An Acquaintance

After a long journey, Xu Xingyu and the others arrived in Shrek City on the final day of Shrek Academy's enrollment period. Shrek City was the city where Shrek Academy was located.

In theory, Shrek Academy was an academy within the Heavenly Soul Empire, but its unusual geographical location placed it at the center of the original Douluo Continent's three great empires. In a sense, Shrek City was effectively a small independent nation, one that every empire wanted to win over.

The reason the three great empires had not joined forces to destroy it was that, besides Shrek Academy's insistence that it was an academy and would not meddle in major affairs of state, it also possessed formidable strength and teaching capabilities.

Among the current high officials of all three empires were graduates of Shrek Academy. At a single command from Shrek's current dean, those graduates would take up arms together against any enemy that attacked Shrek. As a result, the three empires only dared to court Shrek, not destroy it.

If any one of them took the lead in doing such a thing, it would surely lose the support of most of its own people, and a nation that had lost the people's support was doomed to perish.

Some might say this was too exaggerated. How could one little academy possibly have such enormous influence? Xu Xingyu wanted to say that, incredible as it seemed, they really did have that influence. All he could say was that this brainwashing technique called Shrek's glory was simply too powerful.

Once, when the original Douluo Continent's three great empires were resisting an invasion by the Sun Moon Empire, they fell into infighting because none would submit to the others. In the end, the dean of Shrek at the time stepped in and overawed the armies of all three empires, then assumed the position of alliance leader and united their forces against the Sun Moon army.

Only at that moment did the original three Douluo empires realize that most of their soldiers and high-ranking officers had come from Shrek Academy.

Though the story sounded stirring on the surface, a little careful thought showed that this meant Shrek Academy held the three empires' lifelines in its hands, didn't it?

That was precisely why the original three Douluo empires only dared to befriend Shrek Academy, not pressure it.

At that thought, Xu Xingyu could not help sighing, because that position was no different from Spirit Hall's ten thousand years ago.

Ten thousand years ago, Shrek Academy had joined Tang San and the Heaven Dou Empire in destroying Spirit Hall, yet Shrek had now become a second Spirit Hall.

This really was a story of the dragon slayer becoming a dragon!

Unfortunately, the dragon this slayer had become was worse than the evil dragon Spirit Hall they had slain ten thousand years ago.

Besides giving everyone a chance to awaken their Martial Soul and distributing subsidies to every Soul Master on behalf of the various empires, Spirit Hall ten thousand years ago was also responsible for slaying any Evil Soul Masters who committed evil deeds.

Evil Soul Masters were Soul Masters who cultivated through improper means, including but not limited to such wicked methods as devouring human blood and Soul Power.

In the days when Evil Soul Masters ran rampant, the first Pope of Spirit Hall had stepped forward and joined forces with all the renowned and righteous factions of the time to slaughter them. In the end, that Pope drove the Evil Soul Masters back to Slaughter City, the inheritance ground of the Asura God and the Rakshasa God. Slaughter City thus became, in effect, a prison for all Evil Soul Masters. It could be said that while Spirit Hall still existed, those were the darkest times for Evil Soul Masters.

Unfortunately, after Tang San destroyed Spirit Hall, the forces he left behind, the Tang Sect and Shrek Academy, did not properly take up Spirit Hall's burden.

The former, the Tang Sect, had been so unwilling to make progress that it eventually dwindled to just three disciples to sustain the sect. The latter, Shrek Academy, had ostensibly taken over Spirit Hall's duties, but had not done the job well.

Spirit Hall could be said to have been the only chance for commoner Soul Masters to rise, while Shrek Academy was a place where nobles competed for supremacy.

At Shrek Academy, anyone without some special background could not gain a foothold at all. It was a system that could be said to be very unfriendly to commoners. And the very existence of the noble system was the root cause of Evil Soul Masters' emergence. Apart from a few exceptions, the vast majority of Evil Soul Masters came from commoner backgrounds. They fell onto the evil path because they were forced to endure all kinds of oppression from the upper classes, until they could bear it no longer and went mad.

That was why, with Spirit Hall as a force friendly to commoner Soul Masters, fewer and fewer of them turned to the evil path because of society's injustices.

Shrek, by contrast, was an elite school, a place where the strong could have everything while the weak could only eat dust below them.

It spent its resources only on gifted students, without sparing ordinary Soul Masters so much as a glance.

Thus, although a small number of exceptionally gifted commoner Soul Masters enrolled, most of the Soul Masters admitted had the backing of powerful families.

As for combating Evil Soul Masters, Shrek did do it, but its methods were far too discriminatory.

For example, there was once a Scorpion Tiger Douluo named Zhang Peng, whose Martial Soul was the Scorpion Tiger. Simply because he needed to devour the flesh and blood of Soul Beasts to cultivate, he was forced to bear the stigma of being a half-Evil Soul Master.

Yet he had never harmed anyone except those who fought against him, ordinary people included.

There was also Black Crow Douluo, whose Martial Soul had the darkness attribute. But because the darkness attribute was so similar to the evil attribute, Shrek had also labeled him an Evil Soul Master.

They were not fighting Evil Soul Masters at all. They were just looking for a respectable excuse to pick fights!

If they really wanted to accuse someone of being an Evil Soul Master, wasn't their revered and great ancestor Tang San one himself?

He had relied on his external Soul Bone, the Eight Spider Lances, to devour the Soul Power of Soul Beasts and Soul Masters. He had even wiped out Slaughter City, the prison that once confined Evil Soul Masters, to ensure that no one else could ever obtain Divine Slaughter's Domain! Wasn't that unmistakably the behavior of an Evil Soul Master?

Returning to Xu Xingyu's group, after arriving at Shrek Academy, Xu Xingyu parted ways with Xu Yanxue, Huo Yuhao, and the others.

Although certain butterfly effects had enhanced Huo Yuhao's talent, he was still only a level-fifteen Soul Master.

It would therefore still be somewhat difficult for him to pass Shrek Academy's entrance examination, so Tang Ya and the others decided to use the Tang Sect's special admission privilege to get him into the academy.

As for Xu Xingyu, after handing the teacher his sworn younger sister Xu Yanxue's recommendation letter, he set off alone for Shrek Academy's entrance examination.

Why had he not asked his family to prepare another recommendation letter, giving one only to Xu Yanxue?

That was because each family could recommend only one person to get in through the back door. Xu Xingyu was strong enough that he did not need to do so, so he gave the recommendation letter to Xu Yanxue, his sister in name.

Of course, that was not to say Xu Yanxue needed the letter. After all, her true identity was the Heavenly Snow Woman, the Snow Empress, foremost of the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North!

With her talent for combat, wouldn't passing Shrek Academy's entrance examination be a breeze?

The main reason he gave her the letter was that the Snow Empress herself had little to learn from Shrek Academy's Martial Soul Department.

She therefore wanted to apply to Shrek Academy's Soul Tool Department. The best course was to conceal her Snow Woman Martial Soul and disguise it as an ordinary snow lotus Martial Soul, so that Shrek's Martial Soul Department would not force her to join them. As for the possibility of Shrek's higher-ups discovering her identity, that simply did not exist.

A few years earlier, Xu Xingyu had taken her to the Ice God's ruins, where she had obtained the Ice God's inheritance. The first step of the trial was to turn her into a human and have her stay by Xu Xingyu's side to learn all about the human world.

Thus, after taking human form, she had a way to prevent anyone from seeing through her identity as a transformed Soul Beast.

After saying goodbye to Xu Yanxue, Xu Xingyu began his entrance examination.

Xu Xingyu's entrance examination required him to last the time it took an incense stick to burn against a senior student.

What he had not expected, however, was that the senior assessing him would turn out to be an acquaintance.

The moment the black-clad senior saw Xu Xingyu, his jaw dropped.

At that moment, all he wanted to ask was, Is this test supposed to be about him lasting the time it takes an incense stick to burn against me, or me lasting that long against him?

This senior was none other than Xu Sanshi, the young sect master of the Mysterious Underworld Sect, known as the Eternal Defense.