The ceaseless sea mist, like a gray-white python, coiled tightly around Wano Country's winding, treacherous coastline.
The Dawn Ark's enormous, streamlined hull traced an elegant, silent arc across the sea in a way that almost defied physics, deftly avoiding the menacing reefs beneath the surface. Tashigi gripped the helm, fine beads of sweat forming at her temples. Before her was not a traditional compass, but a composite navigation instrument combining Sky Island Dial technology with Fish-Man Island crystal projections, its screen streaming dense torrents of data.
"Thirty-seven degrees to starboard! Sudden change in current speed, level-four undertow!" the navigator-an experienced merfolk from Fish-Man Island-reported urgently.
Tashigi turned her wrist slightly, and the massive Ark slipped sideways as lightly as a hunting shark. The faint force field covering its hull, formed from the residual heat of the Genesis Flame, silently vaporized the waves crashing toward it.
Lin Yan stood beneath the figurehead-a statue of a firebird spreading its wings to take flight-with his arms folded across his chest. His black captain's coat with gold patterns did not stir in the sea breeze. His gaze pierced the thick mist, as though measuring the "thickness" of this deliberately forgotten land.
"The currents have been distorted by permanent terrain and climate spells," Nico Robin said beside him. Holding an ancient parchment sea chart, she tapped it lightly with a fingertip. "They aren't entirely natural. Based on information cross-checked between ancient texts from Alabasta's royal family and records concerning Sky Island's Golden Bell, this blockade was very likely established when the Isolation Edict was issued eight hundred years ago, jointly by the Kozuki Clan's ancestral 'stonemasons' and ability users who wielded the forces of nature at the time."
"To conceal, and to isolate." Lin Yan's voice was calm. "To conceal the Poneglyphs and shut out