Stardust Artifact

"Brother Fan, stop daydreaming. Yuang is a complete freak — we don't even know if you'll live to see the sunrise on your eighteenth birthday, so you can forget about marrying the little princess."

"Yuang? Heh. Just watch me knock every last tooth out of his mouth."

Once upon a time, Mo Fan might have carefully weighed his chances against the Mu Clan. But now? Why would he fear anyone from their younger generation?

Fire Burst in his left hand to roast them to a crisp. Lightning Seal in his right to blast their skin apart. Easy.

The final results of the annual assessment were posted, and when Mo Fan's name appeared at the very top of the big blackboard — highest scores across the board — an untold number of students rubbed their eyes in disbelief.

*Who in the world is this Mo Fan?* How could his results be so absurdly impressive? He'd topped both Xu Zhaoting of the Lightning Element and Mu Bai from the Ice Element noble clan?

The scores alone had sent shockwaves through the school. But news of Mo Fan publicly tearing into Mu Zhuoyun and, with School Board Directors as witnesses, challenging a Mu Clan scion to a formal duel spread through campus like wildfire. Before long, Mo Fan was famous — not just as the overnight legend who had leapt from academic zero to school-wide number one in a single stroke, but as the most recklessly self-destructive student in Bo City's entire history.

Anyone with any sense understood what Tianlan Magic High School was: an institution built for common-born Mages. There were talented students among its fifteen hundred, certainly — but stacked against the elite academies and the ancient noble houses with their generational wealth, the difference was categorical. Any Mage who walked out of the Hunters' Alliance, the Magic Association, or a major noble clan could effortlessly crush their scores.

School was genuinely the best path for someone from the bottom to leap above their station. But that didn't mean you could go picking fights with the second-generation mage elite.

Mo Fan paid no mind to the gossip swirling around school. Beyond his Meditation sessions and Release practice, he ate when he was hungry and slept when he was tired.

Worth noting: Mo Fan had been placed in the Elite Class.

The Elite Class held roughly a hundred students, all attending lectures in a large shared hall and training on an expansive ground.

Everyone who made it in had already mastered around seven Star Motes. A few were still polishing their Release technique, but their foundations were solid.

When practical lessons came around, it became a showcase — the top students from every Element putting their abilities on full display.

Tang Yue remained their practical instructor. This relative newcomer was said to surpass every other practical teacher at the school in terms of cultivation depth, and in less than six months she had become the undisputed choice to lead the Elite Class's training.

The Elite Class's homeroom teacher was still Xue Musheng.

His class had produced two S-grade results — who else could be the Elite Class homeroom teacher?

That was largely Mo Fan's doing, and it had put Xue Musheng squarely in the spotlight of school leadership. Of course, that spotlight came with relentless, emphatic instructions: *do something about Mo Fan's rebellious streak.*

Xue Musheng found the whole thing deeply exhausting. Whether Mo Fan was a bottom-of-the-class disaster or a top-of-the-chart prodigy, the guy was an immovable force of nature — impossible to manage either way.

Without realizing it, another month of the new semester had slipped by.

Homeroom teacher Xue Musheng stood at the front of the Elite Class's lecture hall and gave a heavy, pointed cough — a signal for the students to contain their excitement.

Why were they so worked up today?

Today was the day the school distributed Stardust Artifacts. Being in the Elite Class meant more than just better instruction. It came with perks like this.

The reason the great magical organizations and noble clans so thoroughly outpaced common-born Mages wasn't solely their richer knowledge, proprietary techniques, and accumulated experience. More critically, they had Stardust Artifacts.

Put it this way: if knowledge, technique, experience, and instruction were software, then Stardust Artifacts were the hardware — and top-of-the-line hardware at that.

The great noble houses had flawless software and cutting-edge methods. Even if a common Mage could absorb those at school, no one could match their hardware.

To put it in elevated terms, a Stardust Artifact nurtures the soul and sustains cultivation — it rapidly relieves the exhaustion that follows Meditation sessions and allows the practitioner to resume training far sooner. In plain terms: it's a coolant. It cuts Meditation's recovery time.

Mo Fan wasn't born wealthy. He had to get what he needed through school.

And competition there was fierce — a relentless current that swept away all but the strongest.

Fortunately, he'd locked down first place. The magical resources the school owed him should be considerable. He could train without worrying about resource constraints.

"Stardust Artifact usage time will be allocated according to your annual assessment rankings — the higher your rank, the longer your access. Of course, our school keeps things fair: we will conduct tests every quarter, re-rank accordingly, and adjust Artifact allocations to match each new round of results. One more thing worth noting: although you are now Elite Class students with advantages that ordinary students don't have, don't for a moment assume the next two years will be smooth sailing. In each quarterly assessment, the bottom ten of this class will be demoted directly to an ordinary class, while the top ten from ordinary classes will move up here. Your competitive pressure is actually greater than before," Xue Musheng announced.

This wasn't so different from the academic world Mo Fan had known — nothing about it particularly surprised him.

Plenty of people hated school, and standardized exams even more. But one thing people said was undeniably true: *without school, without exams, how would you ever compete with kids born into money?*

A school's resources weren't necessarily worse than those of the great noble houses. The difference was that school put everything through a relentless filter.

Which only proved the old saying true: gold always finds a way to shine.

"Mo Fan. As class valedictorian, you should be the first to receive a Stardust Artifact with the longest usage time. However, given your disrespectful conduct during the annual assessment, your time has been cut from one month down to ten days. This is your punishment," Xue Musheng said, his expression grave.

"Whoa — a full month cut to ten days. That's a steep price," a student muttered nearby. "If he'd just kept his head down, a whole month's access could've put him miles ahead of everyone else."

"If he'd swallowed his pride and agreed to join the Mu Clan, he might've ended up with even more."

"Exactly. Why does he have to be so impossibly stubborn about everything?"

Xue Musheng's eyes swept the room, and the murmuring died immediately.

"Mo Fan — do you have any objection to this punishment?"

"None," Mo Fan replied.

He needed the Stardust Artifact badly. He trained longer than anyone else to begin with, and with a Stardust Artifact, every hour would yield twice the output.

But that advantage only compounded over extended use. A full month would have been genuinely transformative. Ten days sat somewhere between useful and underwhelming.

"Hey, two-face," Mo Fan leaned casually toward Mu Bai's desk, face perfectly straight. "I've got a question for you."

"The hell did you just call me?" Mu Bai's temper flared instantly.

"Fine, fine — *Mu Bai*. I've got a question for you."