Meanwhile, Tongtong and Xu Muqing were about to return to their seats, while contestants had their own entrance.
“Tongtong, Daddy, Aunt Xu, and Yaoyao will be in the audience seats for now. Follow the staff’s instructions to the contestant seats later, understand?” Liu Yifeng said to Tongtong.
Tongtong nodded, “Yes, I understand. You guys go ahead!”
Then, Liu Yifeng and Xu Muqing’s mother and daughter went to the audience seats.
As a contestant’s family member, Liu Yifeng had exclusive seating. Xu Muqing, however, had been added last minute and could only sit with the production crew.
The three of them went down to the seats. Liu Yifeng looked around and indeed saw the logistics manager, who was directing operations. He then led Xu Muqing to find him.
Upon seeing Xu Muqing, the logistics manager stopped talking to the staff and pointed to two empty seats. “You two sit here. If you need any help, tell me again!”
“Thank you!” Xu Muqing thanked him, then took Yaoyao’s hand and sat down.
Liu Yifeng also returned to his seat. His seat was some distance away from Xu Muqing’s. They exchanged a glance, smiled slightly, and then watched the stage, waiting for the show to begin.
Soon after, Tongtong and Xia Qianqian, along with other specially invited guests, entered from the contestant entrance and took their seats in the contestant area.
Since half of the contestants had been eliminated, the contestant area looked quite empty.
Perhaps by coincidence, Xia Qianqian and Yun Duo’er sat side by side. Tongtong sat right next to Yun Duo’er.
However, Yun Duo’er did not speak to Tongtong. Instead, she cheered on Song Yicheng next to her, “Yicheng, relax. If you don’t understand something later, remember to use your special guest privilege, okay?”
As more and more contestants were eliminated, those who advanced were the top performers. Their skills were almost on par.
Everyone considered Tongtong their biggest rival; others were not a threat.
Song Yicheng was dismissive, “How could I possibly not know the answer!”
Seeing Song Yicheng so confident, Yun Duo’er said no more.
“Tongtong, relax later. If you get stuck on a question, don’t forget to use your special guest privilege!” Xia Qianqian also reminded him.
The questions were getting harder and harder. As Tongtong’s special guest, she hadn’t used her privilege once yet, and it might come in handy later.
Tongtong was not as arrogant as Song Yicheng. He nodded obediently, “Aunt Xia, I know. Don’t worry!”
Yun Duo’er also knew her son was quite exceptional and that ordinary questions wouldn’t stump him. She hoped Tongtong would have bad luck and use his special guest privilege several times, thus increasing his chances of elimination.
As everyone waited, the host gracefully walked onto the stage from backstage.
As usual, there were various sponsor advertisements, followed by introductions of the judging panel, contestants, and special guests.
Then, the rules for today’s competition were announced: “Today is the second round of the semifinals, with three rounds of competition.
The questions today are related to mathematics. Our instructors have pre-selected hundreds of questions. Each contestant can only use their own mind to calculate the answers.
There is a ten-minute time limit. We will see who answers the most questions correctly and takes the shortest time.
Finally, our staff will compile the results. The second round is English listening comprehension. In each question, we will read out a grammatical error, and contestants need to accurately identify which one is incorrect and provide the correct answer.
Since there are two foreign contestants, for fairness, their questions will be replaced with Chinese listening comprehension. They will also need to identify the pronunciation error and provide the correct tone.
Each contestant has five chances to answer questions. The ranking will also be determined by the number of correct answers and the time taken.
The third round is a mini-game that tests everyone’s balance.
Through building blocks, we will see who can build the most blocks within the given time to determine the ranking.
Finally, based on the rankings, we will select eight contestants to enter the final复赛 (fùsài - replay/final round), thus eliminating two contestants.
In the question-answering segment, if a contestant doesn’t know the answer, they can use their special guest privilege, and the members of the help team will answer.
We wish everyone good luck. Now, I declare the competition officially open.
The order of appearance for the first round of the competition will again be determined by the judges drawing the contestants’ names. The drawn contestant will come on stage to answer questions.
Now, let’s welcome Teacher Zhao Dewang to draw the first contestant of the day. Let’s see who will get the opening success!”
The audience applauded. Zhao Dewang waved to everyone and then drew a number card from the drawing box handed to him by a staff member.
The corresponding number card corresponded to a contestant in the contestant area.
“The drawn number is 7!” Zhao Dewang announced into the microphone, looking at the number card in his hand.
After speaking, he turned to the audience and showed them the number card he had drawn.
The number 7 contestant immediately stood up and walked to the answering desk. It was a foreign contestant.
Their numbers would be readjusted as contestants were eliminated.
Tongtong was contestant number 10, and Song Yicheng was number 5.
The host looked at contestant number 7 and said, “Contestant number 7, please get ready. The screen, please display the question.”
Soon, ten different addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems appeared on the big screen. These were all very simple basic questions.
The difficulty lay in not being able to use a calculator or scratch paper, only being able to calculate with one’s own mind.
For ordinary people, even with a day’s time, they wouldn’t be able to answer one question correctly because it was too complex for their mental capacity.
But for this group of genius contestants, the difficulty of these questions was only average. Those who were good at math would answer such questions quickly.
Especially for Tongtong, these questions were a piece of cake.
Everyone had seen Tongtong’s brilliant performance in vCr. For him, these questions were like a freebie.
But this was not the production team giving him special treatment; the questions had been decided before the contestants arrived at the television station.
It just happened that the questions played to Tongtong’s strengths. Although other contestants might not answer as quickly as Tongtong, they could still answer these questions correctly without much difficulty.
Contestant number 7 looked at the questions on the screen and quickly calculated them in his mind. For each question he calculated, he wrote the answer on a white paper with a watercolor pen.
Ten questions in ten minutes, he only took eight minutes to write down all the answers.
When the answers were checked, he had answered seven questions correctly and made three mistakes.
At this point, the host said, “If there is any extra time, contestants can recheck their answers. We will primarily rank based on the number of correct answers, followed by time.”
Then, the second contestant came to the answering desk.
He took ten minutes and answered eight questions correctly.
Among everyone, people were most eager to see Tongtong’s performance, as he was the youngest and thus had the highest expectations.
However, Song Yicheng was still ahead of him. So far, Song Yicheng was also one of the few contestants who had not yet used their special guest privilege.