Unexpected Gain

After searching the Sea of Flowing Clouds carefully for over a week, Wang Gao finally found traces of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit on the afternoon of the eighth day.

Inside an ancient, dilapidated sailing ship, Wang Gao opened a Shadow Tunnel and appeared within one of its cargo holds.

He glanced at the hold's furnishings. Though they had deteriorated severely, the dry high-altitude environment seemed to have preserved them relatively well.

This was a food storage hold. The food inside had long since turned into blackened scraps, leaving only a purple Hami Melon covered in lightning patterns.

Wang Gao picked up the fruit and sensed it with Observation Haki, confirming that this Devil Fruit was the Rumble-Rumble Fruit he had been looking for.

However, after taking the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, he did not leave. Instead, he opened a Shadow Tunnel and entered the captain's quarters.

Only two mummified corpses remained inside. One had a Western-style longsword stabbed into its body, while the other had been shot between the brows. There had clearly been some sort of internal conflict back then.

Thanks to the dry high-altitude environment, many things in the captain's quarters had been preserved relatively intact, such as the navigation log and a rock kept inside a specially made Glass Bottle.

He picked up the Glass Bottle. Inside was a pebble-shaped rock, and Wang Gao revealed a hint of surprise. "It's actually Dyna Stone..."

The reason he was so certain was that this peculiar mineral contained immense energy. Once exposed to air, it reacted with oxygen and produced a violent explosion.

Not only was this substance extremely scarce, but it was also tightly controlled by the World Government.

Even Lucifer would have found it difficult to steal a sample without alerting the guards.

He had not expected to find a small piece of Dyna Stone here. After examining it for a moment, he understood its core composition.

It was a semi-stable form of Metallic Hydrogen, a crystal composed of thirty-six hydrogen atoms. In theory, its explosive power should reach forty-two times that of TNT.

Although it could not come into contact with oxygen, that did not matter. Wang Gao had plenty of ways to make use of this Dyna Stone.

Since Dyna Stone was not formed from neutron particles but from ordinary hydrogen atoms, Mammon's Crystal Mecha could produce it.

Of course, Mammon's Crystal Mecha was not incapable of creating crystals from neutron particles. It simply required an enormous amount of energy. It would likely only be possible to produce them quickly once the ability had fully awakened.

Although this piece of Dyna Stone was not very pure, Wang Gao had already obtained its molecular structure. Since it was a crystalline substance, the Human Reform League would soon be able to equip Metallic Hydrogen weapons.

Having gained this unexpected windfall, Wang Gao casually flipped through the remaining books in the captain's quarters.

He soon learned about the ship's history.

The ship was called the Courage, and it had belonged to the Courage Pirates. The pirate crew had existed 262 years ago and discovered an ancient ruin on an uninhabited island in Paradise, where they found five pieces of Dyna Stone.

After testing the power of one piece of Dyna Stone, the terrifying might of the weapon made the Courage Pirates swell with confidence.

Next, they used Dyna Stone to destroy an island before launching a spree of plundering.

Such high-profile suicidal behavior naturally drew the Navy's attention. An Admiral personally pursued them, and the Courage Pirates had to use two pieces of Dyna Stone just to barely escape.

Afterward, they accidentally entered an Upward Sea Current, and the entire ship was swept up to the White White Sea. Unfortunately, their luck was terrible, and they arrived in the uninhabited Sea of Flowing Clouds.

Furthermore, the pirate crew had suffered devastating casualties during the Navy's encirclement, their ship was badly damaged, and their food stores were extremely limited. In order to survive, they began killing one another, and in the end, they all died here.

Wang Gao had no interest in their infighting. Instead, he developed a hint of interest in the uninhabited island where the ruins were located.

After taking the Rumble-Rumble Fruit and the valuable items aboard the ship, he had the airship return to Birka while he brought Asmodeus into the Shadow World.

The location of that uninhabited island had already been found on the world map collected by Lucifer. He immediately opened a Shadow Tunnel.

He appeared on an uninhabited island. Night had already fallen, and he scanned the island with Observation Haki.

The island was not large, only about thirty-seven square kilometers.

It was an island with no magnetic field. On the Grand Line, that also meant very few Ships passed through this place.

The pitch-black night did not hinder Wang Gao's movements. He came to the western part of the island, where the ground was covered with vine-choked ruins and Trees.

Judging from the scale of the ruins, this should once have been a rather prosperous city. Quite a few Buildings still retained murals and writing.

Asmodeus released a Large Area of glowing fireflies, greatly reducing the eerie atmosphere of the ruins.

Wang Gao briefly examined the remaining murals and writing, then immediately understood the city's origins.

During the Void Century, one branch of the Moon People had established one of its settlement cities here. It was called Karite City, which meant "Land of Hope" in Moon Language.

The present-day uninhabited island was not actually the entirety of the original island. During the great war of the Void Century, Karite Island had been attacked by the Ancient Weapon—the Pluton Battleship. More than three-quarters of the island had been destroyed and sunk beneath the sea.

As for anything valuable here, it had long since been looted clean. The Dyna Stone discovered by the Courage Pirates had actually been found deep underground in the ruins, inside a hidden chamber.

However, Wang Gao had no interest in so-called treasure. He directly released a large number of Scout Fish to inspect the three-quarters of the island that had sunk beneath the sea.

The sunken portion was the true core of Karite Island.

At a depth of roughly 1,700 to 1,800 meters on the seabed west of the island, the Scout Fish discovered the ruins of the sunken Karite City.

After more than eight hundred years of change, the underwater ruins had become covered in coral reefs and Seaweed, while large numbers of marine creatures lived within them.

Having been struck by the Pluton Battleship's main cannon, Karite City had been devastated. Even the island's foundation had split into three pieces.

Wang Gao did not hold much hope that any Moon People items remained in the underwater ruins.

But soon, the Scout Fish found three familiar stone slabs amid one part of the ruins.

Wang Gao activated the Crystal Mecha's ability, and enormous vines dragged the three rocks up from the seabed.

On the seaside cliff on the island's western side, the vines placed the three Stones before him one after another. Moon Script was carved into the massive black stone slabs.

Each stone slab was 15.3 meters tall, 5.1 meters long, and 1.2 meters thick.

The slabs were covered in densely packed Moon Script. The Human Reform League had collected the writing and language of the Sky People, and after matching them against the database, they roughly translated the contents.

The first stone tablet recounted the history and culture of the Moon People, as well as the process by which Karite City was established.

The second stone tablet described how, through studying the stonemason clan among the Blue Sea People, they discovered the secrets of "Eternal Rock" and "Destruction Rock," along with the techniques for replicating them.

The third stone tablet depicted the massive war during the Void Century, as well as the rebellion of some Gene Modded Soldiers. A large area at the end of this tablet was left blank, clearly because it had suddenly come under attack from the Pluton Battleship and there had been no time to react.

Wang Gao quickly understood that the so-called "Eternal Rock" and "Destruction Rock" mentioned on the second tablet could basically be confirmed as the Poneglyphs made by the Kozuki Clan and Dyna Stone.

With regard to Dyna Stone, Mammon's Crystal Mecha meant there was basically No Need to worry about production.

As for the Eternal Rock used to carve Poneglyphs, although the Moon People of Karite City had not developed an identical version of Eternal Rock—

their imitation Eternal Rock was indeed somewhat valuable in terms of durability. It simply lacked the memory-metal-like properties, which made it somewhat less valuable.

Thank you for everyone's support (ω｀)