While secretly building up his own forces, Ye Li had not forgotten the ultimate goal that had weighed on his mind from the very beginning like a countdown to doomsday-saving this world as it slipped out of balance.
He knew perfectly well that both Koga's ninja troops and Vermilion City's underground kingdom were merely ways for him to secure his place in a chaotic world. To truly solve the problem and quell the global catastrophe caused by the imbalance in the Legendary Birds' powers, his only hope was to find the guardian of the ocean who existed only in the oldest legends-Lugia.
And the clues to summoning Lugia lay hidden in the mysterious ancient stone tablet whose rubbing he had brought back from the Seafoam Islands.
He shut himself in the laboratory and studied the rubbing day and night. With Lin Feng and Dr. Anya's assistance, he used Team Rocket's most advanced computers and analytical equipment to perform the most thorough decoding and structural analysis of every ancient character and mysterious totem on the tablet.
At last, he made an astonishing discovery.
He discovered that, once rearranged through a special algorithm, the seemingly disordered descriptions of the Legendary Birds' powers and ritual diagrams on the tablet actually formed a complete ancient nautical chart he had never seen before!
The chart did not cover the Kanto Region. Instead, it pointed farther south, toward a vast stretch of tropical waters dotted with countless islands-the Orange Islands.
And among that vast archipelago, the chart highlighted three distinctive islands with special symbols.
One island's symbol was a burning flame.
One island's symbol was a bolt of lightning tearing through the sky.
One island's symbol was a crystal-clear ice crystal.
Fire Island, Lightning Island, and Ice Island.
These three islands formed an equilateral triangle on