Am I the only one left?!
Lan Bao looked utterly doubtful about his monster existence. Huanhuan quickly comforted him: “It’s okay, it’s okay. Let’s just try again, alright?”
…
A few days later, the course progressed to the People-Finding Spell.
In this class, Ye Yang listened with exceptional attentiveness, even bringing out his notebook, which he hadn’t used in a long time.
The basic People-Finding Spell only required knowing certain information about the person you were looking for, such as appearance or name. At a more advanced level, you could use items related to the person.
But Ye Yang knew nothing about his benefactor. So after returning to his dorm, he couldn’t wait any longer and extracted a drop of his heart’s blood.
That golden drop of water was the only item connected to his benefactor, and it had already fully merged with him. Ordinary blood wouldn’t work; only heart’s blood could potentially establish a connection with his benefactor.
Extracting heart’s blood wasn’t easy.
Ye Yang lay down on the bed, his hands crossed over his chest. Suddenly, his face went pale, and he let out a muffled grunt. A drop of bright red blood shimmering with blue light was forced out of his body, hovering above his fingertip.
Holding this drop of heart’s blood, he slowly got up from the bed and walked to the desk.
Just those two simple steps left him noticeably short of breath, his lips pale, his face like gold paper.
Losing even one drop of heart’s blood was too damaging. Even with his regenerative abilities, he couldn’t fully recover in a short time.
But Ye Yang didn’t care. His entire being was focused on this single drop of blood. Whether he could find his benefactor all came down to this.
A whole year had passed. A year was nothing in the lifespan of a monster like Ye Yang, but this year was different. This year was more important than the several centuries that had come before.
With his other hand, he skillfully formed a magical gesture. The drop of heart’s blood at his fingertip trembled slightly, then went still.
“Hmm? It failed?”
He had succeeded several times in class. Maybe it was an issue of distance?
Ye Yang thought for a moment, then drew out a portion of the special energy he had been storing up and infused it into the drop of heart’s blood.
This time, the blood bead trembled a bit faster, but still quickly settled down.
“Failed again?”
Though it failed, the reaction was noticeably stronger than before, meaning this method was useful. Steeling himself, Ye Yang poured all of his special energy into the drop at once. The heart’s blood could barely contain it; the blue light was almost completely overshadowed by a golden glow.
He formed the magical gesture again. This time, the drop of heart’s blood finally began to shake violently, but still showed no sign of flying off.
Just as Ye Yang was beginning to suspect the spell had failed again and was about to try once more, suddenly, the drop of heart’s blood shot up!
Before Ye Yang could see anything clearly, the blood bead darted away and vanished instantly. It moved so fast that Ye Yang only caught a few afterimages.
“?”
Ye Yang was full of question marks. What did that mean? Why did the blood drop fly off so quickly and become impossible to sense? Did the People-Finding Spell even work or not?
For the next hour or so, Ye Yang tried every possible method. He even sent a message to bother Yu Bei, forcibly waking the Giant Kun from its slumber.
Yu Bei, who had painstakingly developed the habit of sleeping every night, woke up in a very foul mood. But when he saw it was Ye Yang contacting him, he snapped fully awake.
That child had always been polite and measured. If he was suddenly disturbing him, it must be something very important.
“What’s wrong?”
“Teacher, teacher, I think something might be wrong with my People-Finding Spell?”
“? Are you in a hurry to find someone?”
“Not really in a hurry.”
Yu Bei: “?” What was going on with his lovely, excellent, studious student??
But after all this fuss, Yu Bei found his anger dissipating. He could only answer Ye Yang’s question with mild exasperation.
Yu Bei didn’t know what medium Ye Yang was using for the spell, so he could only guess that the YCG headquarters’ barrier was interfering with the spell’s effectiveness.
“Next time, try it outside. Don’t worry—the People-Finding Spell has no distance limit, but it’s often affected by barriers, illusions, restrictions, and the like.”
That made sense. If the spell could find someone no matter where they were, it would be too powerful and wouldn’t be considered a basic spell anymore.
Although Ye Yang had cast the spell inside a barrier and such spells usually weren’t blocked, you could never be certain. What if the person being searched for was also inside some kind of barrier?
Before coming to YCG, Ye Yang hadn’t had much exposure to spellcraft and hadn’t thought of this issue. He pressed further: “Then are there any people-finding spells that can ignore barriers?”
Yu Bei’s response was laden with meaning: “Of course there are. But those are hardly good spells. Don’t even think about it. Even if you learned them, you wouldn’t be able to use them.”
Ye Yang didn’t understand: “Why not? Teacher Yu, if you know them, could you teach me? I really need them!”
“Didn’t you say it wasn’t urgent?” Yu Bei paused. “Well… fine. Showing you won’t hurt.”
Yu Bei sent a long passage of text. Ye Yang only read a few lines before understanding why he had said what he said.
The advanced versions of the People-Finding Spell were, without exception, all forbidden arts. These spells had one thing in common: they required the hair or flesh of the person being sought, as well as the sacrifice of an innocent being.
The stronger the innocent being, the better the effect. To breach the YCG headquarters’ barrier, it would probably require sacrificing several hundred Ye Yangs.
Moreover, if the spell succeeded, the person being sought would inevitably suffer various curses—an unavoidable price of the spell.
Ye Yang would never use such evil methods.
“Is there really no other way…”
After such a long wait, to have his hopes dashed—it would be a lie to say he didn’t care. But soon, Ye Yang composed himself. It was fine. Only a year had passed.
His benefactor must be an incredibly powerful cultivator, great demon, or spirit being. He believed that once he himself became a tremendously powerful great demon, they would meet again.
As the first light of dawn crept in, Ye Yang fell into a deep sleep. No one noticed a drop of blood bead, invisible to all, shimmering with blue and gold, streak across the sky of Dongzhou City and fall into Qishan City, never to be seen again.
Old Man Li, sitting in meditation under the Kunlun barrier, suddenly felt a stir in his heart. A vague sense of foreboding welled up within him.
·
Before anyone knew it, another half month had passed. Yu Bei had finished teaching all the basic spells. Regardless of whether the cubs had mastered them, those who could now stably transform into human form were all to graduate from the preschool class.
All the cubs except Lan Bao had already learned to transform before the spell classes even began. Lan Bao, too, finally managed to form a complete human form just before the last class.
Looking at the eight people lined up neatly before him, Yu Bei felt deeply gratified. “Fifteen years. Finally, a cohort where all the students can graduate.”
He looked at his students—how wonderful. There was Kong Jiamu, tall and slender with strikingly beautiful features; Ke Ranzhou, cool in temperament and light in posture; Yu Siyuan, with well-proportioned features and fair skin… Hmm? Why was little Shan Gao so pale? Was this a genetic mutation?
Then there was Huanhuan, delicate and obedient; Little Thirteen, athletic, small, and agile; Xiao Fan, with his square face and round eyes, looking dull but only looking dull; and the little leaf sheep, adorable in both original and human form, the cutest one in all of YCG headquarters.
And finally, there was Lan Bao—ordinary-looking, muscular, and barely managing to keep his height under 2.1 meters.
Lan Bao, now transformed into a sturdy young man, tried hard to shrink his presence. He didn’t dare speak, terrified of being noticed. After all, all these years, he had been the only one held back.
“Ahem.” Yu Bei cleared his throat. “Students, today is the last class of our 59th session of the preschool class.”
“Next, you will all go your separate ways. Before that, I have a few things to remind you of.”
Ye Yang listened attentively on the surface, but inside, he was filled with excitement. He couldn’t help but reflect on this past year. He had learned so much—his strength had advanced further, his combat ability was stronger, and he had mastered many spells, making life much more convenient.
The days of washing and hanging laundry, sweeping and mopping floors, making beds and airing quilts were gone forever. He could now do all the housework with a simple wave of his hand!
But just then, he heard Yu Bei say: “Students, pay attention. Unless it’s an approved mission, no spells of any kind may be used anywhere in the human realm outside of YCG departments.”
Ye Yang froze. After a long moment, he asked, “Teacher Yu, not even cleaning spells that are silent and don’t affect humans?” He emphasized the phrase “don’t affect humans,” his voice full of pleading, his eyes full of hope.
If Little Thirteen were being looked at by Ye Yang like that, he would probably just nod frantically at whatever Ye Yang said.
But Yu Bei was not Little Thirteen. He swept an expressionless glance at Ye Yang, then raised his head and said to all the students: “That’s right. Not even cleaning spells. No spells at all.”
Ye Yang looked as if he’d been struck by lightning.
He couldn’t stay at YCG forever. No one—no human, no demon—could stay here indefinitely. Moreover, he was deeply in debt and would have to work in the human realm to pay it back. That meant all the spells he had learned would soon be unusable, and he’d still have to do chores the old-fashioned way?!
Ye Yang did not like doing chores.
Yu Bei had no idea what was going through Ye Yang’s head. He continued: “And most importantly, you are children who came from YCG. You will forever be my students. No matter what unsolvable problem you encounter, you can always come to me.”
He paused, as if remembering something, and added: “If it’s not something very important or urgent, don’t bother me.”
·
The next morning, Ye Yang woke up at his usual time out of habit, tidied everything up, and walked to the classroom door.
When he opened the door, he suddenly remembered that everyone had already left.
The next group of cubs hadn’t yet arrived for enrollment, so the preschool classroom sat empty. Ye Yang stood at the doorway, feeling a little lost.
Yesterday, Little Thirteen had again invited him to return to his clan’s territory together. Ye Yang thought that since he hadn’t found the person he was looking for after a year at YCG, perhaps going elsewhere might be a good idea. But he hadn’t made up his mind yet and only said he needed to think it over.
Kong Jiamu had invited him once again—there was nothing to think about there; Ye Yang refused him outright.
Somewhat more surprisingly, Xiao Fan and Ke Ranzhou also extended kind invitations. But Ye Yang couldn’t just return to the deep sea like that, and he didn’t yet know what Director Tu had in store for him, so he politely declined them all.
“What are you standing here for?”
Ye Yang turned around. It was Yu Bei.
“How convenient. I was just about to go find you.”
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