Lin Xuan turned his head, his gaze inadvertently sweeping over Zoro, who was panting with his hands braced on his knees.
The mere brush of that gaze made the moss-headed boy's body stiffen abruptly.
To Zoro's senses, Lin Xuan's aura had changed.
That previously savage power had become even more dangerous, as though every strand carried a lethal edge aimed at his vital points.
That cold, precise sense of suffocation made Zoro's pupils contract violently. His heart clenched, and even his breathing stopped.
"Hey, Moss Head, why aren't you breathing?" Lin Xuan looked at the deathly pale Zoro with some amusement.
Zoro abruptly sucked in a huge breath of earthy-smelling air. His legs buckled, and he nearly fell to his knees in the rubble.
He looked toward his teacher, his face pale and his voice trembling. "T-Teacher, this guy just..."
Koshiro's expression was equally grave.
As a master swordsman, he was far more sensitive to such shifts in aura than his student.
In that instant just now, he had sensed a fully formed sword intent within Lin Xuan.
Although it was still crude and carried a distinctive frenzy, it was unmistakably the beginnings of the ability to cut iron.
"So this is what they call talent?" Koshiro murmured to himself, the bitterness at the corners of his mouth even deeper than after taking that punch. "I thought he was merely powerful. I never imagined his speed of comprehension would be so frightening."
"Teacher, you mean he..." Zoro's eyes widened, the finger he pointed at Lin Xuan stiffening. "He learned it? With that one glance just now, he learned it?!"
How was that possible?
He had spent years without even reaching the threshold, yet this guy had merely listened to a few words of theory, spaced out for a while, and learned it?
"Is he even human..." Zoro murmured, his voice full of defeat.
Lin Xuan ignored the teacher and student.
The enlightenment talisman was still in effect, but he could no longer be bothered to cut leaves.
Seeing through everything felt great, but the drain on his stamina was very real.
More importantly, he had new equipment.
Lin Xuan flexed his still-aching wrists, where the weighted wristbands he had worn ever since arriving in this world were strapped.
Their current weight felt no different from wearing two lumps of cotton.
Now that he had bought the [Modified Gravity-Adjusting Suit], there was no point in keeping them.
Click.
With a soft click, Lin Xuan undid the clasps on his wrists.
"Catch."
With a casual toss, he sent two dark lumps arcing through the air toward Zoro. "I wrecked your dojo just now, and I don't have any money to pay for it. You can have these. Think of it as... well, an early taste of the adult world."
Zoro instinctively held out both hands to catch them.
Looking at those two... he did not think much of them.
After all, Lin Xuan did not have particularly exaggerated, bulging muscles.
Yet the instant those two dark shapes landed in his palms-
Zoro's expression changed drastically.
A weight far beyond anything he had expected instantly bent his arms. Caught completely unprepared, his upper body pitched forward, throwing him off balance.
Thud!
A heavy crash rang out.
Zoro slammed into the ground along with the wristbands, sending up a ring of dust.
Those two seemingly ordinary wristbands now pinned Zoro's palms down like solid blocks of lead and iron, smashing two shallow pits into the ground.
"Wh-what the hell are these things?!"
Zoro's face flushed red, veins bulging on his forehead. He strained with all his strength to pull his hands out of the dirt, only to discover that the wristbands were outrageously heavy.
Beside him, Koshiro's eyelids twitched violently.
He had seen it clearly just now: while wearing those things, Lin Xuan had swung his blade so fast that even its afterimages were impossible to make out.
Had this boy... been fighting in restraints like these all along?
Watching Zoro still struggling with the wristbands, Lin Xuan curled his lip disdainfully. As though he had thrown away worthless trash, he reached into his system inventory again.
"Too light. There really is no point in keeping toys like those."
Zoro's face turned scarlet, the veins at his temples throbbing.
Being so casually handed charity was even harder for him to bear than being pressed down by gravity until he could not raise his head.
"Who... who wants your junk!"
A low growl escaped the moss-headed boy's throat, his arm muscles nearly bursting his sleeves. With a hoarse roar, he actually wrenched those two "iron lumps" out of the dirt and, without even looking where they would go, hurled them hard in the opposite direction.
Thump, thump.
With two dull impacts, the wristbands crashed into the distant bushes, startling several birds into flight.
"Oh? You can still throw them? Guess they really were too light."
Lin Xuan paid no attention whatsoever to Zoro's pride.
To him now, the weights he had just removed truly felt no different from wearing nothing.
When his body was too light, his blade floated. When his blade floated, cutting people did not feel right.
The resistance of a blade slicing into flesh and bone, the fulfilling sensation of every inch of muscle roaring with the effort of swinging his sword-those were his greatest source of security in this world.
And now, that sense of security had a new replacement.
Lin Xuan closed his hand around empty air, and a long black coat appeared in his grasp.
It looked like an utterly ordinary black coat, without any unnecessary ornamentation. The fabric resembled some kind of matte cotton-linen blend, and even the loose threads along its edges looked rather rough.
To anyone else, it looked like cheap merchandise that could be bought from any roadside stall for a few hundred Beli.
But only Lin Xuan knew that the instant the garment landed in his hand, his wrist plunged downward.
Well, damn.
Lin Xuan raised his eyebrows. His arm muscles instantly tensed, veins bulging, and only then did he barely manage to halt his arm's descent.
The system really wasn't lying. This so-called "Gravity-Adjusting Suit" starts at five times gravity.
It felt heavy in his hand, nothing like a piece of clothing.
"Wearing something too thick in this weather will make me sweat."
Muttering casually, Lin Xuan flicked his wrist and tossed the bundle of black fabric beside his feet.
An ordinary piece of clothing thrown down like that would have unfurled in midair before settling gently over the ground.
But this one was different.
The instant it left his hand, it did not flutter at all. It smashed straight down into the ground.
Boom-!!
An exceptionally deep crash rang out.
The ground instantly caved in around the black coat.
Weblike cracks spread across the solid earth.
Before the dust it stirred up could rise, an invisible pressure forcibly pressed it back into the bottom of the pit.
The dojo's entire backyard trembled with it.
Lin Xuan shook his aching, slightly numb wrist. Looking at the deep crater and the black coat lying quietly at its bottom without even a wrinkle displaced, he grinned in satisfaction.
Now that's more like it.
This is the kind of "restraint" a strong fighter should have.
Wind swept through the Bamboo Grove, carrying a few tattered leaves.
Not far away, Zoro, who had just been about to rush over and argue, froze with one foot still extended.
Beside him, Koshiro held half a bamboo leaf between his fingers. His perpetually narrowed eyes opened a fraction, revealing his astonishment.
Both of their gazes were fixed firmly on that pit.
Chapter 25: This Coat Weighs Three Hundred Kilograms. Enough to Take You Down Instantly?
It really was only a piece of clothing.
Its matte material lacked even the slightest sheen befitting a treasure. It looked like old clothing discarded by a dockworker.
Yet that old piece of clothing lay quietly in a pit half a meter deep.
The soil along the pit's walls bore radial patterns left by the instantaneous burst of intense pressure, and several startled earthworms writhed in the freshly overturned dirt.
Silence blanketed the surroundings.
Zoro's stiff neck made cracking sounds as he mechanically turned toward his teacher, hoping Koshiro could explain that this was an illusion.
But Koshiro merely adjusted the half-broken glasses frame on his nose. His usually narrowed eyes were, for once, wide open as he stared at the black bundle at the bottom of the pit, his Adam's apple bobbing.
As a master swordsman capable of cutting steel, he knew very well that causing this kind of destruction required astonishing density. Weight alone was not enough.
If it could produce this effect through physical mass alone, without relying on Haki...
"Three hundred kilograms."
Lin Xuan's voice rang out.
He jumped into the pit, and the cloth shoes on his feet once again groaned under the strain.
Lin Xuan used no fancy technique. He simply grabbed the coat by its collar as though picking up a sack of rice.
As he moved, the garment did not drape like fabric. Instead, it gave off the dull scraping sound of a heavy object.
"That's just its base physical weight, without activating the Gravity Field."
As Lin Xuan spoke, he slid his arms into the sleeves.
The moment the coat settled fully onto his body, Zoro clearly saw his previously straight back sink an inch. The trapezius muscles around his neck instantly bulged like two giant pythons heaving beneath his skin, stubbornly holding up that terrifying pressure.
Crack.
Several more fine cracks split the ground beneath Lin Xuan's feet.
"Whew..."
He slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, drawing a white streak through the air.
What the Kenpachi Zaraki template craved was precisely this oppressive sensation of constantly struggling against both the outside world and himself.
Lin Xuan closed his eyes. Deep within his consciousness, streams of data were rapidly reorganizing.
[Template: Kenpachi Zaraki (Bleach)] [Unlock progress: 10%] [Current Doriki Value: 820] [Status: Under gravitational suppression (Spiritual Pressure sealed)]
820 Doriki.
Lin Xuan whistled inwardly.
If I remember correctly, that CP9 member named Blueno only had about this much Doriki in his normal state.
In other words, leaving Devil Fruits and the Six Powers out of the equation, my physical strength has already crossed the threshold into the superhuman.
And this was only the beginning.
"That coat..." Koshiro finally found his voice. He took a step forward, his gaze wandering over the black fabric as though he had sensed something. "It's not just heavy, is it? I can feel that savage aura of yours... it seems to be devouring it?"
"Good eye."
Lin Xuan fastened the top button of his coat. That terrifying aura he had been radiating instantly vanished without a trace, leaving him looking like an ordinary, slightly muscular boy.
Before you continue