This Road Is Blocked

Miming ignored their stares, rushed into the palaces along the way, and devoured everything in sight. After wiping his mouth, he continued running toward the sea.

Cairns had ordered a huge tableful of food prepared in advance—a standard Celestial Dragon banquet, enough for twenty people. In the past, they would have taken only a bite or two from each dish, but this time Miming wolfed everything down and cleared the entire table.

The passing Celestial Dragons stared wide-eyed. What a vulgar way to eat!

"Put your bubble helmets on, now!" Every Celestial Dragon feared for their safety. Perhaps Saint Miming had become like this because his bubble helmet had broken when he descended to the lower world, and he had come into close contact with Marines during the rescue? This was madness! An infectious disease—it had to be an infectious disease!

Miming ran all the way toward the sea. At the final platform, the Marines had built an extremely imposing base, with bunkers and artillery emplacements everywhere. The port five miles away was the gateway to the West Blue. Each of the four sky-reaching roads leading down from the holy land was guarded by such a Marine base, along with an enormous port capable of accommodating fleets from the Four Blues.

Standing at the edge of a hundred-meter cliff, Miming looked up and found that the sky had been split in two. One half was cloudy, while the other had none. The cloudless side stretched beneath a perfectly clear sky, without the faintest wisp of cloud, and even the sea below was as calm as a mirror. The cloudy side had poor weather, looking as though a storm was about to break, with wind and clouds churning in vicious turmoil. The contrast was so stark that it seemed as if a blade reaching from heaven to earth had cleaved the sky in half.

"The Calm Belt is fifty nautical miles that way." Seeing Miming's interest, Cairns hurried to offer his knowledge. "Mary Geoise is the center of the world. There is a Calm Belt on each side of it, each about five percent of a latitude wide—roughly eight hundred kilometers. The Grand Line lies between the two Calm Belts, while the Four Blues lie beyond them."

"The Vasa Port leading to the West Blue is close to the Calm Belt, which is why we can see such a strange sight here."

But Miming was thinking about something else entirely.

Mary Geoise was an unimaginably vast place. The residential and defensive zones outside Pangaea Castle alone were more than two hundred kilometers wide. The wilderness forest surrounding Mary Geoise was as wide as the Grand Line itself, meaning it spanned nearly two thousand kilometers. With the Calm Belts on both sides, one had to cross one to reach the Four Blues.

In other words, if someone wanted to free a slave in Mary Geoise, they would have to set fires throughout a gigantic capital spanning over ten thousand square kilometers. Then, after unlocking their shackles, the slaves would need to run dozens of kilometers to leave the residential zone, another thousand kilometers to leave the forest, and another eight hundred kilometers to cross the Calm Belt... Along the way, they would need to scale walls even giants could not climb, slaughter their way through countless Marine bases, and finally reach a port. For the overwhelming majority of slaves, only by reaching the Four Blues could they return home.

Impossible! This route would not work!

Miming reached that conclusion almost immediately. Even if they were given a hundred carriages, escaping this holy land of Mary Geoise would still be impossible!

The mighty Fish-Man hero Fisher Tiger could climb an eight-thousand-meter cliff with his bare hands, but ordinary people could not! Simply smashing their cages and letting them escape on their own was utterly impossible—!

And what about the slave collars? They would explode once the slaves left the holy land. They would also explode if forcibly removed! They would blow a person's neck clean off. To escape, they had to remove the slave collars first.

A bolt of thunder crashed down, and raindrops as large as beans fell from the sky. The sea began to churn and howl as well. Yet Miming's heart was in even greater turmoil. What he had known in his previous life had only been stories, but the reality before him was bloody and brutal. Reality was not only heavy—it could also change!

But this future had to become reality. Because if Boa Hancock could not escape during the slave liberation incident started by Fisher Tiger, she would never become the Pirate Empress. She would remain a slave forever!

What should he do? Secretly send the three sisters away, or wait and see until Fisher Tiger escaped?

Under Cairns's astonished gaze, Miming leapt from the cliff and plunged into the raging sea!

For an ordinary person who had yet to master even a single move, this was far too dangerous! Worse still, as a Devil Fruit user, Cairns could not jump into the sea to save him!

But Cairns immediately calmed down. He could sense that Miming's heart had been unsettled, yet as Miming struggled amid the crashing waves, it gradually became calm.

A huge wave struck, dragging Miming beneath the sea, but Cairns did not panic. This was his ability. As a Dog-Dog Fruit user, he could sense his master's emotions and even every change in his body. Miming sank into the sea, but he did not struggle or lose consciousness. He had deliberately chosen to do this. As he sank deeper, the rolling waves gradually calmed. Miming floated in the water, and as his mood settled, the energy within his body began to slowly merge together.

Cairns did not know the exact details of the Empowerment Ritual, but he knew Miming had a great deal of energy in his body. He had to convert that energy into his own bodily functions before he could possess that strength forever.

No one knew how much time passed before a gigantic Sea King appeared nearby, perhaps merely by chance. But Cairns, who had remained on guard atop the cliff, roared and chopped the crown off a great tree with one palm. Using it as a sharp spear, he hurled it down with all his strength! The trunk streaked through the air like a cannonball, sparks flaring from its passage. With a soft hiss, it pierced the sea and struck its target with perfect accuracy. The Sea King, dozens of meters long, swam through the water without even knowing what had happened before its skull was pierced through!

Miming, immersed in his own world, was jolted awake. He opened his eyes in the pitch-black water, then immediately felt suffocated. He swam desperately toward the surface and gulped down fresh air.

At some point, the storm had dispersed, and the sea on the West Blue side was beneath clear skies as well.

Miming finally felt exhausted and swam toward shore. Cairns leapt down from the cliff, stepped through the air several times as if climbing invisible stairs, then crossed the distance in a few strides and landed on a reef ahead. He dragged Miming out of the sea.

"Congratulations, Saint Miming!" Cairns could sense that the volcanic energy raging within Miming's body had finally settled.

"Cairns, how long has it been?" Miming asked, gasping for breath.

"Five days," Cairns said.

Miming was startled. He had stayed underwater for five days without coming up for air?

Life Return was this powerful. As long as there was strength left in the body, energy could be directly converted into whatever the body required. It could mobilize every cell in the body and directly absorb energy.

The problem now was that the energy injected by the Twelve Gods during the Empowerment Ritual had been exhausted, while the strength this body could produce remained pitifully weak.

Looking at Cairns's slightly reddened eyes, Miming suddenly realized that since they had left Pangaea Castle, this dedicated agent had watched over him without taking his eyes off him for even a moment.