Beside the long stone council table.
Xu Jiawei sat at its head, his gaze sweeping over the leaders gathered there, representatives of every class and faction in the Star Luo Empire. He folded his hands on the table, his voice cold.
"You should all have read the report."
"Minghuang Academy was founded just two years ago."
"In those two years, it has recruited students from provinces across the Douluo Continent and taken in large numbers of people from the Sun Moon Empire."
He paused, his expression grim.
"Worse still, its system for training Soul Engineers is far more mature than we ever imagined."
"You all saw it in Star Luo Square today. Every Minghuang Academy contestant had one of those monstrous suits of equipment called Exoskeleton Soul Fighting Armor."
"You know what that means."
"It means they can already mass-produce this groundbreaking Humanoid Soul Tool reliably."
Xu Jiawei rapped his knuckles against the table with a dull thud.
"And the potential of the academy's young Soul Masters is just as unbelievable."
He pointed to a heavily marked file on the table.
"That girl named Bing Hanxue had nothing but Ten Thousand Year Soul Rings."
"Not even basic Martial Soul Theory can explain such a godlike configuration. Search Shrek Academy's entire ten-thousand-year history, even go back to the legendary Sea God from ten thousand years ago, and you might still find no precedent."
An eerie silence settled over the chamber.
Everyone: ...
Every mouth stayed shut. No one wanted to answer.
What they had witnessed in the arena today was simply too shocking.
If tens of thousands of people had not seen it clearly in broad daylight, they would have taken anyone who reported it to them for a fool and dragged them out to be executed.
An elderly woman seated