Li Fei pattered back to her bedroom and pulled out the file on Folded Space B-01.
Thanks to the Dean's earnest drilling, she now saw exactly where her original plan fell short. She meant to reread the materials and draw up a new one.
Tap, tap, tap…
Out of habit, Li Fei rapped her knuckles lightly against the desk as she distilled the file down to its key points.
First, per Mama Nicole's warning, she couldn't go killing students on impulse anymore. The one exception was the young Wolf King that Her Excellency the Dean had singled out by name.
Second, the Magic Academy's best and brightest would be crammed into one tiny Folded Space, fighting over six altars in a mere ten days. It would be a regatta of a hundred ships, and only raw force could ride the wind and cleave the waves.
"Hm… B-01 allows Dawn-grade Transcendent items at most."
Li Fei's gaze lingered on that one rule.
She didn't own many Dawn-grade Transcendent items to begin with, and what she had above that tier could be counted on one hand. [Bai Mengtian's Handmade Crown] and the [Stone of Deceit] she had no use for here anyway. The real impact was that the [Blood Demon Scripture] and the [Black-and-White Pendant] got banned.
Soon her attention shifted to another rule worth noting:
Mid-Sequence students may not claim Tier-3 altars.
Read the other way, low-Sequence students could claim Tier-4 altars. That was exactly why Li Fei had put off advancing to Sequence 6.
Altars worked like potential points, helping Transcendents master new Transcendent knowledge. They were among the most precious and scarce resources in the Endless Planes. Only an ancient power like the Magic Academy, which had endured since the Mythic Era, with tentacles spanning infinite space-time and a trove of folded planes in hand, could supply them steadily to its most outstanding new-generation students.
"Six altars in total. Grabbing them all is obviously unrealistic… I need to sort out primary targets and secondary targets."
Muttering to herself, Li Fei soon made up her mind.
The Tier-3 and Tier-4 Nature altars she was determined to get.
The two Death school altars were worth a real effort.
After all, she was drooling over a special piece of Death school Transcendent knowledge, [Soul Summoning]. Besides, Senior Sister Annesia was a natural ally, and Li Fei didn't want to fight her over the life school altars.
On top of that, the file stated in bold type that advancing Sequence rank inside the Folded Space was forbidden.
Obviously, for geniuses who started at Silver rank, Sequence 6 or even Sequence 5 was no insurmountable threshold. In years past, plenty of students had prepared advancement elixirs ahead of time and downed them the moment they entered B-01 to boost their Sequence. The Main Academy had simply killed that rat race with a rule. Otherwise Li "Grind King" Fei would certainly have led the charge.
Finally, only the student herself could enter a Folded Space. The Spell Encyclopedia Lady couldn't bring thousands of female ghosts along for a righteous gang beating.
"Tough."
After going over the file once more, Li Fei sighed softly and rubbed her temples.
With Furnace Battle-Qi and [Advanced Magic Resistance], plus the Dragon's Strength buff, her spell-like abilities, the System stat bonuses, and a few Dawn-grade pieces of equipment, she was confident she could beat even a genius mage of mid-Sequence.
But her appetite was big. Swallowing two altars, or even four, would draw a ton of hatred. Once the mages united against a common enemy and focused fire on the Spell Encyclopedia Lady, Li Fei doubted her little frame could take it.
Her original plan had been to use goblin gunpowder for mass slaughter and reach a triple win in the end. That meant Miss Top Courtesan wins, wins, and wins: experience, loot, and altars, all swept up in one go. But after the Dean's pointed guidance, Li Fei had dropped the tempting idea to avoid being blasted outside the city by some high-Sequence enemy with a forbidden spell.
And because Li Fei knew herself well enough to know she loved gloating in people's faces whenever she held the advantage, she had to weigh the worst-case scenario and prepare a way out, so she could do her gloating more safely.
"Dragon's Strength? No. Mid-Sequence mages will have a few life-saving spells by now. I'd get kited to death. At best I'd take a handful down with me before getting eliminated."
"Abyssal Lava? Never mind how many it'd kill. If I cast a Tier-6 spell in front of everyone, they'd drag me back and dissect me, right?"
"Is there any way I can seize a decisive advantage…"
Li Fei propped her chin on her hand and brooded, ruling out every method at her disposal one by one. She still couldn't find any way to sweep the whole field and claim four altars.
A buzz suddenly shook her chest. She didn't need to think to know that the only friend online in her Penguin contact list had messaged her.
She fished the warm phone out of her collar, glanced at the dinner invitation, and tossed off a reply of "next time, for sure." A few seconds later another message came in.
Heart-Pounding Warrior: You've changed
Heart-Pounding Warrior: That's what you said last time you came to my place
Heart-Pounding Warrior: We can never go back to how things were. I'm crying my eyes out
Do Not Disturb: Hehe
She set the phone aside and idly started to wonder: what had she even done at Tingbao's place last time?
A tail massage, asking for knowledge… ssss.
Li Fei slapped her forehead. She seemed to have an idea!
She immediately dug several yellowed ancient books out of her spatial ring. They were the Legacy of the Great Song's line of Temple Keepers.
Then she picked one up and shook it, and a single sheet of paper fluttered down.
That was the one!
Li Fei reached out and caught the page. On it was written, in unmistakable characters, [Bai Mengtian's Edition of the Soul-Burial Spirit-Nourishing Grand Array].
The revised Forbidden array still had nine variations.
[Variation One] Plunder Fortune; [Variation Two] Temper weapons; [Variation Three] Strengthen physique and True Qi… [Variation Seven] Develop potential; [Variation Eight] Command malevolent spirits; [Variation Nine] Extend lifespan.
It was an extremely powerful array, and several of its modes could benefit a Transcendent for life. But the resources it demanded were just as enormous, and the conditions for forming it were brutal. One had to slaughter a great many sentient beings and sacrifice their souls before this Forbidden grand array could be laid out at all. Worse, the payoff fell short of a true "qualitative leap," which made the array poor value for the cost.
Take [Variation Two] of Bai Mengtian's Soul-Burial Spirit-Nourishing Grand Array, which tempers weapons. Li Fei would have to slave away gathering materials, then sneak off to some folded plane to lay the array so it wouldn't stain Miss Philanthropist's reputation. She might as well just pay a master to upgrade the item and save herself all that time and effort.
Or take [Variation Three], which permanently improves physique and purifies True Qi. It looked tempting, but the War Academy had plenty of facilities that achieved the same thing. She could also buy some rare materials and commission Lady Zhihua or the Trash Fox to brew potions that permanently raised stats, at lower cost.
In short, with limited resources, Li Fei had more efficient ways to improve herself. Bai Mengtian's Grand Array only came into its own when the environment and timing happened to be right. She was nothing like that thousand-year Tree Demon, who'd had no other choice and had treated the Forbidden grand array as her only hope.
But right now, this array looked like it might be of use.
With a direction in hand, Li Fei's mood eased bit by bit. She kept fleshing out the rough shape of the plan forming in her mind, and even came up with backup plans one, two, and three.
"Let's eat."
A gentle, soft voice drifted to her ear.
"Mm-hm."
Only then did the Young Madam notice that it had gone dark outside the window. She stood up to go eat.
"Wait."
Qin Zhihua pressed a palm to the Young Madam's shoulder. Her slender fingertips parted the girl's hair and pinched out a single golden strand, dull in color but warm and silky.
Clearly, last night the Young Madam's hair had been deeply tangled up with another blonde woman's. That was the only way this could have happened.
Weren't you supposed to be calm as still water these past two days, refusing to take your medicine? Zhihua thought.
Her True Qi began to stir again, and the familiar sour ache left Qin Zhihua torn between joy and worry.
The joy was that the person she knew so well was nearly back.
The worry was that the one who had changed the Young Madam's mind didn't seem to be her…
Mindful of the guest at home, Qin Zhihua pushed down the wistful, hollow feeling for the moment. With a dignified, serene smile, she led her fiancée downstairs by the arm.
The guest was Miss Grace.
Li Fei's face immediately soured. She turned her head away with a "hmph," clearly still nursing a grudge over last night's coercion.
She was a little curious, though. Grace had just freeloaded a meal at Lady Annie's place yesterday, so why was she at Li Fei's tonight? Usually she only came when Li Fei invited her…
"Grace is my student now, too," Qin Zhihua said in a soft, gentle voice. "She came by the Academy this afternoon with some questions about archery. By the time we finished practicing, it was already late, so I invited her home for a simple dinner."
Oh, right.
The Young Madam instantly pieced together the whole story.
When the dual enrollment system took effect, she wasn't the only one who benefited.
Grace, who held the [Chaos Archer] Legacy, also walked the path of dual cultivation in magic and martial arts. In fact, when Miss Grace put on that skin-tight, latex-like combat suit and shouldered her black-and-red longbow, she looked far more like an agile, athletic archer than a mage girl. And given that her Legacy ran on Luck, calling her a cheat-tier archer with double S-rank in luck and killing power was no exaggeration.
So the moment the dual enrollment system was implemented, Miss Grace transferred into the War Academy.
The problem was…
"Aren't you a swordswoman? Since when do you know archery?" the Young Madam asked, curious.
"Archery is one of the Six Arts. I tagged along when my clan brothers practiced and picked up a little. I know a bit," Qin Zhihua said calmly.
Zither, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry, etiquette, swordsmanship and True Qi, acupuncture and massage, pharmacology, cooking, archery… Lady Zhihua, how are you grinding harder than me?
Li Fei shivered. She couldn't imagine how wretched Lady Zhihua's childhood must have been, and was grateful that this daughter of a great house hadn't been warped by the pressure into something like Consort Hui.
Of course, Lady Zhihua wasn't actually that good at archery. But she was the most closely watched new female instructor at the War Academy right now. At Sequence 5 she had mastered [Master-level Combat], and the realm of her self-created True Qi, stimulated by the two thousand-plus Charm Marks on her fiancée's lower abdomen, had faintly begun to rise beyond mid-Sequence. Advancing to high-Sequence was only a matter of time.
With such dazzling talent, even the War Academy's Main Academy had been alerted. They had spent no small effort lately negotiating with the Potion Masters' Guild about Lady Zhihua's future development.
And from such a lofty vantage, offering a low-Sequence little mage girl some pointers on archery was a cinch, nothing to it.
Su Ling'er looked around at the others, her little face flushed red. She had clearly thought of something odd, like teacher and student sharing the same girlfriend…
Miss Grace was even more sparing with words than usual and kept her head down, eating.
She had a guilty conscience.
Lady Zhihua wasn't just meticulous in her teaching. She invited her students home for dinner after class. A teacher this beautiful, this gifted, and this kind was hard to find even with a lantern.
And how did Miss Grace repay such kindness?
Last night, she had coerced her teacher's future wife. Before that, in Folded Space D-07, she had committed a far worse offense against Lady Zhihua's fiancée, and under the open sky, no less.
So when Qin Zhihua asked, in an offhand tone, why the Young Madam hadn't come home last night, Grace straightened her back and sat perfectly, impeccably upright, like a little girl being questioned by an elder after doing something wrong.
"I was learning a foreign language, okay?"
The Young Madam blinked.
"Was Miss Grace learning the foreign language with you?" Qin Zhihua asked pleasantly.
"No."
The Young Madam answered instantly.
"I see…"
Qin Zhihua slowly raised a hand and brushed aside the hair by her fiancée's ear. Her scallion-white fingertips explored along the scalp for a moment, then her thumb and middle finger pinched out a single short, flaxen hair.
She studied the hair's color and length, then glanced pleasantly at the diligent student visiting their home. Grace also wore a fluffy, soft, flaxen bob at shoulder length.
Caught red-handed, evidence and all.
Seeing the two of them eat in silence with their heads down, Qin Zhihua curved up the corners of her mouth. The curve was a little warped, tinged with sour bitterness.
Amid the clink of bowls and chopsticks, dinner ended in a strange atmosphere.
"Miss Grace, if you don't mind, why don't you stay here tonight?"
With indescribably mixed feelings, Qin Zhihua invited her student to stay the night.
Grace: …
Again?
Maybe it was her outrageously pretty face, or maybe her quiet temperament that made people's hearts ache, but Miss Grace had gradually won the approval of the other ladies without anyone noticing. Each of them, independently, had come to regard this silent, reserved, well-behaved girl as the most easygoing and most dependable fellow traveler. It could also be understood as the tutorial boss on the rocky road of adjusting to Li Fei's chaotic love life.
A faint sense of being flattered welled up in her, yet on Miss Grace's delicate deadpan face, a trace of weary despair clearly showed.
Again? Will you people let me study?
Beside her, the Young Madam, hearing this, shook like a startled rabbit.
The last wisp of Azure Mint influence became Li Fei's final stand. She lifted her chin and declared, righteous and indignant:
"Tonight I'm sleeping alone."
Then why didn't you sleep alone last night? Zhihua thought.
The sour thought flashed by, and Qin Zhihua gave a faint sigh.
"Follow me."
The Young Madam hesitated for a moment, then screwed up her courage and followed that figure with hair like a waterfall of ink.
Anyway, as long as I'd rather die than give in, what can Qin Zhihua do to me?
Even if they coerce me tonight, I absolutely won't compromise again! No matter how sweetly they talk, they can forget about shaking my Daoist heart!
Come on, Li Fei, you can do it!
The Young Madam kept cheering herself on inwardly. Her bubble of courage swelled bit by bit, and her graceful back slowly straightened.
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