Exchange Students

"Someone's been protecting her?" Mo Fan stared blankly, completely lost.

"It might just be my imagination," Lingling said. "Or some secret admirer at school. Either way, whoever it is means her no harm — and I'm certain it's not the Black Church. I only stumbled onto it by accident."

"Tell me exactly what happened." Mo Fan was always on edge when it came to Xinxia.

"I honestly can't give you the specifics."

Mo Fan pressed her several more times, but Lingling insisted she wasn't sure herself — it was little more than a feeling.

He went to ask Xinxia directly. She said she'd never noticed anyone watching her, and that left him thoroughly unsettled.

*Protecting Xinxia — that's my job. Which meddlesome idiot thinks they can just step in? Go find somewhere else to be. Just wait until Mo Fan gets his hands on you.*

Call it "protection" if you wanted to be generous. Call it what it was — stalking.

"Might be her mother," Mo Jiaxing said when he heard the story. That was the first place his mind went. "Her mother left without a word. She's probably eaten up with guilt — too ashamed to show her face, so she watches from a distance. Mo Fan, you're worrying over nothing."

Mo Fan pressed him for details about Xinxia's mother. Mo Jiaxing let out a long sigh and couldn't quite put it into words.

The long and short of it: Mo Jiaxing had been on the verge of starting a new family with Xinxia's mother. But not long after things were made official, she vanished — and left Xinxia on his doorstep.

Mo Jiaxing was a kind, decent man. Deceived as he'd been, he had no intention of leaving Xinxia alone in the world. So he stepped up and raised her as his own.

Mo Fan had no words for it.

*How rotten can one man's luck get?* His father had finally found someone — only for her to turn out to be cold-hearted enough to use him as a convenient place to abandon her daughter.

Based on Lingling's description, the person watching over Xinxia from a distance was almost certainly her mother — tethered there by a thread of guilt, too ashamed to ever step forward.

Mo Fan said nothing of this to Xinxia. There was no point in making her hurt.

He lingered in Hangzhou a while longer. After witnessing the wreckage that had befallen Xu Zhaoting and Zhang Lulu, he found himself holding Xinxia — the one he'd pulled back from that catastrophe — a little closer than before.

Lingling had taken a keen interest in the West Lake incident and begun her own investigation. She made no headway, though, and with no good reason to keep intruding on Mo Fan and Xinxia's time together, she eventually packed up and headed back to Magic City.

"Mo Fan, get back here. Dean Xiao has sold us out — apparently we're all doing a stint as exchange students at the Imperial Capital." Zhao Manyan's voice through the phone carried the tone of someone already resigned to his fate.

"What — exchange students??" Mo Fan was baffled.

"Look, if you want to be polite about it, it's an 'exchange program.' If you want to be blunt about it, it's a brutal inter-school grudge match. Happens every year." Zhao Manyan had a gift for plain speaking.

"Then why are we going up against the Imperial Capital Academy?"

"Because there's only a handful of schools in the entire country that can even hold a candle to Imperial Capital Magic Academy, obviously. This year's draw matched us against them. Both schools send a batch of their so-called best students to study at the other campus for three months. And let me tell you — Imperial Capital is packed wall to wall with prodigies and freaks of nature. Even the school leadership is feeling the heat. So to protect Pearl Academy's reputation, Dean Xiao specifically called out your name."

"..."

Mo Fan let out a hollow sigh and rushed straight back to campus.

He tracked down Dean Xiao and Zhou Zhenghua and launched into his grievances before he'd even sat down. "I'd like to know — how did my name end up on this list without anyone asking me? I never agreed to any exchange program. I certainly didn't volunteer to go to the Imperial Capital and spend three months getting looked down on."

"Mo Fan, there's no need for false modesty," Zhou Zhenghua said, perfectly composed. "With your ability, you'll hold your own against anyone Imperial Capital has to offer. Among all the new Main Campus students, the exceptional ones come down to this group. If not you, then who?"

"Dean Xiao," Mo Fan tried a different tack, "you know me — I've always kept a low profile. For something like this, fighting for the school's honor and all that... I'm sure there are plenty of people far better suited than I am."

*He had no desire to go. Life in Magic City was perfectly fine — picking up well-paying commissions, keeping the city clear of monsters, spending quality time with his four magic-element beauties who always seemed to want more of his attention, steadily improving his quality of life. Why drag himself to the Imperial Capital to live under someone else's roof, enduring sidelong glances from students who'd never once lowered their gaze? Every person at Imperial Capital Magic Academy walked around like they were above the rest of humanity. If he had to spend months among that crowd, Mo Fan couldn't promise he wouldn't end up putting one or two of them flat on the ground.*

"Mo Fan, let's skip the back-and-forth." Dean Xiao clearly knew exactly what kind of person he was dealing with and got straight to the point. "Students going to the Imperial Capital will receive additional compensation. I happen to have a Concentration Magic Weapon — a necklace. It allows a Mage to deflect one mental attack while controlling Star Motes, ensuring the spell is Released in full."

"Deflect mental attacks?" Mo Fan's eyes sharpened at once.

He thought immediately of that twisted Chao He — the one he and Teacher Tang Yue had gone up against. Chao He's Curse Element abilities came bundled with mental interference that left its targets unable to cast a single spell.

Open combat didn't scare Mo Fan anymore. What he feared were these underhanded trap-type and mental-type techniques that stripped away the ability to fight back. A Concentration Magic Weapon was exactly the kind of insurance he needed.

"Deal." Mo Fan pocketed the item without a second thought.

The Concentration Magic Weapon turned out to be a necklace. He already had a pendant tucked beneath his shirt, but this one was considerably more elegant than the little loach charm — something he could actually wear in plain sight without raising questions.

There was another angle to consider as well: Yu'ang knew the Earth Sacred Spring was hidden inside that pendant. There was no telling whether the man had let that slip somewhere. Wearing this new necklace openly would throw anyone watching off the scent.

"Now that you've accepted the item, don't you dare embarrass Pearl Academy out there." Zhou Zhenghua's expression had gone distinctly sour.

Every other student at this school would practically trip over each other for a spot in the exchange program. He'd never seen anyone negotiate with faculty the way Mo Fan did. A Concentration Magic Weapon wasn't cheap — and they'd just handed it over, just like that.

"Don't worry." Freshly motivated now that his reward was secured, Mo Fan cracked his knuckles. "I'll knock all those Imperial Capital hotshots' teeth clean out of their mouths."

Dean Xiao fixed him with a sharp look. "Don't go starting trouble."

"Heh, of course not, of course not..." Mo Fan laughed and scratched the back of his head.

Dean Xiao cleared his throat and shifted to a different register. "That said — don't be too restrained, either. As long as you're in the right, we won't sit on our hands."

Mo Fan looked at the stone-faced Dean Xiao and couldn't hold back a grin.

Roughly translated, that last part meant: *If someone starts with you, don't you dare back down. Go after them with everything you've got — and the school will have your back.*