Chapter 762 Qualifiers

When Xia You and Xiao Zhi arrived at the torch relay point, they were surprised to find Xiao Xia, Xiao Yao and others were also there!

This was quite surprising. After all, when I contacted them just now, they had just finished eating ramen. How come they got here so quickly?

Seeing the expressions of the two, Xiaoxia said complacently: "Hehe, you didn't expect that, did you? Humph, you want to leave us alone to watch the torch relay? No way! How can we be left out of such a thing!"

After asking in detail, we found out that after Xiaoxia and her friends arrived at the ramen restaurant, they happened to meet a torch runner with a cat wearing a hat. He was waiting to receive a message from Xia You. After discussing it, they decided to follow the runner to the relay site to take a look. In fact, because the distance was closer, they arrived here earlier than Xia You and Xiaozhi!

Now that they were already here, they watched the torch relay ceremony together.

At this time, the torch relay had been going on for quite a while, and several runners had been replaced. Because the good positions had been taken, they could only watch from a distance on both sides of the road.

It is said that the flame of the Holy Fire was collected from Moltres. To ordinary people, this is indeed sacred and full of mystery, but to Xia You, what? Moltres? Isn't that a Pokémon that can be seen every day?

While watching the relay ceremony, Xiaoxia had a smile on her face the whole time.

This also made Xia You feel very strange.

After all, it was obvious that she seemed to have something on her mind these past few days, and she had been in a bad mood, but since the grand celebration party was over, the smile returned to her face.

Although he didn't know what exactly happened, Xia You was still very happy to see that she had returned to her former self.

It should be Xiaoyao who enlightened her, right?

It seems that I should thank Xiaoyao properly when I have time!

When the group returned to Caiyou City again, Xiaozhi and his friends went to check in, while Xia You temporarily parted ways with them and came to Kuaidian Company alone.

The meteorite key stone mailed by Kuroda has arrived. Xia You is looking forward to this very much. He just wants to see what the difference is between this meteorite key stone and ordinary key stones!

But he was disappointed.

The finished meteorite keystone, at least from the outside, is almost indistinguishable from an ordinary keystone. If its origin is not known in advance, no one would notice its difference just from the outside.

It seems that I can only have the chance to practice it myself, make my own Pokémon mega evolve, and feel the difference between them in terms of strength.

After putting away the key stone, Xia You went to the police station here again.

There is still one thing that needs to be dealt with, that is, the bonus promised to him by the international police has finally arrived!

However, the person who presented the bonus was not someone familiar like Lila and the handsome guy, but a senior civilian official in Interpol who wore glasses and looked gentle and refined!

After a series of photos and speeches, Xia You finally received the money.

A full five million, without any tax deduction, was indeed much more than the prize money from the Quartz Conference and the Silver Conference. Once the money arrived, it filled his bank account a lot more.

Along with the bonus, there was also an honorary certificate for a special investigator. With this certificate, he had a semi-official identity. No matter which region he went to in the future, he would be more legitimate when confronting terrorist organizations.

It can be said that he had already reaped a lot before the Caiyou Conference even started!

When Xia You returned to the lobby of the conference dormitory, Xiaozhi had just completed contact with Professor Oak and Hanako.

As a filial child, when he came to such an occasion, he naturally had to inform the two most important people. Seeing this, Xia You hesitated for a moment and told Nancy, Rika, and Dr. Sakuragi's family the news of his arrival at the venue.

When they heard the news, they were naturally happy, but due to distance and work, they could not arrive and could only watch the live broadcast on TV.

Xia You didn't care about this. In fact, if they really came, that would be the biggest trouble.

There is no problem with the Sakuragi family, but if Lijia and Nancy appear at the same time...

Just thinking about it gives me a headache.

After doing all this, the group came to the teleporter again.

Before this, Xiaozhi had made it clear that he would use his current lineup to challenge this Caiyou Conference, but Xia You was different. Although the Pokémon he captured in Hoenn have been cultivated to very good strength, it is still a bit difficult for him to win the championship. Moreover, for him, the Pokémon that have accompanied him in the two regions cannot be left behind, and they also need to stretch their muscles properly.

After sending away several legendary Pokémon, Xia You exchanged for Banguirus, Claws, Bulbasaur, Jolteon, and Blastoise.

Together with the existing Dragonite, Eevee, Milotic, Metagross, and Blaziken, these are all the Pokémon he will be participating in this tournament.

As for the Crystal Steelix and the giant red Gyarados, because they were so super and powerful, Xia You didn't even hesitate and let them stay in Sakuragi Park.

And then, they must concentrate on the final training and use all the remaining time to adjust their condition!

However, at this point, no matter how good their relationship is, they are still competitors. Xia You and Xiao Zhi must train separately. Before they meet in the tournament, they must ensure that their tactics and details cannot be seen through.

……

Time passed quickly, and in almost the blink of an eye, it was the day of the preliminaries.

Different from the Gorgeous Celebration, the Caiyou Conference is divided into three stages: preliminaries, preliminary championships and the main competition. Compared with the Gorgeous Celebration, there are undoubtedly more people who sign up for the Caiyou Conference. It is said that the number has reached a terrifying 600 people!

And to narrow down these 600-plus people to the 256 who will participate in the main competition shows how fierce and cruel the competition will be.

The preliminaries are one-on-one matches. Each player can only send one Pokémon into the field in each match. This is also the easiest place to go wrong. If you accidentally send a Pokémon with restrained attributes when the strength of the two teams is equal, you may even be directly eliminated.

After ten days of closed training, Xia You and Xiao Zhi met again after such a long time.

Come to think of it, even though they both live in the same dormitory building, the two of them hardly ever see each other every day. Xiaozhi would occasionally see Xiaoxia, but this was the first time he saw Xia You in all these days.

During this period, Xia You basically went out early and came back late. Except for eating and sleeping, he immersed himself in the training ground every day. No one knew how he trained.

This also made Xiaozhi very curious about what kind of results Xia You had achieved, but since Xia You didn't mention it, he was embarrassed to ask.

Xia You, on the other hand, smiled and said to him, "Be careful, don't let yourself be eliminated before entering the main competition."

"That's impossible!" Xiaozhi clenched his fists, obviously full of confidence in himself, "Wait for me, I will definitely make it to the finals!"

"That's hard to say." Xiaoxia laughed secretly, "What if you are unlucky enough to meet Brother Xia You in the first round of the preliminaries? Wouldn't you be eliminated and go home directly?"

“Pfft, pfft, pfft!” Xiaozhi was speechless after being rebuked by Xiaoxia. He was furious and said, “Xiaoxia, shut up!”

The venue for the qualifiers is not the large venue in the lake, but is held in 15 identical small separate venues on the outermost edge. Although they are called small venues, they cover a large area and can accommodate 3000 spectators at a time. With the competitions starting in 15 venues at the same time, the scene and momentum are undoubtedly extremely spectacular.

The enthusiastic audience almost packed the entire venue.

There is no need for any publicity. Once the words "Aiyou Conference" appear, it will become the biggest hot topic in the entire Hoenn region.

Even though it was only the qualifying stage, countless spectators still flocked to the event, occupying all the venues almost instantly.

Xia You was assigned to the A4 venue. After parting with Xiaozhi, she came to this venue accompanied by Xiaoxia.

Although most trainers reach this stage after obtaining eight badges, there are also a small number of trainers who participate in the conference through other channels, but the levels of these people are uneven, some are high and some are low, which also leads to various dramatic scenes in the preliminaries.

Xia You's match number is 3, which means he will play in the third group of matches in the A4 venue. While waiting in the audience, he also saw two matches of not very high level.

The first battle was against two little boys. Although they looked to be the same age as Xiaozhi, they were obviously academic students who had just walked out of the campus!

The theoretical knowledge is indeed rich, but when their Pokémon fight, it is a bit too difficult to describe.

It was all rigid attack and defense, just like what was written in the textbooks. Not only did the audience lose interest, even Misty was panting. It was really uninteresting. I'm afraid that only the two trainers present felt that this was a 'fairly evenly matched' contest.

In the end, the little red-haired boy 'narrowly won', and after spending nearly 7 minutes, he finally defeated his opponent and successfully advanced.

The audience gave a small amount of applause out of courtesy, but the boy was completely unaware and continued to smile brightly and wave to the audience.

It wasn't until he left the stage and the second group came on that people began to show a little interest.

If what just happened was a battle between the teenagers, then at this moment, it was the last passionate contest between the middle-aged people.

The two middle-aged men, who looked like office workers judging by their attire, were sweating on the field. While giving orders, they also did not forget to cheer for the Pokémon with their body movements. It seemed that they were working even harder than their Pokémon.

But no matter what, the close combat between the two Pokémon, the collision of fists and flesh, is indeed much more exciting than the previous battle.

In the end, the older middle-aged man was unfortunately eliminated.

But this does not mean that he has lost hope. In fact, due to the large number of participants, in order to decide 256 people, some people will have to play more than one game or have a bye. Like this middle-aged man, although he lost the game, he will have another chance to fight next time because of his good performance. If he still cannot win by then, he will be truly eliminated.

But this has nothing to do with Xia You.

In the third game, it was finally his turn to play.

And he also proved with his strength what dimensionality reduction attack means!

Even though he only played Ibrahimovic, he easily defeated his opponent with his extremely strong strength.

This battle can be described as 'suffocating'.

The entire game lasted 42 seconds, from the time the referee announced the start to the time the referee raised the flag to end. Throughout the entire process, Ibrahimovic's opponent didn't even touch it once and was directly defeated by Ibrahimovic's continuous offensive!

This also stunned the audience watching the game, and then they cheered belatedly.

Some of them had just opened their potato chip bags and put the chips in their mouths, and the moment they looked up, they found that the game was over. How could they not be surprised?

Compared with the previous two battles, this is simply not on the same level!

This also allowed the people of the Hoenn region to get to know for the first time the extremely handsome man in the trainer command area, who had one hand in his pocket and a faint smile on his face!

Of course, compared to Xia You, his opponent looked at his fallen Pokémon blankly, then looked at the referee's colorful flag, with his mouth open, totally unable to believe that he was eliminated so easily...

What was all the hard work for over a year?

Why does it feel like the game is over before it even started?

Not to mention how much psychological trauma Xia You left on his opponent, just say that amid the cheers of the audience, he walked out of the arena and lightly high-fived Xiaoxia who was waiting on the side.

"What a fast speed." Xiaoxia chuckled, "Although I thought it would be easy before the game, I didn't expect my opponent to not last even a minute."

"It's Ibrahimovic who performed well." Xia You also glanced at the Ibrahimovic at his feet and smiled, "It didn't give the opponent any chance at all. In this way, I should have no problem advancing to the next round. I just don't know how Xiaozhi is doing now."

"Want to go check it out? Xiaozhi's match is later in the schedule and hasn't started yet."

"Of course I'm going. Let's go."

The two of them left the arena and walked towards the stadium where Xiaozhi was. On the way, he actually saw the three members of Team Rocket again!

To be honest, since traveling with Xiaozhi, the frequency of appearances of these three people has increased significantly.

But this time they were not making trouble. Instead, they were dressed like salesmen with a small box hanging on their chests, selling senbei milk candies and juice bento!

He even knew how to take advantage of this opportunity to make money...

All I can say is that as long as they don't make trouble or catch Pikachu, they are still very business-minded and work seriously and hard. Although Musashi often complains verbally, what they do is always successful.

Unfortunately, we have gone astray.

When Xia You and Xiao Xia arrived at the arena where Xiao Zhi was, they found that Xiao Zhi was entering the arena from the player channel at the side. It seemed that his game was about to begin. There were two unfamiliar figures next to Xiao Yao and others in the audience.