Mary Geoise, the World Government's center of power, the Holy Land. Ordinarily, a nearly frozen solemnity and order filled this place. Magnificent halls, marble floors polished like mirrors, white-clad attendants moving silently to and fro, and an omnipresent silence symbolizing absolute authority. Yet now, an urgent intelligence report from the distant West Blue had utterly shattered this order, maintained for centuries.
Clatter! A thick document envelope, its edges still carrying the salty tang of the sea breeze, was roughly slammed onto the round table symbolizing supreme power at the center of the Hall of Power. The official delivering the intelligence was deathly pale, his lips trembling. He did not even dare look at the five figures shrouded in shadow around the table. "West Blue... Hua Country... Guan Yu... Zhang Fei... Zhao Yun... Huang Zhong... Imperial Examination, Palace Examination... Lü Bu... Dian Wei... Ma Chao... Zhou Yu..." He incoherently repeated the key terms in the documents. Each name was like a heavy lump of lead striking the silent hall with a soundless roar.
The Five Elders, the World Government's highest authorities, were five old men whose faces were hidden in shadow. Ordinarily, they were like five immutable icebergs that no raging wave could shake in the slightest. But now, for the first time, their shadowed gazes revealed gravity, and even a trace of bewildered suspicion.
One of the elders, dressed in dark purple, extended his withered fingers and slowly opened the envelope. Inside were several blurry yet terrifying photographs taken by a Visual Den Den Mushi: the shadow of Lü Bu's halberd tearing through the sky, the brute strength of Dian Wei's twin halberds shattering a mountain, the meteor formed by Ma Chao's Silver Spear, and finally, the image of that golden-green sun colliding with an ink-purple sun.
Beneath the photographs