Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece

Chapter 246 The Smoke of War Before the Battle

Bai Yu's voice wasn't loud, but the weight of his words in everyone's ears was heavier than any other sentence they had ever heard in their lives.

The red-haired man's right hand unconsciously rested on Griffin's sword hilt, not because he sensed a threat, but because his body automatically entered a state of combat readiness when faced with some kind of information beyond his comprehension.

This was an instinctive reaction ingrained in his very bones, a reaction honed by his status as one of the kings and a top warrior who had experienced countless life-or-death battles.

Loki stood beside the red-haired man, his enormous body freezing the moment he heard Bai Yu's words.

His eyes widened, his pupils contracted slightly, and his lips moved a few times, but he didn't utter a single word.

He was a prince of the giants, and from childhood he had heard countless grand and unbelievable legends about the World Tree, Ragnarok, and the Nine Worlds. But those legends were just legends, stories that his ancestors told to children around the campfire, and no one ever took them seriously.

Now Bai Yu tells him that he can recreate the world.

It is not a legend, not a story, not a metaphor.

It is a statement.

Mihawk's expression changed the least of all of them. His hawk-like eyes darted back and forth between Bai Yu and Artoria a few times, then he took a slow, deep breath.

His right hand moved away from the hilt of the black sword, hanging at his side, his fingers slightly open and closed, as if sensing some kind of change in the air that only he could perceive.

Jabba finished the last drop of wine from the jug.

He tucked the flask back into his belt, raised his head and looked up at the northern sky, the direction of Mary Geoise, the direction of Pangaea, and the true center of this war.

"Roger, Roger."

Jabba said in a low voice, his voice as hoarse as an old canvas that had been blown by the sea breeze its whole life.

"Is this what you saw in Laugh Tale?"

No one answered him.

Because nobody knows the answer.

Bai Yu withdrew his gaze from Artoria and looked back at the northern sky. His Rinnegan entered a completely new state at this moment.

The red-gold star in the center of the pupil began to rotate at an extremely slow speed. With each rotation, a ripple, almost invisible to the naked eye, spread outward from the pupil. These ripples carried no energy and had no effect on the surrounding environment.

It seems to be reading all the information stored in this world at the coordinates of Pangu City.

It wasn't about reading what was happening now, but about reading all the memories accumulated by this city throughout its long existence. Every brick, every pillar, every inch of land was peeled away layer by layer in Bai Yu's eyes, like an archaeologist excavating an ancient city buried for thousands of years, with secrets from different eras hidden beneath each layer of soil.

Bai Yu saw many things.

He witnessed the construction of the city.

It was not built by humans; no human craftsmen participated in the construction of this city.

Those buildings grew out of the ground, like plants, starting from a seed and slowly growing over a long period of time, growing into towers, city walls, underground cavities, and countless energy channels.

Eight hundred years ago.

Bai Yu also witnessed everything that this city had experienced.

It has witnessed countless wars, but the wars have never reached its walls, because all those who dared to attack the city vanished before they even got close.

It was not killed by humans, but destroyed by some energy-related forces within Im.

Bai Yu even saw the dark golden sphere deep within the city's core.

The sphere began to pulsate at the very moment Im's avatar was destroyed, a pulsation so slow it was almost imperceptible to any ordinary senses.

It's like a heart beating, but the way it beats isn't contraction and expansion, but a more abstract fluctuation that exists between existence and non-existence.

With each fluctuation, the sphere's color undergoes an extremely subtle change, from dark gold to an even darker gold, and then back to normal.

Bai Yu's pupils contracted slightly.

He saw something he hadn't noticed before.

That sphere was not merely a container used by Im to store the life force of this world.

It is a beacon. A permanent beacon connecting this world to Im's Void Throne.

Im can use this device to project his consciousness onto someone in this world who has signed a contract at any time, and he can also use this beacon to draw the power scattered throughout this world back to his own body at any time.

The existence of this beacon means that Im has never truly left the Flower Garden of Pangaea.

He has always been there.

Even if his avatar is destroyed, his consciousness can still reach any part of this world at any time through this beacon. As long as the beacon remains, this world can never truly escape Im's control.

Bai Yu turned his gaze away from the northern sky.

He looked around at the people. Red-haired, Loki, Mihawk, Jabba, Artoria, Matsumoto Rangiku, Unohana—everyone had a different expression, but in everyone's eyes was the same thing: waiting.

They are waiting for Bai Yu to make a decision.

Because everyone knows that only Bai Yu can decide the direction of the next action.

It's not that they lack their own opinions, but rather that every step they take next requires guidance from Bai Yu's eyes, which can see beyond the rules.

Without knowing where Im is, what is in Pangaea, or the existence and function of the beacon, any decision made by anyone is nothing more than wildly swinging their fists in the dark.

Bai Yu opened his mouth, ready to speak.

But he didn't say it aloud.

At that very moment, a beam of light rose from the ground in the northern sky, shooting straight into the heavens.

The beam of light was neither white nor gold, but an extremely unnatural color somewhere between purple and black.

The beam of light was at least several hundred meters in diameter, stretching from the top of the red earth to beyond the atmosphere, like a giant sword piercing the sky from the ground.

The moment the beam of light appeared, the temperature of the entire world dropped by several degrees.

It's not a psychological effect, not a metaphor, but a real, physical temperature drop.

Because the beam of light absorbs a large amount of atmospheric heat as it rises, it acts like a giant air conditioner releasing energy into space.

Everyone's attention was drawn to the purple beam of light.

Artoria clenched her right hand tightly, golden light spilling from between her fingers, and in an instant, she summoned the Holy Sword from the conceptual level into the real world.

The sword had not yet fully materialized, but the light from the scabbard had already covered her entire body. The thin layer of light film became even brighter under the illumination of the purple beam, like some kind of defense mechanism being triggered.

"What is that?"

Loki's voice was low, but a low voice meant extreme tension to the giants.

As the prince of the giants, Loki knew that the purple beam of light was releasing an energy fluctuation he had never sensed before. These fluctuations were spreading in all directions, but all of them pointed to the same direction.

The direction of the red earth continent.

More precisely, it's the direction of Pangu City on the red earth continent.

Those fluctuations seemed to be summoning something.

Or summon someone.

Bai Yu's Rinnegan widened suddenly at that moment.

In his eyes, the red-gold star stopped spinning and then began to rotate in the opposite direction. The reverse rotation was three times faster than the forward rotation, and with each rotation, a scene flashed in Bai Yu's pupils. These scenes were not continuous, but flashed one after another like slides, each containing a vast amount of information.

Bai Yu is reading the information contained in the light beam.

The information was not encrypted or hidden; it was openly written in every photon of the beam of light.

The person who wrote this information doesn't care if others see it.

"It's being broadcast live."

Bai Yu's words were like a stone thrown into a calm lake, the ripples causing changes in everyone's expressions.

The redhead's brows furrowed sharply, and the light in his eyes sharpened. He released Griffin's sword hilt, crossed his arms over his chest, and tilted his head slightly to one side—his standard posture when deep in thought.

"Live streaming? To whom? With what equipment? What kind of equipment in the world can broadcast live from Pangoal Institution to the whole world?"

Redhead's questions kept popping up, his voice carrying a complex mix of confusion and wariness.

As a former Celestial Dragon, he knew all the communication technologies in the world, including Den Den Mushi and Video Den Den Mushi.

Broadcast telephone snails, all of these devices have limitations in transmission distance and the risk of signal interference.

A live broadcast from Pangaea, the city in the heart of the red earth, to the world spans a distance so vast that no known communication technology could achieve it.

Jabba's answer silenced everyone.

"It should be Vegapunk."

When Jabba uttered those four words, there was no doubt in his voice.

This is not speculation, not conjecture, but a judgment as precise as a mathematical formula, based on decades of experience. Only Vegapunk could create something like this, and only Vegapunk dared to do something like this.

"Vegapunk must have developed a long-distance image transmission system at the request of the World Government."

That system also requires Den Den Mushi (snail telephones) and signal relay stations, but it doesn't need any ground infrastructure. It directly utilizes the ionosphere in the atmosphere as a signal reflector, theoretically enabling real-time image transmission over a global scale.

Jaba took the wine jug from his waist, shook it, and found it was empty. Somewhat regretfully, he put it back on.

"Shanks should have heard of this project, but no one has ever seen the actual product because the system consumes too much energy. It would take the energy of an entire small city to power it for just one minute. Vegapunk later abandoned the project because the World Government was unwilling to pay the energy bill of an entire city for just one minute of holographic projection."

"But it seems that the project wasn't abandoned, just shelved. Vegapunk spent years optimizing the system, and he should have plenty of energy now."

As Jaba spoke, he looked up at the purple beam of light, a complex emotion flashing in his cloudy old eyes—an emotion that only appears after experiencing too much, a mixture of weariness and relief.

"Vegapunk, you finally did it for them after all."

Artoria stood beside Shiraha, her holy sword now fully materialized, the limiting patterns on its golden blade slowly disappearing one by one.

She didn't unlock it on her own; rather, her body automatically triggered the preheating process of the holy sword after sensing the energy level contained in the purple pillar of light.

What is the purpose of live streaming?

Artoria's voice was calm, almost to the point of indifference.

This composure wasn't because she didn't care, but because her role in the war demanded absolute rationality. She was a queen, and a queen cannot be swayed by emotions on the battlefield.

In Bai Yu's Rinnegan, those fleeting images froze at that moment.

He saw the scene in front of Pangu City.

He saw the army.

Not an ordinary army, but a force composed of the Knights of God and elite naval troops, honed and trained over countless years.

The most powerful military force in the world besides Bai Yu's side.

Their numbers weren't in the thousands, or even tens of thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of people lined up on the vast, apex platform of the red earth, their ranks so orderly it looked as if they had been measured with a ruler, the distance between each pair precise to the centimeter level.

At the very front of the line were the members of the Knights of God.

Twelve figures.

They are the twelve strongest warriors of the Knights of God, each with their own unique fighting style and power system. Each of them is a top-tier fighter who has survived countless life-and-death battles, and each of them is the warrior that Im trusts most in this world.

They may not have Devil Fruit abilities, they may not have Conqueror's Haki, and they may not even have chakra, but they have something more dangerous than any of these things—they have no fear.

It's not that they overcame fear, or conquered fear, but rather that they never knew what fear was.

Behind the twelve men was a naval formation.

Shiraha saw many familiar faces among these naval personnel.

It wasn't because he knew them, but because he had seen their pictures in the newspaper.

Admirals, vice admirals, and the elite of the Navy Headquarters—almost all the well-known and powerful figures—have gathered here.

But among this naval force, those who mattered most to Bai Yu were not the admirals and vice admirals.

"interesting."

Bai Yu's lips twitched slightly, not in a smile, but in a subtle change of expression that only appears when facing an opponent worthy of serious consideration.

Artoria noticed a subtle change in the corner of Shiraha's mouth.

She didn't ask Bai Yu what he saw, because she knew Bai Yu would tell her.

Sure enough, Bai Yu shared what he saw with everyone in the next second.

Instead of describing them in words, those images were projected directly into everyone's consciousness using the Rinnegan.

Everyone felt as if they had suddenly stood in front of Pangu City, in front of that massive army.