Full-Time Magister: Rebirth of Mo Fan as the Primordial Evil Phoenix

Chapter 43 Thunderous Blow

At 8:30 p.m., the old signboard at the entrance of Qingtian Hunting Grounds creaked in the wind.

Mo Fan arrived just in time, his hands in his pockets, and he could see a small figure standing at the door from afar.

Lingling carried her small bag on her back, held her tablet in her arms, and paced back and forth, her face full of impatience.

"What's with that expression?" Mo Fan moved closer. "I'm not late."

Lingling raised her wrist, glanced at the time, and snorted coldly: "8:29."

"So you're still not late..."

"Couldn't you have come a little earlier?"

Mo Fan clicked his tongue and looked down at her: "You're not that old, but you're quite nosy."

"How can I not keep a close eye on someone as unreliable as you..."

The abandoned ironworks in the south of the city is not close to the city center.

After taking a taxi to the vicinity, the two still had to walk along a dilapidated industrial road.

The night wind swept through the empty factory buildings, stirring up dust that felt dry on the face. The long-abandoned factory area was exceptionally quiet, with half of the chimney broken off, standing darkly.

The rusty steel frame lay high up, and when the wind blew, the sheet metal gently collided, making a hollow sound.

Mo Fan looked up and glanced around: "This place is too quiet."

Then they entered the factory area.

The ground beneath my feet was badly cracked, with gravel and iron filings mixed together.

As they approached a collapsed workshop, Lingling suddenly stopped, squatted down, and shone her flashlight forward.

Mo Fan looked in the direction of the light.

It was a large area of ​​scorch marks. Several places on the ground looked as if they had been instantly melted by the high temperature. The surface sand and gravel were stuck together, but the edges cooled down quickly and solidified into a dark shell.

What's even stranger is the wall.

Half of the old wall had long since crumbled and peeled off, but two layers of burn marks were layered on top of it.

Mo Fan reached out and touched that spot, but as soon as his fingertips touched it, he sensed something was wrong.

"This doesn't sound like something a typical fire mage would do," he muttered.

"Of course not." Lingling stood up and turned the tablet towards him. "Look at this."

The screen displayed a page of records, with the logo of the Tribunal's internal wanted list printed at the top. The man in the photo was in his thirties, thin, with an old scar on his left eyebrow.

"Cheng Yue," Lingling said, "is a mid-level fire mage. He used to do dirty work for the underground black market in another city, and the Inquisition has been pursuing him for a while. About two weeks ago, someone photographed him near the industrial zone in the south of the city."

Mo Fan glanced at it a few times: "You retrieved the data pretty quickly."

"Just a basic search." Lingling continued scrolling down. "His most proficient fire magic has a characteristic: the burst is concentrated, the burning area is small, and the residual temperature is very high. So some sites will leave similar dot-like melting marks."

"But this isn't exactly what he did."

Lingling nodded because just as he nodded, the fire nebula within his body suddenly trembled.

Mo Fan paused, looking into the distance.

Suddenly, a glimmer of light appeared at the end of the dark, old factory building.

It was small, flashing by in an instant, yet it stood out starkly in the night.

Lingling immediately looked up: "You saw it?"

"Nonsense." Mo Fan narrowed his eyes. "Let's go."

The two immediately headed deeper into the factory area.

The further in you go, the stronger the smell of burning becomes. Piles of discarded iron drums and twisted pipes line both sides, and from an empty workshop ahead, you can faintly hear footsteps.

Mo Fan raised his hand to signal Lingling not to move.

The figure deep inside also stopped a second later.

In the dim light, the two sides met each other's gazes through several pillars.

The man wore a worn black coat, the cuffs of which were burned and curled in several places. His face was somewhat thin, and the faint scar on his left eyebrow bone was quite noticeable in the embers of the fire.

It was Cheng Yue from the records.

Cheng Yue glanced at Lingling, then looked at Mo Fan, and said teasingly, "Friend, you... you're playing this trick so cleverly?"

"Who's your friend?" Mo Fan asked.

"There's nothing fun here," Cheng Yue glanced to the side as if confirming something. "If you're looking for excitement, let's go somewhere else."

Lingling, holding her tablet, stood half a step behind Mo Fan, looking at him as if to say, "Good luck!" Then she activated a magical artifact and sped off into the shadows.

Cheng Yue ignored Lingling's departure; after all, who would care about a primary school student?

But Cheng Yue's eyes never left Mo Fan, his expression showing a hint of wariness and barely concealed irritation.

Mo Fan noticed this and tried asking, "Are you looking for something?"

Cheng Yue paused for a moment.

In that instant, the answer was obvious enough.

"It seems that it really is true," Mo Fan said.

Cheng Yue's expression darkened: "Kid, don't ask any more questions. Going any further won't do you any good."

"What a coincidence." Mo Fan cracked his knuckles. "I'm the kind of person who loves to wander into places where there's no benefit."

The atmosphere in the workshop suddenly became tense.

Cheng Yue clearly didn't want to linger, so he shifted his foot and flames shot up from his hand.

"Then die here!"

Mo Fan sidestepped.

Immediately afterwards, the next second, Cheng Yue's flames swept overhead, and half of the old steel beam was scorched red, with debris raining down on it.

"Shadow Step." Mo Fan followed the shadow and disappeared behind the pillar.

"Damn it, you're playing dirty tricks, aren't you?"

"Thunderbolt—Boom!"

A dark bolt of lightning instantly cleaved the space in two, and the violent arc of electricity emitted a sharp screech as it hurtled toward Cheng Yue.

Boom!

The guy groaned, collapsed to the ground, twitched twice, and then completely lost consciousness.

Mo Fan shook his hand, walked over and turned the man over. After confirming he wasn't dead, he casually grabbed a piece of old cable from the side and tied Cheng Yue up tightly.

"Aren't you afraid of killing him? Once he's dead, he'll be worthless!" Lingling jumped out from the shadows.

"Don't worry, I'm holding back. Otherwise, this stuff would have been reduced to dust long ago. Why is he in such a hurry to attack me? Is there some treasure here?"

"That should be it," Lingling squatted down on the ground, shining her flashlight over several nearby marks. "Look here."

The place she was pointing to was at the back of the workshop, next to a row of old tracks. Besides fresh footprints, there were several thin cracks on the ground left by unusual burning, extending deeper into the ground.

Lingling switched the tablet to the old factory blueprints mode and quickly compared them.

"The foundation under this workshop isn't solid," she said. "There used to be an underground smelting structure here, with old furnaces and slag discharge channels. Later, the factory was abandoned, the above-ground part was sealed off, but the underground blueprints weren't completely dismantled."

Mo Fan looked down at the blueprints, then looked up at the scorch marks that stretched downwards.

The fire nebula within his body stirred again.

It's even more obvious than before.

Lingling clearly sensed something was wrong, and lowered her voice: "It seems Cheng Yue isn't hiding here, but rather has discovered something."

"So the target should be right under our feet?" Mo Fan asked.

"Eighty percent." Lingling stood up.

Mo Fan didn't respond.

Because he had a vague suspicion in his mind.