Chapter 717

"What the hell!"

Baimu suddenly sat up, his head slamming into the thick belly of the three-headed dragon, forcing him back down.

"Squeak!?"

The three-headed dragon, struck hard on its abdomen, snapped awake instantly, then lowered its head and regarded its trainer with a slightly wounded expression—until it noticed the trainer's attention was entirely elsewhere, at which point its demeanor cooled.

The other Pokémon gathered around at the sound.

Baimu rubbed his temples, still trying to recall every detail of the dream he'd just had, unwilling to let even a single fragment slip away.

Fortunately, the memory was crystal clear—he remembered everything from start to finish.

Unfortunately, the dream had stopped at the most critical moment; logically, there should've been more, right? The idea of a Ghost-type Pokémon being killed by a rock—impossible.

After all.

Those people in the dream were reckless; using explosives properly was a complex science—not just shoving a kilo here and two kilos there and hoping for a boom.

Using explosives underground? They didn't even fear getting buried alive!

He reached out to soothe the faces pressed close to him, assured them he was fine, then closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep, hoping to pick up where the dream had broken off.

But after all that disturbance, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't sleep again.

He got up and walked outside.

Just then, Shanren, wearing his protective suit helmet, approached from afar and spoke upon seeing him:

"You're awake just in time—the work below is nearly done; the rest we'll reinforce as we push forward. The lower mine tunnels are complex—you need to watch your safety."

"Wait a moment." Baimu took a deep breath and asked: "Do you know why the lower arena was shut down?"

Shanren frowned in confusion. "Why are you asking that? You think the Spirit World entrance is in the lower arena? Actually… that might be possible. Did you read the *History of the Organization's Founding* I gave you?"

"…Only the beginning."

He suddenly realized something.

Shanren spoke plainly: "Read it all and you'll know—the first generation of elders who founded the Organization came from the lower mines and the lower arena. They designed the destruction of the original lower arena, then escaped in the chaos, fleeing to the desert to establish a base—"

Baimu murmured softly: "Master Lidi..."

"Exactly. Master Lidi, the founding leader of the Organization, was both my father and my teacher. During the time he escaped Elder Ejin's persecution, he taught me much." Shanren nodded respectfully.

So that's it!

No wonder it felt familiar.

The name of the founding leader of the Organization was legendary—he fired the first shot against tyranny, lighting the way to save the region's future.

Master Lidi and his companions, after enduring oppression, rising in rebellion, and surviving repeated crackdowns by the Shadow Team, gradually realized that saving this region required a comprehensive, top-down transformation—balancing ideological change with environmental reform—and spent decades preparing meticulously.

From nothing, they grew from a handful of miners to having agents throughout every level of the Ore Region.

Master Lidi's life was nothing short of legendary.

Of course.

But that wasn't the point.

The point was—he'd dreamed of Master Lidi's escape from the lower mines in his youth, and Lidi had had an older brother!

Baimu glanced at Furong, waving at them from afar, and said: "It's complicated. Come with me down into the mine—we'll talk on the way."

"Alright."

Shanren had already planned to go down; he nodded in agreement.

He recalled all his Pokémon into their Poké Balls, keeping only Dragapult and Haunter—one invisible, one shadow-walking—then met up with Furong at the mine entrance.

But as soon as he approached, Furong wrinkled her cute little nose and said:

"You had a Spirit Link dream?"

"I did dream of something." Baimu nodded seriously, then put on his protective suit helmet and recounted his dream to the two of them.

Meanwhile,

They boarded the elevator descending into the lower mine. The machine rumbled to life, yet neither Furong nor Shanren took their eyes off him as they listened intently.

By the time the elevator reached the bottom and the wide, sturdy mine tunnel opened before them, he had finished speaking.

Furong declared decisively: "That Cursed Doll must be a Guardian Pokémon. Since it completed a Spirit Link dream with you, there must be a deep connection between you two."

Shanren pondered her words for a moment, as if grasping a crucial detail, then looked at Baimu with sudden understanding and a flicker of complex emotion: "The *History of the Organization's Founding* only mentions him briefly in the opening, but Master Lidi told me many things about him."

"He never told Master Lidi his name. Master Lidi simply called him 'Big Brother,' and knew only that he came from outside. Beyond that, nothing. But he was the one who inspired Master Lidi—then just a miner—to yearn for freedom, and sparked the entire plan."

He said, as Baimu showed no surprise: "If I'm not mistaken, that man is very likely your—"

"Grandfather, Long He."

Baimu spoke the name he'd learned from the elder of Liuxing Village.

A Dragon Tamer who used Dragapult, with some special connection to him—the story taking place at least decades ago, during Master Lidi's youth.

It could only be the ancestral Dragon Tamer from Long He's village, the one who left and never returned.

"Did my grandfather… never make it out of here?" Baimu asked Shanren softly.

The latter patted his shoulder reassuringly: "Master Lidi told me that Elder Long He sacrificed himself underground in Huang Tie Town—for their sake."

But in truth,

Baimu felt no deep sorrow. A grandfather he'd never met—claiming any real emotion would be false.

Still,

Regret and pity were unavoidable.

The tenderness the man in the dream showed toward the Cursed Doll, the silhouette of him fighting side by side with his wounded Dragapult… everything he did deserved a better ending.

Furong said nothing, only gently patted Baimu's back, thinking that if her grandmother were here, she'd surely say something warm to comfort him.

She still had a long way to go before maturity.

The three moved deeper into the mine.

All Baimu did not linger in that wistfulness, and looked at Furong, saying: "Analyzing based on the dream, the Banette wasn't the Gatekeeper Pokémon at the time. How did it manage that? Did it steal the original Gatekeeper's position?"

"How could that be. It must be that when that arena or whatever was destroyed, too many lives perished, causing a Spirit World entrance to descend and absorb souls, and it just so happened that this Spirit World entrance had no Gatekeeper, and it just so happened that Banette met the Gatekeeper's conditions."

Furong held up two fingers, shook them, and said: "So let's venture a bold guess — the reason Banette blocked the Spirit World entrance."

Shanren said: "To prevent All Baimu's grandfather's soul from going to the Spirit World?"

Furong nodded: "That's a possibility."

"Then why did it say 'you've finally come' when it saw me? Could it be that the one waiting for me wasn't Banette, but my grandfather?" All Baimu proposed another possibility.

Furong nodded again, "That's also possible, but an ordinary person's soul, once separated from the body, will gradually lose consciousness, becoming like a Lost Soul that can only repeat fragments of remaining memories."

The mystery had not yet been fully unraveled.

It seemed only by meeting Banette face-to-face could the veil be lifted on everything.

The three arrived at the "end" of the mine tunnel. Several pieces of engineering machinery were digging full-force in the direction Furong had indicated, and Britto's tablet displayed their current location.

As well as the approximate location Furong had indicated.

"Sure enough, it's at the underground arena." Shanren drew a circle on the tablet with his finger, which happened to overlap with the approximate range of the Spirit World entrance. "This area is the old site of the underground arena. A long time ago, Commander Eya's Shadow Team dug it out and put it back into use once, but the safety hazards were too great, so it was ultimately abandoned."

Eya — isn't that the final boss of the 'Circular Arena' arc in the Oure region?

Compared to Elder Ejin, who made no effort to hide his ambition and methods, Eya at least on the surface maintained the dignity of being a mayor, only scheming in secret.

Furong looked at the tablet and said: "In that case, that underground arena should be the medium for the Spirit World entrance. Hmm… let me think about how to connect the Spirit World entrance to reality."

All Baimu was lost in silent thought. He always felt there was another hidden reason behind Banette coming through the Psychic dream — what message was the other party trying to convey?

Shanren secretly glanced at All Baimu, his heart filled with endless emotion.

He had never imagined the two had such a connection. What a pity that when he had looked into All Baimu's file back then, he failed to link the two together—

Who could have imagined that the big brother who saved the organization's founding leader, Master Lidi, was actually a People of the Meteor from Hoenn.

Why didn't he tell Master Lidi?

Perhaps in that era, there were too many reasons why it was inconvenient to reveal oneself.

Shanren, who was well-versed in world history, understood that even in other regions, the mass acceptance of Pokémon by the public was only a matter of the last hundred years or so.

Before Poké Balls came into being, Pokémon were more often called magical beasts, and they were commonly used in warfare, demonstrating the public's fear of Pokémon.

Professor Oak, as the foremost figure in Pokémon academia, was largely related to his classifying and categorizing Pokémon by type, popularizing Pokémon knowledge for countless people.

—

Several hours later.

The construction crew dug into a hard gray rock wall. The clearly man-made poured wall gave everyone present a boost of spirit.

"The old site of the underground arena!"

Shanren compared the location on the tablet and gave the definitive answer.

And when the wall was dug open, revealing the dark, gloomy passage within, a great stone in everyone's heart fell to the ground.

Finally found it!

Several workers of the construction crew breathed a sigh of relief, exchanging glances, all very happy.

Having worked for an entire afternoon plus almost half the night, finding it was truly the best outcome. Working underground made one feel increasingly stifled.

"Everyone check whether the oxygen circulation system has any problems. It's been decades since this place saw daylight; many toxic gases may have accumulated."

He turned and said to the others, and after confirming everyone's protective suits were fine, he entered the passage one by one.

Perhaps because it had been put into use before, the passage wasn't messy.

All Baimu, along with Britto, who didn't dare move alone, and a worker, found the arena's power distribution room and checked the generators and other equipment inside.

"There's still stored energy! The ventilation ducts and everything are still usable — wonderful!"

Britto said happily to him, then busied himself with work.

Isn't this guy an architecture major?

All Baimu had been about to pull out his phone to ask Porygon-II for help, but seeing Britto skillfully operating those dust-covered machines, he found it quite novel.

Not long after.

With a violent rumbling sound, scattered lights illuminated the power distribution room.

After all, this was a place rebuilt by a generation of Shadow Team; everything looked quite modern. If it had remained in its state from decades ago, that would have been enough to make one want to cry.

All Baimu turned and walked out, finding the passage already lit up. The dazzling white light at the far end was especially glaring.

He had a premonition and went straight over.

In an instant.

The familiar metal platform and giant fan came into view. Countless white shadows flickered in the surrounding stands, like the wildly enthusiastic audience in the dream.

He even felt he could hear those guys shouting.

"All Baimu!"

Shanren's voice interrupted All Baimu's thoughts.

He stood at the side holding his phone, hesitated for a moment, and said: "I feel there are some things I must give you an explanation for. Like Ryu's remains and your grandfather's…"

"Let's meet Banette first."

All Baimu patted his shoulder and looked at Furong standing right in the center of the metal platform.

The other party was staring upward at the slowly rotating giant fan, lost in thought.

Suddenly.

Dusknoir pulled out numerous Poké Balls from the large mouth on its belly and opened them. A large number of Dusclops flew out, circling around Furong continuously.

Furong held her prayer beads, devoutly pressing her palms together.

Jingle~

Jingle jingle~

The sound of the bell echoed through the empty arena.

Baimu saw numerous white shadows abruptly appear and stream toward the spectator seats scattered around, filling every seat, and then a strange sensation surged up within him.

Furong, eyes closed, turned her head and shouted toward Sharen on this side: "Get everyone out of here! Get far away from this site until you can't even see it! That way you won't enter the Spirit Realm!"

"Got it!"

Sharen responded, turned, and called out to the workers scattered around checking the arena's safety, herding them back into the corridor.

He himself hesitated briefly, wanting to return to the center of the arena, but when he walked back out of the corridor, his vision suddenly blurred and Furong and Baimu were gone.

Only the countless Wandering Night Spirits remained, turning in circles in eerie postures.

"They went in?"

Sharen hadn't expected to be left behind; after a regretful sigh, he pulled out his phone.

Regarding Long He, he actually wanted to ask Master Lidi, who was far away in Silicon Beryllium City. Although disturbing an old man's sweet dreams in the middle of the night wasn't ideal, some things were best asked clearly while they were fresh.

He had a premonition that this matter wasn't that simple.

And in another world.

Violent tremors seized everything.

Baimu and Furong watched with their own eyes as the giant fan above the arena shattered and fell, the entire dome collapsing down onto everything around it. The white shadows shrieked and scattered in all directions, but couldn't escape at all.

"Furong!"

He hurried toward Furong, who was shielded by the Dark Night Spirit.

But halfway there, everything around them froze as if time had stopped.

A grey-purple vortex—the same one Baimu had entered before—emerged on the pitch-black dome, and a pair of blood-red eyes peered out from within, followed by a faint, mournful voice.

"You... finally... No! No! That's not right! You're not him!"

Before it finished speaking, as if it had discerned that Baimu was not the one it had been waiting for, it suddenly turned shrill: "You're not him! Get out! Get out of here!"

Everything that had been frozen began to tremble once more.

The Curse Doll is looking for Long He? Didn't Long He already sacrifice himself underground in Huang Tie Town?

Baimu looked at Furong, who was equally astonished, feeling only that the situation had caught them completely off guard.