The Little Loach Pendant

"Out with it." Mu Bai wore the expression of a thoroughly aggrieved housewife — he couldn't stand looking at Mo Fan for even a second, yet there he stood. Strange. By every logic, they should have been sworn enemies; whatever Mo Fan could possibly want to ask him was a mystery.

"That fellow Mu Yuang — does he get a Stardust Artifact feeding him every single day of the year?" Mo Fan asked.

Mu Bai let out a cold laugh. "At most he used to get three or four months of Stardust Artifact access per year. Thanks to you, now he has over half a year."

Mo Fan nodded and pressed on. "I provoked the old bastard the way I did, and he still won't give Mu Yuang full-year access? Is he just that stingy, or does he think that little of me?"

"Do you think Stardust Artifacts grow on trees? The clan has so many disciples and only so many Artifacts — everyone rotates. The only one who holds a permanent piece is Mu Ningxue. She carries a Spirit-grade Stardust Artifact that's hers alone." Mu Bai regarded Mo Fan with undisguised contempt.

"Spirit-grade Stardust Artifact? These things come in grades?" Mo Fan asked, genuinely thrown.

He knew what Stardust Artifacts did. It had simply never occurred to him they were classified by quality.

Mu Bai stared at him as though regarding a fool.

*This idiot — how on earth did he cultivate all the way to S-grade without knowing something this basic?*

Seizing the chance to demonstrate his own superior knowledge — while keeping his disdain equally visible — Mu Bai explained: "Stardust Artifacts obviously vary in quality. The soul-nourishing artifacts we ordinarily have access to are basically all Mortal-grade. Spirit-grade? There are probably only a handful of those in all of Bo City."

"What does Spirit-grade actually do?" Mo Fan pressed.

"Mortal-grade increases a Mage's effective daily cultivation time by around twenty percent. Spirit-grade increases it by forty percent." Mu Bai replied.

As soon as the words left his mouth, an involuntary trace of longing crept across Mu Bai's face. For someone at the very beginning of their cultivation path, a Spirit-grade Stardust Artifact would be nothing short of perfect — you'd outpace your peers so thoroughly they wouldn't even realize the race had started.

"I see." Mo Fan nodded, the picture coming together.

Twenty percent versus forty percent — that difference he could appreciate perfectly well.

"Don't celebrate too early," Mu Bai said, tossing the inevitable bucket of cold water. "You got ten days with the artifact. I have a full month. I'll leave you so far in the dust you won't even be able to see me."

Mo Fan didn't particularly care. Spending every day trading blows with small fry like Mu Bai and Zhao Kunsan would only drag down his own standards — his real competition was the Mu Clan disciples drowning in resources he could barely imagine. He was the man who was going to cut through every last one of them, forcing the old bastard to gift-wrap his daughter and her entire dowry and deliver the package right to his door.

"Remember — Stardust Artifacts are extremely, extremely precious. Do not damage them even slightly. And when your time is up, return them on schedule. I have warned every one of you: these are not toys." Xue Musheng's voice carried real gravity.

Night had fallen. Lights were out in the dormitories, and a deep quiet had settled over the campus.

On the rooftop of the main academic building, Mo Fan sat alone on the ledge of the large water cistern, turning the Stardust Artifact he had just received over in his fingers.

It was a small piece of azure dust-stone, nestled inside an extraordinarily fine case — enough to show how seriously the school regarded it.

The stone had been polished smooth and threaded through with a white chain so the wearer could hang it as a pendant against their chest.

*Putting it on is all it takes?* Mo Fan murmured to himself.

He tilted his head slightly and slowly lowered the Stardust Artifact around his neck.

The chain was long enough that the stone settled squarely against the center of his chest.

**Ding—**

A clear, chime-like tone rang from his chest without warning.

Mo Fan paused — then it clicked.

He was already wearing another pendant around his neck.

It was shaped like a loach: small, jet-black, utterly unremarkable. He still remembered how it had trembled non-stop on the day of his Awakening.

The Stardust Artifact must have knocked against the loach pendant and produced that bright, musical sound.

Come to think of it — what exactly was the loach pendant?

Mo Fan had tried to puzzle it out more than once and always come up empty-handed. At the same time, he had never stopped believing, somewhere deep down, that this loach pendant was what had changed the world.

The pendant had been left behind by Old Man Ying — the gatekeeper who lived at the back gate of the school hill. Mo Fan had been wearing it the night he fell asleep inside that old caretaker's shack, and then, inexplicably, the entire world had turned itself inside out — or perhaps he had slipped sideways into some parallel version of it.

He had kept the pendant on ever since. He was a little afraid that taking it off might undo everything. *Damn it — I only just learned Lightning Seal and Fire Burst.*

"Forget it, not worth worrying about. Better focus on training. Mu Yuang won't be a pushover. And if I want the old bastard to personally package up his daughter and deliver her to my door, I'm going to need real power to back that up." Mo Fan muttered.

Pushing thoughts of the loach pendant aside, he turned his focus inward and directed his mental intent toward the Stardust Artifact.

Mental intent was a faculty that developed as a Mage's spiritual power matured — by concentrating it on a specific point, a Mage could detect the subtle energy and magical fluctuations of that location, while also heightening all their senses — hearing, smell, sight, and touch — far beyond ordinary human limits.

*Strange — nothing's happening. Xue Musheng said all I need to do is probe it with my intent and leave a mental imprint inside, and the Stardust Artifact will channel its spirit-nourishing energy into my body, refreshing my mind and easing the fatigue on my spiritual power.*

Mo Fan tried several more times. The Stardust Artifact remained stubbornly inert.

Hm?

The loach pendant, on the other hand — was that leaking energy?

A bolt of shock went through him. He quickly redirected his intent toward the loach pendant.

The moment his intent made contact, it was as if his whole being had sunk into a warm spring. A silky warmth spread through him, and the spiritual exhaustion built up from months of grueling practice began to dissolve — slowly, steadily — while his Inner World grew clearer, quieter, more settled with every breath.

No irritation. No anxiety. His mind had never felt this still, this peaceful, this deeply at rest.

He had been training for a solid ten hours. Normally he would have dragged himself to bed ages ago; tonight he had pushed only because he'd wanted to test what a soul-nourishing artifact could do.

Now, the overwhelming wave of exhaustion that had been bearing down on him gently eased. He could feel, faintly, that he had a little more left in him.

*What the hell.*

*What is going on??*

The Stardust Artifact the school had given him wasn't doing a single thing. But the loach pendant he'd been wearing this entire time — the one he'd always dismissed as a worthless trinket — was performing exactly the function a Stardust Artifact was supposed to perform.

Could it be... could this loach pendant he'd been writing off all this time actually be a Stardust Artifact itself????

Excitement surged through Mo Fan.