The Commendation Assembly

Pearl Academy's Blue District had an enrollment of over thirty thousand students.

That figure, strictly speaking, only counted those admitted through the standard process. When you included students enrolled under special circumstances and those residing on campus for other reasons, the real number swelled to nearly fifty thousand.

From the moment Mo Fan arrived at Pearl Academy, he'd been living at the center of a storm — so much so that he'd had almost no contact with the wider student body. Even his fellow Summoning Element classmates kept their distance, treating him with a wary kind of respect from afar.

Mo Fan had won back resources for the Summoning Element, yes — but he'd also dragged its reputation through the mud in the process. These days, Summoning Element students couldn't step out to eat without being treated like rats everyone wanted to chase off.

Then, at the monthly all-school assembly, Scholar Li dropped a bombshell: Mo Fan — the student the entire school had branded as public enemy number one — had apparently carried out a remarkable act of heroism.

The gymnasium demon incident had been all anyone could talk about ever since it happened. The four or five thousand students who'd lived through it had been retelling the story throughout the break, and by now it had branched into countless different versions.

The news media had covered the incident as well.

Events on school grounds always received intense scrutiny. Still, a creature like the Scale-Skin Mother Demon was more like a plague pathogen — it had simply slipped inside, and that wasn't anyone's fault in particular. Coverage focused less on assigning blame and more on the response and the resolution.

There had been deaths. The final count, however, had been kept below ten. Throughout history, demon-beast plagues of this kind had claimed over a hundred lives, sometimes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. The ten victims received government compensation, along with donations from people across all walks of society.

Neither the media nor the authorities wished to dwell on the tragedy — especially when the death toll had been held this low, thanks to someone who had risked their life to kill the Mother Demoness in time.

At the all-school assembly, Scholar Li made a point of calling forward the person who had contributed most to resolving the crisis.

More than thirty thousand students packed the main field. Their astonishment had two layers: first, that the person who had resolved the crisis turned out to be a Light Element Mage; and second, that the one who had fought alongside him was none other than the notorious Mo Fan of the Summoning Element.

Every single day since Mo Fan had enrolled — right up until Mu Nujiao's donation — someone on campus had been cursing his name.

And yet today, the entire student body was being asked to applaud him. On countless faces, expressions twisted into something deeply uncomfortable.

"Strange — how was it *him* who killed the Scale-Skin Mother Demon?"

Somewhere in the vast crowd, a slender girl standing among a cluster of Healing Element students wore an expression of pure bewilderment.

"What's wrong?" her roommate asked, equally puzzled.

"Nothing… never mind. So that's Mo Fan." The girl said no more. Her gaze, however, locked onto the young man standing off to one side and refused to let go.

The school was heaping praise on the Light Element student — but as far as this girl was concerned, Zhao Manyan was the assistant. The one who had actually killed the Scale-Skin Mother Demon had to be Mo Fan.

"I have to say — the scene was chaos, but I clearly saw a Thunderbolt strike a blue-green scaly creature. I actually thought *that* was the Scale-Skin Mother Demon."

The voice belonged to someone whispering in the crowd.

There had been no shortage of witnesses. The pandemonium had been total — everyone too caught up in their own survival to spare a glance at anyone else — but the battle playing out on that stage had been impossible to miss.

"Right, I remember it too. It was an Intermediate-Level Lightning Element spell that killed the blue one."

"Maybe Zhao Manyan isn't only a Light Element Intermediate-Level Mage — maybe he has Lightning Element as well."

"That doesn't hold up. I'm pretty sure I also saw Intermediate-Level Fire Element magic. Who Released *that*?"

Whispers rippled through the crowd. The official account — from both the media and the school — was that Zhao Manyan had killed the Scale-Skin Mother Demon and earned the credit. But among the students, a second version was making the rounds: a strikingly handsome young man commanding both Fire and Lightning had been the real one to bring the creature down on that stage.

Many of those who had been present were thoroughly convinced. Not a few had also suspected it might be Mo Fan, given his Lightning Element — but Mo Fan was officially a Summoning Element and Lightning Element student, which meant the "Fire-and-Lightning man" version didn't hold up when applied to him.

"You have to trust me — I was right next to that stage. I saw it with my own eyes. Mo Fan fought the Scale-Skin Mother Demon. He even summoned his Gloom Wolf Beast, and in the end, he killed her with Thunderbolt. God, that Scale-Skin Mother Demon was absolutely a Battle-General-class creature — and Mo Fan took her down solo. I could even see blood streaming down his face."

"Give me a break. How could an Intermediate-Level Mage wield that many elements? And besides — you just said his face was covered in blood. You're still claiming you recognized him?"

"I'm serious! Why won't anyone believe me? When Mo Fan and the Scale-Skin Mother Demon fell from the aerial stage, only one side of his face was hurt — blood was running down it — but how could I ever forget the face of someone I despise that much? It was absolutely Mo Fan from the Summoning Element. He's the one who killed the Scale-Skin Mother Demon!"

"You must've been too terrified to see straight. The official story's out. Stop making things up."

"There's a cover-up. There has to be a cover-up! I am not letting this go — I'm going to expose the truth and make sure the real hero gets justice!"

Some people had indeed witnessed it. The problem was that by the time Mo Fan was carried out, his face had been a ruin of blood — completely unrecognizable. With the authorities naming Zhao Manyan, everyone simply accepted it. As for what lay beneath the surface...

Yes, something did lie beneath the surface. It was just that this particular cover-up had been engineered by Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan themselves.

Exactly as they'd planned from the very beginning.

One wanted the money. The other wanted the fame. A perfect arrangement.

After the assembly, Mo Fan had gotten into the habit of hanging back and waiting for the lunch crowds to thin before going to eat.

But thinking about it now — he'd basically cleared his name, hadn't he? Helping save lives was genuinely righteous work. There was no reason to keep dragging around that old infamy like a ball and chain.

Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan — partners in their neat little scheme — headed together to a decent restaurant and treated themselves to a proper meal.

"Mo Fan, you know as well as I do that Spirit Grade Lightning Seeds are basically impossible to get hold of. We're planning to go to an auction at the International Trade Center this Sunday. When that Spirit Grade Lightning Seed comes up for bidding, the Li Family will buy it outright and hand it straight to you. What do you say?"

"An auction?" Mo Fan's eyes sharpened. "Are there lots of good things there?"

"Plenty. You can sell things or buy whatever you're after. Tell you what — I'll take you along this Sunday."

"Deal. Take me — I could stand to broaden my horizons a little."

Mo Fan had a Battle-General-class Spirit Essence sitting in his possession. You couldn't exactly offload something like that at a corner shop — items worth tens of millions belonged at proper auctions.

His plan: sell the Spirit Essence, pocket the proceeds, then use them to pick up a decent Shield Enchanted Gear.

The Sickle-Bone Shield that Zhankong had given him was completely totaled. He had a bit of money now, so the smart move was to replace it as fast as possible. Otherwise, the next time he ran into something at the Scale-Skin Mother Demon's level, whether he'd make it out alive would be far from certain.

If a Shield Enchanted Gear wasn't available, he'd look for something else to boost his overall strength.

The Main Campus assessment wasn't far off. When that time came, he'd have to square off against rivals from across the school — many of whom had long since developed personal grudges against him. Without something solid backing him up, how was he supposed to keep playing the big shot?