"Ah..."
Looking at Shrek Academy's report for the new year, Zhang Lexuan sighed softly.
"Each year is worse than the last..."
Since losing the Golden Tree, Shrek Academy had completed another two six-year cycles, but both the number of students and their strength had been slowly declining each year at a steady rate.
That decline had reached its lowest point between the end of the first cycle and the beginning of the second-the three years from the fifth through the seventh.
There was no other reason.
The cause was still the Golden Tree.
Shrek had used the Golden Tree to train its students for ten thousand years, and its training methods had long since settled into a fixed process. The Golden Tree was undoubtedly the most important link in that process, and losing it had naturally dealt Shrek an enormous blow.
The first thing affected was the concentration of Heaven and Earth Yuan Power. In the past, its concentration in the Inner Court had almost rivaled that of the Core Zone of the Star Dou Great Forest, but it had kept thinning over the past few years.
At the end of the fifth year, it had fallen to rock bottom, becoming no different from the surrounding area.
Moreover, Shrek Academy had so many students, all gradually absorbing Heaven and Earth Yuan Power, that its consumption could not be balanced by natural replenishment. This had even made Shrek Academy's cultivation environment worse than that of other places.
That was why the quality of Shrek Academy's students had dropped so sharply between the fifth and seventh years.
This was the consequence of losing the Golden Tree. Without that rare treasure, Shrek could forget about having students meditate in the cultivation chambers beneath it or using its Origin to baptize them.
It could