Thump! Thump!
A powerful heartbeat sounded faintly in their ears.
Whitebeard stared gravely into the Abyss. He could clearly sense Mobius's presence, feeble at first but growing steadily stronger.
Black Tendons shot out of the Abyss, hooking into the ground like barbs.
They pulled taut, hauling Mobius up from where he lay deep underground.
Mobius had taken three consecutive blows from Whitebeard, leaving his entire body limp and pliant as mud.
His eyes were tightly shut. If not for the Black Tendons still moving, anyone might have thought he was dead.
The heartbeat was coming from Mobius.
Whoosh!
Mobius's eyes snapped open, revealing cold, dark green snake pupils.
Crack, crack, crack!
Mobius shifted his body slightly, setting off a string of sharp cracks.
Terrifying vitality surged back to life within him.
Severed sinews rejoined, damaged tissue rapidly healed, and even broken bones knitted together under the work of the Black Tendons.
Then, strangely, a layer of skin began to slough off Mobius.
Two Black Tendons tore through the shed skin from within, splitting it down the middle.
The skin Mobius had shed fell away in two halves.
The figure revealed beneath it made everyone's pupils contract.
In that short span of time, Mobius seemed reborn. Every visible injury on his body had healed.
At the same time, his appearance had undergone a strange change.
A layer of eerie dark green Snake Scales covered his upper body, forehead, the sides of his face, neck, shoulders, and chest.
"I almost died there, Whitebeard."
Mobius rolled his neck and fixed an intense gaze on Whitebeard.
None of those three blows had been easy to take.
The first two in particular had directly threatened his life.
But it hadn't been enough. He was still alive.
His control over his body through the Tendon-Tendon Fruit