Kun Forest · Prison

The Thunderbolt's raw power could reduce a living creature to ash in a single instant, leaving not even the faintest trace.

This was precisely why Teacher Gu Han had intervened even when Bai Cangfeng was wearing Armor Enchanted Gear — the truth was that Intermediate-Level Lightning magic, the Thunderbolt, was simply too overwhelming. Even with Enchanted Gear, there was every chance it would rupture a person's internal organs entirely. Bai Cangfeng might have had the confidence to withstand it; Gu Han had no reason to be negligent over that.

Mu Nujiao now faced the same situation as Bai Cangfeng.

When Thunderbolt fell and left no time to dodge, survival was not guaranteed. Even defensive Enchanted Gear might not be enough — Thunderbolt could shatter that kind of protection outright.

This time, however, Gu Han did not step in.

He had seen Mu Nujiao's countermeasure. And in his estimation, she was ten — no, a hundred times sharper than that fool Bai Cangfeng.

"Wind Trail · Drifting Shadow!"

Mu Nujiao had been drifting along unhurriedly just a moment before, but the instant the storm cloud spread overhead, her footsteps became a blur.

Her elegant silhouette glided effortlessly through the wind trails she had already seeded in place, her loose garments billowing and streaming behind her as she accelerated.

The Thunderbolt hammered down from a clear sky — ferocious, absolute — and blasted a scorched crater into the arena floor. Mu Nujiao was already ten meters clear.

*If she had waited until the Lightning Element Star Chart was fully assembled before activating the Star Trail, she'd have had no chance of escaping a Thunderbolt that fast. But she had prepared for this well in advance.*

Gu Han gave a quiet nod.

Swift and savage — that was Intermediate-Level Lightning magic.

Mu Nujiao clearly had a solid grasp of it. She had already seeded wind trails all around her position before the fight even reached this point.

Her plan was straightforward: wait for Mo Fan to complete his Star Chart, and the moment the storm cloud — that unmistakable harbinger — materialized overhead, shift her position in an instant.

Move too early, and Mo Fan could reacquire her and redirect the Thunderbolt's point of impact. Move too late, and wind speed might not outrun lightning. Mu Nujiao had chosen exactly the right moment, using a Basic-Level Wind Trail to evade Mo Fan's Intermediate-Level Thunderbolt.

*What a terrifying woman — she actually dodged the Thunderbolt.* Mo Fan was genuinely rattled.

This was a real fight against a real opponent — nothing like those other girls who only knew how to grind their cultivation and beat on training dummies. Mu Nujiao had clearly been tested through countless real battles. Her understanding of Intermediate-Level magic ran startlingly deep.

Not everyone knew how to read the storm cloud as a tell for an incoming Thunderbolt, or how to time a response down to the last fraction of a second.

"It looks like you're going to lose."

Having used the Wind Trail, Mu Nujiao now stood at a distance well beyond the reach of even Mo Fan's Lightning Seals.

This time, she had no intention of giving him the chance to Release a second Thunderbolt.

"Oh? Your Wind Disk: Tornado would have to cross all that distance to reach me — I'd have cleared the area long before it arrived." Mo Fan watched her from across the arena.

Wind Disk: Tornado covered a broad area, but crossing from one end of the stadium to the other took time. Over a hundred meters, at least — more than enough for him to react.

"Did I ever say I was going to use Wind Element magic?" Mu Nujiao's face broke into a radiant smile.

It was a beautiful smile. It just filled Mo Fan with a bone-deep certainty that something catastrophic was about to happen.

"Kun Grove · Prison!"

Green Star Trails took on the sinuous, curling shapes of vines and tendrils. They wound and intertwined beneath Mu Nujiao's feet, rapidly weaving themselves into a diagram of pure nature — a symbol of all things teeming and alive.

Like the utterance of an incantation long sealed from the world, a spirit totem commanding the forces of nature stirred into motion and began to dance.

Her slender finger gave the lightest flick, and the immense living energy contained within the formation condensed into a single, utterly unremarkable seed.

The glowing orb of green light drifted carelessly downward onto the stretch of ground where Mo Fan stood — ground that looked barren, unyielding — and the moment it buried itself beneath the surface, everything changed.

Something was forcing its way up through the earth. Before Mo Fan could even begin to think about running, a wild eruption of gnarled trees, writhing vines, and grotesque shoots burst upward from the ground—

They shouldered the soil aside. And what was most terrifying was that they were growing at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Some coiled around each other, rapidly branching out into denser clusters of limbs and roots; others spread outward across the surface, swiftly staking out a vast territory for these plants gone mad with growth.

Seconds ago, there had been nothing here but gravel and rubble. Now every inch of it had been seized. These things looked nothing like plants — they looked like some monstrous invader in the act of occupying, consuming, and claiming everything within reach.

They clearly possessed the ability to sense life. They sensed Mo Fan, and with him as their epicenter, they surged and tangled without restraint. Even as Mo Fan scrambled with everything he had to escape, they didn't block him outright — instead they rapidly wove themselves into a dense thicket of twisted vines, penning him inside.

The tangle grew thicker and wilder, more and more impenetrable, until the outside world vanished entirely from sight.

A cage. A jungle cage built entirely of writhing grotesque trees, demon vines, and monstrous branches — packed so densely that the person inside could move freely within, yet could not escape. There was no way out.

A prison. A prison that had erupted from bare earth and grown tall enough to seal off even the sky overhead — a forest gaol enclosing every direction.

The jungle cage appeared before the assembled students without warning, and the shock that gripped them was beyond words.

Wind Disk: Tornado had already made everyone look at Mu Nujiao with fresh eyes. Now she had unleashed a second Intermediate-Level spell — and the audience simply could not believe this was a university freshman's doing.

This was not merely astonishing by freshman standards. Students years their senior would feel ashamed witnessing it.

Of all the students in the Blue District, the vast majority had not yet crossed the threshold into Intermediate Level.

Let alone cultivating two different elements to Intermediate Level — both of them deployable at will.

Intermediate Level.

What had started as a perfectly ordinary Beast Battle had somehow turned into a contest between Intermediate-Level Mages.

More than a few students who had entered the arena with their heads held high were now beginning to question the meaning of their lives.

They were all freshmen — so why was Intermediate-Level magic, something entirely out of reach for so many of them, something these two wielded so effortlessly?

One Intermediate-Level spell was already extraordinary enough. But why had they gone and cultivated their second element to Intermediate Level as well?

What the hell was even the point of being alive?