Chapter 82: Begin Your Performance
Eevee’s drastic image change left the three male Pokémon at home dumbfounded.
【What’s up with Eevee sis? Did she change skins?】
For a moment, Riolu couldn’t help but use aura to shine on Li Wei and whisper, his tone somewhat terrified as he even recalled the story Li Wei had told him before about the 《painted skin》.
【······】
Riolu’s surprise really made Li Wei quite happy; after all, scaring his own people half to death meant it would definitely be a visual shock for others too!
He picked up Eevee, carried her onto the car, placed her on the pre-laid seat cushion, and Mime Jr. brought the daily essentials for watching matches—bento, snacks, beverage, and camera—onto the car as well.
Dragonair and Riolu also ran to the car each carrying Eevee’s support stick and poster, with ‘Eevee’ signs stuck on top of their heads, looking just like decade-long Eevee superfans.
Competitors needed to gather at the venue two hours in advance; for the Grand Festival starting at ten o’clock, Li Wei and the others set off from home at six-thirty.
Unlike the silence during the previous Provincial Competition, Mime Jr. was very excited today, perhaps because he had once battled in Grand Festivals with his own mother; accompanying the junior to the match today made him extremely excited, playing ‘
Phoenix’ and flooring the accelerator on the suburban highway, giving Li Wei the real illusion of riding a rocket.
Arriving at the competition venue and adhering to confidentiality measures while considering the inconvenience of clothes, Li Wei still recalled Eevee into the Poké Ball.
After getting off the car and reporting at the venue, Li Wei didn’t expect to be blocked again in the competitor passage by frenzied reporters.
“Competitor Li Wei, you chose not to participate in the youth Grand Festival the day before yesterday but came to this main competition instead—do you have the confidence to win the championship?”
“No confidence.”
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Li Wei was also an old chat genius.
“Uh… so, competitor, what expectations do you have for this Grand Festival?”
“Do my best to win the championship!”
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After these two questions, the originally enthusiastic reporters gradually became speechless, and taking advantage of their momentary confusion, Li Wei slipped away with his competition certificate and Poké Ball.
Though no substantial content was interviewed, with these two sentences and Li Wei himself, they could still make a pretty good news piece, so the group of reporters also dispersed one after another.
【Shocking! Provincial Competition Champion Li Wei appears at Beginner Grand Festival competition venue, aiming straight for the championship!】
Just three minutes after this interview, such information appeared in the highlights.
The performance match order had long been released, with a maximum performance time not exceeding three minutes; groups performing one after another progressed quite quickly.
Sitting in the rest room, Li Wei could also watch other competitors’ performances on the screen above.
The Pokémon of the competitor currently performing was a Starmie.
Starmie’s theme was light purple, with a golden structure on the front of its body and a red gem right in the center.
The Water and Psychic Attribute combination gave it a lot of room to maneuver in this Grand Festival’s performance match.
Splashing water brilliantly, this starfish’s water play was top-notch; behind the gorgeous display, Li Wei noticed this Starmie’s powerful and terrifying Psychic Attribute talent.
Water Attribute abilities posed no threat to Eevee, who had now transformed into Glaceon form, but Psychic Attribute was another story.
Although there was Mime Jr.’s special training, if threatened by Psychic Attribute, the ‘weakest undefeated’ ‘absolute defense’ plan that Li Wei and Eevee devised might fall through.
If he didn’t want his protective shield to benefit the opponent’s starfish and let it show off, the only tactic he and Eevee could take was to go head-to-head.
A bit headache-inducing, a terrifying enemy.
At this point, the performance match had only reached the fourth competitor, and he had already found a tricky rival.
As expected, the main competition and youth competition felt completely different.
Eevee’s current strength should be in the mid-tier of Elite Level; facing those Pokémon at the peak nearing Professional Level, he could only rely on tricks and give it his all.
For some reason, this thick sense of crisis didn’t make him panic; instead, it excited him.
“Competitor 13, please prepare.”
At this time, competitor 11 had already taken the stage; he now needed to go backstage to prepare and wait.
He took a deep breath, stood up, walked to the full-length mirror by the wall and turned around once, checking his appearance one last time to ensure it was proper, then followed the staff to the backstage.
Grand Festival was already ‘war’ from the moment of entry.
He took out the Poké Ball, looked at the semi-transparent upper half, and made eye contact with Eevee to signal her that the match was about to begin.
Leaning against the wall in the shadows, Li Wei took deep breaths, waiting for the match to arrive.
To be fair, this situation was quite exciting.
A bit like the feeling of performing on stage at a past party, very subtle.
Just as he was lost in thought, competitor 12 had finished performing, and it was his turn.
“Please welcome competitor 13, Li Wei, to the stage.”
The order and entry etiquette had been rehearsed in advance; the day before the match started, Li Wei had followed the rules to come to the venue and communicate with backstage about the lighting and stage arrangements during the match.
At this moment, all the lights in the venue were turned off; following the sound of a Poké Ball opening, there was immediately Eevee’s cry.
“Bu Yi~”
The cry was not as cute and silly as usual; after Teacher Milotic’s special training, Eevee had learned to lower her voice to make an elegant cry.
A wisp of faint light shone down from above in the venue, thick mist enveloping the entire stage.
For ten seconds, the audience could only hear Eevee in the mist and occasionally glimpse Eevee’s shadow through light refraction.
Like a Pokémon swimming in the mist, it drew the attention of everyone in the audience seats.
“Eevee, begin your performance.”
Just as rehearsed beforehand, with Li Wei’s words as the signal, the lights instantly all lit up, and the mist instantly turned into energy gathering toward Eevee’s position.
“Wow！！！！！”
In an instant, the audience and judges who saw the stage clearly all let out shocked shouts.
At this time, the stage had completely changed; in just ten seconds, the clean stage transformed into Eevee’s ice garden.
To fully commit to the act, a sliding door made of ice stood in the middle of the stage, but what was stunning was that this ice sculpture imitating a ‘paper sliding door’ even had extremely three-dimensional flower clusters.
Click.
The door was opened, and Glaceon stepped out from inside.
The black attire and gorgeous embroidery instantly captured everyone’s eyes, the flowers on the clothes echoing the three-dimensional carvings on the door, breathtakingly beautiful and causing exclamations of surprise.
