Lin Yan Wasn't Missing?

After thinking it over for a long time, Ye Lan still decided that he would keep feeding Snivy the premium meals from now on.

He could let anyone suffer, but not his own child!

Besides, Snivy had earned that 50,000 yuan prize money through its own hard work. How could he possibly skimp on it?

As he spoke, he ordered a premium Grass-type meal and, while he was at it, a fried dough stick for himself.

As the card reader beeped, Ye Lan's throat bobbed slowly as he swallowed.

He had just ordered the most expensive breakfast of his life, bar none.

Still, seeing Snivy's eyes light up as it ate, Ye Lan could only smile helplessly.

The last time he had seen Snivy like this was when it had first tasted his mother's braised pork.

Though Ye Lan still didn't understand why a Grass-type snake would like braised pork.

Before long, the food in the bowl was gone. Snivy licked its lips contentedly and looked at Ye Lan across from it, who was holding a fried dough stick.

It looked at the food in front of itself, then at the fried dough stick in Ye Lan's hand. After hesitating for a moment, the Vine Whip beside Snivy shot out and pushed the Moomoo Milk toward Ye Lan.

"Snivy~"

"You mean you want me to drink it?"

Ye Lan rubbed Snivy's little head, took a symbolic sip, and handed the cup back.

Snivy had always been like this since it was born. Unlike other Pokémon, it never threw itself onto its Trainer to act spoiled. Even when facing Ye Lan, it always liked to turn its head away and avoid making eye contact with him.

Yet any Trainer who had battled them could feel Snivy's trust in Ye Lan and the blazing affection it held for him.

Snivy was simply better at expressing it through grueling training and one victory after another.

"Eat up. Evolution isn't far off, and this is exactly when you need nutrition."

Come to think of it, there was still some of the Moomoo Milk Ye Lan had ordered for Snivy left over. But since the school cafeteria could provide it, the remainder could be used as a temporary nutritional supplement during regular training.

Snivy did not fuss any further. It quickly finished the food on the table, then followed Ye Lan to a room in the training area.

This special room had originally been used to train Pokémon's reaction speed. Launchers were arranged around the room, while the center held a circular platform that was wider at the top and narrower at the bottom.

As the setting was raised, the launchers fired tennis balls at increasingly higher speeds. The Pokémon had to remain within the lower area and dodge attacks from every direction.

Snivy's reactions were already quite good. To train its senses and sharpen its sense of smell while its vision was blocked, Ye Lan not only put a blindfold over its eyes but also coated the tennis balls with berry juice of various scents.

He had once consulted Liu Yan, a professional Trainer, about this method. She had suggested using Ghost-type Pokémon to create illusory attacks with all kinds of scents for training.

With his limited circumstances, Ye Lan could not find a Ghost-type Pokémon of that caliber for the time being. He could only settle for the next best thing and use the school's facilities to achieve a similar effect.

As Ye Lan pressed the switch, the launchers in the room began operating.

Tennis balls flew toward Snivy in the center from all directions at irregular intervals.

The initial speed was slow. Snivy kept dodging with nimble movements, but having always relied on its vision in the past, it was still repeatedly struck by the tennis balls.

Ye Lan had originally thought that, given a Pokémon's physical constitution, getting hit by tennis balls should not be much of a problem.

Yet as Snivy was struck again and again, quite a few of its scales twisted out of shape, making Ye Lan's heart ache.

It was like being cut with a dull blade. A hard jab from a needle might not feel like much, even if it drew blood.

But getting your finger lightly caught in a door? Anyone who had experienced that would understand the agony.

"Try using the scent to tell which direction the attacks are coming from!"

Ye Lan could not help calling out from outside the field.

He had also considered training without the blindfold first, but once he realized that would only train Snivy's perception and reactions rather than its sense of smell, Ye Lan decisively abandoned the idea.

In training, of course he would choose whichever method worked better. This had been Snivy's own choice as well.

Seeing Snivy gradually get the hang of it, Ye Lan finally relaxed.

He walked over to the rack in the corner of the room and began putting on the weighted sandbags hanging there.

These had originally been prepared for Pokémon training their reactions. Since Snivy was still in its initial stage, it clearly had no use for them, so Ye Lan simply put them to use for endurance training.

Snivy was working so hard. Naturally, he could not fall behind.

He did not need to become some super rookie who could directly shrug off Thunderbolt, but he at least needed to build up enough stamina.

Otherwise, if he encountered a Pokémon he wanted in the future and could not even throw a Poké Ball far enough, that would be far too embarrassing.

As time passed, afternoon soon arrived.

Snivy had already been sent for treatment. Ye Lan sat on the floor, wiping the sweat from his body while thinking about Lin Yan. The whole matter felt strange somehow.

Logically speaking, a living, breathing high school student had vanished in the black market. Even if the black market was an unlawful place to begin with, why had the Mianzhou Trainers Association received absolutely no news for an entire day?

With all those doubts in mind, Ye Lan took Snivy's Poké Ball from the treatment machine and headed toward Lin Yan's home.

When he passed the school gates, the elderly security guard merely glanced at him before ignoring him. Clearly, Ye Lan's departure from the school had already been arranged in advance.

Before long, Ye Lan stopped in front of an old apartment building. He skillfully climbed to the third floor, knocked three times on the door, and waited to one side.

Not long after, a pale-faced woman opened the door. When she saw Ye Lan outside, a hint of joy appeared on her face.

"Oh, it's Ye Lan. Ah Yan and I were just talking about you."

Upon hearing her words, Ye Lan felt as though his heart had skipped a beat. He froze on the spot.

"Lin Yan... he's already back? I wanted to find Lin Yan at school today and have a battle, but I didn't see him, so I came to ask whether he'd already gone home."

"We usually trained together in the afternoons, so I got a little worried when I didn't see him today."

Ye Lan truly could not make sense of the situation now, but he could not directly explain it to Lin Yan's mother either. What was going on? Lin Yan did not seem like the type to make such a joke!

"You made little Ye worry. Lin Yan didn't come home last night. I thought he was training at school, so I called the school. They told me that he left school after the assessment ended that morning, and I was terrified."

As she spoke, Lin Yan's mother invited Ye Lan inside and had him sit on the sofa.

"Later, I couldn't reach him on the phone either, so I called the police. The police said he was last seen at the black market and that they still needed to investigate."

"I was worried sick all day, but Ah Yan came back just now. He said he'd become the apprentice of a professional Trainer and wouldn't need to go to school anymore. The loans our family took out for his schooling can also be paid off, so we won't have to bear so much pressure anymore."

As she spoke, the smile on Lin Yan's mother's face grew even brighter.

Their family had always been extremely poor, and Lin Yan's father had never wanted his son to become a Trainer.

But Lin Yan's mother did not want her illness to crush her son's dreams.

In truth, when Lin Yan saw his mother smile through her pale face and say, "Even if I have to borrow money, I'll make sure you can attend Trainer school," tears had already begun streaming from his eyes.

Crying, he hugged his mother's somewhat thin body and shouted that he would not become any kind of Trainer, that he would work hard and earn money in the future.

But his mother patted his back like she had when he was little and softly said, "Silly child, then Mother would feel guilty for the rest of her life..."