The audience kept filing in for nearly half an hour. Their sheer numbers made for a spectacular sight.
As the competition was about to begin, nearly every academy silently prayed for the same thing: Please, don't let us face Shrek or the Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineer Academy in the first round. Otherwise, they might as well announce their elimination in advance.
"His Majesty the Emperor has arrived."
"Whoosh—"
Hundreds of thousands of people dropped to their knees at once, their movement shaking the heavens. The soldiers knelt on one knee. As instructed beforehand, the competing academies' students did not have to kneel, but they were required to bow at a ninety-degree angle.
The Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineer Academy's section stood out in particular.
The siblings Xiao Hongchen and Meng Hongchen were both proud. They stood ramrod straight without moving. Ye Guyi and Nana naturally stayed put as well. And Xu Tianzhen, a princess of Sun Moon, certainly had no reason to bow to the emperor of an enemy nation.
The rest of the team had already begun to bow on instinct.
But when they noticed their captain standing perfectly still, they froze halfway through the motion.
Jing Hongchen's mouth twitched. He simply raised a hand.
"Everyone, stay where you are."
A team was a single unit: either they all bowed together, or they all stood together.
If some bowed while others stood, they would look disorganized and lose their collective presence.
So the front row of the Sun Moon Team stood in perfect formation, sharply contrasting with the bowed masses around them.
On the walls of the imperial city, Xu Jiawei had already noticed the group standing still at the front. He was just beginning to feel displeased when his gaze landed on Jing Hongchen, at the head