Read advance chapters for both of my work, exclusively on Patreon at - www.patreon.com/Sniperwoof
-----------------
Coincidentally, just as the two were discussing Bai Xiang, in a distant field, her battling figure was clearly visible.
The Pokémon she sent out was a Leafeon, primarily light yellow in color, with leaf-like fur on its ears and tail, a tuft of green hair on its head, and green fur sticking up on its chest, nape, and limbs, resembling a rabbit.
Even from far away, Li Xiang could still smell the irresistible, refreshing fragrance emanating from the Leafeon.
It was like a grassy field sprouting from the muddy earth after a spring rain at the onset of spring.
The younger the Leafeon, the stronger its fresh scent...
It was said that this Pokémon also had the ability to purify the air, didn't need to eat, and could survive just by basking in sunlight daily. If there was no sun, eating leaves was also an option, completely eliminating the need to worry much about food.
This Pokémon was incredibly easy to raise.
Come to think of it, if he wasn't mistaken, this Leafeon should have the Chlorophyll ability, making it incredibly fast, easily outmaneuvering the opponent's Mudsdale.
"Feng Laiyi has always admired Bai Xiang, so she usually seeks her out for battles."
Su Qian explained slowly.
'Admired?'
Li Xiang looked at Feng Laiyi. This girl, who was no shorter than him, was watching Bai Xiang with an excited expression, fiercely shouting commands for Heavy Slam.
Under her command, the Mudsdale transformed into a massive, gleaming silver projectile, rumbling as it stomped the ground, charging towards the petite Leafeon.
It had the terrifying momentum of a bulldozer hitting a small dog on the roadside!
But due to its bulky body's lack of agility, its weight pressed down during high-speed movement, preventing timely turns, resulting in the Heavy Slam failing to even graze a single hair on Leafeon.
Instead, it got entangled by Leafeon's Grass Knot.
Although Leafeon's Special Attack wasn't high, Grass Knot's damage against Mudsdale was maxed out, causing it to stumble and roll awkwardly on the ground.
Watching from the side, Li Xiang felt like Feng Laiyi was just blindly attacking and sacrificing.
If the Mudsdale hadn't gotten up completely unfazed and used Body Press against Leafeon like a tank advancing again, the smell of acting would have been even stronger.
Feng Laiyi's battling style was also clearly laid out before Li Xiang.
'—Reckless.'
Just like Ash, reckless from start to finish, completely unafraid of failure, or rather, utterly indifferent to it.
In fact, Feng Laiyi had every right to be reckless.
Besides Mudsdale, she also used Flygon and Steelix, both monsters in terms of endurance, difficult to take down with ordinary means. Yet they still guaranteed a certain level of output.
As for Bai Xiang…
Currently ranked first in the school.
She specialized in Grass types, but her team wasn't purely Grass; it also included Fairy and Poison-type Pokémon.
After Leafeon, she also sent out Roserade, with its strong sustainability, and the special wall Florges.
Her sustainability was terrifying. Unless you could deliver a one-hit KO, once you fell into her rhythm, you'd be dragged to death.
After watching for a while, Li Xiang roughly concluded their skill levels, realizing he still had a lot of training to do.
Shifting his perspective, the other pair of regulars: Shen Qing, the cute girl who specialized in Water types, and Ruan Jingjing, the lively girl who specialized in Flying types.
The Pokémon they were using were Azumarill and Salamence.
The scene was somewhat amusing because Salamence fought Azumarill using Thunder Fang after Dragon Dance, or Fly.
Occasionally using Rock Slide or something.
Meanwhile, the Water Rabbit really wanted to get close to Salamence, constantly using Aqua Jet. It tried to use Play Rough several times but was dodged by the Salamence, whose aerial skills were no worse than Corviknight's.
Helpless, it could only chase it, blasting Icy Wind to lower its speed. Unfortunately, the Salamence was too cunning and didn't fall for it.
The two were actually deadlocked for a while before each was switched out by their trainers. By the time he saw this, a winner had already been decided on another field.
The competitors were a sixth-grade reserve and Lu Shu, who specialized in Poison types.
Li Xiang hadn't really watched their battle at all, vaguely remembering the starters were Crobat against Delphox.
Crobat, a typical high-speed Pokémon.
Having missed Lu Shu's battle, Li Xiang didn't want to miss Zhao Jie's.
Luckily, as one finished, the next one went up with another sixth-grade reserve.
The starter was the low-speed Trick Room user Hatterene, against the mid-speed Abomasnow.
The latter had the Snow Warning ability, activating a large-scale Snowscape upon entry, then spamming Blizzard.
Under Snowscape, just like Hurricane and Thunder in rain, Blizzard's energy consumption was reduced, its attack scale expanded, and its usage speed increased.
To avoid being instantly KO'd, Abomasnow even set up Aurora Veil.
However, Hatterene wasn't one to waste words either. While Abomasnow set up Aurora Veil, she set up Trick Room, seizing the initiative in speed.
Simultaneously, after using Calm Mind, she counterattacked with Mystical Fire.
A STAB Blizzard versus a non-STAB Mystical Fire; although one was super effective against the other, the base power of the former surprisingly wasn't as high as the latter's.
Of course, after Mystical Fire and Blizzard canceled each other out, there was naturally little damage dealt to the Abomasnow under Aurora Veil.
But spamming Blizzard was like Rotom spamming Discharge— it would eventually run out.
After realizing the first Trick Room was about to end, Aurora Veil was dissipating, Blizzard hadn't been effective yet, and half her energy was gone.
The sixth-grade senior got a bit impatient and decided to use the priority move Ice Shard for cover. While Aurora Veil was still up, she engaged Hatterene in close combat.
If Ice Shard missed, Avalanche would be launched directly; presumably, even with Hatterene's durability, it would be hard to take.
Failing that, there was Iron Tail; super effective damage would be enough for Abomasnow to handle.
To this end, Abomasnow had secretly used Swords Dance once.
But this move, directly led to its defeat.
The Ice/Grass typing was a "terrible" combination that most people couldn't understand.
But just knowing the sequence—Abomasnow uses Ice Shard, Abomasnow charges recklessly, Abomasnow goes for Avalanche, Abomasnow's Avalanche is blocked, Iron Tail fails, gets hit by Mystical Fire.
That's enough.
Because the final result was simply Abomasnow fainting.
At this point, Li Xiang didn't continue watching. This sixth-grade reserve had skill and could calculate damage well.
She just underestimated Hatterene's strong control ability too much.
Avalanche was blocked by Protect. During this time, Hatterene's psychic waves had already caught Abomasnow, throwing it into the air with Psychic.
Finally, taking advantage of its inability to fly and the Aurora Veil ending just then, a Mystical Fire finished off this seemingly tanky, but actually not so great, Pokémon.
Abomasnow was good in many aspects, but its base stats were too average, a hexagon development without any specialties.
Therefore, even after gaining a Mega Evolution, not many people used this Pokémon.
For setting up Snowscape, Alolan Ninetales was enough. With that Mega slot, wouldn't getting another Pokémon be better?
In comparison, the super powerful Trick Room attacker Hatterene was much stronger.
Shifting his gaze back to the two fifth/sixth-grade regulars, the Pokémon Shen Qing sent out now was the eighth-generation starter, the secret agent-themed Inteleon.
This guy moved exceptionally flexibly, the small wings on its back helping it glide.
On Ruan Jingjing's side, she used the fifth-generation Intimidate counter—Normal/Flying-type Braviary.
They went back and forth, still in a state where neither could gain the upper hand.
Of course, the match would eventually have a winner.
Inteleon was strong, a long-range special attacker that mastered a wide variety of moves. Among them, its signature move Snipe Shot had the longest effective range Li Xiang had ever seen.
Reportedly, its power only weakened after seventy meters.
In this situation, Close-combat Pokémon like Braviary were at a significant disadvantage.
Ruan Jingjing clearly wasn't willing to take this loss and quickly switched in her third Pokémon—the Electric/Flying-type Emolga.
So it became a long-range versus long-range battle, going back and forth until Ruan Jingjing won by a slight margin.
And the final victor was also Ruan Jingjing.
Those who finished battling went off the field again.
The team originally had fifteen people; with Li Xiang and Song Jie, it was seventeen. In principle, pairing them all up wasn't possible.
But after battling Li Xiang, Abigail challenged Su Qian as soon as a spot opened up.
Su Qian naturally didn't refuse; she even wished for someone to challenge her.
Li Xiang stood to the side, not even paying attention to Song Jie and Chao's battle, watching this one with great excitement.
Abigail versus Su Qian was bound to be intense!
And indeed it was.
As the team captain, Su Qian also had a specialized type; she was adept at Fairy types.
Her starter Pokémon was the so-called once-in-a-lifetime blessing Pokémon, Togekiss.
On Abigail's side, she sent out the fast, Dark/Ice attacker, Weavile.
In the games, with this matchup, Su Qian would inevitably switch Togekiss out, since Togekiss wasn't faster than Weavile, and its physical defense wasn't particularly outstanding, unable to withstand its attacks.
But here, Togekiss naturally held the advantage of being a flying, long-range attacker.
Weavile was very fast but couldn't fly into the air, only able to attack from a distance with Ice Spinner or Ice Shard missile-like assaults.
So Togekiss could still stay on the field.
Then, it directly used Dazzling Gleam and Aura Sphere.
Seeing the situation was unfavorable, Abigail decisively, after using Protect, switched Weavile out, sending in the Ghost/Dark-type Spiritomb.
This Pokémon, like ancient man-made Pokémon, was an extremely rare species.
It was Li Xiang's first time seeing one in person, and he couldn't help but feel an itch to interact with it.
Unfortunately, it was in a battle; he couldn't touch it.
He couldn't help but think that after it was over, he must ask Abigail for permission.
And in the few seconds he was distracted, the situation on the field changed slightly.
Togekiss was actually put to sleep by Spiritomb, falling into a drowsy state.
Su Qian had no choice but to let Togekiss take a Thunderbolt from Spiritomb before switching it out.
The new Pokémon sent out was Sylveon.
Indeed, for females, Eevee—a cute, useful Pokémon with many evolutions—was the perfect teammate.
Li Xiang silently complained, feeling like there were so many Eeveelutions around him.
Unsurprisingly, Su Qian's Sylveon had the Pixilate ability. When it used Hyper Voice, pink patterns accompanied the sound, hitting Spiritomb and seeming to hurt a lot.
Spiritomb wanted to try the same trick again but unfortunately failed, forced to take a hit from Sylveon.
—It withstood it.
A single Pixilate Hyper Voice was actually blocked by Spiritomb.
If it weren't for the evidence before his eyes, Li Xiang wouldn't have believed it.
Unfortunately, Su Qian's timing was excellent. When Hyper Voice didn't finish it off, she immediately followed up with Swift.
The semi-automatic tracking pink stars were knocked away by Spiritomb, but the last one hit, depleting its stamina.
Trying to counterattack when at a type disadvantage was indeed difficult.