Favored by the Healing Element

"Hmph, look at you now — the only reason you're not dead is sheer dumb luck!" Shen Mingxiao and Luo Song stood outside the cage, watching Mo Fan bleed without stop.

Bai Cangfeng, Song Xia, and the others had gathered outside as well, taking in the sight of Mo Fan's severe injuries. Bai Cangfeng looked positively gleeful. Song Xia, on the other hand, kept her gaze fixed on the curse demon-beast that had been pinned motionless inside.

Wrung dry by the enhanced Giant Shadow Nail, the creature couldn't move so much as a finger. The sudden appearance of such a hideous monstrosity in the middle of campus had the students buzzing with speculation.

"How did you end up this badly hurt again?" A delicate-featured girl hurried over, and the moment she saw that the person slumped against the bars of the cage was Mo Fan, she broke into a quick trot.

Mo Fan turned his head. The face was familiar, but he couldn't put a name to it. He managed a weak grin.

"I'll heal you — don't move." The girl crouched down on the other side of the cage and began to Control her Star Motes.

"Tingting, why are you helping him?" the boy standing beside her protested. "Can't you see that nobody else here can be bothered? If you treat him, the whole school will turn against you."

The girl called Tingting ignored the stares and kept her focus on Controlling her Star Motes.

"I've got curse corrosion on me — the wounds can't close on their own. Your healing might not be able to—" Mo Fan started.

"I'm not the same Basic-Level Mage I used to be." Tingting simply smiled, and milk-white Star Trails bloomed around her body.

Not one trail but many, crossing and weaving — soft as ribbons of water-silk — they coiled around her and made her look almost otherworldly in their radiance.

The healing light drifted down, and this was nothing like the basic healing magic he'd seen before. Intermediate-level healing manifested as living spirits, each one a butterfly of pure radiance. To them, every wound was like a flower in bloom, drawing them near. They followed the scent of blood, traced the path of corruption, and danced their way across Mo Fan's ravaged flesh — swiftly purging the curse rot and the swelling from his wounds.

The ordinary hemostatic agents had been useless against the curse, but wherever the healing butterflies brushed past, blood sealed itself into a scar within moments.

The gash across Mo Fan's chest was particularly gruesome — through the blackened, necrotic flesh, the white of bone was plainly visible. The healing butterfly spirits lingered there for some time, but they cleared the curse all the same, knitting the wound shut with patient grace. Throughout the entire process, Mo Fan felt nothing but a faint tingling itch. There was no pain whatsoever.

Some color had returned to his pallid face by then. Mo Fan tried to push himself upright from where he lay in his own blood, but Tingting scolded him: "Stay down. You've lost too much blood — the healing spirits will restore some of your vitality."

Mo Fan obeyed without argument. Sure enough, as the crystalline pollen scattered by the healing spirits soaked through his skin, he felt a distinct change — like a transfusion flowing into him — and the dizzy, swimming feeling in his head gradually faded.

"That insufferable villain," Ai Tutu muttered from the sidelines, unable to help herself, "how does he manage to get an Intermediate-Level Healing Element Mage tending to him so carefully?"

The students gathered around were equally dumbfounded.

*What on earth had he done to deserve this?*

Healing Element mages were as rare as Summoning Element mages — which meant every girl who practiced the Healing Element was practically a saint in the eyes of the whole school. Being a Mage meant wielding destructive magical forces. Getting hurt was an occupational hazard — sometimes you even injured yourself by accident and the suffering was real. But if you knew a Healing Element Mage, a single spell could make it all go away.

Healing Element students had always been pampered and fawned over by every other element, with the lines of those currying their favor stretching around the block. With competition that fierce, the number of students who ever actually won the genuine goodwill of a Healing Element saint was vanishingly small.

And hadn't Mo Fan offended the Healing Element students back at the Freshman Tournament? So why was an Intermediate-Level Healing Element Mage stepping up to treat him, tending to him with this much care? The onlookers were practically green with envy.

For many of them, this was their first time witnessing real Healing Element magic up close — injuries that severe, and he'd recovered in what felt like minutes.

In this magic academy, if there was one thing more unbearable than a couple flaunting their relationship, it was someone flaunting their connection to a Healing Element sister.

"There. You're fine now." Tingting smiled — simple and pure, without a trace of anything else behind it.

It made Mo Fan think of Xinxia. *Is every girl who awakens the Healing Element this kind at heart?*

"Thank you," Mo Fan said, genuinely grateful.

"I'm the one who should be thanking you. My name is Bai Tingting." Bai Tingting's smile was clean and bright.

"Oh, I'm—"

"I know who you are. I recognized you the moment you saved me from those Scalehide Demon-Soldiers." Bai Tingting laughed again.

"Infamous is more like it." Mo Fan laughed along.

They were chatting easily when a figure stormed over, visibly furious.

It was Bai Cangfeng. The sight of his own cousin treating that little bastard had driven him up the wall.

"Tingting, how could you treat him? Yes, you like helping people — fine — but think about how toxic this guy's reputation is across the whole school. Helping him is the same as dragging the Bai Clan's name through the mud!" Bai Cangfeng went straight for the clan card.

And why wouldn't he be furious? All the times he, her own cousin, had gotten hurt, had Tingting ever stepped up to heal him? Not once. But now here she was, burning through all this Magical Energy for this self-proclaimed big villain, in front of the entire school no less.

"Does my business concern you?" Bai Tingting looked up at Bai Cangfeng, her voice dropping to ice in an instant.

Bai Cangfeng was left speechless. His furious gaze swung over to Mo Fan instead.

"Hey, does anyone know how to open this Beast-Taming Cage? Can someone let me out?" Mo Fan called out.

"Let me ask around." Bai Tingting immediately set off to find out.

Sure enough, when the Healing Element saint spoke up, things fell into place. A senior student who had once been stationed here happened to know how to open the Beast-Taming Cage, and Mo Fan was finally free of that wretched enclosure.

"You're not going anywhere. That monster, those two corpses — you owe everyone an explanation." Shen Mingxiao immediately stepped forward, hand outstretched to block Mo Fan's path.

"And those two — if I'm not mistaken, they should be Fu Tianming and Jia Wenqing. Did you kill them?"

Mo Fan glanced at the two bodies and didn't bother denying it. "Yes. I killed them."