Chapter 368: A Glimpse of the Truth!

After telling Lucario about the method of using the Unown's power to save the World-Origin Tree, its emotions immediately became agitated.

"Calm down first, Lucario."

Chen Mo smiled.

"This is only a hypothesis for now. We won't know whether the method will actually work until the Unown arrive."

"I understand."

Lucario respectfully bowed to Chen Mo once more.

"Thank you, Lord Chen Mo."

Zoroark had experienced despair within the Mystery Realm, but Lucario's situation was actually no better.

When the Mystery Realm was formed and the World-Origin Tree completely lost its supply of light, even someone like Aaron had, for a time, nearly lost hope.

They could offer their lives to the World-Origin Tree without reservation, but to be honest, none of them could be certain that they would live long enough to see the hero foretold by Ho-Oh.

Therefore—

after such a long wait, finally seeing a glimmer of hope was enough to make Lucario this excited.

Lord Aaron, I will never betray your expectations!

Just as Lucario was secretly making this vow, Chen Mo's voice suddenly came from beside him again.

"Lucario, you should still remember what happened before the Mystery Realm was formed, right?"

"Hmm?"

Although it didn't understand why Chen Mo suddenly asked this, Lucario honestly answered.

"Although I was sealed away for a very long time, my memories haven't been affected."

Chen Mo nodded.

His purpose was actually quite simple.

Zoroark had been young at the time, so there was a limit to what it knew.

But Lucario had been Aaron's most trusted partner. Naturally, it should know much more about what had happened between Alliance Year 1031 and 1032.

However—

when Chen Mo asked, Lucario helplessly shook its head.

"Lord Chen Mo, I think I understand what you want to know. But unfortunately, Lord Aaron had repeatedly rejected invitations from the Alliance, so his relationship with the Alliance was never particularly good."

"Moreover, it was a chaotic era. Lord Aaron usually acted independently with us, at most exchanging information with other Waveguide Guardians."

Chen Mo immediately noticed its wording.

"Chaotic era?"

"It's what the Waveguide Guardians called the period from Alliance Year 1031 until the formation of the Mystery Realm."

Lucario spoke softly.

"Just as you suspect, Lord Chen Mo, many terrible and strange things really did happen during that period."

"The earliest can be traced back to the Pokémon Petrification Incident that occurred in summer."

"The Pokémon Petrification Incident!?"

Chen Mo's spirits immediately lifted.

At the same time—

the expressions of several senior officials watching the livestream in the conference room instantly became serious.

Especially the Countermeasure Bureau personnel led by Professor Zhou.

Long ago, Chen Mo had introduced them to several Legendary Pokémon that posed enormous threats to humanity.

Among them was a Legendary Pokémon codenamed the "Wing of Death," possessing the ability to drain the life force from living things and turn them to stone.

If it awakened, it would be nothing short of a disaster for the entire world!

"Could a Legendary Pokémon really have been active back then?"

"If it's the Wing of Death, and its abilities are really as Xiao Mo described, then this is indeed a very troublesome matter..."

Everyone began discussing it among themselves.

But Chen Mo, who was currently inside the Mystery Realm, had no attention to spare for the officials watching his livestream. He listened intently to Lucario's account.

"The Pokémon Petrification Incident was originally information Lord Aaron heard from another Waveguide Guardian."

"According to that person, while training in a remote mountain, he accidentally discovered a group of wild Pokémon that had been petrified."

"When that Waveguide Guardian posted the information to the channel where Waveguide Guardians exchanged intelligence, three or four others gradually came forward, saying they had discovered similar situations."

However—

the Petrification Incident had little impact on the outside world.

It was limited to the depths of certain forests, places where ordinary people rarely wandered.

Most Waveguide Guardians, on the other hand, were wanderers who traveled far and wide.

Moreover, many of them preferred returning to nature and sensing the Waveguide of all living things.

That was why they had been able to discover such abnormalities.

"After Lord Aaron reported the matter to the Alliance, he also began investigating it himself."

"But there were no signs of petrification in the area where Lord Aaron was staying at the time."

"So Lord Aaron decided to investigate several other regions where Waveguide Guardians had discovered petrified Pokémon."

As Chen Mo listened to Lucario's description, his expression became increasingly strange.

Lucario noticed this and couldn't help asking:

"Lord Chen Mo, is there a problem?"

"Yes. There is."

Chen Mo nodded.

Just like Professor Zhou and the others watching the livestream, Chen Mo had initially assumed that the Legendary Pokémon representing death had awakened.

But now, things seemed somewhat strange.

First—

according to Lucario, those Waveguide Guardians had been active in completely different regions.

In other words, the petrification phenomenon wasn't concentrated in one place.

Second—

Chen Mo had already confirmed with Lucario that only Pokémon had been petrified.

And according to the Waveguide Guardians' observations at the time, there had been no other abnormalities in those areas.

So the question was—

judging from the personality displayed by the Wing of Death in the original work, if it had awakened and suffered from a bout of morning rage, it wouldn't have hidden its presence.

Once it acted, it would absorb the life force of everything around it on a massive scale.

Pokémon, ordinary animals, even plants—

nothing with life would be able to escape.

"I'm sorry..."

A trace of apology appeared on Lucario's face.

"I don't know much about the Pokémon you mentioned, Lord Chen Mo."

"And regarding the Pokémon Petrification Incident, we never managed to find an answer before entering the World-Origin Tree."

"Aaron couldn't solve it either?"

Chen Mo couldn't help asking.

In his view, Aaron was a highly knowledgeable person.

As the Hero of Waveguide, he had seen and experienced countless things.

With his abilities, he should have been able to discover at least some clues.

"No, Lord Chen Mo. That's not what I meant."

Lucario shook its head.

"Because of certain events that happened afterward, Lord Aaron changed his plans and never went to investigate the regions where those petrified Pokémon had been found."

"And among those events, the one with the greatest impact was the large-scale disappearance of Pokémon you mentioned earlier."

"In the autumn of Alliance Year 1031, people all over the world discovered something."

"The Pokémon that had once been visible everywhere, both in human cities and in the wild, suddenly disappeared from sight."

"According to statistics released by the Alliance afterward, roughly seventy to eighty percent of all wild Pokémon disappeared at the same time."

"Fortunately, Pokémon that had already been captured by humans and stored inside Poké Balls weren't affected by whatever force caused it."

"But even so, the entire world inevitably began descending into chaos."

Earth had become chaotic because of the sudden arrival of Pokémon.

But in the original Pokémon world, the sudden disappearance of such a huge number of Pokémon was undoubtedly one of the worst and most troublesome events in history.

After all—

Pokémon had long since become integrated into human life in that world.

Such a drastic reduction in the wild Pokémon population naturally had enormous consequences for a society that had developed around them.

Not to mention—

wild Pokémon also played an essential role in the world's ecosystem.

Their disappearance, to some extent, represented the collapse of every layer of order, from human society to nature itself.

"Lord Aaron also received a mission from the Alliance, asking him to gather Waveguide Guardians and investigate the cause of the mass disappearance."

At this point, Lucario suddenly paused.

After hesitating for a moment, it continued.

"Actually, I've always found something strange."

"Because strange incidents kept occurring, Lord Aaron had always wanted to make use of the Alliance's resources to obtain useful information. After all, the power of one person is different from that of an entire organization."

"But during that period, it wasn't just Lord Aaron."

"Any Trainer or organization that wasn't directly affiliated with the Alliance had great difficulty obtaining useful assistance from the Alliance."

"It was almost as though the Alliance was wary of something."

Chen Mo's brows furrowed tightly.

He was ultimately a person from this world.

His understanding of the original Pokémon world was extremely limited, and he knew even less about how this Alliance differed from the one in his memories.

But—

judging solely from Lucario's description...

it really was strange.

The Alliance wanted to use Aaron and the Waveguide Guardians to investigate the cause of the Pokémon disappearances, yet at the same time, it refused to let Aaron, the Waveguide Guardians, or other organizations obtain intelligence or resources from the Alliance.

No matter how he looked at it, something was wrong.

But before Chen Mo could think any further, something Lucario said next completely broke his composure.

"At the end of Alliance Year 1031, while Lord Aaron was investigating the Pokémon disappearances, a continent called Shenhe was destroyed."

"What did you say?"

"A continent!?"

"Yes. The Shenhe Continent was destroyed."

Lucario's expression was filled with lingering fear.

As a Pokémon that had stepped into the Legendary realm, it understood just how difficult such a feat was.

Human technology couldn't do it.

Ordinary Legendary beings couldn't do it either!

Chen Mo was stunned.

Completely stunned.

Forget the name Shenhe for the moment.

Just consider Lucario's wording.

It wasn't that a region like the one containing the World-Origin Tree had been separated from somewhere by a mysterious force and turned into a Mystery Realm.

It had been destroyed.

How large was an entire continent?

On Earth, even the smallest continent, Australia, covered nearly nine million square kilometers, accounting for roughly six percent of the world's total land area.

And the Shenhe Continent—

if it was bold enough to carry the suffix "Continent," it certainly wasn't going to be small.

Yet under such circumstances—

an entire continent had actually been destroyed by some mysterious force!

According to Lucario's description, that overwhelming energy had pierced through the entire Shenhe Continent almost instantaneously.

The continent had been torn apart.

Countless lives had perished in the catastrophe.

And the shockwaves unleashed by the destruction of the Shenhe Continent had a tremendous impact on the entire world.

If certain beings hadn't apparently stepped forward during that apocalyptic disaster, perhaps the entire world—

or at least human civilization in that world—

would already have been destroyed by the aftermath of the continent's destruction.

Furthermore—

although it had already been established that the world Lucario and the others lived in was completely different from the Pokémon world in Chen Mo's memories, the name Shenhe inevitably reminded him of the Sinnoh region from the original story.

According to the original canon, the Sinnoh region was known in ancient times as the Hisui region.

And in Hisui, there was a place called Shenhe Town, which had existed since the earliest days of the region.

Its people were even known as the "People of Shenhe."

The names Sinnoh and Shenhe had an extremely deep connection in the original canon.

And the legends of the Sinnoh region spoke of an existence that had created the universe.

Its name was—

Arceus, the Creator God!

"What... exactly happened to that world?"

Chen Mo had asked himself this question countless times recently.

But today—

this was by far the most shocking revelation he had encountered.

Lucario clearly didn't know what had caused the destruction of the Shenhe Continent.

And Aaron had likewise been unable to spare any attention for the Pokémon disappearance and continent destruction incidents.

After the destruction of the Shenhe Continent, the entire world seemed to enter a period of accelerated collapse.

Countless events began developing wildly beyond anyone's control.

Natural disasters occurred frequently.

Human society became increasingly unstable.

The Alliance had effectively lost control over most regions.

And the matter that troubled Aaron and the others most—the one most closely connected to their own identities—was that after this incident, sunlight and moonlight began intermittently disappearing, just as Zoroark remembered.

The World-Origin Tree was consequently affected on a massive scale.

Because Aaron had such a close relationship with Mew and the World-Origin Tree, he had no choice but to organize the Waveguide Guardians and begin their journey toward the World Tree.

"That is everything I know about the major events that occurred in that world."

Lucario once again showed an apologetic expression.

"I'm sorry, Lord Chen Mo. I only know the general outline of many things. I still know far too little about the truth."

"You've already helped me more than enough."

Chen Mo slowly exhaled.

He still hadn't fully recovered from the shock of what he had just heard.

Just then—

Zoroark, which had also been listening to Lucario's telepathic explanation all this time, suddenly stepped forward.

"Senior Lucario, I heard Lord Chen Mo say that something happened while you and Lord Aaron were traveling to the World-Origin Tree."

"It seemed that Lord Aaron was injured. Is that true?"

"That..."

Lucario's expression instantly darkened.

It spoke in a low voice.

"It's true."

"We were ambushed by a Trainer who was extremely powerful—"

"and extremely despicable."

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