Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece.

That was the first time Bai Yu had actively changed the state of his eyes during this battle.

He closed his eyes.

Im's one hundred clones stopped all movement at that moment.

It wasn't that they wanted to stop, but rather that their bodies automatically ceased all movement before their conscious minds could issue any commands. It wasn't because of fear, nor because of pressure, but because Bai Yu's act of closing his eyes was like a program being suddenly paused at a critical point.

Bai Yu opened her eyes again.

The speed at which it opens its eyes is slower than a normal blink.

It was so slow that Im could clearly see each opening of those Rinnegan eyes, which were somewhere between red and gold.

After that, the Rinnegan patterns rotated at a speed that Im's vision could not track. The patterns were no longer lines, but turned into a vortex composed of countless points of light, like a galaxy compressed to its limit.

A point appeared at the center of the vortex.

That point is not black, not white, not any color. When you look at that point, you feel like the whole world is revolving around it. Not because the point is rotating, but because the point is the axis of the whole world, and everything is defined with it as the center.

As Bai Yu's eyes opened fully again...

Bai Yu's eyes were not looking in the direction of any humanoid image of Im.

He was looking at a spot in the sky where there was no Im present.

There wasn't a single cloud in the sky above that location. The air density, temperature, and humidity were no different from the surrounding area. There were no energy fluctuations, no spatial distortions, and no indication that there was anything special about that location.

But when Bai Yu looked at that spot, the entire sky began to shatter, centered on that spot.

The way it shattered wasn't like the radial cracks that spread outwards from a single point when glass shatters. Instead, it was as if an unbearable pressure had been applied to the entire sky from within, with all the cracks appearing simultaneously in every corner of the sky. The width, length, and depth of each crack were exactly the same, and the spacing between each crack was precise to the atomic level.

The entire sky transformed into a massive dome fragmented into countless pieces by numerous cracks.

The fragments began to fall the moment the crack appeared.

It wasn't that the sky was collapsing, but rather that the very existence of the sky was shattered by Bai Yu's eyes.

What fell was not clouds, not the atmosphere, not anything in any material form, but the embodiment of the concept of "sky" in the physical world.

Im's multiple clones reacted in various different ways to the falling debris from the sky.

Some clones tried to use spatial folding to avoid the falling debris, but as the debris fell, space itself ceased to exist. Folding something that doesn't exist is like trying to grab something that doesn't exist with a non-existent hand.

Some clones attempted to shatter the fragments with their power, but the fragments would split into more fragments the moment they were hit, and each split would make the fragments more intricate and unstoppable.

Some clones attempted to teleport themselves directly to another dimension, but the moment Bai Yu opened his eyes, all the entrances to the dimensions were closed. They weren't blocked, but rather the concepts of those dimensions themselves were temporarily erased from Bai Yu's field of vision.

The clone vanished the instant it was struck, as if it had never existed, leaving no trace, no energy residue, and not even a clear image in Im's memory.

The remaining clone stood in place.

That wasn't a clone; that was Im's true form.

Im's body condensed from a hundred positions back into a single one. His chest heaved violently, not from exhaustion, but because his body was telling him that he might have died just a moment ago.

In that instant, Im felt as if he were floating in the void before the birth of the universe, without direction, without time, without space, without any reference points, only pure, absolute nothingness. He had never experienced such a feeling in his past seven hundred years of life, and he didn't even know how to describe it with any known concepts.

But Im's body knows.

If Bai Yu had intended to kill him, he would already be dead.

Im stood still, his hand slowly rising from his side, palm facing the sky. Not to attack, but because his body needed to make a movement to confirm that he was still alive, still existed in this world, and still in control of his own body.

Shiraha sat inside Susanoo, showing no intention of pressing his advantage.

He just watched Im quietly, as if he were watching a student complete a problem that was too difficult for him.

It was not arrogance, nor contempt, but pure observation, devoid of any emotional coloring.

Im's palms faced the sky, and his fingertips began to tremble.

It wasn't the trembling caused by fear, but rather Im's body telling him a fact he didn't want to accept as he tried to gather all his strength.

All his strength is there.

Conqueror's Haki, Observation Haki, Armament Haki; his control over the rules of space, his erosion of the rules of time—all these powers exist within him, flowing within him, awaiting his command.

But every channel through which power is delivered has been cut off.

It wasn't that it was blocked or suppressed, but rather that Bai Yu's swimming black vertical line had severed all the connections between Im and this world, one by one, over the past few minutes.

It's like your heart is still beating and your blood vessels are still pumping blood, but the ends of all your blood vessels are blocked, so the blood can't reach anywhere that needs it.

Im's power remains, but he can't use it.

The black vertical line, which was moving with white feathers, stopped less than a meter in front of Im.

The length of the vertical line is shortened starting from fifty centimeters.

Forty centimeters, thirty centimeters, twenty centimeters, ten centimeters.

When it shrank to ten centimeters, the vertical line was no longer a vertical line, but had become a point again. That point floated in front of Im, as quiet as the first seed before the birth of the universe.

The voice wasn't loud, but it was so clear it was as if Bai Yu was speaking right next to Im's ear. It wasn't because Bai Yu had raised his voice, but because all interference along the sound's path had been eliminated by Bai Yu's eyes.

"It seems this body isn't your real body."

declarative sentence.

Im's eyes narrowed slightly.

Bai Yu continued, “I can see it. The connection between your soul and this body is deep within your soul. It’s not a normal connection, but a one-way information flow like a remote control controlling a drone. This body is just a terminal; the real you is elsewhere.”

Im remained silent for three seconds.

Then he laughed.

That was the first time Im had laughed in seven hundred years. The laughter was neither loud nor soft, neither long nor short, but it contained a complex, multi-layered emotion. The outermost layer was bitterness, the middle layer was relief, and the deepest layer was something that even Im himself could not understand, like an animal trapped in a cage for seven hundred years suddenly seeing the cage door open, but its body had forgotten how to get out of the cage.

"You are special, Uchiha Hakuha."

Im's voice became a little lighter, but it wasn't the kind of lightness that comes from having a burden lifted, but rather the kind of lightness you feel when a secret has been revealed and you no longer need to bother to cover it up.

“You’re right, this body isn’t my real body. It’s an avatar of mine, a container that exists within the physical rules of this world, used to hold my will, execute my commands, and manage the operation of this world.”

Im raised his hands and looked at his palms.

"But this avatar has a limitation. The power it can bear is limited because the rules of this world itself have an upper limit. My main body is outside the rules, while this avatar is within the rules, so the power that the avatar can use can never exceed this upper limit."

Im raised his head, looking directly at Shiraha's Rinnegan across a distance of three kilometers.

“You have touched the upper limit of the rules of this world, Uchiha Hakuba. Your power has reached the limit that this world can bear. In some of your attacks, you have even broken through that limit and entered the realm outside the rules.”

Im's voice became even calmer.

"But do you know what this means?"

Bai Yu did not answer.

Im answered for him.

“But you haven’t completely broken through this limit, which means you can’t kill me in this world. You can destroy my avatars, again and again, but my true form is always outside the rules. You can touch the realm outside the rules, but you still can’t survive there. You’re like someone who has learned to breathe underwater, but you still don’t know how to survive in a vacuum.”

Im's voice stopped.

The two stared at each other in silence for five seconds.

Then Bai Yu spoke.

"Are you done talking?"

There was no emotion, no tone, no embellishment.

But the weight these words carried in Im's ears was heavier than all of Bai Yu's previous attacks combined.

These words imply that Bai Yu had absolutely no interest in Im's explanation. It wasn't that she disagreed or opposed it, but rather that she was completely indifferent.

It's like a mathematician hearing a child say 1+1=3; he's too lazy to correct him because correcting him is a waste of time.

Im's expression froze at that moment.

Bai Yu raised his right hand from inside Susanoo.

The finger points in the direction of Im.

Susanoo's right hand rose in sync, its massive finger, hidden beneath the armor, pointing at Im.

There were no black spots on Shiraha's fingertips. Neither were the fingertips of Susanoo.

But Im's Observation Haki restarted at that moment. It wasn't that the vertical cutting failed, but rather that Im's body, after being pushed to its limit by the threat of Bai Yu, spontaneously activated a defensive mechanism that even Im himself was unaware of.

That defense mechanism told him that there was no way to stop the next attack.

There is no space to fold away from it. There is no time to delay it.

There is no dimensional jump that can lead to escape.

This strike covered everything.

Im's body made a decision the instant it received this information.

He stopped hiding.

It wasn't because he didn't want to hide, but because his body told him he couldn't hide.

Bai Yu gently pushed her fingers forward.

Susanoo's fingers pushed forward in sync.

Nothing happened.

There was no light, no sound, no vibration, and no physical phenomena.

Even the rubble stirred up by the previous battle stopped churning, and the dust in the air stopped moving. The whole world fell into absolute, complete, and utter stillness for a moment.

But Im sensed it.

His soul sensed it.

Bai Yu's attack did not affect the physical world, the energy level, or any aspect of space, time, causality, or concepts.

This strike directly targets "existence" itself.

What is hit by this attack will not disappear, will not be destroyed, will not be erased, but will fundamentally lose the attribute of "existence".

It's as if it never existed, and never will, and the very possibility of its existence is irrelevant to it.

Im's avatar put up a final resistance in the face of this attack.