Watching the Pokémon in the courtyard share food with one another, Ye Lan was momentarily dazed.
This was something that could never be replicated on the tiny handheld console beneath his blankets at night in the past. Even though he had repeatedly defeated the so-called Elite Four and Champions in that pixelated world, leading powerful Pokémon all the way to become the strongest, none of it had moved him as deeply as the scene before him.
From the excitement of clearing the game for the first time to the numbness that came later, each journey had not been a story, but more like a "task."
Yet now, he was merely standing here as a barbecue chef, and he had already found everything he had longed for when he first came to love Pokémon.
The evening breeze brushed past, rustling through the leaves and carrying the Pokémon's whispers with it. The moon overhead shone brighter than the lights in the little courtyard, and Ye Lan suddenly felt that this seemed to be enough.
If he chose to live an ordinary life, he already had more savings than he could ever spend. With the Pokémon by his side, they would not get hurt if they did not battle, nor would they have to train so hard.
Ye Lan knew full well that the powerful Trainers he had regarded as his goals were not like NPCs in his previous life, whom he could defeat simply by looking up strategies online or raising Pokémon specifically to counter them.
Even if he studied their main teams countless times, the gap between ordinary Trainers and them would still be as vast as heaven and earth.
He had never doubted that he could lead an all-Grass-type team to defeat those people, but the process would undoubtedly be