At 3 a.m., the landmines in front of the station

At 6 PM, after a day of competition, the official notification he received on his phone as captain was...

Congratulations! The "Seven Colors" team has advanced to the Round of 64 by a mere 0.5 points. Your opponent tomorrow afternoon at 4 PM will be "Black and White."

Su Che: "?"

An Qing: "??"

Yuan Xiao: "???"

Gu Zhi: "...?"

Yu tide: "…………"

Xiao Xiao: "Huh?"

all of a sudden.

The group of people huddled together instantly came back to life from their somber mood...

"No, no, no."

"Wow, this is a lot of information! Let me process this for a moment..."

The crowd looked at each other, all thinking there might be a problem with Mosse's notification.

"Could it have been sent to the wrong person?"

Xiao Xiao asked, puzzled, "His so-called 0.5 point difference means a plus sign, right?"

"Yes."

"So, 'Paradise' got an overall score of A, while we got an A+, which is why we narrowly won?"

That's roughly the idea.

"But how could that be? They're a professionally trained team, and they prepared all original songs. How could they possibly lose to us?"

"I don't know either..."

Just as Su Che was scratching his head, wanting to ask a staff member if the result was reasonable, a familiar voice came from the corridor outside the hotel...

"Waaaah... those damn bastards, they're all obsessed with looks, all of them are obsessed with looks!"

"???"

"Our performance score was SS, so why did they give us an E for appearance?! Where are we ugly?! Where are we ugly?! Looks-obsessed people, all the judges are looks-obsessed!! They look down on us!!!"

"…………"

The orange cat's loud wailing startled everyone in the room...

The members of "Seven Colors" were trembling with fear, and none of them dared to express their opinions on this matter...

Is this the legendary "facial feature division"...?

As a beneficiary of the system... Su Che gasped.

Despite all their calculations, they couldn't have predicted that at the crucial moment, their "style" and "image" would actually outshine "Paradise" in terms of overall score.

"They say 'originality' is the most important thing... but in the end, looks can't be lacking either, right..."

Listening to the neighboring team's furious scramble to their rooms, creating chaos, the group from Qicai felt a lingering sense of dread, as if they had been walking on thin ice...

They all knew perfectly well that if they were even slightly less attractive or dressed a little less stylishly, they might have been eliminated in the first round of the Mosse Cup, just like the other team.

Before Su Che could recover from the commotion, his phone suddenly vibrated at an inopportune moment.

He frowned, picked up his phone, and looked at the screen.

It was a private message from Xiang Xuechuan.

[Master, I deliberately played 10 wrong notes in the competition just now, which lowered the team's score by at least 2 points. I hope... I hope you can praise me...]

"...?"

Su Che was stunned.

Thinking about it, it turns out that the other team's loss wasn't just due to their looks?

It turns out that Xiang Xuechuan also put in a lot of effort, lowering the total score by 3 points, which allowed them to be successfully demoted to Grade A.

Otherwise, is the opponent an S+ level being?

Now he understood.

You did a great job.

He casually replied to Xiang Xuechuan with a cat-patting emoji.

The next second, Xiang Xuechuan replied with a lewd picture of a landmine-like woman kneeling down and sticking out her tongue to beg for love.

"........."

Su Che immediately covered the screen.

"Cheche, what are you looking at? Who sent you this message?"

"Nobody."

Seeing Yuan Xiao and An Qing leaning over to peek at the text message, Su Che immediately straightened his expression and tried his best to slip his phone back into his pocket without making it obvious.

"No, what are you hiding? Is there some other shady news you're trying to keep secret?"

No.

Su Che cleared his throat and used his classic skill—"changing the subject"—to bring everyone's attention back to the important matter:

"Ahem, you all heard that. In the first battle, we narrowly won against 'Paradise' by a mere 0.5 points, advancing to tomorrow's second round. But we can't let our guard down; after all, whether we'll even survive tomorrow night is a big question mark."

“I understand the logic, but why can't they beat us? Is it really because they're not good-looking that they get eliminated? Then what about the other teams with some obviously skilled players…”

The little one had already eaten, so he rolled his eyes and cooperatively raised a question.

"Well, I can't say for sure, but based on past experience, you can think about who the champion was last year..."

"! It's Miya!"

"Hmm. So, isn't Miya cute?"

"So cute!" the girls exclaimed in unison.

"Where is the strength?"

"Extremely powerful."

"So from this perspective, the kind of seed Mosse wants is probably a contestant like Miya... and this year's band competition would ideally have 4-6 contestants of Miya's caliber to support the label."

Su Che analyzed, "It doesn't matter if someone's individual skills are a little weaker than Miya's; they can make up for it with the team's stage presence. But if their image and stage presence are lacking, then there's nothing that can be done. I guess that's Mosse's real purpose."

"...I understand."

Yu tide sat on the other bed in the twin room, listened patiently to Su Che's analysis, and nodded, saying, "But there is another problem."

"Hmm... I know what you want to ask."

Su Che took a deep breath and reviewed the notification message sent by the staff...

"Although we narrowly won tonight, tomorrow's opponent seems to be... a little different from what we expected."

As Su Che's gaze lingered on the words "black and white," images of Li Encheng and the other person who had greeted him that morning flashed through his mind...

They are clearly such a talented group; they even competed against each other on the same stage at Tianlai Livehouse before.

Now it seems they were defeated instantly by an unknown team?

"It's unbelievable. With their skill level and playing only original albums, I just can't imagine how they could lose..."

"If they can still lose like this, it can only mean that the person they hit was even more powerful, right?"

Xiao Xiao took out her notebook and searched for information about "Black and White".

Unfortunately, even after searching the entire internet, there wasn't a single trace of this team...

"Why don't we ask them what's going on? Che, don't you have their contact information?"

Gu Zhi suggested that they spy on each other.

Su Che nodded in agreement, picked up his phone again, and made a voice call to Li Encheng.

After two beeps, the other party answered immediately.

Judging from the sound, it sounds like they're still outdoors.

"Hey guys, you've probably received the news too, my opponent isn't me tomorrow..."

Li Encheng sighed and lamented, "Tianhuan and I were instantly killed by the other side! Instantly killed, damn it!"

"...Slow down, speak slowly. Who is the other side? Did you go on stage first or last? Did you see the whole performance?"

Although Su Che told him not to rush, he actually bombarded him with a barrage of questions.

Li Encheng took a breath, lit a cigarette, and slowly recalled:

"I saw them. It was a group of five, all wearing pretty black and white dresses. Although they were all wearing masks, so they were masked, their appearance score was SSS..."

"?"

"Yeah, as for Typhoon, they all seem to have some dance training, like a damn girl group! They just...just got SSS+ straight away..."

"?? Full marks??"

"Well, in terms of performance and singing, we're both SS, and the other side is also SS, so it's a 50/50 match."

"..."

"Finally, there's originality. We're SS+, while the other side... the other side is also completely original, and their score is SS, not much higher than ours. So in terms of total score, we're three levels lower than them; they're SS+, and we're S."

"."

collapse.

Su Che's vision went black; he felt that he had no chance in tomorrow's second round of the competition again.

My team is only A+ level, while the opponent is SS+. How can we even compete like this?

Does that mean if I change to a new song tomorrow, I'll soar to SS rank while the other person will plummet to S+?

Is such a thing even possible?