It truly was a grand banquet.
Meanwhile, under the manipulation of a mysterious force, the story of Lu Ling, Bo City's hero who had slain the Winged Azure Wolf and saved the city from the Crimson Alert, continued to spread.
Protecting Bo City had, of course, only been incidental. What Lu Ling wanted to protect was the home that put his master at ease.
Had he been in the little Western-style house at that moment, those words might have been more convincing.
Lu Ling's room, Mu Family Manor.
He slowly opened his eyes, feeling that this sleep had been unexpectedly oppressive!
A pleasant fragrance lingered in the air, just like Mu Ningxue's scent.
"Speaking of which, why are you here, Ning Xue?" Lu Ling gently poked Mu Ningxue's cheek. "Stop pretending. Who blinks in their sleep?"
Her usually frost-cold face was flushed now. She cautiously opened her eyes, only to find Lu Ling's handsome face filling almost her entire field of vision.
Her pretty face flushed even deeper. Right in front of Lu Ling, she slowly pulled the covers up with her delicate hands. She slid smoothly beneath them until only her eyes remained, staring guiltily at Lu Ling.
"I don't know either..." A muffled voice came from beneath the covers. Perhaps it was the covers speaking.
"You really don't know?"
"...Ye Xin Xia sleeps with you all the time. Just thinking about it makes me feel awful."
"Jealous?" Lu Ling asked with a smile.
"You still have to ask! Isn't it obvious?!" Mu Ningxue could no longer take it and ducked straight beneath the covers. They trembled along with her as she spoke, looking quite adorable.
"I haven't slept with Xin Xia since she turned twelve."
"So you haven't these past few days either?" Mu Ningxue poked her head out, only now realizing that she had misunderstood Ye Xin Xia a few days ago!
"You slept together every day before she turned twelve?" Within seconds, she spotted another overlooked detail.
"You're even jealous of a little kid!"
They really had been together every day. With Ye Xin Xia's disability, Lu Ling had naturally been the one to take care of her.
"Tch." Mu Ningxue looked away with a quiet scoff.
"Hmm? You've picked up bad habits." Lu Ling turned Mu Ningxue's face back toward him and stared into her eyes.
"What?!" Mu Ningxue demanded angrily.
"You have the guts to climb into my bed, but not to look at me?"
"I!" Suppressing her embarrassment, Mu Ningxue stared right back into Lu Ling's eyes.
Lu Ling was secretly amused. Perhaps because they had been apart for so long, Mu Ningxue was particularly moody today.
Then, in Mu Ningxue's sight, Lu Ling's eyes grew bigger and bigger, closer and closer.
"Mmph..."
Her pupils shook, her brain overloaded, and she was clearly no longer capable of thought. She neither resisted nor struggled.
A long while later, Mu Ningxue stared blankly at the ceiling, with Lu Ling beside her, looking at it too.
She raised a hand and gently touched her lips. For some reason, after that kiss, she no longer seemed quite so shy. Was it simply because they had pierced that thin layer of window paper between them?
"Feeling reassured now?"
"Mm."
"Then I'll go see Xin Xia."
"No." Mu Ningxue grabbed Lu Ling's arm, then added, "Go this afternoon."
"All right." Lu Ling readily agreed. "I'm a student at Pearl Academy now. I'll be returning there afterward."
"Mm. Do you want me to come over to you?"
"Up to you, but I'll be taking Xin Xia there."
Crack. Crack, crack.
Lu Ling seemed to hear ice forming. It was probably his imagination.
The little Western-style house.
"Master, I'm leaving."
"I'll teach you a few more things."
She gently cradled Lu Ling's face, and their foreheads touched once more.
"..."
A quarter of an hour later, the blonde girl waved a hand.
"Go on. Don't die."
"Master, take care!"
The little Western-style house returned to the tranquility belonging to one person alone. Even the Crimson Alert had not affected this place.
Sensing Lu Ling's presence gradually receding, the blonde girl raised her hand and formed a special hand seal. Instantly, dazzling silver light engulfed the entire house.
"I hope you can stand at the pinnacle of the world, little fellow."
The blonde girl smiled faintly. The next instant, she dissolved into light, and even the little Western-style house vanished without a trace, as though it had never existed in this mountain forest.
Half a month later, Lu Ling returned to Magic City with Ye Xin Xia.
After settling Xin Xia into his rented apartment, Lu Ling went to find Dean Xiao.
"Finally willing to come back to the academy, our genius?" Dean Xiao was a little surprised to see Lu Ling.
He had heard from the Summoning System's department head that, since the Beast Fighting Competition, Lu Ling had barely attended the academy for an entire semester. He did not even live on campus, and his two rare visits had been to cultivate in the Three-Step Tower.
If not for the Summoning System's rather unusual teaching methods, and the possibility that the campus environment was unsuitable for Lu Ling's cultivation, he would never have turned a blind eye to such violations of academy rules.
"I wanted to use the Three-Step Tower." Lu Ling smiled.
"You certainly don't beat around the bush." Dean Xiao gave a helpless smile.
"You're already a Main Campus student. I don't have any other way to get you straight into the Three-Step Tower. Besides, aren't you ranked first in the Summoning System? You get a day every month."
As if you had a way to open a back door for me at the Green Campus, Lu Ling thought with an inward chuckle.
Still... if he told Dean Xiao now that he wanted to break through to the Advanced Level, the dean would probably let him straight in to cultivate without another word.
Unfortunately, he had yet to touch the threshold of the Advanced Level and had encountered a very difficult bottleneck. His Summoning System remained immovably stuck at Intermediate Level 3.
"Actually, I came to show you a few things."
"Oh?" Dean Xiao raised an eyebrow, anticipating what good thing Lu Ling would show him.
"This."
With a thought, Lu Ling released the water domain he had obtained.
"You awakened the Water Element?" He could not have been more familiar with this energy. "And... a domain?!"
"Dean Xiao, this one's the genuine article."
Lu Ling manifested his Soul Seed water. He had yet to cultivate his newly awakened Water Element, but the energy within it was visible to the naked eye.
"Water Element Calamity!" Dean Xiao's eyes widened. Then he lowered his voice and asked cautiously, "Did you just awaken it? Did it trigger any strange phenomena?!"
"Don't worry. I only awakened it a few days ago, and it's very stable." Lu Ling thought carefully, then said, "As for strange phenomena, there weren't any."
When he awakened it, he had been in the rain Wu Ku had set up. No matter how badass his own strange phenomenon might have been, it would only have amounted to rain at most.
"As long as it's stable!"
"Even if it weren't, it'd be fine. A Water Element Calamity just means rain at most." Lu Ling cracked a joke.
"If a rainstorm lasted ten days or half a month, that wouldn't be normal here either. And rain lasting that long would paralyze the entire city," Dean Xiao said.
"That's true..." Lu Ling smiled awkwardly. "Actually, I wanted to tell you that I can control this unstable power."
"Control it? That's very good. As long as you can keep yourself hidden and cultivate steadily, you'll become a Forbidden Curse Mage sooner or later," Dean Xiao said.
"Not just my own. Other people's too." Lu Ling's voice was low.
"So what if it's other people's? Look at you, getting so full of yourself..." Silence fell. This highly respected Dean Xiao abruptly realized that the young man before him possessed a talent...