Terror spread.
Three more unfortunate souls who failed to escape were swept up in it, reduced to withered corpses before they could even scream.
The entire Rain Dinners hall seemed to have become a massive grinder. Everything touching the ground-tables, chairs, stone pillars, even living people-reverted to the most primitive grains of sand beneath that overpowering energy.
Yellow sand danced wildly through the air, turning the once-glittering casino into a lifeless desert of death.
Yet amid this horrifying scene, enough to drive an ordinary person to a mental breakdown, Lin Xuan remained where he stood.
He watched the encroaching field of sandification around him and the lives turning to dust in despair. There was not a trace of pity or fear in his eyes; instead, a hint of boredom surfaced.
"Is this your full strength?"
Lin Xuan looked at the last stone slab beneath his feet, on the verge of crumbling, and sighed softly.
His military boot pressed against the edge of the disintegrating slab, producing a teeth-grating scrape.
Lin Xuan tilted his head slightly, his gaze passing through the murky air as though examining a shoddily made reject.
"Assimilating the environment. This level really does brush against the threshold of Devil Fruit Awakening." His tone was flat, even somewhat listless. "Unfortunately, that's all it does. This so-called miracle of yours is just borrowing power from the desert climate here. Without the terrain advantage, how far can your Reincarnation erode? Five meters? Ten?"
Those words were like a basin of ice water poured into boiling oil. But rather than lowering the surrounding temperature, they made the agitation in the air even more lethal.
At the edge of the ruins above, Nico Robin's hand abruptly tightened around the railing.
She was too clever. Clever enough that one glance at Lin Xuan's