Pokémon: Did you play Pokémon today?

Chapter 341 "Handsome Researcher: Next time we meet, I'll formally introduce myself..."

"Aren't you coming back to the Johto region with me?"

"Oh right! I remember now, handsome researcher, you only went to Johto temporarily because you were on a business trip with Professor Oak—"

Qi Shu's mind raced, and he thought he had figured out the "reason".

But she was still somewhat unwilling, her gaze lingering between Dream and Celebi, trying to find an excuse to delay.

"Um—could you wait a minute? I have some questions I'd like to ask, and besides, it's a fantasy—"

"Handsome Researcher: Go back home!"

The handsome researcher kicked her into the tunnel.

"Handsome Researcher: This isn't a place you can stay for long. If you linger any longer and attract two more big guys, things will get really messy —"

Buzz—

As the character enters the passage, the game screen gradually becomes blurry and distorted.

The colors spread like paint dropped into water, eventually fading into complete darkness.

The last moment before the screen went completely black.

Only the handsome researcher's gentle voice, accompanied by a short text dialog box, appeared clearly.

"Handsome Researcher: Oh, by the way, when you get back, remember to call me with your phone."

"Handsome researcher: Say hello to him for me. He actually made me fulfill his promise; he really knows how to boss people around—goodbye, little Qishu."

"Handsome researcher: Next time we meet, I'll formally introduce myself —"

The screen went completely black.

A few seconds later, it was like a camera lens focusing.

The light reappeared, and the image gradually became clearer.

Little Wonder Tree stood once again in that tranquil oak forest.

Before them stood the ancient ancestral hall, and beside it stood Abi, the abbot of the Hachiman Kagura Dojo, who was almost in tears.

"You're back————"

Looking at this familiar scene, Qishu couldn't help but feel a faint sense of loss.

"Wait a minute—what did that handsome researcher mean by his last words?"

"Whom should I greet on his behalf? Am I supposed to greet him himself?"

She belatedly pondered that sentence, vaguely sensing that something was amiss.

"Abi: Qishu! Are you alright?!"

When Abi saw the Little Wonder Tree reappear, he immediately rushed over, still shaken.

"Abi: You just followed that masked man into the passage! I thought something had happened to you!"

"Abi: Thank goodness! You don't seem to be hurt! But where did you go? That passage is—"

He fired off a barrage of questions, but Qishu keenly caught a key contradiction in his words!

"Wait! Ah Bi, are you talking about what just happened?"

Qi Shu suddenly sat up straight, his tone filled with disbelief.

"That's not right! I was definitely there for quite a while! How could it have been just 'just now'?"

As she spoke, she was suddenly struck by lightning, her words abruptly cut short. An extremely absurd yet perfectly reasonable conjecture suddenly rushed into her mind!

"No, no way—could it really be what I think?!"

Qi Shu felt his voice tremble slightly, swallowed hard, and his heart pounded.

She hesitated, almost afraid to say the word, lest she make herself look like a fool.

This startled and hesitant demeanor instantly piqued the curiosity of all the viewers in the live stream.

The comments section captured this unusual atmosphere, combining it with various overlooked "details" and "coincidences" from the previous episodes.

Some quick-thinking viewers instantly resonated with Qi Shu!

"It's the time! The time is wrong! Ah Bi said just now!" But we clearly stayed there for a long time before coming back!

"That passage—could it be a time tunnel?! Going back to the past?! Holy crap! Is it that exciting?!"

"So, Killu returned to Kanto before and after Team Rocket disbanded?! No wonder!"

"That explains everything! No wonder Sakaki seemed a bit different! Turns out he'd just been defeated not long ago!"

"It's terrifying to think about! So the handsome researcher didn't recognize Qi Shu back then because they genuinely hadn't seen him at that point in time!"

"That's why the handsome researcher said you don't belong here," and "Staying too long isn't good!"

Qi Shu didn't participate in the discussion in the comments. She took a deep breath, suppressed her excitement, and decided to act according to the handsome researcher's instructions.

She manipulated the little tree to take out its phone again, found the handsome researcher's name in the contact list, and pressed the call button.

This time, the call was answered almost instantly.

Handsome Researcher: Huh? It's Little Strange Tree?

A familiar, warm male voice came from the other end of the line.

"Handsome Researcher: Why did you suddenly decide to call me? Is there some problem you can't solve?"

"No, no! I'm not asking for help!"

Kiki tried to make her voice sound normal, even though she felt her words sounded like a prank.

"It's you—it's another you." He told me to call you back when I get back, and he also asked me to give you his regards.

After she finished speaking, she herself felt that her reason was ridiculously lame, and sounded exactly like nitpicking.

But to her utter surprise, after a brief silence, the languidness in the voice of the researcher on the other end of the phone suddenly vanished.

Instead, there was a sense of realization, even tinged with a bit of amusement and disbelief.

The call from the handsome researcher: "Ah—so it's this time!"—I never thought it would make my former self work overtime.

He paused, then his tone became quite interested.

"Handsome Researcher: By the way, how was your special time-travel trip? It should be—pretty interesting, right?"

"You from the past? Time travel?!"

Qi Shu's head buzzed as his suspicion was confirmed by the other party's own words, and his pupils contracted violently!

"It's true! It's really true! That passage wasn't spatial teleportation! It was time teleportation!"

"I wasn't teleported to the Kanto region! I went back in time! Back to the point when Team Rocket had just disbanded!"

She couldn't help but scream, completely unaware that the two little magnets in her hair had fallen askew.

"I should have realized it sooner! No wonder I always felt that inexplicable 'strange feeling'!"

"No wonder Boss Sakaki still had injuries on his face back then! And his demeanor was different too! He must have just gone through his final battle with the Crimson Legends!"

"No wonder the handsome researcher back then didn't recognize me at all! Because at that point in time, we hadn't even met yet!"

"He was a familiar stranger to me," while to him, I was a completely miraculous tree that had fallen from the sky!"

"But—even under these circumstances, without knowing who I am or where I came from—"

"He actually went to such lengths to help me fight against Team Rocket and find Celebi—he really is—"

Qi Shu's voice gradually lowered, his heart filled with a mixture of emotion, shock, and warmth.

Qishu has played time travel games before.

But all of that is superficial; players often experience it with the clear understanding that "I am time traveling."

Like the Pokémon experience, where players are completely unaware that they are time-traveling.

Through incredibly natural plot guidance and interaction, the entire time-travel process is subtly completed, with the truth only abruptly revealed at the very end through subtle details.

Completely immersive!

This experience was terrifyingly real!

Everything was perfectly aligned! Everything had a traceable clue! Yet, at the time, you couldn't see through it all!

The realism of everything is so strong that it doesn't seem like something a "game" could create! It's more like a meticulously recorded and recreated story!

A true story that happened!

Because games rarely spend such a long time setting up, and they certainly don't make every detail correspond so perfectly to the background settings of the real world!

The hundreds of thousands of viewers in the live stream were equally stunned by this amazing reversal and ingenious design.

"Holy crap!!! Time travel?! It's confirmed!!!"

"I was totally blown away! I didn't notice a thing the whole time! Looking back now, it's all about the details! All foreshadowing!"

"Teacher Salty Fish! This plot design is absolutely amazing! This isn't a game anymore! This is art! I'm in awe!"

"So that's what 'say hello to yourself for me' meant! Mystery solved!"

So, Qishu really did change the past in the game? Although it might just be a branch of the story within the game—

'

"I've already started imagining what would have happened if I had made different choices at that point in time—would it have affected the city of Jōto now?"

It took Qi Shu a long time to recover from this huge information shock; he was still a bit dazed.

She didn't realize she was still on a call until she heard a voice on the other end again.

"Handsome Researcher: Hello? Little Qishu? Are you still there? It's just time travel, no big deal, why are you so surprised?"

"Handsome Researcher: Forget about Celebi, even a certain big guy, theoretically, could do it if it wanted to—"

He paused abruptly, his tone becoming somewhat suspicious.

"Handsome Researcher: Wait a minute—you don't know that Celebi is a Pokémon with the ability to travel through time, do you?"

Although it is often referred to as the god of the forest, it does not directly wield the power over time.

He seemed to feel it was necessary to provide some basic information.

"Handsome Researcher: But it's known as a darling of time," possessing the innate ability to roam the river of time. Therefore, at different points in history, you might find traces and records of its existence.

"Handsome Researcher: Uh, I accidentally said too much. Anyway, that's it. You get the gist of it. Any other questions?"

Qi Shu couldn't remember how he hung up the phone.

I don't remember how I vaguely found myself back at Mr. Steel's house in Azalea Town, returned the gold and silver balls, and completed the mission.

Her mind was filled with information about "Shrabbhi" and "time travel," and she was in a dazed state of information overload.

In short, when the strange tree finally came to its senses...

In her game character's backpack, there was a new set of handmade citrus balls made by Mr. Steel.

And the number of viewers in her live stream has exceeded ten million!

The barrage of comments and gift effects almost flooded the entire screen!

Meanwhile, there is discussion about the hidden "Celebi time travel storyline" in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver.

It instantly swept through the entire gaming industry and social media, topping the trending topics list on major platforms, generating explosive buzz!

Kanto region.

Viridian City, Team Bright Rainbow Rocket's underground base.

The former elite members of Team Rocket, who have been reorganized and trained by Giovanni with new ideas, are now maintaining the operation of various systems at the base in an orderly manner.

However, whispers filled the air from time to time, some excited but choked-up.

"Waaaaah—I'm so touched! So when our leader suddenly disbanded the organization, he wasn't abandoning us—"

"Yeah! Our leader took all the blame and failures on his own, protecting us in that way! We even thought he—I deserve to die!"

"Our leader has been patiently cultivating his skills and secretly plotting, and now he's finally gathered us back! He really hasn't forgotten us old subordinates!"

"Compared to our leader, all we know how to do after a failure is wander and dejection; we're so immature!"

"I must work even harder! I'll repay the boss's trust and hard work with ten times the effort! I absolutely cannot let the boss down!"

"For a brighter tomorrow! For Team Rainbow Rocket! For Giovanni!"

Such fervent, tearful pronouncements circulated quietly throughout the base.

Sitting in the central control seat, Giovanni listened to these faint sounds, his face as black as Gengar's butt.

He really wanted to immediately activate "Time Roar" to go back an hour and slap his impulsive self across the face!

Ask him if he's lost his mind!

They're actually watching HeartGold/SoulSilver live on a big screen in this semi-public base control room!

If you're just looking at the game's story and combat, that's fine.

Who would have thought!

That guy Bai Zhou!

he!

How dare he?! How dare he be so audacious as to incorporate his past confrontation with Xiao Yin, a confrontation filled with estrangement between father and son, into the game's storyline in its entirety!

That's a private matter! It's a family conflict!

It's about the awkward communication and hidden care between a father and son!

He didn't give Bai Zhou the authorization to use the character image and background for this kind of thing!

It's not about making him publicly humiliate his family affairs in front of players all over the world!

"call"

Sakaki took a long breath, trying to suppress the surging anger in his heart with the calmness of the earth.

But the more she tried to calm down, the stronger the urge became to fly to Bai Zhou immediately and "have a good talk" with him.

Fuck!

What's even more infuriating is, have these former subordinates who've resurrected at the base had their brains damaged by the gas from the gas bombs?!

Watching the character "Sakaki" in the game utter a few pretentious lines, everyone was like they'd been given a shot of adrenaline!

I was so excited that I wanted to go through fire and water for him right then and there!

Wake up! They're a legitimate organization now!

Team Rainbow Rocket is a group that walks in the light and aims to maintain peace in the multiverse!

This is no longer the lawless Team Rocket that pursued dark rule!

What are these people trying to do, acting like fanatics?!

Should we let Giovanni run for league chairman?!

Or do you want him to immediately rise up in rebellion, overthrow the league, and become the champion himself?!

They will either perish in silence or erupt in silence.

"—You guys."

Sakaki's imposing voice rang out in the control room. It wasn't loud, but it instantly silenced all the whispers and murmurs.

"Is that what you think too?"

>