In the front row stood three statues. The one in the center was an elderly man wearing glasses, his plump face adorned with a cheerful smile, giving off the impression of a kindly gentleman.
Beibei said to Huo Yuhao, "The man in the middle is the founder of our Shrek Academy and its first headmaster, Flender. On his left is one of my ancestors, Yu Xiaogang, known as the Grandmaster. He laid the foundation for Shrek Academy's martial soul system and established the ten core competencies of the soul master world. My mother is a direct descendant of his. The woman on the right is also an ancestor—Liu Erlong, the Grandmaster's wife. Together with Headmaster Flender, the three of them were known as the Golden Iron Triangle."
"If Flender founded Shrek Academy, then the Grandmaster was its soul. It was he who personally nurtured the Shrek Seven Devils behind them."
The Grandmaster's statue looked like a thin middle-aged man, while Liu Erlong's statue depicted a graceful, elegant woman. Behind them stood seven other statues.
Just then, a familiar voice echoed in Huo Yuhao's mind—Elder Ye: "Interesting, how very interesting. I didn't expect that in this world, the life trajectories of these people have taken such drastically different paths."
'Elder Ye, you know these founders of Shrek Academy?' Huo Yuhao asked in shock.
'In the world I come from, these people also existed, along with a Shrek Academy. And yes, Tang San and the others were indeed students of that academy. But to my knowledge, that Shrek Academy was little more than an empty name.'
'An empty name? Why? Isn't a school that trains monsters supposed to be powerful?' Huo Yuhao asked, confused.
'Haha, Yuhao, you're still too young to understand the layers behind all this. As for what the Shrek Academy from ten thousand years ago was really like, let me show you my memories.'
As Elder Ye spoke, a series of images suddenly appeared in Huo Yuhao's mind. From Elder Ye's perspective, he saw the so-called monster-training Shrek Academy, the so-called Shrek Seven Devils, and the so-called highly respected teachers and headmasters—and saw their true nature.
Shrek Academy only admitted "monsters"—in other words, extremely talented individuals. But aside from the strength of the instructors, they had little actual teaching capability. Essentially, they tricked gifted students into enrolling, then sent them off to fight in soul arenas every day under the guise of "training."
That would have been tolerable if not for the appalling state of the academy itself. It lacked even basic facilities. Students lived in shabby village cottages with leaky roofs and subsisted on plain steamed buns and salted vegetables.
Over the many years since its founding, before Tang San and the others arrived, the academy had enrolled only a few dozen students. Of those, only a handful managed to graduate. The rest either died in the soul arenas, self-destructed while absorbing soul rings, or were crippled.
Shrek only admitted geniuses, but they lacked the ability to actually turn those geniuses into strong soul masters. On the contrary, their so-called "training" had directly led to the deaths of an uncountable number of gifted students. This so-called "Academy of Monsters" was nothing more than a fraudulent, ramshackle back-alley school that offered nothing but empty promises.
'This… this!'
After seeing Elder Ye's memories, Huo Yuhao looked at those legendary figures with an entirely different expression. They were nothing like the people described in the tales. He was completely dumbfounded. He never could've imagined that Shrek Academy, ten thousand years ago, had been so… pathetic. Compared to its current form, it was like comparing heaven and earth.
Even more shocking was the revelation about Elder Ye's connection to his ancestor, Zhu Zhuqing.
'You were Zhu Zhuqing's teacher?!' Huo Yuhao exclaimed in his mind. 'But the Zhu Zhuqing of this world became a god and ascended to the Divine Realm, didn't she?'
'That's perfectly normal. While the two worlds are similar in overall development, even with identical individuals, some differences in the details are to be expected,' Elder Ye replied. 'Back then, I saw promise in her—unyielding determination, a strong will. And we happened to be fated, so I took her in. She worked hard and eventually became a Titled Douluo. Later, she returned to Star Luo to dissolve her engagement and, somehow, ended up becoming Empress of Star Luo. She even abolished the tradition of deadly succession among princes.'
'What about the ancestor Dai Mubai?' Huo Yuhao couldn't help but ask. 'What happened to him?'
'Dai Mubai?' Elder Ye was silent for a moment before recalling. "Oh yes, that one. I don't know much about him. Based on his talent at the time, unless he had some major stroke of luck or was favored by a god, the best he could hope for would've been reaching Titled Douluo. Ascending to godhood? Impossible."
'Maybe he lived to old age. Or maybe he died during an Abyssal Demon invasion. Who knows?' Elder Ye said, completely unconcerned.
'To think the two worlds could diverge so drastically…' Huo Yuhao was deeply shaken by everything he had just learned. He couldn't help but have another thought:
'Could this version of Shrek Academy be just as worthless as the one from Elder Ye's world?'
But he quickly shook his head and dismissed the idea. Regardless of anything else, just based on Shrek's current status, there was no way it could be fake. They obviously weren't lacking in resources. It couldn't possibly be as impoverished as the Shrek Academy from ten thousand years ago.
As for other qualities—those were harder to say.
Since he hadn't officially enrolled yet, Huo Yuhao still didn't know the academy's true nature. But due to the memories Elder Ye had passed to him, his subconscious reverence for Shrek had quietly diminished. He no longer viewed it as some towering, divine institution.
Even his opinion of Flender and the other founders had begun to shift. There was now a faint sense of disillusionment.
And this was exactly the effect Elder Ye had intended. After all, if this naïve boy continued blindly worshipping Shrek and got emotionally attached to a garbage school, it would be truly unbearable.
Their conversation, though complex, had occurred entirely on the mental plane, and in reality, only a short moment had passed. To the others, it merely looked like Huo Yuhao was seriously listening to the lecture without distraction.
At the same time, Beibei was giving him detailed introductions to each of the statues and their "glorious history."
But to Huo Yuhao—who now knew the truth—it all sounded laughable. He couldn't help but think how pitiful these people were, blindly idolizing legends that never truly lived up to their names.
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