"Enough."
Yu Xiaogang finally spoke.
He had been sitting beside the tree roots, his face pale, though his voice remained steady. "Calm down first and listen to me."
Everyone looked at him.
"Think about Spirit Hall." Yu Xiaogang adjusted his glasses. "Hu Liena, Xie Yue, Yan—the Golden Generation of Spirit Hall. Were their talents poor? No. Yet none of them were on Su Mo Academy's list. Why? Because Bibi Dong from that other world never sent them to take the test."
He paused, his gaze sweeping across everyone present.
"By the same logic, Shrek's Seven Monsters were not on the list either. Most likely, for certain reasons, you never took Su Mo Academy's entrance examination. You were not at that testing ground, so Su Mo naturally would not recruit you."
The cabin fell silent.
"Then why did Ning Rongrong go?" Ma Hongjun pointed at Ning Rongrong.
"Because the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect invested in Su Mo Academy." Ning Rongrong spoke up herself. "The Sky Screen showed it. Su Mo gave the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect one admission slot without an exam. My father would definitely give it to me."
Everyone looked at one another, the anger on their faces turning into resentment, then reluctant acceptance.
"So it wasn't that our talent was lacking. It was that we didn't take the test?" Ma Hongjun muttered.
"You could put it that way." Yu Xiaogang nodded.
Ma Hongjun patted his chest as though relieved. "Fine, so that was it. We didn't take the test, so we didn't get in. It wasn't because we weren't good enough."
"Right, we didn't go," Oscar echoed, though there was still a trace of bitterness in his tone.
The Sky Screen ignored their emotions.
The image lit up again, and the narrator's voice was as steady