The host of the "Poetry Conference," Wen Wan, was a talented woman endowed with intellectual elegance.
The program team included permanent guests: five doctors from renowned Schools of Arts and professors from the history department.
Before the official recording began, Wen Wan greeted each contestant, memorizing their names and faces, and then waited for the director’s signal to officially start the show before walking to the center of the stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen, hello, and welcome to the large-scale cultural and intellectual program ’Poetry Conference’ hosted by the Central Television."
The competition format of the Poetry Conference involved elimination rounds, advancement rounds, finals, and the pinnacle contest.
The elimination rounds included "Thousand Picks" and "Poetry Chain" sessions.
In "Thousand Picks," multiple-choice questions were displayed on an electronic screen, with correct answers scoring a point and incorrect answers losing a point. In "Poetry Chain," the host would present the preceding line, and contestants had to answer with the next, within five seconds; correct responses scored a point while incorrect answers also led to point deductions. Ultimately, the top twenty scorers advanced, while the bottom ten were eliminated.
The advancement round used the "Flower Flying Order" format, where all advancing contestants had to speak a poem containing a specified word within a set time, and the top ten highest scorers moved on to the finals.
The finals followed a quick question and response format, with the host posing questions and contestants racing to answer—points were awarded for correct answers and deducted for incorrect ones, with the two highest scorers advancing to the pinnacle contest.
The pinnacle duel involved five doctoral advisers sequentially posing questions, to which contestants responded.
After delivering the opening remarks, Wen Wan got to the crux of the matter, "Now, we begin the first round of our Poetry Conference, ’Thousand Picks’! This round is timed to one minute, and the questions are randomly drawn from our program’s pool. For each correct answer, you’ll score a point, but for each mistake... points will indeed be deducted! Competition countdown begins now, contestants, please get ready!"
"3...2...1, start answering!"
As Wen Wan spoke, different questions appeared on the electronic panels in front of Qianxun and others.
Each question offered four options, and guessing without knowing could easily lead to mistakes.
Meanwhile, the big screen displayed thirty names; for each correct answer, the corresponding name rose slightly, showing each contestant’s scoring in real-time.
Qianxun, who had the skill to read ten lines in a single glance, quickly scanned through the questions and decisively pressed the corresponding answer keys.
However, Qianxun was fast, but so were the others.
Within the first ten seconds, nearly everyone’s score rose above five points.
Among them, the scores of Qianxun and Yuan Yuan increased the fastest.
By thirty seconds, Qianxun had answered twenty-eight questions, while Yuan Yuan had answered twenty-four.
Both had all correct answers; it was just that Yuan Yuan was not as quick in reaction as Qianxun.
A minute later, Qianxun had answered fifty-six questions, leaving other contestants far behind.
Yuan Yuan also sighed in relief at this moment.
She knew the program’s question pool; no one could steal her limelight!
But when she glanced at the electronic big screen with a slight smile, she suddenly clenched her fists.
She wasn’t the first place?
She had answered all her forty-eight questions correctly!
This even broke the record for this round in the Poetry Conference!