Take your filthy hand off her

After leaving the Element Academy, Zeng Mu rode with Yuan Su all the way back to the latter's home.

The three-story villa had a garden in front and a swimming pool behind it. Its design and furnishings were lavish and top-of-the-line, without a single fault to be found. As soon as Zeng Mu arrived, the fresh air and peaceful atmosphere soothed his troubled heart considerably.

"Grandpa Yuan, why did you bring me to your house?" Zeng Mu asked in confusion.

Yuan Su chuckled. "Don't rush. You'll find out soon enough."

With that, he led Zeng Mu through the front door and toward the studio on the third floor.

With a creak, the door opened. Once the lights came on, the pitch-black room became bright, a petal-shaped pendant lamp illuminating everything inside.

It was an art studio. Apart from a hexagonal wooden table and three or four rosewood chairs, everything else was paintings of every kind: portraits, landscapes, traditional Chinese paintings, ink paintings... Most were unframed, newly finished works still on sheets attached to drawing boards. The few remaining pieces had been framed and hung on the walls, filling all four of them.

Naturally, all these paintings were Yuan Su's work. After retiring from the military at forty, he had started learning to paint. Unlike most retirees, he had no interest in strolling through parks, writing poetry, or dancing. He preferred spending time quietly on his own, so he had chosen painting, and it remained his only hobby.

Ever since Zeng Mu was little, whenever he visited Yuan Su's home, the old man would keep him in the studio for a long time, sometimes two or three hours, sometimes even an entire day. To be honest, Zeng Mu wasn't particularly fond of the place. He had no talent for painting, no matter how much effort Yuan Su put into teaching him.

"Grandpa Yuan, why did you bring me here? Surely you don't want me to spend the whole day painting with you?" Zeng Mu sounded a little disappointed. He had thought Yuan Su meant what he had said earlier, but now it seemed to be just another of the countless white lies the old man told to comfort him.

To his surprise, Yuan Su said, "No, of course not. I brought you here precisely to restore your dormant elemental mark."

"Oh? How exactly can you do that?" Zeng Mu's eyes suddenly lit up, his voice brimming with anticipation.

"Do you see that painting?" Yuan Su pointed at a painting on the wall beside the window.

Zeng Mu looked up at it. It was an impressionist painting depicting a large golden tree, with three figures beneath it, their backs turned and their clothes different colors. A dull gray grassland stretched beneath their feet, dotted with pale blue, three-petaled flowers. It extended gradually into the distance, as though descending from a mountaintop to its foot.

He shook his head. "Isn't that the painting I've been looking at since I was little? What about it?" He truly couldn't understand what was special about it.

But Yuan Su's next words made his eyes widen. "Let me put it this way. This isn't a painting at all. It's a real world."

"What do you mean? A real world?"

"That's right. It's a world I've visited before."

He turned to Zeng Mu and asked, "Do you know why elemental marks become dormant?"

"No."

"It's because dormant elemental marks have been drawn away by a certain kind of energy from another world."

"Another world? What do you mean?" Zeng Mu really couldn't make sense of what he was saying.

Yuan Su said gravely, "The comet that arrived back then was no coincidence. It was a fragment from another world-a fragment of a god. It was that power that brought elemental marks into our world."

"A god? A god from another world?" Looking at Yuan Su's face, Zeng Mu found it very hard to believe that gods actually existed, especially hearing it from him.

"Of course they exist. Otherwise, where do you think all the legends about gods came from?"

"Of course, we can't see gods here. But you can in that world."

Zeng Mu stared wide-eyed at the painting on the wall. "You mean the world inside this?"

"That's right. You can see them in there."

"But how do I get in?" After saying that, Zeng Mu shook his head, as though trying to shake himself awake from a dream. This is just ridiculous.

Yuan Su took something out from inside his clothes and handed it to him.

It was a black stone necklace.

"With this, you can get in," he said.

"As long as you wear this necklace, you can enter the world inside the painting. It's another world, one that can help you recover your lost elemental mark and make it even stronger. Of course, when you'll be able to return depends entirely on your fortune. Well? Do you have the courage to venture in?"

Zeng Mu nodded and said firmly, "Of course. I have no choice now."

"But before that, I still want to see her first. At least let me say one more thing to her. Just one."

Tonight was the Element Academy's annual Night Dance.

The ball was held in an enormous theater. Inside the huge oval building, which could accommodate ten thousand people, tonight was destined to be an unforgettable celebration.

Naturally, no one at the Element Academy would miss this grand ball-except for one person whom everyone knew lacked both the right and the courage to attend.

Elementalists were exceedingly rare, so the Element Academy had only thirteen hundred students. Students entered and graduated on a four-year cycle, with each incoming class numbering around three hundred. On a planet with a population exceeding six billion, they were a rare breed indeed.

Everyone attending the ball tonight, male or female, had dressed meticulously, eager to make their faces look far more attractive than they truly were.

The male students dressed fairly alike, in suits, Zhongshan suits, or formal wear. All in all, they looked much the same.

The female students' outfits, however, differed enormously. Red, blue, green, purple, white, yellow, pink, and sunset hues-from necklines to hems, from patterns to accessories, nothing was the same, let alone an entire outfit.

And among them, the one who drew the most attention was Zhou Shiyu.

She wore a pale blue gown whose train covered her ivory heels and trailed half a meter across the floor. With every step, she seemed like a blue butterfly dancing lightly over the ground, instantly drawing the eyes of men and women alike.

Just as her close friends had said, the annual Night Dance was the best place to make connections. Besides, her results from last month had placed her first in her year in the annual rankings. In the eyes of the parents of many outstanding students, that was one of the criteria for choosing a future daughter-in-law.

Her beauty needed no explanation. Simply sitting there quietly drinking grape juice was enough to keep a host of eyes fixed on her.

"Hey, Shiyu, why are you sitting here drinking all by yourself? Listen, a young man from a military family just came up to me and specifically asked me to bring you over to meet him. Do you know who he is? His grandfather was a major general at the founding of the nation, and his father's an air force colonel! My, my, this is a golden opportunity dropped straight from heaven."

Another woman came over and said, "Shiyu, Young Master Wang, that business tycoon's son, is here too. I just saw him. Remember him? The man who greeted you from his Rolls-Royce Phantom half a month ago. Haha, I told him you were here tonight, and he asked me where you were. He asked me to bring you to Section Three when I found you so he could invite you to dance."

Yet Zhou Shiyu remained unmoved by words that would have made anyone else cheer with excitement. Instead, she waved a hand and said, "Oh, forget it. You go. Just let me sit quietly on my own."

"Why? A ball like this is such a rare opportunity, and you're just sitting here drinking by yourself? Come on, Shiyu, have you caught a cold?"

"Exactly! Why else would you be acting like this?"

"I get it. Are you still thinking about that good-for-nothing?"

One of them tried to persuade her. "Look, we all know he was your first love, and we have to admit that Zeng Mu is really handsome. His results in last month's annual exam were excellent too. But you need to understand that all of that is in the past. As of two days ago, you two no longer belong to the same world. Do you understand?"

"That's right, Shiyu. You have to face reality. Don't you understand? Stories where a toad wins a swan's love only happen in fairy tales."

They all tried to persuade her, just as they had the moment they learned that Zeng Mu's elemental mark had disappeared two days ago.

"I'm not listening! I'm not listening! All of you, go away!" she shouted, driving them back.

"Oh, just give it some thought. Once you've thought about it enough, you'll understand."

"Devotion is a good thing, but it depends on who you're devoted to. If he's a useless dog who can't do anything, what good is he, no matter how loyal he is?"

They stopped trying to persuade her and left, each preparing for her own wonderful romantic encounter that night.

Zhou Shiyu remained in her seat, swirling the grape juice in her stemmed glass. Her expression was calm, but melancholy filled her heart as she tasted the drink's sweetness and bitterness.

Just then, a pair of eyes watching from the shadows settled on her.

The man was elegant and poised, dressed in blue formal wear. The Swiss gold watch on his wrist and the black Nier leather shoes on his feet both displayed his distinctive taste. He was Fu Yuanyuan, the student ranked second in his year.

He approached, casually taking a glass of pink champagne from the champagne tower on a round table, then swirled it in his hand as he came toward her with dancing steps.

"Good evening, Shiyu. Long time no see."

Hearing his voice, she looked up. Sure enough, it was him.

She looked away and said without looking at him, "I remember you came to talk to me just a few days ago. How can you call that a long time?"

"A day apart feels like three years, especially when it's someone who's always on your mind. Wouldn't you agree?" As he spoke, he pulled over a chair and sat down.

She turned her face aside, not wanting to look at him. That was how she always treated men she had no interest in.

"Hard to imagine, isn't it? At such a special Night Dance, the academy's great beauty, Shiyu, is sitting here drinking grape juice all alone. Tsk, what a waste. You look so beautiful tonight. Don't you have even the slightest desire to dance with me?"

"Hmph. Who wants to dance with you? I didn't dress like this for you. Understand?"

"Then who was it for? Some young gentleman from a powerful family, or some young master with influence in high places? Or perhaps... for me, sitting right in front of you?"

With that, he reached out and gently rested his hand on her shoulder.

At that very moment, an icy voice came from behind him. "Take your filthy hand off her."