At this moment, centered around the Heaven Dou Grand Arena, nearly a third of Heaven Dou City had been turned into a scene of empty streets packed with ten thousand people. For days now, every hotel in the city, regardless of class, had been fully booked. The city's population had surged by nearly fifty percent. That alone spoke volumes about just how alluring this Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Elite Tournament was to the masses.
For the sake of this tournament, Heaven Dou City had deployed a full five thousand city guards to maintain order. Only then were disturbances kept to a minimum.
"Wow, so many people!" Ning Rongrong couldn't help but cry out in amazement. Looking left and right, this was the first time she had ever seen such a surging sea of heads.
Oscar was playing the role of bodyguard, shielding Ning Rongrong at her side. He kept his head bowed as much as possible, trying not to let anyone see his face.
Oscar wasn't the only one. Apart from the few dazzlingly beautiful girls, everyone else — whether members of the Shrek Seven Devils or their substitutes — was keeping their heads down as low as they could. The reason was simple: their outfits were downright embarrassing.
The standard Shrek Academy uniform wasn't an ordinary green. It was a color somewhere between yellow and green, and in Dai Mubai's words, it was "shit-green."
For this academy tournament, Headmaster Flandre — a man of truly exceptional taste — had personally commissioned these uniforms for them. The material was actually quite nice and comfortable to wear. But beyond the shit-green color, each uniform also featured a giant Monster Shrek emblem on the chest that practically covered the entire front. And that emblem was rendered in a vivid, almost dripping emerald green.
As if that weren't enough, the most outrageous detail was on the back of each uniform: six large characters stitched in bright red thread — "Seeking Naming Sponsorship."
Below those six characters was a line of smaller text: "For advertising fees, please contact Shrek Academy Headmaster Flandre in person."
The Shrek Seven Devils had once risen up in protest against these competition outfits, but in the end they were crushed under Flandre's tyrannical authority. After much desperate bargaining, Flandre had reluctantly agreed that if any advertising revenue did come in, one-third of the total would be distributed to the team members competing. The rest would be kept as academy construction funds.
For Dai Mubai, Zhu Zhuqing, and Tang San, this money might not have been much. But for the others, it was still significant. Moreover, all of them had seen Shrek Academy's dire situation back in the day. Now that there was finally a chance to earn some money, they couldn't very well throw away Flandre's goodwill. For all his cunning and scheming, this headmaster had genuinely struggled these years to keep the academy afloat.
Of course, the Shrek Seven Devils had also turned to the Great Master for help, but his answer was equally bizarre. The Great Master told them that although the uniforms were ugly, they also served as training for their mental fortitude. If they could maintain a straight face amid the mockery of the crowd, then their psychological resilience would have reached a certain level.
The Shrek Seven Devils grumbled among themselves that this was clearly just training them to be thick-skinned.
The Great Master, citing his role as the academy's representative, refused alongside Flandre to wear such uniforms. They each had only a small, inconspicuous Shrek emblem on the left side of their chest.
It was precisely because of these outrageous outfits that the moment Tang San and the others entered the crowd, they attracted "special" attention.
"Which academy are they from? Good heavens, did they just crawl out of a latrine?"
"That's hilarious! The green monster emblem on their chests is actually kind of adorable. Why do the ears look like megaphones?"
"Look, look — they're advertising something on their backs? Is there really a Soul Master academy like this? And they get to compete in the Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Elite Tournament? That's just too funny. Really proves the saying — in a big enough forest, you'll find every kind of bird."
"Keep your voice down. They're still Soul Masters, after all. But I'm guessing they're just here to go through the motions. Look, there's even a fat one in there — shaped like a ball."
If there had been a crack in the ground right then, the eleven students from Shrek Academy would have scrambled over each other to squeeze into it. Even though they had mentally prepared themselves, they hadn't expected that the area outside the Grand Arena would already be packed with so many people. It was practically an exhibition — and they were absolutely the laughingstock.