Strategy

The remaining six members of the Summoning Element department had come to regard Mo Fan as nothing short of a deity. They were sensible enough to take only what had originally been their own share, leaving everything Mo Fan had seized entirely to him.

Never mind what Jiang Yunming may have intended — even if he had meant otherwise, Mo Fan had no reason to split the spoils with those six. He had staked everything and made himself the enemy of the entire school to win those resources. What did any of that have to do with them?

"Dean Xiao also said he'd convert the public resources into cultivation materials for me. I wonder how much it'll actually amount to. Resources to advance the Gloom Wolf Beast should be obtainable, right?" Mo Fan murmured to himself.

If the Gloom Wolf Beast could break through to Battle-General-class, Mo Fan felt he could truly dominate his entire generation — and even challenge opponents above his tier.

He had seen a Battle-General-class creature with his own eyes. The shock of that Three-Eyed Demon Wolf materializing between buildings was something he still hadn't forgotten.

After the storm of the Beast Battle, Mo Fan found that his life had changed in noticeable ways.

For one, his dormitory was down to three people.

The two roommates who had never really mixed with Mo Fan had apparently grown afraid of being caught in the crossfire of his enemies, and applied for a room transfer.

Now it was just Mo Fan, Zhang Pinggu, and Zhao Manyan.

Zhang Pinggu worshipped Mo Fan with something approaching religious devotion and had nearly become his personal shadow. Zhao Manyan's reaction was comparatively normal — same as ever, really — though his most frequently asked question had become: *Since you fought Mu Nujiao up close, you must have a pretty good sense of whether she's a C or a D, right?*

Mo Fan was completely speechless. In a fight that tense, who had time to take measurements? Eyeballing it from memory... probably a D.

The resource redistribution still had some paperwork to clear before it reached his hands, so Mo Fan wasn't in any hurry. He used the time to focus on his cultivation in peace.

A man at Intermediate-Level with four elements honestly didn't have much mental bandwidth to spare for anything else. Every night he was tending to each one in turn, and none of them could afford to go hungry.

Time slipped by quickly. A little over a month passed.

The uproar over the Beast Battle had gradually been displaced by fresh news. On the occasional night before sleep, Mo Fan would catch Zhang Pinggu chattering to himself about new formidable figures who had surfaced on campus — reportedly, one late-enrolling student's combat strength might even exceed Mo Fan's own.

Well, it was inevitable. Mo Fan was the school's public enemy, after all. Everyone acknowledged he was powerful, but nobody wanted to admit he was truly unbeatable. It was perfectly natural to hold up someone equally strong but more personable as the real number one — especially when they'd never actually fought head-to-head.

"Hey, do you two know what Mu Nujiao just did? It's the reason the whole campus is calling her an actual goddess now." Zhang Pinggu burst through the door from class, fresh news in tow.

Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan were both in the dorm doing Meditation, too lazy to attend lectures.

At the sound of Zhang Pinggu's voice, Zhao Manyan opened his eyes.

"Go on," he said. Zhao Manyan's interest in Mu Nujiao was considerable — whenever Zhang Pinggu had something to say about her, he'd probably drop mid-breakthrough to listen.

"She took personal responsibility for what happened at the Beast Battle, and then, in the name of the Mu Great Clan, donated an amount of resources nearly equivalent to everything the school had provided — to every student across every department."

Mo Fan opened his eyes too.

"Why would she do that?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

The woman was almost absurdly generous. It wasn't even her fault she'd lost — so why was she compensating the entire student body for the cross-department public resources?

"Exactly — even the school didn't see it coming. Nobody quite knows what to make of her. She's truly a blessing from above," Zhang Pinggu said, nearly glowing with excitement.

"It's strategy," Zhao Manyan said after a brief pause. He'd already worked it out.

"Strategy? How so?" Mo Fan asked.

The amount of public resources involved was staggering. Even a major clan with deep pockets didn't throw that kind of money around recklessly.

"Every year, the great clans pour enormous resources into recruiting graduates from elite academies — some even lock in promising students while they're still enrolled. The Mu Great Clan is simply front-loading that investment. They used the perfect cover of Mu Nujiao's loss — her 'failure' to reclaim resources for the whole school — to buy the goodwill of every incoming freshman in one clean sweep. Normally, the academy wouldn't allow a powerful faction to do something so blatant. But the department heads have no choice — they can't let their students end up empty-handed. So they accepted the proposal, framed as Mu Nujiao taking personal responsibility and making amends." Zhao Manyan smiled.

"Still, it's a massive outlay just for a good reputation. And not many Mages are going to pledge loyalty over what amounts to pocket change — not when bigger patrons will come calling later," Zhang Pinggu said.

"Think of it this way. Feed a man on the brink of starvation a single bowl of rice, and he'll be grateful enough to die for you. Give a man who's already made it a mountain of gold, and he might still walk away. Maybe not every freshman at Pearl Academy will go on to succeed — but enough of them will. Spending the cost of five thousand bowls of rice to cast a wide net is far more effective than sinking it all into one golden mountain. Even if most of them never join the Mu Great Clan in the end, the reputation this buys is immense. Any way you look at it, it's worth it."

Zhang Pinggu sniffled involuntarily.

Honestly, if Zhao Manyan hadn't laid it out like that, Zhang Pinggu would have happily kept believing Mu Nujiao had simply felt guilty and thrown open the family coffers out of the goodness of her heart.

Mo Fan looked at Zhao Manyan, mildly impressed.

*This handsome roommate of mine understands this kind of maneuvering rather well. He must have grown up immersed in the world of major clans — there's no other way he'd see through it so quickly.*

"So she's a calculating schemer after all? And here I was genuinely putting her on a pedestal," Zhang Pinggu said.

"It's not really about Mu Nujiao herself. Most likely, her clan heard about what happened and made the call — told her to go ahead with it. She already felt guilty about the resource losses from her defeat against Mo Fan. If her family was willing to foot the bill, she'd have no reason to refuse. It's a win-win all around." Zhao Manyan shrugged.

"Good. For a second there, you almost completely demolished the goddess I had built up in my head."

Mo Fan sat with his thoughts for a while after hearing all this.

So not every major clan or noble house was the blundering kind that simply threw its weight around. The truly established names understood how to protect their image — and how to quietly draw talented Mages into their orbit. What might have been an embarrassing defeat for the Mu Family had been turned, in one deft move, into an enormous advantage. Any competing clan trying to poach the same recruits would now have to pay a far steeper price.

"Oh, right — Mo Fan, how exactly did you escape from that Intermediate-Level Plant Element spell? That overgrown jungle was so dense, none of us could figure out what you did," Zhang Pinggu said, finally unable to hold back.

"It's his trump card. You think he's going to tell you? With that mouth of yours, the whole school would know by dinnertime," Zhao Manyan said on Mo Fan's behalf.

Mo Fan nodded firmly. There was no way he was casually revealing his ace.

"Tell me privately, then." The words were barely out of Zhao Manyan's mouth before he'd slid up next to Mo Fan with a conspiratorial eyebrow raise. "I'm much more discreet."

Mo Fan's expression went flat. He mouthed three words back at him: *Get lost.*