You Lose!

"That Mu Nujiao is... she's incredible!" The girl with the high ponytail stood frozen, staring. "Mo Fan has to be done for, right? There's basically no escaping a Kun Grove prison."

"I can't say for certain." Xu Zhaoting shook his head slightly.

"Surely your classmate can't still have something hidden — that's impossible, unless he pulls out some devastating piece of Enchanted Gear."

Xu Zhaoting didn't answer. His eyes were locked, unblinking, on that jungle of trees and tangled growth.

"That was... that was *insane!*"

"I know! The goddess showed up and struck down the evil demon just in time — we almost lost everything. She is my goddess from this day forward!!"

"Hey, Zhang Shao — maybe we should find a different girl to be our gang queen. Our whole crew combined isn't enough for Mu Nujiao to take seriously."

Every freshman in the school was practically prostrating themselves in worship at that moment. If Mu Nujiao hadn't stepped in with such overwhelming force, that great demon Mo Fan really would have stripped them of every last resource.

A woman who was merely beautiful could still be called a disaster — the kind that topples kingdoms. But a beautiful woman who *also* struck down villains and shielded the innocent? That was a true goddess: one who saved all living things from suffering, wreathed in auspicious clouds wherever she went, with the faint sound of celestial music always following in her wake.

Mu Nujiao lowered those slender, jade-like hands of hers — hands that had just cast out a demon — and strolled at an unhurried pace toward the Kun Grove prison she had built.

She was completely certain that Mo Fan had no path to recovery.

His Summoning Element was spent. If he had a stronger Summoned Beast, he would have called it out already.

And his Lightning Element? In a situation like this, it was useless. It couldn't help him break free of the Kun Grove.

He had already lost.

Mu Nujiao stepped to the edge of the grove.

The Kun Grove served as a binding prison, but it had no direct offensive capability. All she needed to do was walk in and have Mo Fan admit defeat.

If he refused to cooperate, she wouldn't mind sending a Wind Disk his way — letting him experience the raw thrill of a free-fall with nothing to catch him.

She peered through the narrow gaps between the trees, scanning for Mo Fan's trapped form.

She was just about to speak when she realized, with a sharp jolt, that there was no sign of him anywhere inside the Kun Grove prison.

"How could this be..." The cool self-assurance on Mu Nujiao's face cracked wide open into shock.

The Kun Grove's binding was something no movement technique could simply outrun — the plants tracked living creatures and grew to surround them.

Wind Trail, Earth Wave, mobility-enhancing Enchanted Gear — none of it could escape the Kun Grove's hold.

It was precisely because Mu Nujiao was one hundred percent certain she had won that she'd walked in so casually. And now, peering into the dense lattice of the prison she herself had grown, she could find absolutely no trace of Mo Fan.

*Impossible.*

*Absolutely impossible.*

"You lose."

A low, unhurried voice drifted from somewhere among the surrounding trees.

Mu Nujiao snapped her gaze toward it — and through the undergrowth, she caught the faint outline of Mo Fan stepping out from beneath the shadows of the brush...

Not stepping out from *between* the bushes. Stepping out from the *shadows themselves.* No matter how sharp Mu Nujiao's perception was, how could she possibly have anticipated that he could shadow-shift — that he could move freely through darkness without constraint?

Wind Trail and Earth Wave couldn't escape the Kun Grove's prison. But what the Kun Grove was most powerless against was precisely Shadow Element magic.

The vines and trees arched into a dense canopy above, casting a vast swath of shadow beneath them. That shadow was, in effect, an open playing field for any Mage who wielded the Shadow Element. The thick vines and knotted demon branches could bind flesh — but they could do nothing to bind a shadow's movement.

"Shadow Element..." Mu Nujiao stood frozen, her eyes carrying a coldly interrogating stare. "How could you possibly know Shadow Element techniques?"

She didn't dare move, and she didn't dare attempt any magic. Mo Fan was far, far closer than she'd realized. On his open palm, writhing bolts of lightning coiled like frenzied serpents, straining to fly free at any moment.

At this distance, there was no room to dodge. She couldn't even reach for her Enchanted Gear in time.

"You don't need to ask about that." The Lightning Seals on Mo Fan's palm grew more volatile by the second, pressing toward her. "The point is — you lose."

Shame and fury burned in Mu Nujiao's eyes.

Shadow Element.

Was this man trying to shatter everything she understood about what was possible?

He had clearly demonstrated Summoning Element abilities during their fight, then gone on to use his Lightning Element. As an Intermediate-Level Mage, those were both his elements — he should have had nothing left.

Then why was he now producing a third?

*Was he a High-Level Mage?*

Impossible. Absolutely impossible. No one in this world could reach High-Level Mage at that age — not even members of the Tribunal could manage that.

Lips pressed tight together, she stood there with no options left.

She considered it — whether to bring out her Enchanted Gear and keep fighting. But she let the thought go.

Whether Enchanted Gear could be activated faster than a Lightning Seal was beside the point. The real issue was that he hadn't used a single piece of Enchanted Gear throughout this entire battle. If she won by falling back on her great clan's backing rather than her own ability, what would that victory mean?

Her lips stayed pressed tight. The fire in her eyes finally guttered — and with quiet, reluctant dignity, she said:

"I lose."

*I lose.*

The moment those words left Mu Nujiao's mouth, the entire arena went dead silent.

Then, after a long and frozen pause, the arena detonated. The crowd erupted into complete and utter chaos.

She'd lost. Mu Nujiao had actually lost.

Which meant Mo Fan, alone, would claim every last piece of the freshman class's shared cultivation resources.

Good lord — even the goddess they had placed their final hope in had lost to this demon. Whatever happened to evil never triumphing over good?

"How... how did he get out of the Kun Grove prison?"

"He had to have cheated. It's impossible any other way."

"Just kill us already. We worked so hard to get into this school — all for those extra resources that set it apart from everywhere else — and now it's all gone. Every last bit of it."

The disbelief was total. Wailing and groaning swept through the stands in waves.

Mu Nujiao could feel the sounds pressing in from every direction, her face burning as if it were on fire.

She hadn't expected to lose — she, of all people, the final challenger. The self-recrimination hit immediately: how had she been so careless?

She knew perfectly well that among these five thousand-plus freshmen, not everyone shared her indifference to the school's initial public resources. There were girls in her own dormitory counting on those resources to break through the Basic-Level Mage threshold.

If she had wanted a fight for its own sake, she could have taken Mo Fan's position and challenged the entire school herself. The reason she had stepped forward was that she hadn't wanted him to take everything from the ordinary students around her — the ones with no great family to fall back on.