Molting Again
Misfortune really does come in pairs.
Mo Fan realized the two Molting creatures had no intention of letting him and the child go — they came crawling out the window after him, launching themselves from above and diving straight down.
Gaping maws. Long, lolling tongues. Those two ravenous faces were getting closer by the second.
They were falling faster than him.
Mo Fan allowed himself a cold smile. *Good. I've been waiting for you to jump.*
Inside the apartment, he hadn't dared use Intermediate magic freely — Blazing Fist at full power could torch an entire floor, or spread the blaze to neighboring ones.
But out here in open air? This was the perfect moment.
"Blazing Fist!!"
He had been holding the Star Trails coiled in his grasp the whole time. The instant the demons dove for him, Mo Fan wove them together into a complete Fire Element Star Chart.
The Star Chart materialized behind his back — only natural, given he was the one in freefall.
His right hand clenched. In an instant, flame roared up his body and surged to his right wrist, condensing into a violently burning cuff of fire.
"Rose Flame!"
The color was a deep, vivid crimson, and from a distance it blazed like countless roses blooming all at once.
"Rose Flame — Blazing Fist: Heaven Shatter!"
His entire fist ignited. He poured every ounce of his strength into it and drove it straight up into the black night sky.
**WHOOOOOOSH—**
A colossal fist of roaring flame surged upward along the face of the tower. The scorching Rose Flame washed over every surrounding building, bathing them all in crimson light.
The upward punch hit like a wall.
Neither creature had anticipated that Mo Fan would complete a Fire Element spell mid-freefall. By the time they saw the massive Heaven-Shatter fist surging up to meet them, the fire tide was already crashing into their scales, searing them clean off.
"HRRAUGH!!"
The Molting Demoness, as it turned out, was considerably more cunning than her counterpart. She lunged sideways mid-fall and seized the Molting Demon.
The Demon was baffled. *We're both about to be swallowed by the same fireball — what exactly does grabbing me accomplish?*
Then the Molting Demoness planted her foot hard on the Demon's back and kicked off, using him as a springboard to vault toward the balcony of the adjacent building.
**BOOM—**
The crimson fist of flame engulfed the Molting Demon completely. Every last scale burned away. Even his grotesquely swollen musculature couldn't absorb that much heat. The demon had been falling — but the punch hit him so hard it launched him upward, past the rooftop and into the sky, a streak of fire arcing through the night like a wayward firework that had landed on the wrong roof.
"Slippery thing." Mo Fan glanced at the Molting Demoness crouching on the neighboring building's windowsill and let out a cold snort.
The Blazing Fist detonated above the rooftop in a massive flare, lighting up the entire residential complex as bright as noon. And that enormous light source cast long, deep shadows from every tower around it.
Borrowing those fleeting building shadows, Mo Fan triggered Shadow Fade when he had barely passed the third floor.
His body dissolved into the darkness and reappeared where the building's shadow fell across the small plaza below. He set the child down, then let out a long, slow breath.
*Thank God I'm a genius. If it weren't for that insufferable little brat turning on every light in the apartment at the exact wrong moment, I'd have been paste on the pavement.*
"Fan Mo, are you all right?" Lingling's voice came through the Bluetooth earpiece.
"I'm fine. The kid is also — oh. He's fainted." Mo Fan glanced at the child, who had gone white-eyed and limp beside him, and answered with a touch of embarrassment.
"You blasted the Molting Demon up here to me," Lingling said, sounding mildly displeased.
"Couldn't exactly control that. But my Blazing Fist hits more than twice as hard as a standard Intermediate spell — that Demon took a full Heaven Shatter to the face. Even if he's not dead, he's finished."
"Didn't expect you to be this capable," Lingling said.
On the rooftop, Lingling crouched over the charred remains of the Molting Demon, keeping the call open.
Her grandfather had told her Fan Mo was talented. She had half assumed that was the old man managing her — talking her out of real danger by pairing her with some perfectly ordinary person, keeping her occupied with small-time work here in Magic City.
She hadn't expected him to be genuinely strong. And he possessed a Spirit Grade Spirit Flame on top of everything else.
For someone his age to have reached this level — that was rare. Genuinely rare.
And Lingling clearly remembered that Mo Fan had also used Lightning Element magic during the fight.
An Intermediate-Level Mage wielding three separate elements. She had never heard of such a thing.
Mo Fan climbed back to the rooftop and turned to the scorched body. "How does it look?"
"See for yourself."
Lingling was small, but she had no visible reaction to a burned corpse. Mo Fan studied the remains, and just as he was starting to wonder, the charred outer skin suddenly cracked — splitting first along the back, then spreading slowly toward the head and down the legs.
If he had to describe it, he'd say it looked like a thoroughly charred sweet potato cracking open along its burnt outer shell.
Mo Fan tensed slightly, quietly bracing himself in case the creature shed another skin and launched another attack.
But when the charred layer peeled away to reveal perfectly normal, living human skin beneath it, unease gave way to outright disbelief.
The black shell shed faster and faster. From inside it, a naked man emerged — slick with fluids, completely limp, rolling free of the husk like a newborn creature.
He had apparently been suffocated for a long time. The moment he was free, he gasped desperately for air, his whole body heaving with the effort.
Mo Fan stood frozen.
Because the man lying there — naked, shaking, gasping — was unmistakably the husband.
*What... what on earth is going on?*
Molts into a terrifying demon. Demon dies. Molts back into a human. Was this thing man or monster?
"S-save me... please..." The man was barely conscious, dragging himself weakly along the ground.
Lingling didn't move.
Mo Fan had no idea what to do either.
"Call an ambulance," Lingling said at last. "He's human. Don't let him die."
"You sure about that, kid?"
"He's the client." Lingling bit down on the words with grim precision. "If he dies, we lose the other two hundred thousand."
"..."
The girl had left Mo Fan completely shell-shocked — fried from the outside in. If it weren't for her clearly being a child in both stature and face, he'd have sworn his partner was some kind of ice-cold adult professional.
All right. Old Bao had said it plainly enough: Lingling's mind was nothing close to ordinary.