```
The preliminary competition was once again held in the suburbs, but the venue was better than the open audition's—it was inside a warehouse. Due to the warehouse size, the preliminaries were divided into groups of fifty, totaling nearly three thousand competitors spread across exactly sixty groups. The last group had twenty-seven, and Jiang Feng was in that group, still number thirteen.
Because there were only twenty-seven cooking stations, the warehouse seemed somewhat empty. The air was filled with floating dust, and those with a more sensitive sense of smell could even detect a faint, lingering odor from the last batch of goods.
The competitors all arrived quite early, with no absences. Seeing that everyone was present, the organizing committee's staff decided to announce the competition rules ahead of schedule.