Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece.

That was the outline of a person.

No, that wasn't one person.

It was something that existed between humans and gods, something that shouldn't exist in this world, something that transcended all definitions, something that could distort the surrounding spacetime simply by existing.

The silhouette descended slowly within the beam of light, like a shadow flowing backwards in a waterfall, or like dust slowly sliding down a beam of light shooting from the ground into the sky.

As it fell, it became clearer, more specific, and closer to a form that could be understood by human senses.

The five elders knelt down.

They knelt not because they were forced to by force, but willingly, from the bottom of their hearts, with a devotion that had remained unchanged for eight hundred years.

Their foreheads were pressed against the ground.

Their hands were placed flat on either side of their bodies.

Their bodies were trembling violently, not from fear, but from excitement—the excitement that the eight-hundred-year wait was finally over.

"Lord Im..."

The leader's voice trembled, carrying an emotion never before felt in eight hundred years—a near-mad fervor, a fervor finally released after being suppressed for far too long.

"You have finally... truly returned..."

The outline in the beam of light did not respond.

It continued to fall.

The beam of light disappeared the moment it hit the bottom.

It didn't gradually fade or slowly fade away, but disappeared instantly, as if someone had pressed a switch. The dark golden beam of light that shot from the top of Pangu City into the sky vanished into thin air.

Darkness returned to the top of Pangu City.

But that darkness was not an empty darkness; rather, it was a darkness filled with a more intense, more substantial, and almost tangible sense of presence.

In the heart of that darkness, a figure stood.

The figure was neither tall nor strong, and had no exaggerated physical features. It looked like an ordinary, medium-sized person, wearing some kind of dark robe, with a white mask on its face. The mask was expressionless and featureless, with only two empty eye sockets.

But what emanated from those two hollow eye sockets instilled an instinctive sense of unease in everyone present who saw it.

The discomfort did not come from fear, but from something more fundamental, closer to biological instinct.

Just as a frog will instinctively freeze when it sees a snake, everyone who sees those eyes will instinctively realize that the thing standing there is a completely different species from themselves.

No, they are not different species.

They exist at different levels.

Just as a two-dimensional graphic cannot comprehend an object in three-dimensional space, the human brain cannot truly comprehend the essence of the thing standing there.

But Bai Yu could understand.

His Rinnegan trembled violently at that moment, not from fear, but because the instant Im appeared, his eyes captured some kind of information that only the Rinnegan could capture.

She presents a state of convergence of the world's vitality at a specific juncture.

Every life form in this world, from the largest sea monsters to the smallest plankton, from humans to trees, from animals to bacteria, contains an extremely small amount of invisible energy that cannot even be detected by any known instruments.

This energy is not ordinary biological energy, not ATP, not heat, not any form of energy that can be scientifically defined.

It is life force itself, an energy that belongs neither to matter nor spirit, but lies between the two, which cannot be created or destroyed, and can only be transferred from one vessel to another.

Im is the convergence of this energy.

Or rather, Im's power is to draw all the life force in the world to her/him/it.

Every moment, countless life forces flow from every corner of the world to Im, where they are absorbed, stored, transformed, and used.

But the whole world was preserved thanks to Lengominiad's efforts.

Both Rungominiad and Im's abilities are vying for life force.

While preserved by Lungonimiad, their life force is not absorbed by Im, because they are neither alive nor dead; they are simply fixed at a point at the end of time, beyond Im's reach.

Im was very unhappy about this.

Bai Yu could sense that dissatisfaction.

It wasn't spoken from Im's mouth, nor expressed through Im's actions, but rather emanated directly from Im's very being, like a scent permeating the air, omnipresent and impossible to ignore.

It was a feeling of hunger.

A perpetual, almost pathological hunger for vitality.

Im stood in the shadows atop Pangu City, his white mask facing Bai Yu. His empty eye sockets had no pupils, no irises, and no other recognizable human features, but Bai Yu knew that Im was looking at him.

No, it's not about watching.

It means "to examine".

Like a hunter examining his prey, like a collector examining his collection, like a hungry person examining his food.

Then Im moved.

It's not walking, not flying, not any known mode of movement. Im simply appears from one location to another, without any trajectory, process, or time difference.

One second they were still in the shadows at the top of Pangu City, and the next they were standing in the square in front of Pangu City.

Im looked up at the golden pillar of light.

Rungomminiad continues to fall, continues to devour everything, continues to drag everything it envelops into the tower at the end of time.

Its power is not diminished by the appearance of Im, nor altered by the appearance of anything else, because it is "rule," not "power." The rule does not change because of the strength of the enemy, just as gravity does not change because of your weight.

Im watched silently as the light of the Holy Lance gradually faded.

Then Im raised his right hand from his robe, and the seemingly ordinary hand slowly unfolded in the air, its five fingers spread out, as if it were holding up something unseen.

Then that thing appeared.

From directly beneath Pangu City, from the deepest underground spaces—spaces even the Five Elders were not authorized to enter—a colossal object began to slowly rise.

The enormous thing made no sound.

There was no roar of an engine, no turning of gears, no noise that should be produced by any mechanical device in operation. It simply rose silently, slowly, and irresistibly from the ground, like a mountain emerging from the sea, like a giant awakening from slumber.

Its size is unimaginably large.

It is not a ship.

It is not a warship.

It is not any known vehicle capable of moving on water or in the air.

It is a platform.

A circular platform, over a kilometer in diameter, made of a dark gray material that is neither metal nor stone, but somewhere in between.

The platform's surface was covered with dense patterns, which were not decorations or carvings, but an extremely complex circuit system that even Vegapunk could not fully decipher.

The complexity of those patterns far exceeds that of any known circuit system in the world. They are not two-dimensional, but multi-dimensional. Each pattern exists simultaneously in multiple spatial dimensions, shuttling, interweaving, and overlapping between different dimensions.

In the very center of the platform, there is a huge recessed area, which is a perfect circle with a diameter of about 100 meters and a depth of about 20 meters.

The bottom of the recessed area is flat, but it is not smooth in the ordinary sense. It is an absolute, thorough flatness, where even the unevenness at the atomic level is perfectly smoothed out.

In the center of this recessed area, there is an even smaller recess, only the size of a fist, shaped and sized just right to hold a particular kind of container.

That was a spot reserved for the "mother flame".

The interface of the world's highest theoretical energy density energy core, which Vegapunk has been researching for years without completing, is located in the center of this depression.

Heavenly King!!

Chapter 250 Avalon

The moment Uranus emerged from the ground, the entire Red Earth trembled.

It wasn't an earthquake.

This massive landmass, which has existed for hundreds of millions of years, instinctively felt fear in the face of something far older than itself.

The platform of the Heavenly King continues to rise.

It has no base, no supporting structure, and no parts connected to the ground. It simply floats, suspended above Pangu City in a posture that defies all the laws of physics, like a shield emerging from the void, or a door to another world.

The edges of the platform began to glow.

That light was not gold, not white, not any color in the visible spectrum.

It is a faint, dim light that cannot be defined by the human eye, existing between existence and non-existence, like the last ray of light that bursts forth at the limit after the darkness of the night sky has been compressed to its extreme.

“It was used only twice eight hundred years ago. Those two times, it changed the face of the world. And today… today it will change the world again.”

The platform of the Heavenly King continued to rise, watching the patterns on its surface light up one after another, and seeing that dim light spread from the edges to the center, like a darkness that was swallowing everything, or like a flower that was blooming, not belonging to any season of this world.

Im stood directly below the Heavenly King's platform, his white mask facing the sky, the Heavenly King's shadow reflected in his empty eye sockets.

Im's right hand was still raised.

That seemingly ordinary hand was now bearing an unimaginable burden. The Heavenly King was not driven by any mechanical device; it was driven by a vast energy source, by Im's own will, and powered by the bond between Im and the underlying rules of this world.

Every second that the Heavenly King is activated, Im consumes the equivalent of a city's entire population's life force for a year.

But Im didn't care.

Because at this moment, the whole world is providing energy for the Heavenly King.

From the distant East Sea to the desolate West Sea, from the frozen North Sea to the scorching South Sea, from the beginning to the end of the Grand Line, from the islands in the sky to the ruins in the deep sea, the life force of every living being in this world is being drawn out by Im, flowing into Im's body, and being injected into every pattern, every circuit, and every dimension of Uranus through Im's body.

Those life forms are so weak that they are almost imperceptible.

But when billions of tiny life forces come together, they become a torrent powerful enough to shake the very foundations of the world.

The King's platform has stopped rising.

It hovers about 500 meters above Pangu City, like a round shield covering the entire sky, casting its shadow over everything below.

The textures on the platform surface all lit up.

Those dense, multi-dimensional patterns, more complex than the stars in the Milky Way, simultaneously emitted that dim, faint light at this moment.

They do not emit light independently, but rather flicker with an extremely subtle, near-perfect synchronization rate, like some ancient creature that has been sealed for eight hundred years and is finally able to see the light of day again, slowly opening its eyes.