Qiangu Zhangting's brows furrowed slightly as he speculated, "Could it be that those are allies they only temporarily recruited? Otherwise, how could we know nothing about them?"
Qiangu Dongfeng replied, "I've already launched an investigation, so let's wait for the outcome. With the resources of our Spirit Pagoda, we'll definitely be able to find something as long as we get the slightest of leads. You don't need to pay any attention to that; focus on enrolment, and nurturing the academy's students. The most important factor that decides the caliber of an academy are the students it produces; I'm sure we won't be inferior in this aspect to a newly rebuilt Shrek Academy."
"You can rest assured, Grandfather!" Qiangu Zhangting said with brimming confidence, "We have so many resources that are unavailable to them; there's no way we can fail."
Right at this moment, a burst of urgent door-knocking suddenly rang out.
Qiangu Zhangting's brows furrowed slightly as he said, "Come in."
A middle-aged man barged into the room with a panicked expression, and said, "Bad news, Principal!"
Qiangu Zhangting's heart jolted upon hearing this, and he urged, "Calm down and explain!"
The middle-aged man took a moment to catch his breath, then elaborated, "We've just tallied up all of the statistics for this enrollment, and we discovered that not even a single one of our enrolled students are above rank 20 in soul power. Children with soul power above rank 20 at below 12 years of age are very rare, but not non-existent! This has always been Shrek Academy's enrollment criteria. Hence, we grew suspicious and asked some of the students what had happened, and they told us that some registrants had already been taken elsewhere after the preliminary examination."
"What preliminary examination is this?" Qiangu Zhangting faltered slightly upon hearing this.
The middle-aged man replied, "That's what I want to know as well! All of our examinations took place inside the academy, but the students say that they all underwent a preliminary examination while lining up outside the front gate, and that those who passed the preliminary examination were asked to enter a vortex door of light, while those who didn't pass the preliminary examination were allowed into the academy."
Qiangu Zhangting almost fainted from fury upon hearing this. "How is this possible? Are all of our enrolment staff blind? How could they not have seen anything?"
The middle-aged man was already on the verge of bursting into tears. "I don't know! We've already checked through the security footage, and the only suspicious activity that we saw was that all of the students would extend a hand forward after arriving at the gate, and after that, some of them walked away to the side before disappearing into thin air. For some reason, none of us noticed this!"
Qiangu Zhangting was about to say something further, but he was cut off by Qiangu Dongfeng. "Let's go and take a look at the security footage first."
Half an hour later, Qiangu Zhangting and Qiangu Dongfeng were standing in front of a large screen that was displaying the security footage with dark expressions.
Sure enough, one registrant after another was making their way toward the front gate before pausing and extending a hand forward.
Some of them then walked over to the side before abruptly vanishing, while others continued into the academy, and none of the enrolment staff seemed to have seen anything.
"What the hell is going on? Can somebody tell me what happened?" Qiangu Zhangting was about to pull his own hair out by the roots!
All of the employees were completely petrified. They were all low-level workers, and in this Spirit Academy that was filled with powerful beings, they could easily be killed and no one would ever know.
"They're not to be blamed, Principal; this is the result of an extremely powerful illusion. A short while ago, I detected a burst of powerful spiritual fluctuations, but when I tried to latch onto it, it was already gone. During the time that this illusion was in effect, I just so happened to be over at Shrek Academy," Han Tianyi said with tightly furrowed brows.
Qiangu Dongfeng asked, "An illusion? How could there be such a powerful illusion? What kind of Soul Master could pull off something like this?"
Han Tianyi shook his head in response. "I'm not sure. Theoretically speaking, I should be able to directly sense all illusions within a radius of 10 kilometers. However, I was only made aware of this illusion as it was being withdrawn. Thinking back now, I was only able to sense the spiritual fluctuations as it had overlapped for an instant with the spatial fluctuations that resulted from the withdrawal of the illusion. Unless there are some other circumstances involved, the creator of the illusion should possess spiritual power that's not inferior to my own. Otherwise, I wouldn't have discovered it so late."
Qiangu Dongfeng drew a sharp breath upon hearing this. Han Tianyi was the undisputed number one when it came to spiritual power on the entire continent.
If Shrek Academy really did have a Soul Master with spiritual power that wasn't inferior to Han Tianyi's, then that would be a truly terrifying prospect. This was only a recently rebuilt Shrek Academy! How had it accumulated so much in such a short time?
Even more importantly, all of the most exceptional students had been taken away by Shrek Academy right in front of the Spirit Pagoda's very own academy!
Even Qiangu Dongfeng was struggling to contain his fury now.
The clash between Shrek Academy and Spirit Academy had taken quite a long time, and even though it had ended in defeat for Spirit Academy, he had thought that with the time they had bought, Spirit Academy would've surely been able to enroll many students already.
However, never did he think that he would be playing right into Shrek Academy's hands from the very beginning! Where the hell did these people come from? Since when was there a master of illusions in Shrek Academy?
Qiangu Dongfeng was on the verge of throwing up blood at this point.
If the higher-ups of the Spirit Pagoda were to hear about this, the entire Qiangu Family would most likely be heavily impacted.
A massive amount of manpower and resources had been expended to found Spirit Academy, so failure wasn't an option.
"What should we do, Grandfather?" Qiangu Zhangting was at a complete loss.
Qiangu Dongfeng quickly repressed his tumultuous emotions, and replied, "Keep this information strictly confidential, and impose a non-disclosure order on all those who know about this. If anyone dares to leak this information, then don't blame me for silencing them!"
All of the surrounding employees were unconsciously holding their breath in the face of Qiangu Dongfeng's furious aura.
Qiangu Zhangting immediately understood his grandfather's intentions. They definitely couldn't allow the higher-ups of the Spirit Pagoda, particularly the core members, to hear about this. Otherwise, the Qiangu Family would be placed under immense pressure.
As such, even though they had been screwed over, they could only swallow this bitter pill in silence.
Qiangu Zhangting snapped, "Shrek Academy is absolutely shameless! How could they do something like this?"
Qiangu Dongfeng took a cold glance at him, and said, "At the very least, we haven't lost to them on numbers. Nurture this cohort of students to the best of your abilities; I'm sure they won't be this lucky next year."
Despite Qiangu Dongfeng's fierce demeanor, Qiangu Zhangting could tell that his grandfather had truly been shaken and was even slightly fearful of Shrek Academy's five Limit Douluos. In terms of top-grade firepower, the Spirit Pagoda no longer held any advantage.
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