The Power to Counter Imu!

Chen Ye hovered in the air with his eyes closed.

His Observation Haki pushed against the terrifying pressure and forced its way into the white pillar of light.

The instant his senses touched its core,

Chen Ye's eyes snapped open.

For the first time, an expression crossed his perpetually impassive face.

His pupils shrank to pinpoints.

His jaw tightened like a drawn bowstring.

Even his hovering body swayed slightly.

A gale whipped his dark-gold robes, making them snap in the wind.

It had been a long time since he had looked like this.

Since entering the forbidden zone, neither Loki's counterattack nor the depths of Imu's power had shaken him.

Everything had been under his control.

But that pure white light shattered his composure.

His mind raced.

Every image of Luffy in Nika Form flashed through his memory.

Energy wavelength.

Density of his aura.

He compared every measurement with what stood before him.

The result chilled his fingertips.

It was different.

Completely different.

This time, Nika's power was purer than ever before. It held not a trace of impurity, as though the fiercest fire in the world had tempered it again and again.

Its magnitude had undergone a qualitative change.

The sheer force of it was suffocating.

This was no longer the raw release of a boy whose bloodline had just awakened.

It was like a beast that had slept for eight hundred years.

It had broken its chains.

It was fully awake.

Standing where sea met sky, it roared at the world and announced its arrival.

What made Chen Ye's scalp prickle most was the core of that power.

At the very center of the dazzling white light, something deeper stirred.

He drove his Observation Haki to its limit, yet he could not decipher it.

That fluctuation did not