Kyren Wilson beat Si Jiahui 6-2 to reach the quarter-finals of the Masters at Alexandra Palace.
Last year was a tough one for the 2024 world champion but this was more like it, with a 147 bid and two centuries underlining how fluid he appeared among the balls.
Wilson got the better of the opening frame, then in the second potted 10 reds with blacks and had his sights set on becoming only the sixth player to make a 147 at the Masters, but with the remaining balls well placed he missed a tricky 11th red.
Si pulled one back with a run of 97 and had a chance to snatch frame four from 53-0 down, but Wilson took advantage of a mistake to lead 3-1 at the interval.
Frame five lasted 34 minutes, the longest of the week so far, and was resolved when Si laid a tough snooker on the final yellow then took the chance that followed to halve his deficit, but from there Wilson was imperious with breaks of 59, 101 and 105 to continue the run of 6-2 scorelines so far.
"I felt really strong out there," said Wilson. "When you can go out and trust your cue and just play the game, it makes my job an awful lot easier.
"At 3-2 Si was looking dangerous, so it was important to win the next frame."
Wilson took particular pride in the way he closed out the match, returning to his aggressive best in one of the performances of the tournament so far.
"In this era you have to play an attacking game, because grinding out frames takes too much out of you," he said. "So I have wanted to speed it up and play in a natural way.
"I have been playing snooker since I was six so it has always frustrated me when people say I am not a natural player compared to others.
"It has been nice to put that to bed and play good flowing snooker, and there is no better place to do that than Ally Pally."
That sequence of 6-2 wins was, remarkably, extended to a sixth match when John Higgins had few troubles against Barry Hawkins in the evening.
Each and every frame featured a half-century, six of them for the Scot, whose run of 99 in frame six was the high break of the match.
By then he'd taken full control of it and Higgins would go on to set up a mouthwatering clash of generations against Zhao Xintong next.
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