Ice Age

On the boundless sea, a colossal warship over a thousand meters long rode the wind and waves at breakneck speed.

The broad deck was now packed with prisoners in black-and-white uniforms.

They crowded together, constantly looking around.

Most of them had confusion and unease in their eyes.

This time, Bullet had brought more than six thousand prisoners out of Impel Down.

Around four hundred of them were vicious criminals from Infinite Hell.

Originally, that number should have exceeded six hundred.

More than a hundred had died in the battle against Magellan.

Most of the remaining prisoners were ordinary pirates and criminals who had committed serious offenses.

Bullet had already ordered Shiryu and the others to release all the prisoners held in the cells.

He would lead this group into Marine Headquarters and become a third force capable of influencing the situation.

However, in Bullet's eyes, fewer than twenty of them truly possessed formidable combat strength.

Although he had decided to formally establish his own pirate crew after this war at Marineford,

he certainly would not accept just anyone.

He would use the battle at Marineford to eliminate the vast majority of useless trash and select the elites among them.

"Everyone, hold on tight! A tsunami is coming!"

At the center of the Hell Battleship, Jinbe, who had climbed atop a towering pillar to observe their course, suddenly shouted down below.

"A tsunami? What is Boss Jinbe talking about?"

"How could a tsunami suddenly appear at a time like this?"

The prisoners heard Jinbe's warning, but none of them took it seriously.

Yet before long, everyone felt the ship beneath their feet begin to rock.

The sea churned violently, and enormous waves rolled across its surface.

Even a vessel as massive as the Hell Battleship appeared incomparably tiny before the vast ocean.

It was repeatedly hurled high into the air.

"Ahhh! Help! Help!"

Some unlucky men failed to react in time and were easily flung from the deck as the warship pitched violently, falling into the surging deep sea.

This stretch of ocean was like a carpet being violently flipped upward.

"Zehahaha! So this is the seaquake caused by Whitebeard. What awe-inspiring power!"

Among the crowd, Teach's eyes blazed with emotion as he secretly watched the figure standing immovably at the bow.

"I haven't completely lost my chance to seize the Tremor-Tremor Fruit!"

"Just you wait, Devil's Heir!"

At the bow, Bullet felt the Hell Battleship's speed continuously increasing under the force of the tsunami.

His foot gave a slight stomp.

The power of the Combine-Combine Fruit flowed from the deck deep into the vessel's interior.

Silently, unnoticed by anyone, a section of the colossal thousand-meter warship was separated from its middle and downward.

The lower section of the hull transformed into an endless torrent of purple, contracting and gathering into a gigantic sphere that plunged straight into the depths of the sea.

Inside the sphere were the imprisoned Magellan, Luffy, and the others.

The space inside was not large, and the oxygen within could only sustain them for half a day.

If Bullet did not return in time,

then Magellan, Luffy, and the others would suffocate alive inside that airtight spherical prison.

Rumble!

The towering waves surged and roared, carrying the enormous Hell Battleship as it howled toward the hazy silhouette of an island visible in the distance.

Marine Headquarters, Marineford.

In the vast plaza, dense ranks of elite Marines raised their heads.

Reflected in their eyes were towering waves rising higher and higher, like two enormous mountains on the verge of collapse.

Anyone standing before those waves that blotted out the sky would feel utterly insignificant.

"Gurararara! Marine brats, this is my greeting gift to you."

Whitebeard's booming laughter rang out from the deck of the Moby Dick.

"Wooo! Pops is invincible! Wipe out the Marines!"

"Destroy Marine Headquarters! Save Ace!"

In an instant,

the tens of thousands of pirates from the Whitebeard Pirates erupted into earth-shaking cheers.

Their morale instantly surged to its peak.

"Fufufufu, so this is the power of the world's strongest man. He really does whatever he wants."

Doflamingo burst into laughter.

"Ah, what a grand gift."

Below the execution platform, the lean Aokiji exhaled and rose to his feet.

Whoosh!

A burst of snowy ice crystals exploded where he stood, and his figure vanished in an instant.

Hundreds of meters in the air, amid the towering waves crashing down with a thunderous roar, Aokiji suddenly spread his arms and fired two slender streams of ice crystals at the waves pressing in from both sides.

"Ice Age!!"

In an instant,

a raging current of extreme cold poured wildly from his hands toward both sides.

Crack crack crack!

Starting from the very tops of the waves, vast sheets of thick ice began spreading at an astonishing speed.

In merely four or five seconds,

the wave crests, hundreds of meters high and resembling two mountain peaks, became two motionless snow-white icebergs.

The pirates' cheers on the sea came to an abrupt halt.

The temperature in the air plummeted rapidly.

"I can't let you destroy this island so easily, Whitebeard."

Aokiji plummeted at high speed, while two coldly gleaming spears formed in his hands and shot toward Whitebeard.

"Ice Block: Pheasant Beak!"

"Annoying ice brat."

Whitebeard grinned, bent his right arm, and threw a fist through the air!

Crack crack!

Clearly visible fractures suddenly appeared in the air.

The two ice spears shot forward but were blocked by the ruptured atmosphere.

Boom!!

A surging shockwave blasted forth, crushing upward through the air.

"Ah..."

Aokiji let out a sigh as the roaring shockwave crushed through him, and his body exploded in midair into countless shards of ice.

Strands of snowy ice crystals fell from the sky and landed on the sea before the Moby Dick.

White frost mist rose in curling wisps as ice rapidly piled up on the surface, swiftly outlining Aokiji's crouching figure.

Crackkkkk!

In an instant, centered on where Aokiji landed, the seawater froze rapidly into a thick layer of ice as hard as iron.

The ice spread wildly in every direction at an unimaginable speed.

In the blink of an eye, the entire sea within sight had become a vast glacial plain.

Whether the ships of the Whitebeard Pirates or the Marine warships, all of them were sealed within thick ice and unable to move!

At that moment, even the air seemed to fall silent.

Both sides revealed intense shock.

This was the highest combat power of Marine Headquarters, Admiral Aokiji.

Freezing the sea with his power alone!

After the brief silence, countless Marines in the plaza of Marine Headquarters immediately erupted into fervent cheers.

"Admiral Aokiji! We have invincible Marine Admirals!"

"The tsunami Whitebeard created has been stopped by the Admiral!"

On the execution platform, Sengoku's taut nerves finally relaxed.

Listening to the countless Marines cheering around him, Sengoku thought that morale was high.

He immediately picked up the Transponder Snail.

"All forces, attack! Destroy the Whitebeard Pirates!!"