Before the competition began, even Xia Chi's most devoted fans could hardly have imagined it.
His performance would actually score higher than Wallace's!
Of course, there were several reasons.
Plenty of people voted online just for laughs, and the audience had higher expectations of a legendary master like Wallace.
And so on.
Still, there was no denying that Xia Chi's first-ever performance had been an unexpectedly resounding success!
So much so that Valerie, Jasmine, Erika, and the others who appeared afterward were all compared to Xia Chi once their performances ended.
And lost, one after another.
The reasoning was the same.
Xia Chi had set the bar. Unless someone afterward delivered a truly stunning performance that surpassed their own limits,
they would struggle to outshine Xia Chi, who had far exceeded everyone's expectations-
online voters were not professional judges, after all.
Besides, even professional judges often had double standards, demanding that contestants show some kind of breakthrough.
For once, Xia Chi had benefited from those double standards.
And so, amid the strange feeling that this was "unexpected, yet perfectly understandable upon reflection,"
Xia Chi, an absolute newcomer to performances, claimed first place in the Wallace Cup preliminary round with the undisputed highest score in the online vote!
Sure, he was only the people's choice champion.
But who said a people's choice champion wasn't a champion?
All the performances on the Wallace Cup's first day came to a close.
Starting the next day, the competition would enter the knockout stage of Contest Battles, where raw skill would truly be tested in passionate clashes.
Yet however loudly the outside world clamored in anticipation of those peak showdowns,
none of the top Trainers competing had any desire to prepare right now-
if Xia Chi's intelligence was accurate, Team Magma's mad operation to awaken