Seizing Doflamingo's Body

Wang Sen had to admit that although his cheat was absurdly unfair, it was indeed extremely effective at tempering his mind. Almost the moment he ate the Illusion Fruit, he had already developed its Devil Fruit ability to a level close to awakening.

Previously, Illusion Fruit ability users in the Pirate World had generally focused on distorting light and creating optical illusions. A select few could affect other people's vision, but after eating the Illusion Fruit, Wang Sen had already begun to touch upon mental abilities.

Just as Wang Sen was lost in his memories, a knock sounded outside the room. "Steve, are you there?"

Wang Sen snapped out of his recollections and hurried to open the door. "I'm here, Saint Homing!"

Among the Celestial Dragons in the Holy Land, only Saint Homing and his wife called him by name and knocked politely. The other Celestial Dragons only referred to him as No. 13 Slave.

"Today is your performance day again." Outside the door, Saint Homing, with his golden handlebar mustache and a smiling face, said, "The audience can hardly wait."

"Okay, I'll go right away." An impatient expression appeared on Wang Sen's face, though in Saint Homing's eyes, he looked merely cautious and submissive.

That was the effect of the Illusion Fruit, distorting what others saw. Ever since eating the fruit, Wang Sen had no longer hidden his emotions. He merely used an illusion to cover them up in daily life.

Saint Homing was considered one of the few Celestial Dragons with even a little learning. In fact, someone without much education could hardly develop such forward-thinking notions as equality. Thus, what he enjoyed most were classics with some depth, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

As for the other Celestial Dragons, their favorites were naturally web novels—the more brainless Gary Stu power fantasies, the better. They even found something like Battle Through the Heavens too mentally taxing.

What they liked were stories where the protagonist came with an intelligence-reducing aura and every villain was impossibly idiotic. Well, idiots about as brain-dead as these Celestial Dragons themselves—those old-school wish-fulfillment stories.

Even though Wang Sen had been a webnovel author of shallow stories in his previous life, he still looked down on power fantasies that were so stupid they required no brain at all.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do. Those Celestial Dragons, whose intelligence was below that of a second grader, loved that sort of thing. Wang Sen was impatient, but he had no choice.

Still, that made fooling those idiots relatively easy. It was not like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Even though Wang Sen had read it several times and remembered it well, adapting it still took some effort.

If it had been something like Dream of the Red Chamber, with its subtle foreshadowing stretching over vast distances, packed with all sorts of metaphors and written with such exquisite delicacy, never mind whether the Celestial Dragons could understand it—Wang Sen himself would not have been confident in adapting it.

Looking at it that way, those idiots being unable to understand overly profound literature was actually a good thing.

After arriving in the hall, Wang Sen saw several foolish Celestial Dragons wearing bubble helmets, all grinning like brain-dead morons.

"Yo, ten... ten... eighteen! You're here! Hurry up and perform the next part for us!"

Wang Sen wore a contemptuous expression. This guy was a Celestial Dragon who could not even count properly. Even among all these morons, he was severely brain-damaged. At least the other idiots could remember a few numbers.

"Idiot, he should be No. 13, right?"

"Who cares what number slave he is? Hurry up and perform for us."

Wang Sen gave a cold smile, the disdain on his face impossible to hide. Fortunately, his Illusion Fruit ability concealed his expression.

Then, unwilling to communicate further with these idiots, he directly unleashed his illusion. In an instant, the entire hall transformed into the world of a novel.

More than an hour later, those idiotic Celestial Dragons finally left while swaying their heads. Wang Sen, meanwhile, looked exhausted, with even a trace of blood at the corner of his mouth.

"My illness seems to be getting worse. I can barely withstand using even this Devil Fruit ability anymore." Wang Sen wiped the corner of his mouth, a cold glint flashing through his eyes. "Make preparations tonight. The body seizure will begin before dawn!"

Dragging his exhausted body, Wang Sen returned to his room. As a relatively valuable slave, his treatment here was actually quite good. However, none of that changed the fact that he was a slave whose life and death rested in someone else's hands.

After hastily eating dinner, Wang Sen lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

His vision went dark, then brightened again. He appeared in a wondrous world.

The sky was pale blue, and distant mountain ranges stood at the edge of the earth. Wang Sen was inside a strange city. Directly across from the city lay a red beach and a bizarre, blood-red sea.

Several strange humanoid figures wandered across the beach, like skinned, blood-red puppets. From time to time, they opened their mouths wide and made all kinds of bizarre noises.

This was the Illusion Space Wang Sen had created using the Illusion Fruit. It could also be called a dreamscape, a mental space, or a virtual space. At the same time, this illusory world was a defensive line intercepting the soul bombardment his cheat inflicted upon him.

If one crossed the mountains, one would find that the other side was still a blood-red sea. That boundless ocean, with no end in sight, was the manifestation of his cheat. The city and island where he now stood had both been carved out here using his Illusion Fruit ability.

The puppet-like figures surfacing on the sea were condensed from endless memory fragments. As long as Wang Sen shattered those puppet figures, he could freely seize a vast amount of Mental Energy and even strengthen the essence of his soul.

Of course, they also came with countless useless memory fragments. Those were the source of all the sand on the beach.

There were not many inhabitants in this city. Even when there were, they were merely NPCs capable of saying only a few sentences. Even those NPCs were created by Wang Sen mixing together various memory fragments from the beach, so they possessed practically no intelligence.

Other than Wang Sen, there was only one other living person in this Illusion Space.

"Hahaha! I am the king of the world!"

Beside Wang Sen, a blond boy of six or seven held his head high with an arrogant expression, gesturing and pointing at the air.

This blond boy was Donquixote Doflamingo, the target Wang Sen had plotted against for a long time.

Back then, merely drawing this brat's sleeping soul into the Illusion Space had cost him an untold amount of effort. Fortunately, his fruit development progress had been astonishing. Before he died from illness, he had managed to draw Doflamingo's soul here every night while the boy slept.

Within this Illusion Space, Wang Sen was truly invincible. His illusion ability had been strengthened to the point where he could completely alter reality with a single thought—though naturally, it was only the reality of the Illusion Space that he could alter.

Thus, on Doflamingo's first day in the Illusion Space, Wang Sen had completely controlled him with illusions. Doflamingo had never even seen the true face of this Illusion Space and had remained immersed in illusions within illusions.

Wang Sen looked coldly at Doflamingo. Long ago, he had designated him as the target for body seizure. However, seizing a body was not such an easy matter.

First, Wang Sen's Illusion Fruit ability had to be developed to that level. In truth, this mental secret art he called the Soul Transfer Great Art had long surpassed the scope of so-called illusions. If his cheat had not given him the confidence, he could never have developed such a terrifying secret art.

After reaching this stage, he could briefly project his soul from his body and occupy someone else's flesh. Yet if he wanted soul and body to truly become one, he was still missing a medium.

After much consideration, Wang Sen turned his attention to the souls of others.

His cheat could forcibly pour Soul Fragments into his own soul and fuse them with it. Naturally, he could use the same method to devour the original owner's soul. With that medium, he could completely unite soul and body and successfully seize the body.

To make his cheat fuse Doflamingo's soul into his own body, Doflamingo's soul first needed to be processed by the cheat—meaning Doflamingo had to take a dip in the blood-red sea outside.

With a casual turn of thought, Doflamingo, who had been laughing loudly, abruptly turned pale. "What is that?! Don't... don't bite me!"

Screaming at the top of his lungs, Doflamingo scrambled out of the city and charged toward the blood-red sea.

He occasionally encountered blood-colored puppets along the way, but when those puppets met Doflamingo, they did not collide with him. Like phantoms, they simply passed through his body.

Wang Sen narrowed his eyes as he watched those puppets. These blood-colored puppets could only collide when they encountered him. Otherwise, they were like phantoms that could not be touched no matter what.

Very quickly, the pitiful Doflamingo reached the edge of the sea and was swallowed by the red waves.

"AAAAAHHHH!" Amid his miserable screams, Doflamingo's body rapidly began to melt, turning into something like a pool of blood that nearly dissolved into the sea.

Wang Sen slowly extended a hand. The entire sea immediately churned with towering waves, and moments later, it spat out a blood-colored puppet.

However, this blood-colored puppet was small, like a child of six or seven. Its appearance also closely resembled Doflamingo's, making it obvious at a glance that it was deeply connected to him.

With a mere thought, Wang Sen appeared before the puppet. He reached out and placed his hand on its forehead.

His hand seemed like a terrifying black hole. The blood-colored puppet let out a muffled roar before being completely drawn inside.

Normally, after such a puppet was absorbed, it would leave behind some fine red sand. The entire blood-red beach had been formed this way, from the useless memory fragments of those puppets.

This time, however, Wang Sen did not leave the memory fragments behind. He absorbed them all.

"Ugh..." Clutching his head, Wang Sen groaned. His damaged cheat offered no protection for his soul, so absorbing memories was certainly not a pleasant experience.

Moreover, what he had absorbed before were only memory fragments. Although those fragments were shattered to the extreme and held no real meaning, they also greatly reduced the chance of driving him insane.

This time, however, he had absorbed Doflamingo's soul. Although it had already soaked in the blood-red sea and become utterly fragmented, with many gaps in its memories, it could still barely be pieced together into a whole.

If Doflamingo had been at his peak rather than only six or seven years old, Wang Sen would absolutely have ended up mentally shattered.

But now, Doflamingo's broken and sparse memories did not cause him much trouble.

A moment later, after finally recovering, Wang Sen revealed a cold smile. With another thought, he left the Illusion Space.