The bitter wind and snow tore through the vast clearing.
It was as though a killer whale with a mouth full of sharp teeth had swallowed the wind and snow whole.
A gunshot rang out. The bloodied pirate's face caved in as he was blasted backward, plowing a long furrow through the snow.
Conrad's frost-swollen fist smoked. Snow began drifting down again.
Thud!
The surrounding pirates rolled their eyes back in unison, then collapsed one after another.
Rosinante pulled the fishing spear from his feathered coat and scrambled up the snowy slope. He shook his head hard, his painted-on clown smile twitching. "Conqueror's Haki?"
The memories were familiar, but the presence was different.
Conrad turned around. His handsome face was veiled in dark lines, and his Haki had clearly gone to his head.
Two rows of white teeth showed as he seemed to want to say something, but all he did was bare them in a terrifyingly amiable smile.
"Thank you so much!" Rosinante carefully held the Op-Op Fruit in his arms and bowed, his right hand gripping the Lead Bullet Gun tucked inside his coat.
When he looked up again, Conrad's back was already disappearing down the mountain.
Rosinante breathed a sigh of relief, then hurried after him, heading down the mountain toward the west side of Ghost Town.
Thirteen-year-old Trafalgar Law, who was suffering from the terminal Amber Lead Syndrome, was waiting there for him.
They had left the Donquixote Family and spent nearly three years searching all over the North Blue for a doctor, but to no avail. Law was nearing the end of his life.
That was why Rosinante had taken such a desperate risk, robbing the Op-Op Fruit despite making enemies of the pirates, the Marines, and Doflamingo.
Not long after the two left,
Barrels was helped out of the burning building by his subordinates. Looking at the pirates sprawled across the snow, his bleeding forehead throbbing with bulging veins, he roared:
"Drake! Where the hell have you disappeared to, you useless idiot? You're never around when I need you! You're stronger than anyone, yet you're such a coward!"
"My injuries don't matter! Hurry! Get it back! The five billion... the Op-Op Fruit!"
"Yes, sir!" The pirate crew raised their torches and set off in pursuit, guns and knives in hand.
Dusk was falling, and the snowfall was growing heavier. The footprints left behind moments earlier were soon buried.
At the edge of Ghost Town, Conrad leaned against a stone wall and pulled his leg free from the snow. His steps were unusually heavy.
It seemed that his first outburst of Haki had been too much, leaving him exhausted from overexertion.
"Were you captured by pirates? Where's your home?" Rosinante caught up, took off his feathered coat, and draped it over Conrad's shoulders.
Conrad's face was flushed. He exhaled a large cloud of white breath and kept walking.
Rosinante reached out to touch his forehead, then stared wide-eyed and snatched his hand back as if he'd touched a boiling kettle. "You're burning up! You've got a high fever!"
He forced a strange smile. "I'll take you to the Marines."
Conrad remained silent and kept walking.
"Mr. Corazon, could he be deaf?" asked a boy wearing a snow-leopard-spotted fur hat, his skin covered in white mineral patterns.
"Possibly." Rosinante looked at him with sympathy. He was the Donquixote Family's second-in-command, codenamed Corazon, and had been pretending to be mute by using the Calm-Calm Fruit.
In truth, when he was eight, he had once been so frightened that he cried and ran away after witnessing Doflamingo shoot his own father and cut off his head.
He had then met Marine Admiral Sengoku, who adopted him. Rosinante became a Marine, and fourteen years later returned to the now-infamous Doflamingo Pirates as an undercover agent for the Marines.
But this time, he had stolen the Op-Op Fruit, which could perform the Perennial Youth Operation, to save Law. He could no longer return to the Marines.
Rosinante instructed him, "Law, go wait for me on the ship. I'll take him to the west shore, then come find you right away."
A Marine surveillance ship was anchored off the west shore. Rosinante needed to deliver his final intelligence report to the Marines. It contained the names of the powerful underworld figures who had traded with Doflamingo over the years, as well as the target of their next invasion.
Trafalgar Law stared at Conrad's back. His eyes were small, with the whites taking up almost their entire surface, giving him a sinister look.
Rosinante had told him that this boy had rescued him, allowing him to get the Op-Op Fruit. Then Law had stuffed it into his mouth, which meant the boy had saved his life too.
"Fine. Hurry back." He bundled his sweater tighter around himself and hurried around the bend.
Rosinante nodded, jogged in front of Conrad, and crouched down. He patted his back, then gave a strange grin. "Hop on."
Conrad couldn't understand him, but he could tell what he meant.
Before Conrad could refuse, Rosinante wrapped him in the black feathered coat and hoisted him onto his back.
Rosinante looked thin, but he was taller than two Conrads put together. Carrying a boy was no trouble at all, and he sprinted across the snow with his long legs.
"How long has he had a fever to be burning up like this...?"
Conrad blinked as he gazed into the endless snowfall.
He wasn't sick. He was thinking, trying to recall the events of this disaster.
People's brains inevitably grew hot when they thought.
When Zhang Sanfeng of Wudang taught the Taiji Sword, he had once said: Forget half of it, then forget most of it. Only when you've forgotten everything have you reached the highest level, where no moves defeat all moves.
Conrad was exceptionally gifted. He forgot things as soon as he saw them, yet every time he reviewed them, he learned something new.
But now, that supreme talent was holding him back. He couldn't remember the specific details of an anime he'd watched only five years ago.
"When will the Donquixote Family come ashore? Which direction is the Marine warship in? Who's leading the group again?"
Conrad's temples throbbed with pain and heat. His memories were hazy. He knew what he was trying to remember, but he just couldn't recall it.
Rosinante felt like he was carrying a furnace on his back and quickened his pace. "We're almost there. Just hold on a little longer. There's a doctor on the Marine ship. They'll definitely be able to cure you."
Bang!
Conrad shoved hard and tumbled off Rosinante's back into the snow, his face red as if it were about to drip blood.
"No way! These are my own memories. How could I not remember them?"
He laughed, then burst out laughing. This wouldn't defeat him.
His memories couldn't hide from his brain!
"I! Am the master of this body!" Conrad slapped the top of his head at the Baihui acupoint, driving his Haki into his brain. "Memory! I order you to come out!"
Boom!
Pitch-black. Blinding white. A constant ringing.
In an instant, his ears cleared and his vision sharpened. Conrad's focus turned inward. Countless images lined up in shelves and cubbyholes inside his mind, like a vast library.
The pages of One Piece flipped rapidly. The food he'd just eaten until he was stuffed was quickly broken down and absorbed, supplying blood to his brain.
The images became clearer, as if he were experiencing them firsthand. Every blade of grass and every tree, every word and every action—even the sounds—echoed through his mind.
Watching Conrad ramble, Rosinante grew anxious. The boy might have gone delirious from his fever.
He glanced toward the coastline at the foot of the mountain. The mast of the Marine surveillance ship had appeared behind the cliff.
Under the snow-covered tree canopies along the shore, he could just make out a Marine squad with guns on their backs and cloaks around their shoulders. They were climbing toward the island's interior, trudging along with binoculars raised.
Rosinante grabbed Conrad's wrist and tugged, but couldn't move him. Since they were so close, he decided he might as well deliver the intelligence report himself and have the Marines come rescue the boy.
But he hadn't gone far when a voice suddenly came from behind him, each word clear enough to cut through the howling wind.
"Don't go any farther. Come back."
Rosinante turned around in surprise. All the color had drained from Conrad's face, and his black eyes were as clear as mirrors.
"You can talk?"
"I can now." Conrad spun the fishing spear in his hand, raised it overhead, stepped forward, exhaled, and hurled it.
The spear cut through the wind and snow, passed Rosinante, and shot toward a mushroom-haired Marine wearing sunglasses in the squad climbing the slope.
Clang!
The impact rang out sharply.
The Marine with sunglasses didn't even change expression. He raised an arm with a matte metallic sheen and knocked the spear aside.
The spear snapped and flew off, piercing three Marines beside him before embedding itself in a thick tree trunk.
The three corpses stained the white snow red, their blood flowing together into a pool.
"Corazon? You can talk?"
Before you continue