"Gold Mountain?" She froze for two seconds, then her lips moved. "Are you joking?"
"I'm not. It's probably true."
She set down the kettle and asked seriously, "Did you learn this from Gitton and the other one?"
"Yes. After coming here, I could feel a resonance with the elemental power inside me. That's normal for elementalists. A wood elementalist in a dense forest, a fire elementalist on a volcano-when elementalists are somewhere that matches the elemental power they command, they can all feel it clearly."
"Are you feeling that now?"
"Yes, a little, but not much. I can only make a vague guess."
He looked at her face and asked again, "Want to find out whether it's true?"
She said nothing. This was still something of a shock to her. After all, resources like these were monopolized by the military or nobles as powerful as counts. Ordinary people had no chance of ever getting near a gold or silver mine, much less an entire Gold Mountain.
"Then let me confirm it." He rose and slowly spread his arms.
Whoosh! Golden light surged forth in an instant, his elemental mark more dazzling than the radiance itself. His hair flew toward the sky, and his clothes billowed and snapped without any wind.
The leaves on the ground rustled, spreading outward with him at their center. The ground trembled slightly too, yet the leaves beyond the affected area remained untouched.
Zeng Mu closed his eyes, but as Ma Linya watched him, she felt as though they were open. She could sense an immense, imposing force, as if she were looking at an incomparably sharp sword. The keen aura spilling from its edge made her uncomfortable. Only by turning away could she shut out that sensation.
His awareness turned inward, gathered within his elemental