"The strongest? What a boring title."
The instant Yas's words, filled with absolute contempt and disdain, echoed in Whitebeard's ears like a final verdict-
Boom!!!
Fist and blade finally collided head-on!
Yet the anticipated earth-shattering explosion never came.
In its place was silence.
Deathly silence.
Time seemed to have been stripped away completely at that moment.
Space seemed to have frozen entirely at that moment.
Every sound and every color in the world was forcibly stripped away in that instant by a grander, more supreme will!
Everyone present, whether top-tier fighters like Garp and Roger or ordinary Marines and pirates, found their minds plunged into an absolute blank at that moment.
In their eyes, in their perception, only two utterly pure "wills" remained!
One was black and red!
It was domineering and unrestrained, filled with boundless ambition to destroy and shatter everything! It seemed intent on overturning the entire sea and trampling the whole world beneath its feet!
That was the king's will of "Whitebeard," Edward Newgate!
The other was azure blue!
It was cold, deathly still, vast, and sacred! It held not the slightest trace of emotion, as though it were the supreme law itself that had governed "purification" and "judgment" at the birth of the universe! It sought neither conquest nor destruction, only to cleanse every existence it defined as "filth"!
That was the divine will of "Azure Thunder," Yas!
Rumble-!!!
The two utterly pure wills manifested as tangible lightning in the physical world and collided wildly!
Black-and-red Conqueror's Haki lightning and azure lightning of divine will tore at and devoured each other like two peerlessly ferocious dragons awakened from the primordial age!
Every collision cracked the earth beneath their feet inch by inch, making it collapse soundlessly!
Every clash forcibly tore enormous black rifts through the sky