Chapter Eighty-Eight: Eavesdropping

Several hours passed after they were able to hear the voices.

During that time, Aimu and Xiaoxia ate a serving of compressed biscuits and drank an energy drink, which could briefly push the body past its limits. Staying up all night was no big deal, but one could well imagine that it could not be used repeatedly.

Little by little, under the guidance of Gengar, Aimu and Xiaoxia entered the underground region that had its own source of light.

Certain stones and fungi here gave off a faint luminescence. Even without Ghost Fire to illuminate the way, Aimu could still see normally, and Xiaoxia could make out her surroundings for more than ten meters.

"We've already entered the Moon-Viewing Mountain range," Gengar said. By "Moon-Viewing Mountain," it meant the main peak itself.

Aimu suspected they were inside the belly of the mountain.

At that very moment...

"Wait! I can hear people talking..." Aimu said, stopping at once and adjusting the temple of his glasses as he listened.

Xiaoxia and the Gengar in Aimu's shadow hurried closer too, all of them clearly straining to hear.

"The voices are way too faint!" Xiaoxia complained impatiently after listening for a long while and catching nothing at all.

"The signal's bad, Gengar?" Gengar was surprisingly fluent in human expressions.

"No, it's not a signal problem. Otherwise we wouldn't hear anything at all... This probably means Akane is still some distance from the source of the voices," Aimu corrected, defending the old professor's technology.

[This time our target is...]

[Yes!]

...

[Thanks to Mr. Surge being willing to cooperate...]

[We each get what we need...]

...

[Too bad Koga and Sabrina are both...]

[That bastard Sakaki...]

...

[...a pleasure doing business.]

...

"Well?" Xiaoxia asked anxiously.

The voices were already blurred and broken up, so she could not make out a thing.

"It comes and goes, but it sounds like... this should be connected to Team Rocket," Aimu said, though even he looked puzzled.

"Team Rocket! I knew those were the bad guys! But what does this have to do with Akane?" Xiaoxia asked after her burst of indignation.

"I'm not sure. There should already be quite a few of them inside... and it sounded like they were even cursing Sakaki as a bastard," Aimu said, equally baffled. If they were Team Rocket, why curse Sakaki?

And if they were not Team Rocket...

Then with names like Surge, Koga, and Sabrina mentioned, how could it be anything else?

"Gym Leader Sakaki? Then it must be that Sakaki did something to spoil Team Rocket's 'good thing,' which is why they bear him such a grudge!" Xiaoxia said, sounding perfectly reasonable.

After all, she had no idea that Sakaki was Team Rocket's hidden boss.

"They also mentioned Koga and Sabrina... and Surge!" Aimu was still pondering the relationships between the people involved.

"Aha! I know! It must be that Gym Leaders Koga and Sabrina are also ruining Team Rocket's plans! As for Surge... maybe Team Rocket has already won him over!" Xiaoxia declared, very just and objective in her assessment.

After all, in Xiaoxia's mind, Gym Leader Koga had a personality much like her father's, both of them pillars of the League, while Sabrina, the youngest Gym Leader and the foremost psychic specialist in Kanto, perhaps even in the whole world, was one of Xiaoxia's idols.

As for Surge...

Once the official Gym Leader of Vermilion City, he was, in Xiaoxia's memory, a difficult and thoroughly unlikeable man.

That was also why, after repeated incidents of injury in the gym—including challengers' monsters being deliberately harmed and severe bullying among the gym students—he had been stripped of his official Gym Leader status at the start of the year.

So the Team Rocket collaborator had to be him!

But Aimu clearly had a different view.

In the animated version, among the three Gym Leaders, although Surge had a bad temper and liked to bully the weak, and Sabrina had the role of a ruthless sorceress, none of them had anything to do with Team Rocket.

But in the comic version, those three—Sabrina, Koga, and Surge—were precisely the three great executives under Sakaki in Team Rocket.

As for Team Rocket in this world, from what Aimu understood, its executive structure lay somewhere between the game and the comic versions.

The hidden boss and the three chief executives stood at the top of Team Rocket. If Sakaki was Kaido, then these three were the "Three Calamities," only their identities were kept secret from the public.

Below them were the Seven Generals and the Four Beast Lords, which were different from the comic version.

Some of the Seven Generals were public-facing, others were concealed, while the Four Beast Lords were the heads of four organizations under Team Rocket...

Aimu could not determine their exact identities.

However, he was now basically certain that the identities of the three chief executives were probably the same as in the comic version: Koga, the Fuchsia Gym Leader and poison-type elite trainer; Surge, the former Vermilion Gym Leader and electric-type elite trainer; and Sabrina, the Saffron City Gym Leader and psychic queen.

Aimu released Ditto and seemed to give it some instructions. Then he put Ditto on top of his backpack and carried it on his back.

"What's wrong?" Xiaoxia asked, puzzled.

"Nothing. It's already seven in the evening... In another four and a half hours, it'll be about the time the full moon reaches its peak this year. Let's hurry," Aimu said without elaborating, continuing toward Moon-Viewing Plaza.

As they went deeper, Aimu noticed that Gengar was growing more and more agitated. It seemed that the fact they still had not encountered a single Pokemon from the Clefable line or the Gengar line was not normal at all.

Even other Pokemon had become scarce.

Then, behind a rock nearby, there was suddenly a faint rustle.

"Who's there!"

The moment Aimu shouted, his shadow also lengthened abruptly. When it reached the rock, the shadow's end suddenly rose to its feet, taking the shape of Gengar...

"Chu... chu..."

The Pokemon hiding behind the rock was startled, and it turned out to be a Sandshrew.

"Hey! Have you seen any other Pokemon? What's going on here?" Gengar pressed urgently.

"Chu..." Sandshrew looked extremely frightened.

Aimu quickly stepped forward and stopped Gengar. "It's frightened. Let me try."

As he spoke, Aimu slowly extended his hand. Because his initial impression was favorable enough, Sandshrew only flinched a little and did not resist much.

Then, under Animal Sense, Aimu roughly understood what had happened earlier.

"Just as I thought... a large number of Pokemon Hunters have infiltrated this place, and they're operating together. Many Pokemon have already been captured!" Aimu said gravely.

Their main targets should be the Clefable line and the Gengar line, but in order not to alarm the prey, they would also clear out any other Pokemon they encountered along the way.

"After that, they split up and acted separately... Where do these three paths lead?" Aimu asked, looking at the three forks ahead.

"All of them lead to Moon-Viewing Mountain Plaza. This path is a little longer, and those idiot Clefairy and those idiot Gengar won't take this one, Gengar," Gengar said.

"Then we'll take the longer one. We should be able to catch up, and there are fewer people on this path..." Aimu intended to rescue some of the captured Pokemon first.

From Sandshrew's account, the captured Pokemon were all being kept in cages. After all, if Team Rocket were to use the monster ball transport system on a large scale, the police would notice. And if they forcibly captured and teleported them, the result would surely be that the moment the Pokemon arrived at the foster site, they would immediately break free on the spot, or even cause a riot.

Whether it was Aimu's imagination or not, everything had gone astonishingly smoothly along the way.

Team Rocket's people had actually left no sentries or lookouts along the route, as though they were simply waiting for Aimu to come ambush them...

"Brother Shen!"

"Mm!"

Shen Changqing walked along the road. When he met acquaintances, they would greet each other or nod.

But no matter who they were, no one wore any excess expression. It was as if they were indifferent to everything.

To this, Shen Changqing was already used to it.

Because this was the Demon-Suppressing Office, an institution responsible for maintaining the stability of the Great Qin Empire. Its main duty was to slay demons, monsters, and strange apparitions, though it also had a few other side occupations.

It could be said that everyone in the Demon-Suppressing Office had blood on their hands.

When a person had seen too much life and death, they would become indifferent to many things.

When he first came to this world, Shen Changqing had not been accustomed to it, but over time he grew used to it.

The Demon-Suppressing Office was vast.

Those who could remain in the Demon-Suppressing Office were all either formidable experts or people with the potential to become such experts.

Shen Changqing belonged to the latter.

Within the Demon-Suppressing Office there were two professions: one was the Guardian, the other the Demon-Exorcist.

Anyone who entered the Demon-Suppressing Office started as a lowliest Demon-Exorcist, then rose step by step, eventually hoping to become a Guardian.

Shen Changqing's former self had been an apprentice Demon-Exorcist within the office, the lowest rank among them.

With the memories of his former self, he was very familiar with the environment of the Demon-Suppressing Office.

Before long, Shen Changqing stopped in front of a pavilion.

Unlike the other grim and murderous places in the Demon-Suppressing Office, this pavilion stood like a crane among chickens. Amid the blood-soaked atmosphere of the office, it exuded a different sort of tranquility.

The doors of the pavilion were open at this moment, and people were occasionally coming and going.

Shen Changqing only hesitated for a moment before striding inside.

As soon as he entered, the atmosphere changed abruptly.

A wave of ink fragrance mixed with a faint smell of blood hit him in the face, causing his brows to knit instinctively, though they soon relaxed again.

The bloody smell on everyone in the Demon-Suppressing Office was almost impossible to wash away completely.