One day later~
Two figures appeared in the waters near Fish-Man Island.
One of the figures was a handsome young man, and the other was a tall mermaid—it was Xia Chen and Neptune!
Neptune turned to Xia Chen and said, "Lord Xia Chen, this is the place I told you about!"
Xia Chen looked ahead, his eyes slightly narrowed, and said calmly, "I can indeed sense a powerful aura! I didn't expect Joy Boy to have left this behind. Interesting!"
What appeared before Xia Chen was an enormous, roughly circular crater, roughly estimated to be at least tens of nautical miles in diameter.
Looking down, darkness seemed to swallow everything; nothing could be seen.
"Lord Xia Chen, I entrust the rest of the items to you!" Neptune said respectfully.
"Sure! Since you've already paid me, I'll naturally keep my promise! Besides, I'm quite interested in it too!"
"Alright, that's enough. I'm going downstairs to deal with this guy!"
With that, Xia Chen's body began to plummet into the deep pit at incredible speed, disappearing from Neptune's sight in an instant.
Looking at the enormous, deep pit before him, Neptune's gaze was deep and somber. After a long while, he sighed and murmured:
"The safety of Fish-Man Island is in your hands, Xia Chen! I hope nothing bad happens!"
With that, Neptune turned and swam toward Fish-Man Island.
However, just as he was about to reach Fish-Man Island, several figures blocked his way.
" Neptune, it's been a long time! I wonder if you still remember me!"
"You... you are..."
Neptune's face showed a look of horror, his eyes fixed on the figure before him...
--
On this side, Xia Chen was still falling continuously. To be honest, this pit was really deep. Since Xia Chen started falling, he had already descended at least several thousand meters.
Keep in mind that even above the pit is the ocean, which is already 10,000 meters deep, and now it's several thousand meters deeper, and it hasn't even reached the bottom yet.
This has far exceeded the deepest depths of his previous life's world.
Although it was pitch black here, Xia Chen was already familiar with this situation. It was the same when he was in the Eternal Night Sea, so he didn't feel anything.
While falling, Xia Chen couldn't help but recall what Neptune had told him a day earlier.
After talking with Neptune, he realized that there were indeed many things in this world that he didn't know, no wonder Neptune had sworn that he definitely didn't know before telling him.
According to Neptune, there are actually two covenants passed down on their Fish-Man Island from eight hundred years ago, one of which is the oath ship known to all the residents— Noah!
The other secret is known only to a very small number of people, perhaps only one person per generation, and is a secret passed down orally from generation to generation by the kings of the Ryugu Kingdom.
The secret of the World Serpent, Jörmungandr!!!
Legend has it that eight hundred years ago, Fish-Man Island Fish-Man Island a great crisis when it was almost swallowed by a giant sea serpent.
Fortunately, there was an extremely powerful human on Fish-Man Island at the time, and it was because of his existence that Fish-Man Island was spared from disaster!
This human was Joy Boy, and then Joy Boy had an earth-shattering battle with this giant sea serpent.
Because of its enormous size, this sea serpent was exaggeratedly called the serpent that Jörmungandr Serpent That Encircles the World!
In the end, Joy Boy won a hard-fought victory, but for some reason, he did not choose to kill the snake after winning. Instead, he sealed it away with his extremely powerful Conqueror's Haki.
This deep pit is where Jörmungandr sealed Joy Boy! Joy Boy once said that his seal could last for about eight hundred years, after Jörmungandr would break free, and Fish-Man Island would be plunged into crisis again.
In fact, quite some time had passed since Joy Boy mentioned eight hundred years ago, and Neptune had initially thought that Jörmungandr had long since died of old age in this deep pit. He couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Until a few years ago, a tremor was felt in this sea area, which could be clearly felt even by Fish-Man Island, which is dozens of nautical miles away.
Neptune's first thought was Jörmungandr, and he rushed over immediately.
As he expected, the tremors were indeed coming from this location, and since then, such tremors have been occurring intermittently over the past few years, with each interval becoming shorter and each tremor becoming stronger.
This was clearly a sign that Jörmungandr break free of his seal! He wasn't sure how much longer the seal could hold!
The problem was that Neptune had no way to deal with it. Although he didn't know how strong Joy Boy eight hundred years ago, he could tell from the few words that had been passed down that he was very powerful.
They are certainly not comparable to the strongest people in the world today, which is why Neptune did not seek help from Whitebeard, who had once sheltered them.
He couldn't guarantee that Whitebeard could resolve the crisis; if he couldn't, not only Fish-Man Island, but the Whitebeard Pirates might perish there.
When Neptune heard the news that Xia Chen had single-handedly breached the Marine Headquarters, Neptune instantly felt that his opportunity had arrived!
This kind of exceptionally strong individual with a significant power gap is exactly what he's looking for!
He's going to take a gamble!
I'm betting Xia Chen can take down Jörmungandr!
This is undoubtedly a huge gamble! The safety of the entire Fish-Man Island is on Xia Chen's shoulders. If they lose, there's a high probability that Fish-Man Island will be doomed! After Jörmungandr free of its seal, it will likely continue what it failed to do eight hundred years ago—devour Fish-Man Island!
The problem is that sitting idly by and waiting to die is also a death sentence. This seal obviously can't hold for long. If Jörmungandr its own and no one can stop it, then it's really over.
To be honest, when Xia Chen first heard about this, he felt like he was listening to a myth, which was a bit abstract!
Going so far as to create a sealing mechanism, isn't that a bit inappropriate?
However, Xia Chen thought that it was even more unrealistic for him to encounter Pluton Hades, so encountering some kind of seal didn't seem so strange.
Furthermore, Joy Boy's Conqueror's Haki is indeed extremely powerful. In the original work, he was able to store his Conqueror's Haki eight hundred years ago and only use it eight hundred years later.
That's already pretty outrageous, right? So it's not so hard to accept that Conqueror's Haki was used to seal a sea serpent!
only...
Will this really put Joy Boy in a tough spot?
If that's the case, why was it possible to seal it away for eight hundred years using only Conqueror's Haki? Was it because Jörmungandr already severely injured and on the verge of death at that time, and therefore had no ability to resist?
Shaking his head, Xia Chen shook off these thoughts.
Why think so much? We'll find out soon enough. He could feel himself getting closer and closer to his goal.
Thinking of this, Xia Chen couldn't help but smile...