Day 350 of the journey to Sinnoh. Cloudy.
Yu Hai slowly reeled in his fishing rod from Blastoise's back. Looking at Fishing Island, whose outline was beginning to emerge, he stretched and let out a long sigh. "Finally back..."
Only a little over two months had passed since the Lily of the Valley Conference. He had not hurried back afterward. The war between the League and Team Rocket was in full swing. If he had returned then, wouldn't they have drafted him as cannon fodder?
So he had wandered around outside for ten months, finding remote, uninhabited places for his Pokémon to break through to Champion level. He had also explored quite a few ruins and deadly zones, making considerable gains.
As long as he did not return, the Gym assessment could not be carried out, meaning he was not yet a Gym Leader within the League system. The League had no authority to mobilize his subordinates. It allowed him to remain in a peaceful corner amid the chaos of war and enjoy a rare quiet life.
Fishing Island was too remote, so neither Team Rocket nor the League had paid attention to it. Otherwise, did they really think that the seven or eight Elite Four-level trainers who had joined the Fishing Gym would not have to obey the League's summons?
Any trainer within the League system basically had to obey the League's deployment. Especially a force of such strength—during the war between Team Rocket and the League, they were no small source of support.
It was only because they belonged to Fishing Island, and both the island owner and Gym Leader had been absent, that Luo Yan and the others could only obey the Gym Leader's orders and could not act on their own. That was what had kept