Chapter 151: Purpose

"Celebi... is actually this powerful too?" Ryu asked with a sigh of amazement.

Although he had long since realized that in the public perception of this world, even the cute and endearing legendary Pokémon possessed immense power and were far from being as easy to bully as they were in the original work, Ryu still couldn't help but sigh when encountering a real-life example.

"Indeed. According to your current classification, that Celebi... possessed strength surpassing the Grand Heavenly King tier a millennium ago, and that was even after being ambushed!" Lin said, casting a warning glance at Ryu.

He was terrified that this fellow would have his vision blinded by greed, just as he and the others had been back in the day.

However, after a closer observation, Lin realized that Ryu only felt a normal sense of curiosity and harbored no "greed" whatsoever.

Of course he didn't!

After all, as long as Ryu increased the sequence of his Divine Path, he would gradually grow stronger...

To Ryu, things like "gaining the companionship of a legendary Pokémon" carried much the same meaning as "winning the League Championship"—they were merely conditions for role-playing.

Winning the favor of a legendary Pokémon was naturally best, but if it didn't happen...

There was no need to take unnecessary risks either!

"So... is your goal now to help everyone find peace?" Ryu asked, inquiring about Lin's true objective.

Lin remained silent for a long time, then looked at the ribbon in Ryu's hand and said, "Yes, it has been far too long..."

The moment he saw that ribbon, he understood that this was also Kato Kanna's wish.

"Are there any obstacles?" Ryu asked further.

"Aside from me, those who remain lucid are Kato Feng and Kato Huo... No, perhaps they can't even be considered lucid anymore! Or rather, their minds have been completely blinded by greed. Instead of breaking the cycle, they use it over and over again to rehearse, hoping to seize the moment when the temporal ripples truly manifest once more to ambush Celebi a second time." Kato Lin said, shaking his head helplessly.

Temporal ripples would appear periodically all across the world, though their exact principle remained unknown.

Celebi, much like a "restorer" of time, would always appear when these temporal ripples manifested, absorbing this anomalous temporal energy and radiating vitality in return...

The temporal ripple located here appeared once every millennium!

As for the previous occurrences within the three-day cycle, they were merely phantoms of time. Only this time, when the temporal ripples truly reappeared, the genuine Celebi would arrive once again.

Ryu gave him a deep, penetrating look...

In truth, it wasn't just Kato Feng and Kato Huo; Kato Lin himself wasn't entirely normal either. Otherwise, he wouldn't have stubbornly maintained Kato Kanna's soul so that it wouldn't completely dissipate, right up until the moment she hinted at him through Ryu's intervention, making him suddenly realize... that it had already been far too long.

"What about Kato Shan then? Was he the only one who couldn't make it?" Ryu asked with a hint of puzzlement.

Weren't there four Heavenly King-tier trainers? How was he the only one who hadn't recovered?

"No, he should have been the earliest to recover... By the time I woke up, he was already gone. Because he was Kanna's older brother, and his personality was rather... well, back then, we kept it a secret from him until the very last moment.

"Yet he still discovered the truth, or perhaps Kanna noticed something and warned him beforehand. He even tried to stop us... Regrettably, we were already consumed by obsession at the time and instead blamed him for meddling.

"Those whose vision isn't clouded by greed always find it easier to awaken." Lin sighed once more.

Since he wasn't here, it meant that Kato Shan... likely chose to find "peace" immediately upon waking up, rather than stubbornly trapping himself in the cycle like the rest of them.

"There are... no longer any Pokémon here, right?" Ryu confirmed with Kato Lin once again.

If this was going to be a battle between Ghost-type Heavenly Kings, adding one more Ryu to the mix would be completely meaningless.

"That's right, our partner Pokémon are all gone, but... Clan Head Feng and Huo can transform into Gastly. Although the other clansmen haven't awakened, through endless repetition, they too have gained the ability to transform into Gastly, though they aren't strong—about what you currently call the Elite tier, totaling one hundred and twenty-seven people." Lin laid all the facts out for Ryu.

"By the way, why do Pokémon vanish as time flows, while humans must leave this place in order for their physical bodies to perish?" Ryu asked, feeling perplexed.

Within the spatial rift formed by the temporal ripples, Pokémon were still bound by the constraints of time, vanishing after a certain period of cycling. Humans, however, seemed physically unaffected, as if time had truly stopped—requiring them to leave this place in order to synchronize with the outside world?

"That... is beyond my understanding." Lin clearly had no research into such matters.

"Then what do you need me to do? If there are too many Elite-tier combatants, it will be very dangerous for me, not to mention a 'Super Gastly' as powerful as you... There are two of them, right?" Ryu asked, getting straight to the most crucial point.

"You won't need to fight them. I will hold both of them off. All you need to do is remind Celebi of what is happening here when it appears," Lin said solemnly.

"Really?" Ryu asked again, still harboring some doubts.

"Some of the weaker Gastly might approach you, but the power of Ho-Oh you possess can disperse them..." Lin clearly wasn't as confident as his words implied.

However, Ryu had already roughly grasped his intention—when all was said and done, Kato Lin didn't truly believe that this ambush against Celebi could succeed, especially since a millennium had already passed and nothing could be changed now... He simply believed that the others had completely lost their minds!

"Capturing Celebi" was impossible, but it was entirely possible that they would prevent Celebi from normally absorbing the temporal ripple, causing this "spatial rift" to continue existing indefinitely!

From a selfish standpoint, what Lin worried about most was likely that they would end up continuing to live as walking corpses for another thousand years.

The moment he saw the ribbon in Ryu's hand, he understood that this was Kanna's way of hinting to him—it had been long enough.

From a righteous standpoint, Celebi's failure to properly absorb the temporal ripple could cause the surrounding vitality to wither away...

Therefore, when the time came, he would hold off Kato Feng and Kato Huo, while Ryu seized the opportunity to notify and soothe Celebi. Afterward, Celebi would be able to normally absorb the temporal ripple here and smooth over the spatial rift in time.

"If it's just going to see Celebi... Very well, then!" Ryu agreed, and then asked, "So what should I do next?"

"Tomorrow at this time, a temporal ripple will appear at the center of the island. Celebi will manifest then, and they will be lying in ambush all around. You... first disguise yourself as one of us, and when Celebi appears, reveal yourself... Yes, just like that." The more Lin spoke, the more it sounded like he was trying to comfort himself.

Ryu looked at him with a face full of skepticism—it was obvious that Kato Lin didn't have a detailed plan at all!

He wasn't even certain whether the events of tomorrow would unfold the same way they did a thousand years ago...

After all, he had only ever witnessed the temporal ripple and Celebi once!

"Where will Kato Feng and Kato Huo be? Haven't they ever turned into Gastly and left?" Ryu decided it was better to make the plans himself.

"To maintain their sanity, they spend most of their time in deep slumber as well, but they should be awake by now. As for going out... I left with the determination to perish, only to discover afterward that when spiritualized into the Gastly state, I could move about in the outside world. They have no desire to perish whatsoever, and besides... they must have assumed long ago that I, like Shan, had already vanished."

Over the years, Lin only woke up in his Gastly state for three days each year, and when he slept, his movements weren't detected by Kato Feng and Kato Huo...

As for the rest of Kato's underlings, they were currently acting just like NPCs; seeing Lin wouldn't strike them as odd at all—they would simply execute orders like mindless corpses!