The tournament had a simple format: preliminaries, semifinals, and finals, held over three days. To cheer Lumine on, Yucheng and Shenhe made a special trip to the arena in Guyun Stone Forest to join the fun. But watching the preliminary matches made Yucheng want to wolf down three big bowls of plain rice on the spot. They were that hilariously bad.
Of the hundred-plus one-on-one preliminary matches, around half ended with a single move, while another quarter were two novices flailing at each other. The remaining quarter were fairly respectable. Laughter filled the arena, but Beidou looked decidedly unhappy.
Only afterward did Yucheng hear Beidou complaining that, while registering applicants, Zhuhan had approved people with credentials like "runner-up in the Chihu Rock freestyle fighting competition" and "Qingce Village arm-wrestling champion." Yucheng was utterly speechless.
Chihu Rock... freestyle fighting... wasn't that just workers beating each other up? Runner-up... which meant he had actually lost.
Qingce Village arm-wrestling champion... wasn't Qingce Village mostly retired old people and children left behind by their parents? How could a young man have the nerve to arm-wrestle them? No sportsmanship at all.
Fortunately, that sort of thing was mostly confined to the preliminaries. There were far fewer matches between flailing novices in the semifinals, and by the finals, every match could be called a thrilling contest.
Lumine also fought her way smoothly through one opponent after another. Although a small mishap occurred at the very end, she won the championship without any real danger, preserving her reputation as a great hero.
Even in the hands of the tournament champion, however, the masterless Vision still failed to light up again. This left Kaedehara Kazuha, who had been watching from the sidelines, somewhat disappointed.
Boss Beidou had organized this tournament specifically to fulfill his wish: to find a