Trapped in the Iron Cage!

Without a second thought, Mo Fan spun on his heel and bolted toward the nearest building.

Luo Song, Shen Mingxiao, Fu Tianming, Jia Wenqing, and the rest never expected Mo Fan to be such a coward. The moment he turned tail and ran, they let out shouts and surged forward in pursuit.

As Mo Fan fled, he activated Shadow Fade, which pushed his movement speed well beyond theirs. Even so, Shen Mingxiao and Jia Wenqing both possessed Wind Element ability, and the two of them rode Wind Trails in pursuit at a pace that was anything but slow.

Luo Song and Fu Tianming were clearly both equipped with Enchanted Gear, leaving them only marginally behind. Among the other six, at least one was a Wind Element Mage who kept pace near the front of the pack.

Mo Fan charged toward the broad stone steps at the building's entrance and was about to climb when the air around him abruptly crystallized. The cold was sharp enough to burrow straight through his skin.

He looked back — and found four or five thick Ice Lock chains hurtling toward him, twisting and writhing like great, living pythons. At the other end of those chains stood Luo Song, wearing a cold sneer.

Luo Song was still primarily an Earth Element Mage; yet by combining his Footwear Enchanted Gear with a burst of basic Earth magic, he had somehow been the first to close the distance.

"Nowhere left to run!"

The iron-solid chains cracked against the granite steps hard enough to carve deep gouges into the stone.

"Strange — where did he go?" In the black haze, Luo Song had been certain the Ice Lock would pin Mo Fan in place. He charged up the steps only to find no trace of the man.

"He must have gone inside." Shen Mingxiao drifted forward on Wind Trail, the judgment already made. "Hurry — don't let him hand over the Shadow Demon-Beast."

The whole group surged forward, each doing what they could, and flooded into the building — a structure built entirely of stone.

It was exactly that: massive stone blocks stacked into walls. For a structure designed to house Summoned Beasts, the school typically had an Earth Element Mage throw it together without much care. A building like this looked impressive in scale, but no one would mourn its destruction — rebuilding it cost nothing but a measure of Magical Energy.

At the very back of the building stood a Beast-Taming Cage — the objective of this entire assessment.

The Beast-Taming Cage was enormous, no smaller than the Barrier that had enclosed the Freshman Tournament arena. In terms of floor area alone, it could swallow an entire football pitch.

The cage stood twenty meters tall, its bars welded from steel rebar and layered with additional enchantments. Anything below Commander-class would find breaking free in any short stretch of time utterly out of the question.

The building sat within the range of the Night Sovereign's Dominion array, though this was clearly the periphery — only a thin drift of black mist lingered here.

That mist saturated every corner of the vast, open-topped stone structure and coiled around the enormous rust-stained cage, making the whole enclosure feel as though something immense and terrible lay hidden deep within — dangerous and unknown.

Mo Fan sprinted headlong through the darkness, his visibility barely reaching anything at all. So when he looked for somewhere to hide, he never realized he had charged straight inside the Beast-Taming Cage.

The cage's great door had been raised high above the entrance, hidden by the dark mist. Mo Fan had no idea he'd blundered in.

**CLANG!!!!!**

Something massive and metallic dropped from above and slammed into the ground.

Mo Fan wheeled around. Behind him rose an iron gate — fully twenty meters tall — thundering down to embed itself in the earth, then standing there immovable.

At first he had no idea why the gate had fallen. But as the obscuring black mist slowly thinned, realization hit him like a fist: he was already inside the Beast-Taming Cage.

The mist cut visibility to less than twenty meters. And at twenty meters, he still couldn't see either side wall, let alone the far end.

This was his first time here. How was he supposed to know the cage was this vast? And how could he have guessed that the only exit had already been sealed shut by that crashing gate?

Iron bars as thick as tree trunks rose in rows around him, their spacing just narrow enough to make passing through impossible.

Above, a domed ceiling of tightly woven wire mesh curved overhead — escaping from the top was equally out of the question.

And the few gaps that looked almost wide enough were packed with finer wire netting, decisively eliminating any last hope of squeezing through.

*Who the hell designed this thing?* he thought. *It's supposed to hold beasts — so why can't a person get out?*

"Ha. Do you know what you look like right now?" A voice drifted out from the dispersing mist.

There are harsh, grating voices that can only be called ugly. But this voice — this one sounded like something that had crawled out of a grave. Every hair on Mo Fan's body prickled upright.

"Looks like you've been waiting for me for a while," Mo Fan said, glancing at the gate that had shut so inexplicably.

"You walked into this yourself." The voice came from his left. "The Shadow Demon-Beast is already mine. What comes next — I want the whole school to watch the most thrilling live performance."

Mo Fan spun toward the voice. Through the bars of the cage, standing on tiered stone steps outside, was a figure.

He wore a mask that covered most of his face — nearly swallowing even his eyes — but left a striking fringe of black hair hanging loose, obscuring the other half. All that was visible was a strip of skin around the eye socket and brow. And in that one exposed eye burned madness and venom in equal measure.

"Who are you?" Mo Fan stood inside the vast cage and stared at the figure.

"You don't recognize me? You don't *recognize me*?!" The one-eyed masked figure burst into laughter, the sound ringing through the stone building with a deranged, hollow edge.

"That voice does ring a bell," Mo Fan said. "Like a crow."

"Stop playing dumb. Last time you escaped from Bo City — call it your lucky day. This time, I'll make you regret ever surviving." The figure's voice dropped low.

"Oh, now that you put it that way, I know exactly who you are." Mo Fan's tone stayed easy, almost idle. "You know, that face of yours really isn't such a big deal. One trip to South Korea for some surgery and it's all sorted. So why carry all this resentment toward me? A man who spent ten years willingly being someone's lapdog — and you still can't bring yourself to just get a little work done on your face?"

The truth was, Mo Fan had recognized him the moment he heard that voice.

"Ha. Soon you'll be on your knees begging me to leave your skin in one piece." Yu'ang's voice went cold.

"Yu'ang, I have a question for you," Mo Fan said.

Yu'ang's smile stayed cold.

"If you fail this mission again — will the person above you ruin the other half of your face too?" Mo Fan delivered it without hurry, without heat.

Yu'ang's cold smile stretched further. And further. Until it was no longer a smile at all — it had twisted into something grotesque.

*If this bastard says one more word about his face*, Yu'ang swore to himself, *he would boil Mo Fan alive and force every last person Mo Fan loved to drink the broth.*

Xu Zhaoting — hadn't he been exactly the same? That same shameless death wish, that same sharp tongue. And in the end, he had been tortured until he was barely recognizable as human.

This Mo Fan. The hatred had long since sunk into Yu'ang's bones. He wanted to make him suffer — double, triple, a hundred times over.