Flames erupted, and the blast hurled Shen Qi away. He rolled over and over through the snow before his back struck a tree trunk and stopped him.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
His lungs stung. He felt as though he would cough up his organs.
The Tulip Squad... had used explosives like grenades.
Just as Officer Jenny had said, they were phantom thieves, hardcore criminals, lunatics!
Didn't they care about their own Pokémon?!
No, the Tulip Squad's Pokémon were forcibly controlled with Chain Balls. They didn't belong to them...
Shen Qi inwardly broke into a cold sweat. Fortunately, he had recalled his Pokémon in time.
Although he hadn't managed to avoid the damage with [Nene Ninja Technique], at least he hadn't let his Pokémon get blown up by a grenade.
The explosives sent snow flying everywhere. Shen Qi took out his Poké Balls again, only to notice something wrong with the Strange Balls...
The blue-to-white gradient of the Strange Balls swirled, their colors constantly shifting.
This sensation was... Zinnia had opened the Spacetime Rift!
One reason Shen Qi had kept fighting the Tulip Squad was that he couldn't find an opportunity to escape. Even taking flight was dangerous;
the other was that he feared the Tulip Squad would follow his tracks into the mountains after he escaped and find Zinnia.
After all, the enemies weren't limited to the three in front of Shen Qi. There were other Tulip Squad members at the cabin by Lake Acuity, and Domino had come to Lake Acuity too.
He didn't know what they were after, but clues about Hisui Pokémon, the Red and Blue Orbs, and Super-Ancient Energy were all far too tempting to these phantom thieves.
And... Domino held a grudge against Shen Qi!
What he hadn't expected was that Cai Xia was also a