Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece.

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 in the direction of Pangu City on the red earth continent.

Those fluctuations seemed to be summoning something.

Or summon someone.

Bai Yu's Rinnegan suddenly widened a little at that moment.

In his eyes, the red-gold stars 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.

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? What equipment? What kind of equipment in the world can broadcast live from Pangu City 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—Den Den Mushi, Video Den Den Mushi, Radio Den Den Mushi—and that all of these devices had limitations on 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 telephone operators) 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 the project, but no one has ever seen the actual product because the system is too energy-intensive. 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, it was 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 comes from having experienced too much, a mixture of weariness and relief.

"Vegapunk, you did it for them in the end."

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 this moment.

He saw the scene in front of Pangu City.

He saw the army.

It is not an ordinary army, but a military force composed of the Knights of God and the elite of the navy, which has undergone countless years of training and integration, and is 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 had seen, because she knew he 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.

Chapter 247 Pangu City

As Bai Yu's voice faded, the image slowly dissipated from everyone's consciousness.

Although the image disappeared, the purple beam of light still stood in the northern sky, like a giant nail piercing the heavens from the ground, pinning the entire world to the eve of some enormous, irreversible change.

The redhead was the first to recover from that visual shock.

His right hand was lowered from his chest and hung at his side, his fingers slightly curled and then extended, as if he were warming up for some kind of battle.

His eyes were fixed on the purple beam of light in the north, his gaze as deep and unfathomable as a sea brewing a storm.

"With an army of over 100,000, now is not the time to start a war. Uchiha Hakuha, let us wait for the appearance of the Sun God."

Redhead's voice was calm, so calm that it didn't sound like he was saying something that would send chills down anyone's spine.

"Add the twelve most elite members of the Knights of God, the well-known strongmen of the Navy, and the Five Elders. And this is only outside Pangu City. We have no idea what's inside Pangu City."

He paused, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly at an angle. It wasn't exactly a smile; it was more like the expression on the face of someone who becomes more clear-headed before a storm.

How many people are there on our side?

No one answered him, because everyone knew the answer.

Their numbers are less than a fraction of the other side's.

This does not appear to be an evenly matched war; it is a war in which the opposing force is at an absolute disadvantage in all objective conditions.

Loki's deep voice came from the side.

"Uchiha Hakuha, what do you plan to do? The live broadcast you just mentioned means that our every move will be seen by the whole world. If we lose, it's not just a matter of losing a war, but the whole world will see us. In that case, those who are still watching, those who are still hesitating about whether to resist, will never stand up again."

Loki hit the nail on the head.

Vegapunk's live-streaming system is, in some ways, more dangerous than the hundreds of thousands of troops outside Pangaea.

Because it elevates the outcome of this war from a purely military level to a level of will and belief.

If they lose, the whole world will see the end of the rebels, and it will become an iron curtain that weighs on everyone's hearts, one that they can never escape.

Bai Yu turned around and looked at Loki.

His Rinnegan changed again during this gaze; the red-gold star switched from rotating in the opposite direction to rotating in the same direction, at a speed slower than ever before, almost as if it were still.

But it was precisely this slow, almost static rotation that gave Loki an unprecedented sense of oppression.

That's the oppressive feeling of the rules.

It is not oppression brought about by power, nor oppression brought about by momentum, but a more fundamental oppression that exists in the underlying logic of the world.

It's like the feeling of being pressed down by gravity when you stand on the edge of a cliff. It's not the cliff that's pressing down on you, but the physical rules of this world that are telling you that you will die if you jump.

"Loki, you should not participate in this war; just observe from the sidelines."

After saying this, Bai Yu shifted his gaze from Loki and looked back at the northern sky.

Then he closed his eyes.

It's not the kind of closing your eyes because of fatigue or thinking, but the kind of closing your eyes that you do before making a major decision, when you're entering a deeper state of consciousness.

Everyone present sensed a change.

It is not a change in hearing, nor a change in sight, but a change that is more abstract and exists in space itself.

The ground beneath their feet, or rather the island beneath them, was trembling in an extremely faint way.