The association’s official website interface was usually very clean.
Under normal circumstances, trivial matters were handled by the admins, and not much news made it to the office. But once it did, it meant that the matter was quite important.
However, today, the frequency of backend message alerts far exceeded previous occurrences.
What on earth was going on?
With curiosity, Old Li opened the unread messages, and the first thing that caught his eye was the basic information of a participant named "Song Qingyuan."
Region: Yun Province.
Participation: Traditional Chinese Painting Competition, Calligraphy Competition, Challenge Beyond One’s Level.
Old Li was taken aback. Why would a participant’s message from Yun Province pop up on his screen?
The competitions had just begun, and the works of participants from various places should be scored by the local judges. Only the top five finalists would be planned to come to the capital.
But that would be in three days’ time.
Initially, Old Li was stunned; as he continued reading, he discovered a very crucial piece of information:
[Challenge Beyond One’s Level: Challenger chooses to surrender.]
Not resignation, but surrender?!
Resignation and surrender have entirely different meanings in Challenge Beyond One’s Level; the former is akin to pressing the undo button, pretending nothing ever happened. The reasons for resignation are many; perhaps due to personal issues or feeling that one is no match for the opponent.
However, surrendering is an outright admission of inferior skill. By surrendering, according to the challenge rules, one also relinquishes their current ranking position. In other words, if your rank was higher than your opponent’s and you chose to surrender, then the opponent would directly take your place.
In short, resignation means preserving your current rank, while surrender means the exact opposite.
What merits discussion is that even if one surrenders, it’s only a concession to a single challenger; one still has to compete with the other challengers. That means the rankings could still change.
So... what kind of unexpected event led this participant to choose to surrender instead of simply resigning from the challenge?
"Old Peng, someone has chosen to surrender in a Challenge Beyond One’s Level over here; this is really... The works were uploaded just yesterday, right? The judges haven’t even had time to score them, so why surrender?"
This seemed too hasty; there might be a turning point yet.
Strange, really strange!
Usually, nobody would give up their ranking so quickly.
Old Peng, sitting across from him behind two ultra-thin computers, glanced at him and said nothing.
But his look was like he was watching a fool.
Anyway, it was indescribable.
Old Li, who didn’t receive a response, didn’t pay much mind to it, focusing instead on the continuous stream of message alerts. He immediately opened the second unread message.
[Challenge Beyond One’s Level: Challenger chooses to surrender.]
[Challenge Beyond One’s Level: Challenger chooses to surrender.]
Old Li’s expression became a bit peculiar.
After opening five unread messages in a row, all revealing surrender actions in Challenge Beyond One’s Level...
He finally looked up toward the other side, "So, what exactly happened last night?"
With so many people choosing to surrender simultaneously, last night’s live broadcast would definitely not be ordinary. The previously indifferent him was now dying of curiosity. His instinct told him the answer lay within last night’s live broadcast!