"Crack!"
With a crisp sound, the Life Branch was split in half!
The Venusaur watching Ash's actions was momentarily dumbfounded.
"Venasaur!!" What are you doing!!
"Ash, this..." Misty saw Ash abruptly break the Life Branch into two halves, and her face showed an indescribable expression.
What is Ash doing? Is this how he plans to split the Life Force by half? What a joke! Wouldn't this just destroy the item? Brock thought the same.
You can't blame Misty, Brock, and Venusaur for thinking that way. Typically, if a Pokemon tool is broken in half like this, it would certainly lose all its function. Isn't this just outright destroying the item?
"Ahem, didn't I say I was just going to take half? Look, isn't this half?" Ash raised the half branch in his hand.
Hearing this, the Pokemon present, along with Misty and Brock, were all speechless in disbelief. Do you even hear what you're saying?
Is this how you split it in half? Are you sure just breaking the branch in two will still have the effect?
"Don't worry, try sensing it," Ash said as he handed the branch to Venusaur and Misty.
The former hesitantly extended a Vine Whip, wrapping it around the branch in Ash's hand and carefully sensing it, and then displayed an utterly incredulous expression.
Venusaur, who had always enjoyed the effects of the Life Branch, knew better than anyone what a complete Life Branch was like.
Now, with half the Life Branch sensed through its Vine Whip, it indeed contained half the Life Force of a normal Life Branch.
Moreover, this Life Force wasn't dissipating.
In other words, Ash's crude method seemingly worked... How is this possible? Could it be this simple?
"See, no problem, right? This is a method I've carefully derived using Aura Power, so how could it be wrong? Anyway, by splitting it in half like this, everything's good! Just wait two or three years, and this branch will be restored to its original state... but splitting it once is the absolute limit, so don't try breaking it again."
Ash cleverly used Aura Power as an excuse to cover the information he got from the chat group.
If there was anything hard to explain, Professor Oak is one reason, Aura Power is another; you can usually pin it on those.
If even these reasons can't take the blame, it must be something enormous.
After hearing Ash's words, Venusaur instantly gave up the idea of breaking the branch in half again once it recovered.
If it could be split infinitely, of course, it would want to break it again, keeping half the Life Branch for itself.
This way, it could continue assisting Bulbasaurs in evolution in the future and also gain a boost itself, so why not?
But Ash's words directly extinguished that notion. Let alone whether Ash was truthful, after interacting with him, Venusaur didn't think Ash was the kind who would fabricate lies.
Besides, it had no way to gamble on whether the Life Branch could split again, so it decided to stick to using this half to continue its previous activities.
Ash didn't take back the Life Branch on Venusaur's Vine Whip, as it was meant for Venusaur.
And the remaining half was placed directly onto Bulbasaur's seed. In less than a second, the Life Branch merged into Bulbasaur's seed.
At that moment, Bulbasaur began to shine brightly, this was the Light of Evolution!
"Is Bulbasaur evolving?" Misty pointed out the obvious.
But encountering such a situation, it's natural to question it.
Misty always knew that Ash was searching for the Incredible Garden to find the perfect evolution method for Bulbasaur.
Because Bulbasaur had missed the perfect timing for evolution, evolving might result in a double evolution.
Evolution would significantly boost its strength, but this wasn't necessarily a good thing.
If evolution caused too big a boost, its Ability Value couldn't keep up, greatly impacting Bulbasaur's future.
Champion Ash sent Ash to find the Incredible Garden for this reason.
Although Misty and Brock knew Ash was guided by Professor Oak to the Incredible Garden, they didn't know specifically what Ash was seeking there.
And once found, what method would he use to enable Bulbasaur's perfect evolution?
Until Ash broke off a Seven-Colored Branch from that giant tree.
After finding the Seven-Colored Tree, Ash used an utterly unconventional method to split the branch's power, keeping half for Venusaur, and giving the other half to Bulbasaur.
Everything seemed normal until the point... as soon as Bulbasaur absorbed the Life Branch, it started evolving directly!
It was so quick! Not even requiring time for absorption; it just evolved directly? How could this achieve a so-called perfect evolution?
These questions were the true meaning behind Misty's words.
"Don't worry, Ash and Bulbasaur chose to evolve at this time because they're completely confident. Surely, they wouldn't let the fruit of a month's hard work go to waste, right?" Brock comforted beside her.