Pokémon, Ash is going to become a perfect man from now on.

"Alola! Excuse me... are you a human trafficker?" the girl greeted him warmly, but Ash's face fell.

"Miss, I'm not a human trafficker. On the contrary, I could be considered a police officer," Xiao Zhi explained speechlessly. "I'm here to hand over a suspect to my colleague here. Is the officer on duty here?"

"You mean Uncle Merdan? He usually goes to feed the cats at this time, but you..." The girl looked curiously at the dozens of prisoners behind Ash, a hint of surprise on her face, "Did you cause that commotion just now? You didn't take care of Team Skull all by yourself, did you?"

"They're just a bunch of thugs, easy to deal with," Xiao Zhi said modestly.

"No, Acerola heard her uncle talk about Guzma, the leader of the Skull Team. He's a very powerful person." The girl shook her head seriously...

"Whether someone is powerful or not is relative... Acerola, the Skull Team is really no match for the person in front of you."

A somewhat weathered, middle-aged voice suddenly rang out. Ash instinctively turned around and, sure enough, saw the island king with the menacing look on his face.

The other person greeted him casually: "Hey, isn't this the Red Devil from Kanto? What brings you to a place like this?"

“Mr. Merdan, it seems like only bad guys would use that title on me.” Ash shrugged. “I’m traveling in Alola, and I’ll bring you some credit while I’m at it, and catch up with you.”

“I don’t need this kind of performance record,” Mordan hurriedly waved his hand. “As for catching up… although we’ve met before, we didn’t even speak back then. I don’t see anything worth catching up on…”

At this point, a hint of unbearable memories appeared in Merdan's eyes.

Upon seeing the child before him, he couldn't help but recall the tragic incident from years ago.

They were powerless against the raging behemoth and could only watch helplessly as their companions were devoured and died a gruesome death!

“Uncle Merdan…” The girl Acerola seemed to sense something. She gently tugged at Merdan’s sleeve, which pulled him out of his reverie.

"Phew... Ash, just tell me what you want to teach me~" Mordan, who had come back to his senses, asked casually with a lazy look on his face.

“Officer Jenny will be coming to take these Team Skull members away later. You’ll need to hand them over to me… Whether they go to a labor camp or whatever, it’s up to you to decide,” Ash said softly. “As for the other two, they’ll stay for now.”

As he spoke, Xiao Zhi waved and pulled the non-mainstream youth and the chuunibyou teenager to his side: "These two are involved in one of my current cases. Since I can't hand them over to Officer Jenny, I'll keep them here with you for a while."

“Those two… Guzma is one of them,” Mordan said lazily. “What if I lost and they got away?”

"I've confiscated all their Poké Balls. If you just pay close attention, you can definitely keep an eye on them." Ash knew that this mean old man just didn't want to get involved.

He used to be the captain of the baiting team, and he was one of the elites among Interpol officers. Would he be afraid of a mere Guzma?

Putting aside how powerful Merdan is as the island's king, his fighting skills, honed through training in the police force, would conservatively put five Guzma to the ground and beat them to a pulp!

"Okay, is there anything else?" Merdan asked, feigning helplessness.

When Xiao Zhi came to his door to force him to reminisce, the shrewd old fox knew that he was probably going to have to "repay kindness" today.

"I made a bet with Tapu Lele to complete the island tour within a month. I've already passed the great test on Akara Island, so please help me arrange things on your side as well." Ash didn't stand on ceremony with Modan and directly listed a bunch of requests. "Also... I need to borrow your computer for a bit."

"The big test is no problem, but the computer... Hey, wait a minute!"

Amidst Modan's scream, Ash opened his computer's search history...

Chapter 403 The Ether Foundation, the Traitor is…

"Pah! Disgusting... watching that kind of stuff on your work computer!"

In front of the police station's computer, Xiao Zhi gave a disgusted look and rolled his eyes at a shameless old man.

Honestly, this person is so irresponsible! He was just browsing the internet for a bit, and he actually clicked on those kinds of images...

It's so spicy it hurts my eyes!

Moreover, the computer was a complete mess. If it weren't for my management software being so robust, that evidence disk might have been ruined by various Trojans and viruses.

"(Dirty humans.)" Porygon II, which was invisible, muttered under its breath on Ash's shoulder.

(I knew it, that bad uncle was definitely not a good person...)

(Both you and he are.)

"Cough...cough!" Ash choked on the words of the Pokémon manager and could only cover up his embarrassment with a cough.

Merdan was also losing face, but he still covered Acerola's eyes while stubbornly retorting.

"That's enough. You start checking other people's browsing history as soon as you turn on your computer. How much better are you yourself? Don't you care that there are children here?"

"I just wanted to open a webpage, who knew I'd step on so many landmines?" Xiao Zhi retorted without holding back. "Besides, I don't need to look at this stuff anyway~"

People only get restless when they can't have something. A rich and handsome guy like Xiaozhi, who is surrounded by all kinds of girls, doesn't need to look at that kind of thing to relieve his boredom.

Just one blue one is already amazing; Ash hasn't even unlocked all of its moves yet...

"Does 'no need' mean... Holy crap, Acerola, you absolutely must stay away from him!" Having figured something out, Mordan immediately cursed and quickly shielded Acerola behind him.

He's so young and he's already done *that*? This kid is a real beast...

"Mr. Mordan, if Acerola goes astray in the future, it's because she's influenced by bad company, and it has nothing to do with me, a mere passerby~" Ash complained without looking up, while starting to check the data on his hard drive.

Although the forced reminiscing with Merdan involved occasional bickering, the overall atmosphere was quite good.

Xiao Zhi quite enjoys dealing with people like Mo Dan, who is extremely averse to trouble. Generally speaking, people like that aren't very troublesome...

Unless it's like in the original story, where they want to deliberately make things difficult for Ash.

But now that they have saved his life, Murdan will naturally make things easy for Ash.

While Ash was checking the data, he had already handed over the members of Team Skull to Officer Jenny and properly imprisoned Guzma and Gladion.

Meanwhile, Xiao Zhi had also roughly confirmed some information on the disk.

As he expected, the site indeed contained research data from the Aether Foundation on the Ultimate Hole!

With this information in hand, there is absolutely solid evidence to prove that Lusamine was conducting research in private, and she has no way to refute it!

(Some information is missing here; it was likely deleted intentionally.)

During the search process, the management wizard discovered some issues.

Someone had tampered with the data on the disk, and although it was done very discreetly, the management wizard still discovered it by comparing the data before and after.

The data here is listed in chronological order, but some data from four years ago shows obvious inconsistencies.

(Someone must have deliberately hidden this part of the content; something must have happened at the time.) The management sprite explained.

(Four years ago, could it be...)

Suddenly, Xiao Zhi felt a sudden thought.

He immediately went to Gladio and briefly examined his memories!

"As expected!" Ash finally discovered the problem.

Since Moen's disappearance, the Aether Foundation's research on the Ultimate Cave has been halted, and even though Lusamine is secretly conducting research, the progress is quite limited.

However, in Gladion's memory, his experience with Lillie is still the same as in the original anime!

Four years ago, the siblings lived in Etherland when they stumbled upon the mysteriously opened Ultimate Hole. Lillie was almost possessed by Nihilego, but was saved by Silvally.

But since then, she has become afraid to touch Pokémon and has even completely lost that part of her memory.

Gladio vividly remembers this incident, which leads him to resent his mother's neglect. The brother and sister gradually drift apart from their mother and eventually move to a villa on Melemele Island.

Until six months ago, Gladion, realizing his own weakness, secretly escaped from the Aether Paradise with his sealed attribute: Emptiness, and began running away from home to train himself...

The above content is basically consistent with the original work, which makes Xiao Zhi really want to complain... This chuunibyou brother-in-law, if you're going to train, fine, but why do you have to hang out with a bunch of thugs? Wouldn't it be better to just wipe them out and level up?

After gathering all this information, Ash unconsciously recalled an image that looked a lot like a Pokémon.

If Ash remembers correctly, in the anime, the culprit who caused Lillie and Lusamine to be attacked by Nihilego was that guy!

So, could it be him...?

Ash has always suspected that there might be a mole within the Aether Foundation, and this feeling is growing stronger now.

Moen mentioned to Ash during a casual chat that he was probably the first person in the world to discover the Ultra Dimension. He had traveled to many places around the world and later discovered that the space walls in Alola were the thinnest. That's why he decided to move his whole family here to study the Ultra Dimension in detail.

If Moen is right, the Aether Foundation should be the world's first organization to study the Ultimate Void... So what about Galar?

Moen's experiment went wrong. After falling through the Ultimate Hole into the Crown Snowfield, he was immediately targeted and his research notes were stolen.

If the Galar only started researching the Ultimate Cavern around that time, it seems rather coincidental.

But if we change our perspective, everything becomes much easier to explain.

The Galarian side has been conducting research for a long time, and even the Aether Foundation was scapegoated for the Ultimate Energy Riot many years ago!

They were the ones who started the incident, so it was easy for them to monitor the unusual activity in the snowfield. When they arrived, they were surprised to find that the person who fell out was actually Dr. Moen, an authority on the study of ultimate space!

So they quickly stole Moen's research notes and even got the village chief of Frozen Village to put the amnesiac Moen under surveillance.

They didn't directly deal with Moen, possibly because they were hesitant to confront Nihilego. At that time, there was no technology like the Ultra Ball, and the alien beasts were undoubtedly a huge problem.

Another possibility is that she wanted to keep it as a trump card to blackmail Rosamund when necessary.

But for them to do all this, there is a prerequisite: someone within the Ether Foundation must transmit data to them!

In other words, he's an inside man!

It'll be ready soon...

Xiao Zhi closed his eyes slightly and even used a bit of his superpower of precognition to put together all the recent chaotic clues. In the end, they all seemed to point to the same person!

If we can bring him out, we might be able to uncover clues about Galar's side.

Ash can also make the final decision and directly control Lusamine and the entire Aether Foundation!