That year, the Continental Advanced Soul Master Tournament was held once again, but this time was different: the two great empires were gone, and Spirit Hall no longer presided over it. The empire openly supported the Soul Master Tournament, since it could both inspire Soul Masters to cultivate harder and indirectly select talented people for the empire.
This Pan-Continental Advanced Soul Master Tournament was presided over directly by the senior officials of the Wanling Empire, with the finals held in the new capital, Douluo City. The twelve administrative regions were divided into twelve competition regions. Every advanced Soul Master academy on the continent entered the preliminary tournament in its own region, and each region selected one academy team. These twelve teams then traveled to Douluo City for the finals, where first, second, and third place would be decided.
Shrek Academy also participated in this tournament. It assembled a new team, which advanced to the finals as the winner of its region, then defeated the other eleven teams to claim the championship, defending the honor the Shrek Eight Monsters had once earned.
That day, Shrek Academy was decorated with lanterns and streamers, and the students were jubilant. The last time the academy had been this lively was several years earlier, when the Seven Devils held their weddings.
Today marked both the champion team's return and the beginning of a new academic year at Shrek Academy. The academy was no longer what it had once been; it had expanded several times over. With nearly ten thousand enrolled students, it had moved out of central Heaven Dou City and built a vast new campus elsewhere. Had it not upheld its longstanding admission standards, students from half the continent might have squeezed their way into Shrek Academy. Tang Xuan had once explicitly told Flender