Pokémon: I just became a Gym Leader, and Cynthia proposed to me.

The mountains and forests on the west side of the Yuanzhi Village Basin were still green just three days ago.

Li Shuwen stood on the mountain ridge, and the waveguide power spread forward like a tide.

What he sensed was a whole expanse of dead waveguide. The trees were still standing, but their inner vitality had been drained, leaving only standing corpses.

Scattered among these corpses were the chaotic auras of a dozen Pokémon, corrupted by shadow energy.

"Let's go."

He stepped into the forest.

The first to rush up was the Greatsword Demon of the Emerald Green.

Its horn was stained purplish-black by shadow energy, and its eyes flickered with an abnormal purple light.

The water blade condensed into a jet-black crescent slash in front of it, silently slashing towards Li Shuwen's throat.

Li Shuwen did not stop.

The bear apprentice moved.

Its body switched from stillness to full speed in a tenth of a breath, its footsteps leaving a small crater in the ground as it slid along the lower edge of the Shadow Water Blade.

The water blade severed a few hairs on its head, but it had already reached the Greatsword Demon's chest.

Rock shards. A punch lands squarely on the center of the carapace.

The Greatsword Demon's carapace is its strongest defense, but the Bear Apprentice's fists are even harder than its carapace.

With a dull cracking sound, the Greatsword Demon slid back three steps, a dent appearing in his chest.

Little Lugia swept past from the side, its wings flapping, creating a storm.

The violent airflow lifted the Greatsword Demon up and slammed it into a dead tree behind him.

The tree trunk broke, and the Greatsword Demon fainted.

Not long after, they encountered the mischievous Thunderbolt Washing Green again.

The enormous sphere fell from the treetops and landed three steps in front of Li Shuwen, its surface crackling with blue and purple electric arcs.

It begins to expand, a precursor to self-destruction.

Little Lugia swooped down, its breath condensing into a swirling ball of light in its mouth.

Cyclone attack.

The ball of light shot out, enveloping the mischievous lightning bomb just before it reached its critical point of expansion.

The self-destruct energy of the Mischievous Thunderbolt was forcibly suppressed by the cyclone attack, making a muffled sound inside the sphere, and then the Mischievous Thunderbolt blew itself unconscious.

Li Shuwen raised an eyebrow, not expecting that the Xicui Nianmei Dragon also lived in this mountain forest.

It rose from the stream, its body covered by a hard shell formed from shadow energy.

It opened its mouth, and the dragon's energy surged.

A purple beam of light shot towards Li Shuwen.

The bear apprentice stood in front of him, clasped his hands together, and exerted force.

White aura energy erupted from his palm, colliding head-on with the Dragon Pulse and shattering it.

Li Shuwen stepped out from behind Xiong's apprentice and raised his right hand.

The power of the waveguide condensed into an invisible spear, piercing through the Goodra's shadow shell and pinning it to the riverbank.

Soon, three shadow-transformed Emerald Sniper Tree Owls swooped down from overhead and were swept away by Lugia's storm.

The shadowy Moon Bear charged out from the flank, only to have its forelimbs frozen by the Bear Apprentice's Frozen Fist.

The shadowy, horned deer attempted to charge, but Li Shuwen pressed down on its forehead with one hand.

The power of the waveguide was poured in, forcibly dispelling the shadow energy within its body.

When they reached the depths of the mountains and forests, not a single speck of dust remained on Li Shuwen's robes.

Then he saw a young man.

The young man stood in the middle of a completely destroyed forest clearing, wearing a short robe stained with mud and dark blood, with his back to Li Shuwen.

Behind him stood a huge ancient tree, more than two meters in diameter.

But that tree is no longer a tree.

Its roots emerge from the ground like the claws of a giant beast, embedding themselves deeply into the surrounding soil.

Its trunk swelled to a height of thirty meters, and its crown transformed into countless twisted branches that stretched towards the sky like fingers.

More than a dozen holes had split open in the tree trunk, and deep inside the holes, a dark purple light flickered, like a dozen eyes opening at the same time.

Rotten Wood Demon.

Its size is more than ten times that of a normal Wood Demon, towering into the clouds, like a living deadwood fortress.

The young man turned his head.

His eyes were a pale purple, and there was a fanatical, almost manic light in his pupils.

"You've arrived."

His voice was so calm it didn't sound like that of a madman.

"The Lord of Shadows told me that someone would come to stop me, but He also told me that no one could stop me."

"Go, Wood Demon, kill him, and offer everything to the God of Shadows!"

The rotten wood demon moved.

Its branches scatter a large number of shadow parasitic seeds.

The seeds rained down on Li Shuwen, each one carrying a purple shadow energy.

Once it successfully parasitizes, it will frantically drain the host's life force.

Little Lugia takes off, wings spread, a storm ensues.

The violent airflow blew all the parasitic seeds away, and the seeds hit the surrounding dead trees, instantly turning those trees into powder.

But the Wood Demon did not stop.

It raised one of its giant root legs and stomped on Li Shuwen.

The roots smashed a five-meter-diameter crater in the ground, sending dust billowing into the sky.

The bear disciple rushed into the mortal realm.

Frozen Fist.

The icy blue fist slammed into the roots of the Wood Demon, the chill seeping in and freezing a layer of bark. But the Wood Demon was too large.

The power of the Frozen Fist was dispersed to almost negligible by the thirty-meter-tall torso.

It didn't even look down at the bear apprentice; it simply swept the bear apprentice away with another root.

The bear apprentice did three somersaults in the air and landed ten steps away, kneeling on one knee.

"Charizard Dragon"

A black Charizard leaped out of its Poké Ball, its wings spreading as it landed, its dark scales gleaming eerily in the shadows.

It opened its mouth and spewed flames.

A scorching pillar of fire spewed from its mouth, crimson and black flames intertwining, like a roaring fire dragon crashing into the trunk of the rotten wood spirit.

The rotten wood spirit made a sound.

The sound wasn't like a Pokémon's roar, but more like the deep groan of a tree burning.

Its bark was charred, cracked, and peeled off in the flames.

But it did not retreat.

Then, the branches burst forth with a dark green light and lashed down, like a giant whip made of countless branches, towards the fire-breathing dragon.

Charizard dodged to the side, then spun around in the air; Aerial Ace was still effective.

"Little Lugia, Cyclone, Charizard, Heat Wave, Kuma, Power Shot."

The triple attack landed simultaneously.

Lugia's vortex ball of light, Charizard's hot air, and Kuma's Chi Punch struck the Wood Sprite's torso from three directions.

The trunk of the Wood Demon split open from the center, and shadow energy gushed out from the crack like a black fountain.

The shadow energy automatically repaired its wounds, and the cracks closed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Li Shuwen made a move.

He took a step forward, his body appearing in front of the trunk of the Wood Demon.

Waveguide power surged from his body like a river.

It seeped into the earth from the soles of his feet, spreading upwards along the roots of the rotten wood spirit.

Pass through the tree trunk, through the veins interwoven with shadowy energy, all the way to the canopy.

The power of the wave guide flowed within the body of the Wood Demon, touching the remnants of the Wood Demon's memories that belonged to the original ancient tree.

That tree has been growing here for eight hundred years.

It remembers what this mountain forest looked like when it was still a seedling, remembers the changing seasons, and remembers every Pokémon that once rested in its shade.

It remembered that it was a tree, not a monster.

Li Shuwen's wave-guiding power was like gentle hands, caressing the memory submerged by shadow energy and pulling it back from the abyss.