Elf: Is the bear apprentice the weakest? I'll shatter the sky with my fists.

Mewtwo keenly noticed that Li Chen's fingers, which were resting on the Poké Ball, were unconsciously rubbing against an old scar.

"From the moment that waveguide was sensed..."

Li Chen opened his eyes, his gaze flickering with complex emotions. "I had a vague idea."

His voice was soft, yet it caused ripples to appear in Mewtwo's mental barrier.

The distant wail of sirens seemed to freeze the air between the two men.

The silence of that moment was more deafening than any explosion.

Li Chen remained silent for a moment, his fingertips gently stroking the edge of his phone.

The cold light from the screen reflected on his slightly tired face, making his features stand out clearly.

He took a deep breath and dialed that familiar number.

"Hello, Li Chen?"

Leon's cheerful voice came through the receiver, with Charizard's excited growl mixed in the background, "Calling me at this hour, is it a challenge or something good?"

Li Chen's Adam's apple bobbed, but his voice was surprisingly calm: "Emperor Dan, there's something I need to ask of you."

The noise on the other end of the phone suddenly quieted down, as if someone had sensed something was wrong.

"Next... four people will remain in Galar temporarily."

Li Chen's gaze swept across the sky outside the window.

"If I don't return in a month... then divide all my properties equally among them."

A long silence fell on the other end of the phone; even breathing became barely audible.

"......I see."

Dan's voice was unusually low, "But you must come back alive. I'm still waiting for a real showdown with you."

Li Chen chuckled softly, but made no promise.

He hung up the phone, his fingertips lingered on the screen for a moment, and finally he slowly lowered his arm.

Mewtwo gazed at him silently, its purple eyes swirling with complex emotions.

The wind that blew by lifted the hem of Li Chen's clothes, making his figure appear particularly lonely.

......

......

Three days later, at the Galler Palace gate.

In the harbor where the morning mist had not yet dissipated, Li Chen took one last look at the figures of the four girls behind him.

Xin Yong's knuckles turned white as she gripped the hem of her clothes, Sakura Yukari's folding fan froze in mid-air, Ao Shiyao's lips parted as if she wanted to speak, and tears glistened in Eileen's eyes.

Give me a month.

He raised his index finger, a familiar smile playing on his lips. "I promise I'll be back."

The moment it turned around, the ultimate bracelet burst forth with dazzling light. When the light faded, only a few fallen ginkgo leaves remained on the spot.

.......

.......

The capital city, the Dragon and Phoenix Secret Realm.

The ancient altar was covered with moss, and Li Chen's footsteps startled a flock of cooing pigeons.

The iridescent Sky Soaring Steed swooped down from the clouds, its jet-black scales shimmering like stars in the sunlight.

"Old buddy, time to get to work."

He raised his hand and tossed out a dark blue meteorite. Lie Kongzuo's slender body drew a perfect arc in the air and precisely caught the extraterrestrial object that was emitting an eerie chill.

Her eyes met Li Chen's, and without a word, she understood his determination.

Liekong let out a deep dragon roar from its throat and swallowed the entire meteorite.

In an instant, light patterns burst forth from the gaps between its scales, and the wounds left from past battles began to heal at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Li Chen leaped onto the dragon's back, his fingers tracing the newly grown scales of the dragon.

He could feel the immense energy emanating from his palm.

That's a meteorite from outer space being transformed into the purest dragon-type energy.

"Let's go."

With a command, Lie Kongzuo's slender body suddenly straightened, transforming into an emerald meteor that shot straight into the sky.

The ancient barrier of the secret realm automatically parted the moment it came into contact with the dragon's breath, making way for a king as if respectfully seeing him off.

As he broke through the stratosphere, a blue-green energy flame enveloped his body.

Li Chen squinted, watching the azure planet beneath his feet gradually transform into a bright pearl suspended in the darkness.

And directly in front of them—

Countless ice crystal-like meteorite belts are slowly gathering, forming a huge, eye-like vortex.

At the center of the vortex, something resonating with Li Chen's waveguide could be faintly seen awakening.

Sound cannot travel in the vacuum of the universe, but the words of that being resonated directly in Li Chen's mind.

The voice was both familiar and strange, like an echo coming from the other side of a mirror.

The ice crystal vortex slowly rotated, gradually revealing a blurry human-shaped outline.

It has the exact same waveguide frequency as Li Chen, but its body is surrounded by stardust-like ice-blue light bands.

When it fully opened its eyes, Li Chen's blood almost froze.

Those eyes reflected countless fragments of parallel worlds.

"We've finally met..."

Its "voice" carries a sense of vicissitude that transcends time and space, and the ice crystals condense in the vacuum into a lip shape exactly like Li Chen's.

"My half-body has wandered through three hundred worlds."

Rayquaza let out a warning dragon roar, and pinkish-purple energy condensed in its mouth.

Li Chen stared intently at the being with the same face as himself.

This is another version of myself outside of this world.

Li Chen's fingertips dug deep into the gaps in Lie Kongzui's scales, his voice reverberating through the mental link: "Who exactly are you?"

He could clearly sense that the waveguide, which should have been perfectly synchronized with his own frequency, was now entangled with icy blue impurities.

It's like ink being added to a glass of clear water; although it's not completely murky yet, its essence has already been altered.

The icy figure slowly raised its hand, and countless stardust gathered in its palm to form the outline of Li Chen: "I am the part of you that may have fallen into darkness."

Its voice suddenly became distorted, like a poorly signaled communication, "Li Chen, the only one captured by the Ice Tentacle among three hundred world lines."

Rayquaza's Achilles' heel suddenly stood on end; it sensed a dangerous frequency hidden in the opponent's waveguide.

The icy blue energy is slowly reshaping Li Chen's thought process.

"take it easy..."

The figure revealed a twisted smile, "Before being completely corrupted... I will end the ice tentacles of all worlds."

Its left eye suddenly turned an unnatural ice blue.

"Including...me, who is about to be eroded."

Cosmic dust coalesced behind it into countless mirrors, each reflecting the horrific scene of different worlds being swallowed by ice crystals.

And in the nearest mirror, there were four girls gazing at the starry sky in Galar.

However, they have not yet suffered any calamity.

The figure made of ice crystals slowly raised its hand, and cosmic dust condensed at its fingertips to form a blue planetary projection.

Let me tell you a story...

Its sound suddenly took on warmth, and the mottled brick walls of Rongcheng Old Street appeared on the surface of the ice crystals.

Fragments of memory, like fine snowflakes, begin to swirl, reflecting two similar yet different childhoods.

The projection shows the alleyway entrance drizzling with spring rain.

In reality, what Li Chen saw were the surgical reports after his parents' deaths;

What Bingjing Li Chen showed was the image of his childhood sweetheart father carrying him home from the funeral hall after he had cried himself to exhaustion.

"In your timeline, Uncle Xin is just a neighbor."

The icy figure stroked the blurry male silhouette in the projection, "And in my time..."

Its voice suddenly stopped, and icy blue lines crept up its cheeks.

"He is my second father."

Suddenly, the Thunder God let out a warning dragon roar.

It discovered that in those seemingly heartwarming memories, there was always a semi-transparent icy larva curled up in the corner, quietly wrapping around the ankle of the childhood "Li Chen".

A crack suddenly appeared in the chest of the ice crystal figure, revealing a memory nebula that was constantly reassembling inside.

The shimmering points of light gradually coalesced into two parallel world lines.

"We are all inheritors of the 'bloodline of heroes,' and even our initial companions were the same bear apprentices..."

"But the turning point in our destiny... begins here."

The fragments of memory suddenly turned icy blue, revealing a heartbreaking scene.

In the snow-covered Banyan Snow Realm, a Magikarp, covered in wounds, lies dying in an ice cave.

Beside it, a Pidgey with frosty feathers was struggling to push aside tree fruit with its beak.

The most striking thing is that beneath Pidgey's trembling wings, there is a beautiful scale that shimmers with a faint light.

"It could have escaped on its own..."

The voice of the icy figure cracked, "But before freezing to death, it gave Magikarp the chance to survive."

The ice crystal projection twisted violently, and the scene in the blizzard was suddenly stained with blood.

"The reason they were hunted was because Pokémon hunters saw the beautiful scales and wanted to take them."

"That hunter broke his Pokémon's wing for a single scale."

"Although you passed by in time, you only managed to save Magikarp."

In the memory, "Li Chen" was running wildly through the snow, carrying a dying Magikarp.

The bear apprentice desperately unleashed his still-unskilled fighting techniques, only to be defeated by a sneak attack from the hunter's Weavile.

"No system...no inheritance..."

The icy figure's left arm suddenly shattered into countless ice particles, then painfully reformed. "It took us three days to escape to the depths of the secret realm..."

The boy huddled at the bottom of the ice cave, tightly protecting his bear apprentice and Magikarp in his arms.

Fragments of memory suddenly burst forth with dazzling evolutionary light, turning the entire scene into a magnificent rainbow.

The Magikarp, curled up in a pool of blood, suddenly trembled violently, and the beautiful scale it was tightly biting shone with an unprecedented light.

Within the white light of evolution, one could vaguely see the scales transforming into streams of light and merging into Magikarp's body.

"Roar--!!!"

With a roar that shattered the ice shards, rainbow-colored horns sprouted from the top of the newly born Gyarados's head, and every scale shimmered with a seven-colored halo.

Even more astonishing was the violent energy that instantly erupted from its body.

It's clearly the most ferocious move of the Dragon type: Outrage!

The hunter's terrified face contorted in the rainbow light as he staggered backward, kicking and shattering the ice mirror.

The image of its enemy was reflected in Gyarados's dragon eyes, and its still-developing dragon tail swept across with overwhelming rage!

The ice cave collapsed with a roar, and when the snow dust settled...