"Impersonating? The real Captain John..."
"Yes, I am the real Captain John!"
Yunlai admitted it, while Sig... stared at his slightly balding topknot, a feature typical of Wano Country —I've never heard that Captain John is from Wano Country.
Understanding Sig's gaze, Yunlai grew even angrier. "That's what that bastard looks like!"
"Hmm?" Sig looked puzzled at the opportune moment.
After calming down a bit, Yunlai said, "Actually... I'm a user of the Time-Time Fruit. You probably don't know about the Time-Time Fruit's abilities..."
"That kind of fruit that allows you to travel backward in time?" Sig interrupted abruptly.
Yunlai somewhat surprised, but still said, "That's right, but the time travel ability of the Time-Time Fruit has limitations not only in preventing one from going back to the past, but also... well, it's not really a limitation of the Time-Time Fruit. No two fruits can exist at the same time, you know that, right?"
Sig nodded naturally upon hearing this.
"At the same time, Devil Fruit can regenerate. In any era, a fruit either already has a user or is waiting to be discovered in its fruit form... You understand, right?"
Yunlai finished speaking, Sig had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to say, and Sig certainly understood—he even knew that this was because the will of the Devil would not perish with the death of the ability user.
"Then this involves a point: after the Time-Time Fruit's power is activated, the user 'disappears' from the existing time dimension and travels to the future. So, will the Devil Fruit regenerate at this time? If it does, after the Time-Time Fruit user travels back and 'lands,' will they be the same as the already regenerated fruit?" Yunlai guided Sig to understand what he was about to say.
Sig was taken aback—he hadn't thought about it this way before. After all, the Uniqueness of Devil Fruit must be due to the Devil within it, right?
So...
As long as the Devil within the fruit remains residing within the user and travels through time alongside them, this paradox wouldn't exist, right?
However, Yunlai then said, "Actually... this is the biggest limitation of the Time-Time Fruit. It's almost impossible to choose the time after traveling! Because only if the 'previous' user who existed here activates the fruit and disappears in this time dimension can one travel to 'here'!"
Sig looked thoughtful—this was somewhat different from what he had imagined. In other words... from the Devil's perspective, the Time-Traveling Devil hadn't actually traveled through time. He simply "kicked the ability user into the river of time" the moment they activated their power, and then casually "fished one out" to possess them?
At the same time, Sig naturally thought of another user of the Time-Time Fruit from the original work— Oden's Wife!
She was Kozuki Oden's wife, a user of the Time-Time Fruit from eight hundred years ago...
Before his time travel, Sig didn't know much about her, but after he traveled through time, Shanks told him about her, and combined with the story of Kozuki Oden, he could roughly piece together the timeline.
In other words...
Eighteen years ago, Captain John was cornered by the navy in the West Blue. In desperation, he activated the Time-Time Fruit's power and began to travel through the river of time.
Meanwhile, Kozuki Toki appears in Wano Country, having traversed eight hundred years of time.
Over the next ten years, Kozuki Toki and Kozuki Oden sailed together, married, and had two children...
After Kozuki Oden's death, Oden's Wife seemed to have seen something in the river of time, leaving behind a prophecy that someone would save Wano Country twenty years later. After that, she set herself on fire and sent her son Momonosuke and several samurai she considered loyal to her to the future!
In the Oden's Wife died, Captain John set sail again and Yunlai appeared on Angel Island. So Sig originally thought that Yunlai was the Wano Country swordsman who stood up to fight Kaido after Kozuki Oden's death.
Now it seems...
That's not the case!
Yunlai, or rather "the real Captain John," was unaware of Oden's Wife's situation, but he had some guesses about his own circumstances.
"Generally speaking, users of the Time-Time Fruit are very difficult to kill if they don't want to die. However, I suspect... the previous user of the Time-Time Fruit may have given up the opportunity to escape death by traveling through time, which is why my time travel has encountered some problems..."
At this point, Yunlai was mainly guessing. When he reappeared, he had not only lost his Devil Fruit ability, but also his memories!
A year later, he could even swim again— Ritasha had mentioned on the Sky Island that her father could swim...
Not long ago, Yunlai regained his memory.
According to his own speculation, the suicide of the previous generation's ability user caused a disruption in the transmission of the Time-Time Fruit's power.
On one hand, he emerged from the river of time; on the other hand, another timely Time-Time Fruit appeared.
Sig suspected that the Devil had made a mistake, only realizing afterward that a fruit had already been regenerated, and that he should possess the fruit...
Therefore, when Yunlai, he lost his abilities and memories, and now he recalls that he appeared in Wano Country, not the Flower Country in the West Blue.
When Yunlai first appeared in Wano Country, his fighting power had greatly declined due to amnesia. Although he still possessed a powerful body and fighting instincts, and ordinary people were no match for him, he was certainly no match for true masters. More importantly, his vigilance had been greatly reduced.
Combining what Yunlai said, along with Sig's understanding of the situation in Wano Country over the past few years and his knowledge of the original work before his transmigration, he roughly pieced together the truth—and judging from the feedback from the White Tower Path, he had basically "pieced it together" correctly this time.
At that time, another Devil Fruit ability died in Wano Country, namely Kurozumi Semimaru —the former Devil Fruit ability!
Because Kurozumi Semimaru used the Copy-Copy Fruit to transform into Momonosuke during Kaido Kozuki Oden, tricking Oden and causing his defeat, Kaido inexplicably adopted a "gentlemanly" persona Kaido and killed Kurozumi Semimaru...
Although Kurozumi Orochi was indignant about this, he dared not defy his backer. However... he secretly retrieved the fruit of Kurozumi Semimaru — Kurozumi Semimaru had told Orochi what the fruit she ate looked like!
And they were lucky; the Kurozumi Family successfully recovered the fruit. However, after discovering that the Kurozumi Family members had eaten the fruit, they encountered another "temptation."
The ability of the Copy-Copy Fruit isn't limited to imitating faces; it can also imitate bodies.
While it's impossible to imitate Devil Fruit abilities, nor Haki (meaning Haki), and even weakening one's Haki while attempting to imitate due to the mismatch between body and will, how could a low-level player, seeing an opportunity to easily acquire a powerful opponent, possibly resist seizing it?
The Kurozumi clan member who inherited the Copy-Copy Fruit drugged and assassinated the amnesiac Captain John, Record his face, and used another power of the Copy-Copy Fruit to "transform" his own face... and his entire body, into John's.
Later, under the guise of Captain John, he secretly defected to Kaido on certain conditions and imprisoned the real "Captain John" before setting sail.
The reason Yunlai still alive is likely because the Copy-Copy Fruit's power has similar limitations to the Shadow-Shadow Fruit; if the person being "copied" dies, he will also lose the copied body...