The Sword Attendant Meets Teach / The Bounty Posters, Sea Circle Calendar Year 1494

During the coup, something unexpected happened. A Giant Beast broke into the Holy Land guarded by the D. Clan, where an enormous, strange tree grew.

It bore all kinds of fruit: some looked like apples, others like pineapples, cantaloupes, or avocados. Every variety seemed to be there.

Their colors varied too, but every fruit had one thing in common: the same swirling patterns.

These were the Devil Fruits that would later spread across the seas.

The Giant Beast devoured many members of the D. Clan who had mastered special abilities and took those powers for itself. Growing ever more vicious, it rampaged through the battles that followed and nearly wiped out the clan's leaders.

Heaven and Earth Consciousness intervened. But after absorbing those abilities, the Giant Beast had grown immensely powerful. Even when the laws of the world obliterated its body, its consciousness had become almost indestructible.

With no other choice, Heaven and Earth Consciousness imprisoned it, intending to wear it down over a long stretch of time.

Afterward, the ancestors of the Celestial Dragons led the coup. They discovered what the Sacred Tree's fruit could do, divided its Devil Fruits among themselves, and made a pact with the participating nations.

Dongze had traveled back to the eve of the Giant Beast's battle with World Consciousness.

That battle shook heaven and earth. Facing World Consciousness alone would have been an even match for him. Add a Giant Beast of unknown origin and terrifying strength, though, and he was badly outmatched.

Fortunately, the two had their own agendas. Neither attacked alongside the other; each hoped to profit from the other's fight. Dongze seized the opening, used his Swordsmanship Divine Ability to destroy the Giant Beast, gravely wounded World Consciousness, and escaped covered in wounds.

But the battle had nearly ruined him.