Chapter 158: The Stingy Shrek
The lunch break passed in the blink of an eye. All the students who had passed the freshman assessment were now assembled neatly in Shrek Plaza.
After waiting for a short while, Director of Instruction Du Weilun, accompanied by a group of teachers, approached from the front of the plaza. Aside from the homeroom teachers of each class, there were also several unfamiliar faces among the crowd.
Du Weilun swept his gaze across the assembled students, nodded with satisfaction, cleared his throat, and declared in a resounding voice: "Good day, students. As you are likely already aware, the freshman assessment and ranking tournament have now fully concluded. This assembly serves both as your class placement assembly and as a commendation ceremony for the top three teams of the ranking tournament."
He paused briefly and raised the folder in his hand: "Now, I shall announce their names and present the commendations and rewards."
"Third place in the freshman assessment—Furina's team. Team member: Furina."
A sparse smattering of applause rippled through the crowd.
Quite a number of students were silently musing to themselves: had Furina not voluntarily conceded in the semifinals, it would be hard to say who would have ended up in first or second place.
As for Ning Tian's team, which had competed against Furina for third place, in the eyes of most, they simply weren't on the same level.
Even Dai Huabin, who possessed a martial soul fusion technique, had been defeated at Furina's hands. What did Ning Tian's team have to win? Without a killer move of that caliber, facing Furina would have been nothing but a foreordained, suspense-free defeat.
Thus, Ning Tian's team could only settle for fourth. And the team of Huang Chutian, ranked fifth, despite having the Lan sisters' martial soul fusion technique "Heavenly Net"—which made them nearly unstoppable among two-ring teams—still fell a notch short when facing opponents of Ning Tian and Furina's level, ultimately stopping at fifth. But fourth and fifth place, in any case, made no substantive difference; neither came with additional rewards.
Furina unhurriedly stepped out from the freshman ranks, walking with poised composure to Du Weilun's side. She then turned around and waved to the crowd with a beaming smile:
"Hey there, everyone! I'm Furina—Pope of the Church of the Water God, and also the Water God herself! For those of you who might be interested, after graduation, if you don't have any particularly good place to go, you're all most welcome to join our Church of the Water God! The doors of our Church of the Water God are forever open to outstanding talents!"
The corner of Du Weilun's eye twitched faintly, but he merely gave a light cough and acted as though he hadn't seen her so brazenly poaching talent.
It wasn't the first time, nor even the second. Besides, given the extraordinary strength and overwhelming talent Furina had displayed in the tournament, she was indeed qualified to stand here and recruit talent in this manner.
Hearing that light cough, Furina tactfully reined in her smile and stood quietly to the side.
Du Weilun continued reading: "Second place—Dai Huabin's team. Team members: Dai Huabin, Zhu Lu, Cui Yajie. Come forward."
The three emerged from the freshman ranks, yet their faces showed not a trace of excitement or elation. As they walked up before Du Weilun, Dai Huabin's gaze first fell upon Furina, lingering for a moment, then swept past the formation of Class One and settled upon Huo Yuhao, who stood further back among the crowd.
His gaze was complicated, carrying thoughts no one could read.
Furina felt that line of sight settle upon her, yet she couldn't even be bothered to lift her eyelids.
There was nothing worth looking at.
"Finally," Du Weilun raised his voice slightly, "let us welcome, with a warm round of applause, this year's freshman assessment championship team to the stage!"
Applause surged like a tide.
"First place—Huo Yuhao's team. Team members: Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, Xiao Xiao."
Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong walked forward shoulder to shoulder, Xiao Xiao a step behind, the three of them coming up together before Du Weilun.
Du Weilun nodded with satisfaction. Once the applause had subsided, he declared in a clear, ringing voice: "Good. Now, I shall first announce the rewards for the top three teams of this year's freshman assessment. First and foremost, they will all receive one identical reward—"
He swept his gaze across the entire assembly and spoke slowly: "From this point on, whenever each of you needs to acquire a soul ring, you may submit a request to the academy, and the academy will assist you in obtaining the most suitable soul ring that you are capable of withstanding."
The moment these words fell, a wave of amazed and envious murmurs rippled through the first-year students.
The value of this reward was something everyone understood perfectly. The academy was essentially promising that for these seven individuals, their next soul ring would inevitably be at the "extreme limit" of what they could bear. For instance, if Xiao Xiao's upper limit for her third soul ring was one thousand five hundred years, the academy would find her the most suitable one-thousand-five-hundred-year soul ring. It would be the same for each of them.
In the eyes of many students, this reward was by no means insubstantial.
Furina, however, upon hearing this, couldn't help but complain inwardly: Isn't this incredibly perfunctory? For students with power, influence, and money, who even cares about this? Just hire people to hunt soul beasts yourself, and you'll still get a soul ring at the extreme limit of your capacity. The promise of a single soul ring—for lower-grade students, what difference is there from getting nothing at all?
She genuinely couldn't understand whether Shrek was deliberately playing poor, or simply never took student rewards seriously in the first place. Giving a soul ring was worse than just handing out some prize money or a trophy or a medal—the former could at least be used, and the latter would at least count as an honor. A soul ring, on the other hand... say it was useful, and it sort of was; say it was useless, and it really was quite useless.
Besides, as an academy, wasn't it a teacher's duty to help students obtain their soul rings? How did it suddenly become a "reward" in your hands?
But Furina couldn't be bothered to continue griping about Shrek Academy's miserly ways. In any case, when her own Canaan Academy was established in the future, it absolutely could not be anything like this.
Du Weilun continued: "In view of the champion team—Huo Yuhao's team's—outstanding performance and undefeated record throughout the entire competition, the academy has decided to bestow upon them an additional, special reward. The specific content of this reward will be kept confidential by the academy. After the class placements are concluded, you three may follow me to receive it."
Hearing this, the faces of Huo Yuhao's trio didn't show much excitement either. Could the academy possibly produce ten-thousand-year soul bones for them?
Yet no student raised any objection to Huo Yuhao's team receiving an extra reward. All along their path, they had successively defeated the teams led by Soul Elder-level powerhouses—Ning Tian's team, Xie Huanyue's team, Dai Huabin's team. The three great Soul Elders among the freshmen had all fallen at their hands. This championship contained not a shred of trickery or luck; receiving greater rewards was only right and proper.
Of course, there were those who felt Furina was more suited to take this championship. But since Furina herself didn't care in the slightest, what could any bystanders possibly say?
"Alright, you may return to your ranks," Du Weilun instructed.
Furina and the other six returned to their respective positions and stood in place.
Once the seven had re-integrated into the freshman formation, Du Weilun delivered yet another round of routine platitudes, and finally cut to the heart of the matter—announcing the core disciple roster.
The square, which had been somewhat noisy just moments before, fell instantly silent.
The core disciple roster was not limited solely to the top three teams. As long as one's performance had been outstanding and one's results exceptional, there was a chance of being selected.
Du Weilun opened the folder he had been carrying all along and read out the names one by one:
"After deliberation by the academy, the core disciple roster for this year's freshman assessment is as follows: Furina, Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, Xiao Xiao, Ning Tian, Wu Feng, Dai Huabin, Zhu Lu, Xie Huanyue, Zhou Sichen, Cao Jinxuan, Lan Susu, Lan Luoluo."
Had it followed the trajectory of the original story, even if Huo Yuhao had won the championship, with his mere one-ring cultivation, his name would absolutely never have appeared on this list. Even though Bei Bei and Tang Ya had repeatedly assured him that "the freshman assessment's first-place team will definitely make it into the core disciples," in the end, Du Weilun still hadn't done so.
One could only say—Shrek's version of "fairness" truly was flexible.
Next came the class placement segment.
The entire first-year cohort was divided into four classes: Class One for assault-type and control-type battle soul masters; Class Two for defense-type and agility-type battle soul masters; Class Three for support-type battle soul masters; and Class Four, encompassing food-type, healing-type, and other special-attribute battle soul masters and tool soul masters.
Ultimately, Furina was placed in Class One.
This was Yan Shaozhe's decision.
Taking into account Furina's close relationships with Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, and Xiao Xiao, as well as the fact that her strength truly was unsuitable for simple categorization under support-type or food-type—she could fight and she could support, making Class One the most appropriate placement.
Furina was reasonably satisfied with this arrangement. Even if they really had assigned her to Class Three or Class Four, she wouldn't have complained—she'd just go poach talent from the other classes and have Huo Yuhao continue recruiting in Class One on her behalf.
But being placed in Class One wasn't a problem either. After all, in the original story, Zhu Lu, an agility-type soul master, had also been stuffed into Class One. This just went to show that as long as you had connections, getting into whichever class you wanted was no problem at all.
Class One's homeroom teacher remained Zhou Yi, and Class Two's remained Mugin.
As for who served as homeroom teacher—to Furina, it was all the same either way.