Stay Calm, Little Loach!

The Earth Sacred Spring was housed in a completely sealed chamber — walls and ceiling built from massive dark greenish-black stones, each one carved with strange magical patterns and incantations.

Mo Fan was educated enough to recognize what some of those symbols meant. Unless he was mistaken, they constituted a high-tier protective spell formation. So however unimpressive a stone room it might appear, not even an earthquake could rattle so much as a grain of dust inside — truly sealed against all intrusion, in every sense of the word.

His initial fantasy had been that the Earth Sacred Spring would be something like a grand bathhouse — strip down, stretch out, and soak at leisure. But after passing through a row of stone pillars, Mo Fan discovered to his dismay that the Earth Sacred Spring was nothing more than a diamond-shaped stone altar with four tiers. At the very base, a narrow channel had been chiseled out in a circuit around the platform, and through it, spring water flowed in a slow, gentle current — so crystal clear it was nearly invisible.

He studied it for a while and found nothing remarkable. He was about to follow Mu Zhuoyun's instructions and sit down on the altar to begin cultivating, when without warning, the Loach Pendant at his chest began to vibrate with a strange, eager trembling.

"What are you getting so worked up about?" Mo Fan muttered. "Do you think you can just drink from this thing?"

The Loach Pendant was now a Spirit Grade Stardust Artifact. Not only could it sustain fourteen hours of Meditation per day, it also released a special nurturing energy that continuously warmed and fed both of his Stardust. That was the reason Mo Fan had been able to advance both elemental systems to the third tier in such a short time.

Consider: at graduation, most students could claim a second-tier command of a single element and be considered exceptional. Mo Fan, cultivating an additional element on top of that, was still a full tier ahead of all of them. That alone spoke to how extraordinary a Spirit Grade Stardust Artifact truly was.

*Could it be... that Little Loach can absorb the Earth Sacred Spring's warmth?*

Sensing the pendant's desperate craving, Mo Fan's mind began turning the idea over.

Stardust Artifacts and the Earth Sacred Spring were fundamentally the same kind of thing — both accelerated a mage's cultivation. The spring simply housed vastly greater reserves, enough to help a mage push from Basic Level all the way to the Intermediate threshold.

*Should I try it? If the pendant really could absorb the spring's energy, couldn't it upgrade into an even higher-grade Stardust Artifact?*

After all, it had already drained the school's Stardust Artifact completely — sucked it down to scrap. If it could do the same to the Earth Sacred Spring, he'd essentially be carrying a personal Earth Sacred Spring wherever he went.

The spring only opened once a year, providing cultivation time for just seven of the most talented mages in all of Bo City — and even that limited access drove people mad with envy. But if... if...

*Oh hell no.*

The school's Stardust Artifact had been reduced to worthless scrap after Little Loach drained it. Tang Yue had been the one to smooth that whole mess over.

If he drained the Earth Sacred Spring — the entire population of Bo City would lose their minds. They'd haul him up onto a pyre and burn him alive.

Sit quietly. Meditate. Stop thinking about catastrophically stupid things like this.

"Little Loach, don't do anything rash," Mo Fan murmured inwardly. "I know this place is an absolute feast for you, but if you pull something like that, your dear old dad is going to get stomped flat by every person in Bo City. So please, *please* don't cause trouble. We're going to sit here peacefully for seven days, then it's the college entrance exam, university, hunting demons, saving the world — I'll have Mu Ningxue on my left arm and Tang Yue nestled close by my side. I'll even find you a mother pendant someday..."

Mo Fan kept up the silent murmuring until the Loach Pendant, as though it had genuinely understood, finally settled and lay still against his chest.

He let out a long, slow breath.

*For the love of — is this actually a pendant, or some kind of tiny demon king? Why does it act like it has its own brain?*

He settled himself onto the leather meditation cushion. Even before slipping into a Meditation state, he could already feel a wave of nurturing warmth rolling toward him — the same quality of energy his pendant produced, but on an entirely different scale.

If Stardust Artifacts had grades of Mortal and Spirit, then what the Earth Sacred Spring offered was surely the pinnacle. It was as though his entire being might lift off the ground and ascend on the spot.

His two Stardust — Fire Element and Lightning Element, both hovering near saturation — stirred to life. They were like two infants who had just discovered their mother's milk: they latched on and drank greedily, and with every pull they swelled a little larger.

When he had first awakened them, both Stardust had been truly minute — no more than tiny motes of dust adrift in the vast expanse of his inner cosmos, their light faint and uncertain, sometimes hard to even locate. But after three years of cultivation, they had grown. Their radiance was now clearly visible, each one having carved out its own territory in that inner universe, pulsing with a quiet, contained power.

Now, in this chamber, both Stardust were expanding again — measurably, visibly — and every single hour of progress here was worth a full week of his hardest solo training.

*This is insane. My growth is spiking like I've broken the rules of the universe.*

He hadn't expected to stumble into an opportunity like this. It was becoming clear that fighting for resources from the privileged class wasn't just worthwhile — it was essential. At this cultivation speed, even a mediocre mage could outpace everyone their age.

Resources. So many resources concentrated in so few hands. If he hadn't revealed his Dual Elements, none of this — none of the Earth Sacred Spring — would ever have found its way to him.

With Little Loach's Spirit Grade nourishment layered on top of the Earth Sacred Spring's amplification, over seven full days... he might genuinely have a shot at breaking through to Intermediate-Level Mage.

"Guard Captain Liang Bin, is the Earth Sacred Spring really as miraculous as they say?" asked Wang Tonglian, one of the newer guards, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Bo City has a long history — one that stretches back to the Qin Dynasty, perhaps even further," Liang Bin said, settling comfortably onto the ground with a leisurely air, a trace of pride on his face. "The Earth Sacred Spring has been preserved since those ancient days. Think about it — our city has no great economy, no exceptional talent pool, no particular strategic advantage. So what is it that gives Bo City any standing at all in the southern region? It's this spring. Without it, we'd be nothing more than a backwater township."

"Going all the way back to the Qin Dynasty — that's over two thousand years of history," Wang Tonglian breathed, wide-eyed.

"Exactly. And any mage who isn't hopelessly talentless can cultivate inside at three times their normal speed for every hour they spend in there." A distant, wistful look settled over Liang Bin's face.

"Guard Captain Liang is one of the rare few in all of Bo City who has actually been inside," remarked another guard standing nearby.

Liang Bin nodded. He would never forget those seven days — not for the rest of his life. For someone who truly hungered for power, that place offered something more satisfying than any other pleasure the world had to offer.