Three-Step Tower

In the Jing'an Private Sanatorium, a middle-aged man stood at the bedside, his gaze fixed on the figure lying beneath a full body of plaster casts and metal fixation plates.

"Fu Tianming, I'll ask you one more time — have you been exposed?" the man asked coldly.

"No. I swear on my life. When I went to probe him, I used the name Jia Wenqing. The school has no way of finding anything. I just can't understand why he struck so viciously." The figure swathed in plaster said.

This was Fu Tianming — the man Mo Fan had kicked until every bone in his body shattered. He watched the figure before him with barely concealed fear, a man who appeared and vanished like a phantom.

"I'll make other arrangements. What you need to do is heal, then use your connections to go after him and settle the score. I need to muddy the waters." The man standing nearby said, his entire body radiating a dense, murderous aura.

"Your Eminence, this person already has no shortage of enemies at Pearl Academy. Even without your intervention, he's surrounded on all sides. The best moment, in my view, would be the Main Campus assessment — I've already heard that several Noble Clan students are planning to team up against him there." Fu Tianming offered from beneath his casts.

"You don't need to tell me how to do my job," the sinister man said coldly.

The conversation was over. The man was already gone. Fu Tianming strained painfully to prop himself up and peer out the window — and a chill shot through him. As the Priest stepped into the shadows, he saw several grotesque figures moving alongside him...

Those things were clearly the Black-Beast Demons he had raised. Creatures supposedly refined from half-human, half-corpse remains — the most filthy, hideous, and wretched things in all the world.

"Mo Fan, did you really think you could escape me this time?" Deep in a dark thicket, the hat-wearing Priest had come to a sudden stop. His eyes were fixed on Pearl Academy, its lights still burning bright against the night.

Slowly, he swept the hat from his head — revealing a face half-covered by a mask. When the cold light fell across it, the twisted expression beneath sent a crawl of revulsion down the spine.

"Hiding inside a university won't save you. I told you I would make you my slave — driven like a dead dog, just like these." The half-masked man sneered. "I always keep my word."

He glanced at the Black-Beast Demons cowering and fawning at his side. Not a trace of mercy in those eyes. He lashed out with a savage kick at one of the creatures — a thick-necked specimen that crumpled under the blow.

Yu'ang had a particular obsession: taking the people he hated most and reducing them to these things — neither human nor ghost — to be tormented and driven like black dogs for the rest of their miserable lives.

The Three-Step Tower stood in Pearl Academy's Main Campus, and it ranked among the most fiercely contested resources among the Pearl Academy elite.

The Three-Step Tower was, like the Earth Sacred Spring, a treasure born of heaven and earth.

The Earth Sacred Spring owed its power to thousands of years of natural gestation — the energy stored within could sustain an entire city and nurture a new generation of exceptional Mages.

The Three-Step Tower was similarly ancient. Built by the wisdom of those who came before, it was an extraordinary magical structure designed to gather the scattered, drifting elemental energies of the world and concentrate them in a single place.

Elements exist everywhere. Spirit Seeds come into being precisely because in locations where elements and Magical Energy are especially concentrated, they are slowly refined by the passage of time until they gradually evolve into something new. The Three-Step Tower's position and construction allowed it to draw in energy from an area spanning thousands of kilometers —

Like an enormous web of roots spreading beneath thousands of kilometers of earth. Even if the surface above appears completely barren, roots stretching so wide will still channel a ceaseless, sustaining flow of energy up into the trunk.

This concentrating power was, at its core, the key to Pearl Academy's ability to cultivate magical geniuses.

The school's rules stated that only students who had entered the Main Campus and demonstrated exceptional performance there would earn the right to train inside the Three-Step Tower. Mo Fan was the exception.

Dean Xiao had already made clear to Mo Fan that this opportunity might come only once. He had to make the most of it.

Mo Fan knew he was facing a serious crisis. The Black Church had named him as a target. He couldn't wait any longer — he had to grow stronger.

The Three-Step Tower rose as a perfectly symmetrical triangular prism, its exterior composed of what appeared to be silver metal, thrusting straight and sharp into the sky. Among the buildings of the Main Campus, it was impossible to overlook.

"Dean." The two men standing guard at the entrance bowed respectfully as Dean Xiao approached.

"Good, you're on duty today. I've already had the permit delivered for you to review. Take this student inside." Dean Xiao said.

"So this is the new student from the Blue District." One of the guardians — the friendlier of the two — smiled. "I had to wait two full years after entering the Main Campus before I finally got to step inside this tower. You're quite the fortunate one, junior."

Mo Fan smiled modestly.

"Follow me. I'll walk you through what you need to know." The friendly guardian led Mo Fan inside.

Mo Fan followed him in. A long corridor stretched ahead, its walls shimmering with a faint metallic glow.

After walking for several minutes, Mo Fan's curiosity finally got the better of him.

*Something's off about this corridor.* He'd been going straight ahead the whole time — at this pace, he should have crossed from the front entrance to the back wall of the Three-Step Tower several times over. Yet the corridor showed no sign of ending. From the outside, the tower's diameter couldn't have been more than fifty meters.

"Do you know why this place is called the Three-Step Tower?" the friendly guardian asked.

"Is it something like a maze formation? It looks like I've been going straight, but we've actually been walking in curves — or loops. We must have covered at least five hundred meters since entering, and the tower is only fifty meters across." Mo Fan said.

"Not exactly. We really have been walking in a straight line the whole time. You're still in the Blue District, so you likely haven't touched any Space Element theory yet. There's a concept in spatial study: *one step, a thousand zhang; two steps, ten thousand li; three steps, boundless.* The Three-Step Tower is also called the Boundless Tower — because from the outside it looks unremarkable, yet the space inside is virtually inexhaustible." The friendly guardian explained.

"Spatial studies?" Mo Fan had never heard the term before.

"That's right. This tower was built by a Grand Sage who majored in Earth Element and took Space Element as a secondary discipline. The spatial magic arrays inside have never been fully decoded — not to this day. So we simply follow the instructions passed down from those who came before. The tower has many spatial layers, and each layer concentrates energy at a different intensity. As an Intermediate-Level Mage, you're limited to training on the first and second layers. Venture any higher and the energy density would overwhelm you — you'd be blasted apart." The friendly guardian warned.

"I see... So how do I figure out which layer suits me?"

"That," the guardian said, "you'll have to discover for yourself."