Fish-Man Karate, You Know What It Is, Don't You?

In the reflection of Hanafuda's pupils, which suddenly contracted into vertical slits,

Luo Yi's fist shot out.

The next moment, that familiar Wave Fist erupted once more.

But Luo Yi's fist was not aimed at Hanafuda's ship. It was aimed at the sea below!

"Hum!"

Surging cold burst forth, and the freezing began to spread.

"Crack!" "Crack!" "Crack!"

The endlessly rushing currents came to a halt in midair at that moment.

The fish and shrimp swimming through the water were frozen in the sea.

Even the wind carried shards of ice, while the moisture in the air condensed into frost.

The surface of the sea split apart as usual, but this time the waves did not crash back down. Instead, they transformed into enormous walls of ice.

That was right.

After this punch was thrown, the sea surrounding the Giant Dinosaur Fleet had been completely frozen!

"'Aokiji's' ability? No... It's not exactly the same. What was that fluctuation?"

Looking at this scene, Hanafuda naturally thought of Admiral Aokiji first.

But then he shook his head. He had never heard of Aokiji using a move like this—the radiance in Luo Yi's fist and the shock wave that came with it were completely unfamiliar.

But clearly, Hanafuda no longer had time to think about it.

"Boom!"

Because the Tyrannosaurus beneath his feet had clearly come to a stop.

Or to be more precise—it was not just this one ship.

At that moment, the entire Giant Dinosaur Fleet had been frozen above the surface of the sea by that single punch.

But that was precisely where the problem lay.

"This punch was powerful enough to destroy any ship. Why didn't he do that?"

Hanafuda muttered this question inwardly.

If it had been another Marine, he could certainly have found a suitable reason—perhaps the other party did not want to offend him, a Shichibukai, or perhaps they feared his influence and the Hundred Beasts Kaido behind him.

But Hanafuda knew that now,

none of those reasons applied.

Because he could see the gaze of the Marine standing before him.

What kind of gaze was it?

Cold, calm, and resolute, without the slightest hint of retreat or hesitation. It was not the gaze of someone preparing to stop here!

And that was indeed the case.

In the very next instant, Hanafuda saw Luo Yi move again.

He raised his hand once more.

The difference was that this time, he raised his right fist!

"Hum!"

Golden ripples flowed once more, but this time, crimson appeared within them!

It was the color of intense heat.

Within Luo Yi's arm, some kind of scarlet, searing substance seemed to begin flowing as well, turning his arm crimson.

"Flame Wave Fist: Boil Sea!"

"Roar!"

At that moment, Hanafuda's expression changed drastically.

"Everyone, abandon ship immediately!"

He practically let out a beastlike growl.

As a top-tier Ability User of the Ancient Zoan type, he naturally possessed the instincts of a top predator.

And at that moment, his instincts were telling him that this attack was extremely dangerous!

At the same time,

far away on the sea,

"Whoosh!"

The flames gradually died down inside the exhaust ports behind the Spade.

"Hah... hah..."

Ace, his entire body dripping with sweat, panted as he knelt on one knee. "Damn it... those injuries from earlier..."

Just as Hanafuda had said before,

using his ability at such intensity to propel the Spade forward had been extremely taxing for him as well.

"Ace, take a break!"

"Captain Ace, are you all right?"

Seeing this, Deuce and several crew members who were still able to move struggled to stand.

"I'm fine."

Ace waved his hand, took a bottle of water, and drank from it. Only afterward did he ask, "Hah... They didn't chase after us, did they?"

During the escape just now, when he had been using his ability, he naturally had no attention to spare for anything else.

"No. If anything, the situation over there is a little strange."

At this, Deuce's expression became somewhat subtle.

"Strange?"

Hearing this, Ace also looked toward the sea behind them in confusion.

They were already too far away to make out what was happening there. They could only see several of Hanafuda's ships, reduced to tiny specks, and...

"The surface of the sea froze?"

Seeing that stretch of sea, frozen in a state of surging motion, Ace was stunned.

"It wasn't Hanafuda's ability..."

He had fought Hanafuda before, so he naturally knew that the man did not possess such an ability.

Then there was only one explanation.

"That Marine called Luo Yi?"

Ace muttered the name he had only learned for the first time not long ago.

"That's what we think too."

Deuce voiced his own guess. "The other party should be fighting Hanafuda, and the frozen sea may be the result of his ability..."

He analyzed the situation with a serious expression, while the other members of the Spade Pirates beside him nodded one after another.

But only a moment later, their discussion came to a stop.

Because both they and Ace saw the sight in the distance.

Something crimson appeared in the sky.

It was something Ace was very familiar with—the flames produced by intense heat!

"Captain's 'Fire Fist'?"

The companions behind him subconsciously said those words.

"No!"

But Ace had already answered in his heart.

He watched the enormous pillar of fire, wrapped in a powerful shock wave, surge toward Hanafuda's ships!

He could clearly see the ashes kicked up wherever the flames passed.

He instinctively felt that those flames seemed even stronger than his own.

But Ace had no time to think it through.

He saw the enormous torrent of flame sweep directly across the sea and pierce through Hanafuda's fleet.

"Boom!"

Above the frozen ocean, enormous smoke and terrifying flames instantly rose high enough to blot out the sky, while a massive shock wave scattered in every direction.

"Hanafuda's fleet is finished!"

Even from such a distance, Deuce could still say with absolute certainty that after this attack, not a single one of Hanafuda's ships would remain!

But immediately afterward, an even greater question naturally arose.

That was—

"Who launched that attack?"

One of the Spade Pirates asked the question.

The scene fell completely silent.

The answer was not difficult to guess.

The kind of fluctuation contained in that enormous flaming shock wave was something they had witnessed with their own eyes not long ago.

Immediately afterward, the only sound on the entire ship was Ace's murmured whisper.

"Loi Amos..."

"Hey, hey! There's no mistake, right? The boss is terrifyingly strong now!"

Clearly,

the members of the Detention Unit held a similar opinion to the Spade Pirates.

At that moment, Hans and Fal were waiting on the deck.

Following Luo Yi's instructions, they had already arranged for people to search the cabins for the two injured individuals and repair the cabins at the same time.

However, they had not followed his instructions completely.

For example, at that moment, they had not obeyed Luo Yi's order to hide. Instead, each of them was holding his own weapon.

They had already made up their minds—if their boss fell, they would take his place.

But the actual development of events far exceeded their imagination.

At that moment, even through the cover of the thick smoke, they could see the devastation on the frozen sea not far away.

The entire Giant Dinosaur Fleet had indeed been almost completely wiped out.

The six escort ships had completely vanished into the center of the explosion. Only burning fragments and wreckage showed that they had ever existed.

The only ship that still retained its complete appearance was the flagship Tyrannosaurus—but even so, its hull had broken apart in the middle, and the entire ship had been melted straight through.

"To think he defeated that legendary Shichibukai with only two attacks."

At that moment, the Marines of the Detention Unit felt so dizzy that their heads spun.

"Um... Do you think that's really our boss? Could he have been Admiral Zephyr in disguise...?"

Hans's train of thought was as bizarre as ever.

"What are you talking about? That's definitely the boss!"

Fal punched him on the spot. "But freezing or igniting the sea—isn't that because Admiral Zephyr gave the boss a Devil Fruit?"

"Oh, you're right!"

Hearing this, Hans finally understood. "That's right—Admiral Zephyr isn't an Ability User, so the person pretending to be the boss wasn't him."

"Are you even listening to what I'm saying!?"

And just as the two of them were arguing,

"You two have made two more mistakes."

They saw Luo Yi descend from the sky with Geppo and land back on the warship.

His expression remained calm, and he even seemed to carry a strange sense of satisfaction.

"First, everyone knows that I'm not an Ability User and haven't eaten a Devil Fruit. As for what you saw just now, it was still the Wave Fist."

He looked seriously at Fal and Hans, whose faces were filled with disbelief.

"Not long ago, my teacher told me that the Fish-Man Race's martial art, Fish-Man Karate, could control the moisture in the surrounding air."

"That gave me some insight, so I created a new branch of Wave Fist techniques. It is called Ice Wave Fist."

As he spoke, blue ripples appeared over his hand.

"Besides that, my teacher also told me that Wano Country possesses a swordsmanship called Foxfire Style, which can release and cut through flames."

"Moreover, quite a few people can use friction to control fire. For example, I know a pirate and his cook who can both use similar techniques."

"I developed the idea further and created this second branch of Wave Fist techniques. It is called Flame Wave Fist."

The things he said so casually were naturally complete nonsense.

The two so-called Wave Fist techniques he had displayed were, in essence, the intense heat and extreme cold of the Great Buddha form of the Human-Human Fruit, separately combined with the Magma-Magma Fruit and Freeze-Freeze Fruit.

By using shock waves to spread those two effects, he had naturally developed such powerful attacks.

However, the abilities of the two Logia Devil Fruits and the Great Buddha Fruit all consumed an enormous amount of stamina. Although he had conceived of this idea earlier, he had never used it in actual combat.

But after his recent physical enhancement, he could now control it to some extent!

As for the new branches of Wave Fist he had mentioned, they naturally had no scientific basis whatsoever.

But clearly, that was not important.

Because—

"So that's how it is!"

"So that's what happened!"

"As expected of Admiral Zephyr's disciple!"

"Shouldn't you say, as expected of our boss?"

After hearing his words, the Marines immediately chose to believe him without the slightest hesitation.

As for this reaction, Luo Yi was not surprised in the slightest.

That was right.

This was the most crucial point.

If this had been Loi Amos, an ordinary major of the Detention Unit, then displaying such a massive increase in strength in such a short time would certainly have been unreasonable and aroused suspicion to some extent.

But things were different now.

He was now the legendary admiral of the Marines and the disciple of the universally acknowledged strongest instructor, "Black Arm" Zephyr.

And practically every Marine had grown up listening to the legends of Zephyr!

So what was there to find surprising about the disciple of former Admiral Zephyr growing stronger a little faster?

"In Teacher Zephyr's eyes, I'm a 'monstrous genius.'"

"In the eyes of the other Marines, I'm 'the disciple of a Marine legend.'"

A smile spread across Loi's lips.

"So now, I can be a little more reckless in how I display my strength."

After that brief moment of reflection, Hans and Fal came back to their senses.

"Boss, you said we made two mistakes. What's the other one?"

Fal asked curiously.

Hearing his question, Luo Yi smiled again.

"The second mistake was saying that I defeated a Shichibukai with one strike."

"Although I've grown much stronger now, defeating someone like that with one strike would still be somewhat difficult."

Just as Luo Yi finished speaking,

"Marines!"

Hans and Fal heard the furious roar that echoed across the entire sea.

Then—

"Boom!" "Boom!" "Boom!"

A huge, deafening tremor thundered across the ice.

They were the heavy footsteps of some kind of monster.

Then, everyone saw it together.

From in front of the smoke-shrouded Tyrannosaurus,

a huge, monstrous figure emerged from the billowing smoke!