Void Manifestation!
Luo Tian seemed to merge into the void, his body turning semi-transparent.
Zephyr's iron fist passed through Luo Tian's intangible body as if it had struck empty air.
Zephyr's pupils widened in shock.
"Elementalization?!"
No, this wasn't elementalization. Even if it were, his Haki-coated iron fist should still have been able to hurt Luo Tian.
With Luo Tian holding Zephyr up, Golden Lion Shiki charged toward the Treasure Ship.
"Gyahahaha... The Heavenly Tribute is mine!" Shiki roared with laughter, swinging Kogarashi and Oto with abandon. Golden slashes poured down like a torrential rain.
The Navy soldiers on deck could only curse and scramble to dodge. The cannons they fired in retaliation all missed, their attacks anticipated by Shiki's Observation Haki.
Greed and fervor gleamed in Shiki's eyes.
All he had to do was touch the hull, and the entire Treasure Ship would break free of gravity and rise ten thousand meters into the sky.
Then, no matter how many tricks or schemes the Navy had, all they could do was stare up at the sky in despair!
Ten meters, five meters, three meters...
The distance closed rapidly.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch the hull—
Inside the ship, in the darkness of the hold,
a fist moved.
No windup, no warning, not even a trace of killing intent.
The fist shot out of the shadows, utterly unremarkable.
But the Armament Haki coating its surface was so black it seemed to devour all light.
Shiki's Observation Haki blared its warning only in the final tenth of a second!
Danger! Danger! Danger!
He tried to retreat, but his forward momentum was too strong.
He tried to block, but his arms were still outstretched.
"BAM!!!"
The fist slammed squarely into the left side of Shiki's face.
"Cough—ptooey!!!"
Shiki shot backward like a cannonball, not in a straight line but tumbling and spinning, carving a deep furrow a hundred meters long across the sea.
He barely steadied himself before he hit the water, using the Float-Float Fruit's power to force his body to stop.
But the left side of his face had already swollen purple-black. His cheekbone was visibly caved in, and blood from the corner of his mouth mingled with fragments of broken teeth.
"Cough... Which bastard...?!"
Shiki's fury erupted in his chest, nearly burning his reason to ashes.
But when he saw the figure calmly stepping out of the Treasure Ship's hatch—
Shiki's pupils contracted to pinpoints.
"G... Garp?!"
"What the hell are you doing here, you mad dog?!"
According to the intelligence gathered by the Rocks Pirates, the Navy's highest-ranking officers openly assigned to escort the Heavenly Tribute fleet were only Buddha Sengoku and Black Arm Zephyr!
Iron Fist Garp was supposed to be with another group escorting Heavenly Tribute!
"Yo, Shiki. Long time no see."
Garp picked his nose as he hopped onto the ship's rail, baring a grin full of white teeth.
"You want the Heavenly Tribute? In your dreams—"
Garp's smile suddenly vanished, and his gaze sharpened like a blade.
"Not one of you Rocks Pirates is getting away today!"
Shiki's expression darkened.
They'd been tricked.
Completely and utterly tricked.
The Navy had laid a double trap from the very beginning—no, a triple trap!
On the surface, Sengoku and Zephyr led the main fleet in a direct assault, drawing the Rocks Pirates' full attention.
In secret, Garp, a god of slaughter, had hidden aboard the Treasure Ship to lie in wait.
Elsewhere, as Luo Tian clashed fiercely with Zephyr, his Spatial Perception suddenly sensed danger!
It wasn't coming from Zephyr in front of him, but from behind and to his side, in the shadows of an escort warship thirty meters away, its hull riddled with holes from cannon fire.
A figure shot through a shattered porthole like a phantom.
The figure held both hands out, and a transparent, stream-like substance formed in the air.
It spread rapidly like a spiderweb, its target—Luo Tian's back!
Luo Tian's gaze sharpened. Without looking back, he pressed his left hand into the air—
"Void Barrier!"
In the next instant, a huge, semi-transparent spatial barrier appeared behind Luo Tian, deflecting the oncoming stream of liquid and shattering it!
Then Luo Tian used Space Leap to teleport to safety, shifted his position, and looked coldly at his assailant.
She was a female Navy Vice Admiral, composed and efficient to the utmost degree.
"By the looks of it, you must be Marine Vice Admiral Tsuru." A complex, inscrutable smile tugged at Luo Tian's lips.
"What a clever plan. Garp hid aboard the Treasure Ship to ambush and wound Shiki.
And you hid aboard a warship, planning to ambush me?!"
His gaze swept over Zephyr and Tsuru standing side by side, then settled on the figure in the dog-eared hat aboard the distant Treasure Ship. His smile deepened.
"But—did you bring too few people?"
Zephyr and Tsuru both furrowed their brows at his words.
"What do you mean?" Zephyr demanded.
Luo Tian didn't answer. He merely turned his head toward the Rocks Pirates' flagship.
At the front of the deck, the figure draped in a black cloak still stood with arms folded.
"Hmph!"
Zephyr forcibly suppressed his unease and laughed in anger.
"You insolent brat! Today will be the day the Rocks Pirates are destroyed! Garp is here. You have no chance of winning!"
Garp was the strongest of the four of them!
"Tsuru, let's bring him down together!"
Tsuru nodded lightly, and transparent ripples shimmered across her hands once more.
This time, moisture gathered in the air ten times faster!
It wasn't naturally condensing. Her Devil Fruit power was forcibly "washing" it out, then restructuring and controlling it!
The humidity within a hundred meters plummeted. Every trace of moisture was being sucked out and gathered into an ever-growing transparent sphere of water in her palms.
The sphere looked clear, but it radiated an aura of danger that set Luo Tian's Observation Haki screaming.
It was said that the Wash-Wash Fruit could not only wash away the evil in people, but also wash away their strength, leaving them unable to move freely.
Wash-Wash Fruit: Secret Technique—
"Purification: Sea Burial!"
Tsuru's voice was as calm as a still well as she slowly thrust out her hands.
The sphere of water burst silently, turning into a transparent, colossal wave that blotted out the sky and swallowed the entire space where Luo Tian stood.
At almost the same moment—
Zephyr moved.
"Black Arm: Meteor!"
He sprinted forward, his right fist clad in Armament Haki Hardening to the utmost. Black-purple light tore through the air, leaving a trail of vacuum in its wake.
Luo Tian hovered in midair and slowly raised his right hand, fingers spread slightly. He spoke softly:
"Shinra—Tensei!"
Hum—
An invisible field of Repulsion expanded instantly from him, spreading like a barrier.
The air compressed into visible, ring-shaped ripples and collided with the transparent wave.
The wave exploded outward in every direction as if it had slammed into an impenetrable wall!
At the same time, Luo Tian clenched his left hand into a fist.
Web-like white markings appeared across its surface. He calmly punched toward the oncoming Zephyr.
Crack, craack—
Space groaned under the strain.
Cracks spread forward from the fist.
Web-like white fissures branched through the air, as though the world itself had become a shattered mirror.
"Air Quake: World Collapse!"
A concussive shock wave erupted!
The shock wave collided with Zephyr's Black Arm punch—
BOOM!!!
A circular shock wave burst outward...
Before you continue