The Weapon of First Nika

Chen Ye hovered three thousand meters above the ground.

The dark-gold aura at his fingertips solidified.

He stared at the saber at the edge of the ice plain.

Thin ice cracked across the scabbard.

In another breath,

the saber would be in Luffy's hands.

Luffy lacked a weapon.

He happened to have one.

A chess player did not touch the pieces.

A spectator did not interfere with the game.

He had followed that rule for many years.

But Luffy was close to his limit.

The Codex Sword had firmly stopped his attacks half a step short.

None of his punches could reach Imu's face.

At this rate, Luffy's white flames would eventually be exhausted.

The dark-gold aura spread from Chen Ye's fingertips to his entire right arm.

Observation Haki locked onto the saber's location.

With a single thought, the saber would tear through the air.

The thought had only just taken shape

when a tremor passed through the air.

It did not come from the battlefield.

Nor did it come from the ice.

The tremor was exceedingly faint, yet it pierced the entire world.

The movement of Chen Ye's fingers stopped.

The dark-gold aura abruptly froze at its peak.

His Observation Haki caught the source of the tremor.

The World Tree.

Chen Ye whipped his head around.

His gaze passed through the snowstorm, through the rain clouds, through three thousand meters of empty air, and landed on the enormous tree in the distance that pierced the heavens and earth.

The World Tree towered into the clouds, its roots burrowing into the seabed and its crown vanishing above the clouds.

That tree had stood in Elbaf for countless tens of thousands of years.

At this moment, it was trembling.

But it was not the tree that was trembling.

It was the