The Third-Level Space!
Mo Fan had been pouring himself into cultivation without a moment's rest.
What filled him with genuine excitement was that both his Lightning and Fire Elements had advanced to the second level of Star Nebula.
The gap between a first-level Star Nebula and a second-level one was substantial. In terms of raw Magical Energy alone, the increase exceeded twofold — the Star Nebula had expanded considerably in scope, and the luminous Magical Energy swirling within it blazed with breathtaking brilliance.
With both Lightning and Fire elevated once more, Mo Fan's confidence surged.
His training time in the Three-Step Tower was limited. By his own estimate, he had roughly one day remaining.
In truth, the first few days of cultivation had seen his speed rocket upward at a pace he could barely believe. But the effect was a bit like medicine — take enough of it and your body builds up resistance.
After the second-level space's forty-times elemental concentration pushed him up an entire tier, his cultivation speed had dropped from its original 100x down to 80x. By the fifth day, it had fallen to around 50x.
By the sixth day, it had dropped further to 30x.
This was perfectly normal. Places like the Earth Sacred Spring and the Three-Step Tower almost always delivered their greatest effect on the first exposure. Returning to the same resource afterward would yield significantly diminishing returns.
With efficiency down to 30x, his one remaining day was really only worth less than two weeks of regular solo cultivation. That was no longer particularly meaningful.
*Maybe I should spend this last day pushing for the third floor?* The thought surfaced in his mind.
The higher you went, the denser the elemental concentration — and the greater the gains.
Chances to visit a place like the Three-Step Tower were genuinely rare. Mo Fan wanted to leverage the combined Magical Energy of all four of his elements to make a run at the third floor.
He had it figured out by now. Because of how the spatial layers stacked, a kind of mental gravity existed here. The higher the floor, the stronger it pressed. This was clearly the mechanism behind compressing elemental concentration to such extraordinary levels — and it meant any Mage ascending to a higher floor would be crushed under that mental weight.
Magical Energy consumption was the clearest indicator of who could handle the climb. The greater your reserves, the deeper into the tower you could push.
Mo Fan was a man with four full elemental systems. His Magical Energy reserves dwarfed those of any ordinary Intermediate-Level Mage, and with the breakthroughs from this session behind him, it was more than worth attempting the third floor.
No point deliberating. He was already heading for the staircase between the second and third spatial levels.
With every step upward, it was as though another lead weight had been bolted inside his skull. The oppressive sensation deepened with each advance, grinding steadily at his mind.
Mo Fan gritted his teeth and pressed on.
Halfway up, it felt like an invisible band had been cinched around his head and was being tightened without mercy. The pain had become genuinely excruciating.
The mental gravity kept building. His head grew heavier, the suffering worse — as if his skull were on the verge of being crushed flat.
*I can't take any more. I'm done.*
*One more step and my head will actually explode.*
Mo Fan finally made the call to give up. This mental agony was even worse than what he had endured when first breaking through to Intermediate-Level Mage.
Oh — but wasn't he already there??
Just as he moved to retreat, the third-level space materialized right before his eyes.
*Talk about "arriving without effort"...* Except this very nearly cost him his life. Effortless was not exactly the word.
He dragged himself onto the third floor like a half-dead old man, but the instant he crossed the threshold, every ounce of mental pressure vanished. In its place came an elemental concentration a full eighty times greater than the outside world — it felt like being submerged in a vast ocean of pure elemental energy, free to greedily absorb and expand his Star Nebula without restraint.
A cultivation speed of two hundred times the norm. *Oh my—!!!*
Mo Fan's own mind went a little wild. Just as it had on the second floor, his speed shot upward the moment he arrived. On the second floor he had started at 100x, and here on the third it doubled outright.
One day equaled two hundred days. That was nearly seven months of Meditation.
They say the path of cultivation is long and arduous — and truly it is. Without resources or support, most people could spend an entire lifetime training and reach no further than Intermediate-Level Mage, with nothing beyond that in reach. It was precisely these rare, extraordinary resources that allowed already-gifted Mages to climb even higher.
Seven days in the Three-Step Tower — equivalent to years of grueling outside cultivation.
This time, Mo Fan directed the bulk of his focus toward the Fire Element.
Spreading his efforts evenly across all four systems, breaking any single one through a full tier would be next to impossible. But by concentrating everything on Fire, there was a real chance of pushing it to the next level.
*Blazing Fist: Nine Palaces.*
*Soon I'll be stepping into the same territory as Teacher Tang Yue.* He didn't know whether she had already pushed past that point, but either way, he was drawing closer.
The day was genuinely short. Mo Fan could have buried himself in there indefinitely.
But the school's rules were final — seven days, not a minute more. Every activation of the Three-Step Tower consumed enormous energy, and the academy kept strict control over it.
Mo Fan walked out of the Three-Step Tower feeling refreshed and clear-headed.
It seemed there were more floors above the third. If he ever got the chance again, he absolutely had to challenge the higher levels — the cultivation speeds up there would be staggering.
He was making his way back through the Main Campus when his phone rang.
"Mo Fan, come quick!" Ai Tutu's voice came through from the other end.
"What's going on?" he asked, puzzled.
"Okay, so — I was at Starbucks, had some coffee, and I ordered a ton of food too. Ate every last bit of it. And then I realized I forgot my wallet *and* my card. Come pay for me, okay? It's not far — just on Nanyu Street." Ai Tutu sounded frantic.
"I may not be the most worldly guy," Mo Fan replied with complete seriousness, "but even I know that Starbucks, same as KFC, is a pay-first kind of establishment."
"Ugh, *this particular place* is just weird like that, I can't help it! Just hurry up and get over here!" Ai Tutu snapped back at him.
Mo Fan was hungry himself, and the commercial street happened to be on his way back, so he headed in that direction.
He found the café she had described and spotted her immediately — Ai Tutu, in a cute cartoon T-shirt, sitting under a green sun umbrella and glancing around anxiously, the very picture of someone waiting for a savior.
The moment she saw Mo Fan, she shot toward him like a bird darting back to its nest — and without a word of warning, she looped both hands around his arm and pulled it snugly against her.
Good lord. Mo Fan had always had an internal nickname for Ai Tutu: "Busty Bunny." Her actual name was practically begging for it, and frankly, that chest of hers was genuinely, absurdly ample. With this particular move, she had all but sandwiched his entire arm between both of those considerable assets.
He had just emerged from a solid week of solitary training, and this was the welcome he came out to. Mo Fan felt a heat rising to the tip of his nose — something threatened to make an unwelcome appearance.
He didn't get to enjoy the moment for long, though. The ice-cold, furious stares drilling into him from the nearby tables hit like a blast of winter air.
*Of course.* Anything this suspiciously warm always meant trouble lurking underneath. Ai Tutu had clearly landed herself in serious trouble — and she'd dragged him here to pull her out of it.