Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece.

All the protective forces that remained in his avatar and had accumulated over the past seven hundred years erupted at the same instant. These forces were not meant to block the attack, but to complete a program that Im had already laid out before the battle even began, before the attack hit.

As Im's avatar erupted, a complex pattern of countless geometric shapes appeared on every inch of his skin.

Those lines contract from the skin's surface into the body, and with each millimeter of contraction, a portion of the information stored within the incarnation is compressed into the core of the lines.

This information includes all the data from the battle, a detailed analysis of all of Bai Yu's abilities, all the observations from Bai Yu's Rinnegan, and most importantly, the spectral characteristics of the power within Bai Yu that does not belong to any power system in this world.

The textures contracted at an extremely fast rate, but they were still not fast enough.

The moment it hits, the avatar begins to disappear from bottom to top.

It wasn't burning, decomposition, or disintegration, but rather like a figure in a painting being erased by an eraser, starting from the feet and being removed inch by inch from this world.

Every inch of the body that is removed loses its right to exist forever.

It is not that it died or disappeared, but that the concept of "this incarnation of Im" itself has no place in the history, present, or future of the entire universe.

But the procedures that Im had laid out were completed at the last minute.

At the location on the avatar's chest, a ball of light the size of a fist was ejected in the last 0.001 seconds before the avatar disappeared.

The orb of light has no mass, no energy, and no detectable physical properties; it is simply a pure information packet containing all the data Im has collected during this battle.

The direction in which the light sphere was launched was not any direction in space, but a direction that cannot be described by the concept of space. It was the location of Im's true form, an absolute domain that was not in any dimension, not on any coordinate, and not bound by any physical laws.

Bai Yu's gaze shifted for a moment as the light sphere bounced off.

He saw the orb of light.

He saw the trajectory of the ball of light as it bounced off.

He even saw the information encapsulated inside the sphere of light.

But Bai Yu did not stop the light sphere.

It's not because he can't, but because he chooses not to stop it.

Chapter 245 The Holy Sword and the Holy Lance

Bai Yu's gaze shifted for a moment as the light sphere bounced off.

He saw the orb of light.

He saw the trajectory of the ball of light as it bounced off.

He even saw the information encapsulated inside the sphere of light—data about his eyes, his power, and his very existence—compressed by Im into a fist-sized information packet using an encoding method that surpassed the technological level of this world.

The encoding method is so ingenious that no being in the world should be able to crack it, unless that being itself has already stepped into a realm outside the rules.

But Bai Yu did not stop the light sphere.

It's not because he can't, but because he chooses not to stop it.

Inside Susanoo, Shiraha's right hand slowly lowered.

The galaxy vortex in his Rinnegan began to slow down. The patterns that were spinning at speeds beyond the limits of vision seemed to be soothed by some kind of will, slowing down layer by layer and settling down until the eyes, which were between red and gold, regained their calm.

Three kilometers away on the ground, Im's avatar had completely disappeared.

It is not death.

It is not annihilation.

It is not any kind of ending that can be recorded, described, or understood.

It was simply removed from the attribute of "existence"—if "this incarnation of Im" had never existed in the world, then naturally there would be no trace of its disappearance.

There were no scorch marks on the ground, no residual energy fluctuations in the air, and no cracks in the space. Everything was spotless, as if the incarnation of Im had never been to this land.

But Bai Yu knew it had been here.

Because his eyes recorded every moment of its existence, from the first time it appeared in his field of vision to the last time it was removed from existence, every frame was completely preserved in Bai Yu's visual memory, as clear as if it had been carved into the hardest granite with the sharpest carving knife.

Susanoo began to shrink.

The massive black skeleton began to shrink from a height of hundreds of meters, the armor-like exoskeleton retracting piece by piece, and the chakra muscle fibers covering its surface dissipating one by one. The whole process was quiet and orderly, like a giant folding its body into a smaller space.

Shiraha's body emerged from inside Susanoo.

He stood in mid-air, the air beneath his feet like a transparent pane of glass, bearing his entire weight.

There was no fluctuation of chakra, no operation of abilities; he simply stood there, because the moment his eyes looked down at his feet, the air beneath his feet was imbued with the ability to stand.

It's that simple.

That's unreasonable.

The white feather fell from the sky at a moderate speed, landing without stirring up any dust or making any sound.

When his feet touched the ground, the ground actively adjusted its hardness to accommodate his weight. It wasn't that the ground was conscious, but rather that the ground was given this property when Bai Yu looked at it.

This was the first time Uchiha Hakuba had displayed this power in this battle.

It's not attack, not defense, not anything categorized as a combat skill, but a more fundamental, more basic, more unreasonable ability: his eyes can transform anything he looks at into whatever he desires.

No process is required.

No logic is needed.

It does not need to follow any known or unknown physical laws.

Just observe, then change.

In the distance, those comrades who had retreated to a safe distance before the battle began were rushing towards Bai Yu's location.

Artoria was running in the lead.

She held no sword, but her right hand was always poised to draw the holy sword at any moment. This was a muscle memory she had developed after countless battles; even in the most relaxed moments, her body was never truly at ease.

This wasn't a lack of trust in Bai Yu, but rather a requirement she set for herself, a self-discipline ingrained in her very being.

Everyone arrived in front of Bai Yu almost at the same time.

The redhead was the first to speak.

His voice carried an undisguised shock, a shock that a soldier should have after watching a battle, but rather the sense of disorientation that inevitably arises when someone whose cognitive boundaries have been forcibly pushed open tries to understand a new world using old cognitive frameworks.

"Bai Yu, what did you just use... what exactly was that?"

Redhead's question was vague, not because he lacked the ability to express himself, but because he simply couldn't find the right words to describe what he had just seen.

He wasn't even sure if what Bai Yu had just done could be called "some kind of ability" or "some kind of skill," because those words sounded too specific and too limited, while what Bai Yu had just done seemed to have no boundaries.

Bai Yu turned to look at the red-haired man.

When those Rinnegan eyes, somewhere between red and gold, looked at Shanks, the oppressive feeling that had been so chilling disappeared.

It wasn't that Bai Yu deliberately hid anything; rather, the aura his eyes exuded when facing enemies was completely different from when facing friends.

The former is like the mass of the entire universe compressed into a needle tip, while the latter is like a calm lake, deep, quiet, and reassuring.

"This is one way I use my eyes."

The amount of information implied in this sentence, if fully explored, could be enough for the world's top scholars to study for a lifetime.

Redhead opened his mouth, wanting to ask more questions, but swallowed the words back.

Because he suddenly realized that now was not the time to ask about these details.

They have more important things to do.

Artoria stood to the left of Shiraha, her gaze shifting from Shiraha's face to the empty space where Im's avatar had disappeared.

Her long golden hair swayed gently in the breeze, her emerald green eyes remained expressionless, but her senses were scanning the area at maximum power.

"He escaped; what a strange ability."

Artoria's voice wasn't loud, but her tone was very certain, like the conclusion drawn by an experienced hunter after examining all the traces left by his prey.

Bai Yu nodded.

"His true form is outside the rules; what remains here is merely an avatar."

Jabba narrowed his eyes slightly upon hearing this.

He pulled out the small flask he always carried with him from his waist, unscrewed the cap, took a sip, and then said unhurriedly, "Outside the rules... So that's what Roger meant back then."

Jabba's tone was relaxed, but his eyes were anything but.

He had lived in this world for so many years, seen Celestial Dragons, Marine Admirals, the Four Emperors, and the world's strongest and darkest people, but the phrase "outside the rules" was the first time he had heard it used to describe someone other than Roger.

Bai Yu looked up at the sky.

The fragments of the sky that had been shattered by his eyes began to repair themselves within seconds of Im's avatar disappearing.

The fragments that fell from the sky did not truly disappear; instead, they reintegrated into the sky as they fell, like a shattered mirror healing itself, the cracks gradually disappearing and the sky slowly returning to its original state.

This is the world's own repair mechanism.

Bai Yu doesn't need to do anything, because the world itself has the ability to maintain its integrity.

He had only temporarily severed the "existence" of the sky, but when he stopped looking at that shattered sky, the world would stitch its own wounds back together.

"Im definitely has more than one clone."

Bai Yu's voice was calm, but the content of his words made everyone present tense.

“His true form exists outside the rules, but he has multiple avatars within this world. The one that was just destroyed was only one of them, and it shouldn’t be his strongest avatar. That avatar’s mission from the beginning was not to defeat me, but to gather information about me.”

The redhead's brows were furrowed tightly.

"So all those things he said earlier, about the upper limit of rules and the limitations on avatars, were just stalling for time?"

Bai Yu did not answer the question directly. His eyes were fixed on the northern sky, the direction of the Holy Land of Mary Geoise, the direction of Pangaea, and the direction where Im's true form resided.

"He doesn't need to stall for time. From the moment the battle began, his information gathering program was already running automatically. Every word he said and every action he took was just an add-on to that program. The real core was that ball of light, that information packet that he launched."

Artoria turned to Shiraha, a hint of seriousness appearing in her emerald green eyes.

"Can you track down that packet?"

Bai Yu nodded.

"can."

"But you didn't stop it."