Whoosh!!
A meteor streaked across the heavens, its radiance illuminating the eastern hemisphere. Beneath that boundless, pure-white brilliance, all darkness was wiped away.
Thunderlight Penetration Cannon, or Thunderlight Piercing Shot, just as the name implied, Rowen didn't perform any complicated maneuvers. He merely compressed the power within his body into a range no wider than two fingers and fired it out.
Because that was enough…
Shuā!
Above the ocean, Imu and Shi Ji turned their heads almost simultaneously, staring at the dazzling lightning beam, their faces drained of color.
"So… so terrifying!"
That heaven-might-like destructive force shattered the ocean beneath their feet into basin-like depressions from over a thousand meters away. Countless sea creatures were annihilated without a sound, reduced to their most basic particles.
At the same time, its speed was beyond description.
Among all of Rowen's techniques, Thunderlight Penetration Cannon was the fastest to activate, without exception, especially in his current state.
In the mere instant it took them to turn around, the lightning beam pierced straight through Shi Ji's right chest. Without losing momentum, it continued onward, boring through Imu, who had just reformed into humanoid shape, straight through the forehead from ten meters behind, then surged forward again, plunging into the abdomen of the Mountain Ancestor, which had fallen backward and hadn't yet risen. It crushed everything in its path, finally bursting out through the faintly glowing carapace atop its head.
This was the moment Rowen had been waiting for, when all three were aligned on a single straight line, with the smallest possible gaps between them.
Not a single fragment flew out. The wounds pierced by the lightning beam glowed a fiery red, perfectly clean from front to back.
"Ugh!!"
Shi Ji let out a muffled groan as he was sent flying straight back, only to be caught by Rayleigh not far away.
The other two, however, were not so fortunate.
Imu's expression of shock remained frozen on his face. Until the moment of death, he never even realized what had erased his vitality. Like a puppet with its eyes wide open, he fell straight down toward the ocean.
Bang!
From a height of over a thousand meters, seawater was as hard as reinforced concrete. Perhaps this would have meant nothing to them in the past, however, at this moment, when Imu struck the surface, his body shattered instantly.
In an instant, fierce winds erupted. Shi Ji could feel it, the world itself was rejoicing.
Even without self-awareness, it still possessed a simple sense of good and bad.
At the same time, the Mountain Ancestor's struggling movements abruptly lost all strength, and it toppled backward.
Its muscle structure, harder than the toughest steel, offered not the slightest protection. The lightning beam pierced into its body, striking through the core hidden deep within its muscles, killing it completely.
The Mountain Ancestor's tenacity lay precisely in this. It had no "vital point" in the conventional biological sense. Like its descendant, the Hell Island Crab, it possessed a core that could freely shift within its muscle structure.
Without destroying that core, killing it was nearly impossible.
Protected by layers of muscle and shell, no one could see where the core was hidden. Coupled with its enormous size, even if it stood still and didn't resist, one might not find it.
But Rowen was different.
Having fused with the Heavenly Demon's power, he too possessed a divine instinct, one exclusive to gods like Imu and Shi Ji.
An instinct called "Extinction."
It wasn't that he knew where the Mountain Ancestor hid its core.
Rather, wherever he aimed, that was where the Mountain Ancestor's core would be.
First came the "result," then the "cause."
Yin and Yang inverted. Words became law.
This was the unique ability of the Heavenly Demon, born from the alternation of civilizations, born from destruction and rebirth.
"A pity it has instinct alone, but not overwhelming combat power…"
Satisfied with the outcome of his single strike, Rowen nodded.
"If the Heavenly Demon of old had also mastered lightning origin power as strong as mine, who could have sealed it?"
That was why, in his memories, the Heavenly Demon existed within the body of a little girl, not because it wanted to, but because it had no other choice.
Each time it awakened during a transition between civilizations, without borrowing a mortal body, it couldn't even touch others. At best, it could only act the hero within the realm of consciousness, endlessly interfering with a target's mind, twisting their thoughts.
Only when a civilization approached destruction could it seize the chance to grow stronger and become a true demon.
Before that, it didn't even possess a physical form.
Take the Mountain Ancestor as an example, Rowen knew better than anyone how terrifying the physical body of a Hell Island Crab was. As its progenitor, the Mountain Ancestor's body would likely withstand even concentrated fire from Pluton for a full day and night without its defenses being breached.
Achieving this had relied on lightning origin power with Rowen himself as the core, not purely on the Heavenly Demon's power.
Boom!!
As his words fell, a cloud of ash exploded around Rowen.
All sorts of strange objects appeared around his body, tables, chairs, food, medicine, weapons, armor, cannons, explosives, everything tumbled toward the ocean. These were items stored inside the Castle-Castle Fruit ring. Now that Imu was dead, the worst-case scenario had arrived.
"Devil Fruits becoming ineffective… no, is it degradation?"
He reached out and caught the pile of Dyna Stones that had once driven Akainu into a rage, preventing them from falling and blasting through the seabed rock layers. As Rowen looked at the ring on his hand, realization dawned.
Even in his eyes, the ring now looked utterly ordinary.
Yet through the divine power within his body, he could still sense faint energy fluctuations lingering on the ring,
Fluctuations of divine power.
And fluctuations of Castle-Castle Fruit particles.
The mother plant and its seeds could exist independently, so Devil Fruits hadn't completely vanished after all.
They had merely lost the control of a primary consciousness, automatically reverting to their original seed state…
Yet they were no longer as clean and pure as the original prototype seeds. Different fragments of world origin had already been etched into their DNA, shaping them into their corresponding "forms."
Given enough time, they could still grow into new fruits one by one.
"It'll just be a lot more troublesome!"
Raising his head to look toward the moon, almost at that very instant, whether it was Akainu or Aokiji, Ain or Koby, countless Devil Fruit users found their abilities weakened to the extreme.
Fortunately, unlike being fundamentally stripped away by Imu, there was no danger to their lives.
From Rowen's perspective, with their own vitality sustaining them, the seeds within Devil Fruit users would take at most three to five years to recover to their original state.
As for the Castle-Castle Fruit ring on his hand and the other Devil Fruits scattered across the seas, recovery within ten years was out of the question.
Some Devil Fruits that had only been seized and fused in recent years might even have their origin power directly return to the world.
"Devil Fruits really are quite something, even with such glaring weaknesses."
As he said this, his dangerous gaze shifted toward Shi Ji.
Shi Ji's pupils shrank as large quantities of Dyna Stone, gleaming with a silvery-white luster, were hurled toward him.
"Dyna Stone!!!"
The moment he recognized the pink substance inside, Shi Ji felt his scalp go numb. Without caring that Rowen was still watching him like a predator, he burst out at full speed and fled into the distance.
zī zī…
ding ling, kuāng lāng!
Amid the clattering impacts, cracks appeared in the Dyna Stone containers, releasing an ominous aura.
Then,
BOOOOM!!!
Even after heavy usage, there were still a full two tons left!
What did the explosion of two tons of Dyna Stone mean?
Rowen was sent flying by the shockwave, staring in disbelief as the world turned pure white, not metaphorically, but literally. It was as if a sun had risen from the ocean's surface.
Terrifying heat waves scoured the land, the sky, and the sea, enveloping everything within,
And then, burning it all to nothing!
One massive ring of tsunamis after another erupted outward from East Blue, surging in all directions, so enormous that they were clearly visible even from outer space.
At this moment, Rowen realized he had seriously underestimated Dyna Stone, something that barely stood out in the original canon.
Not only because of its exaggerated explosive power, but because…
"He's afraid?!"
While being blown backward, Rowen looked downward.
"Shi Ji was formed from Seastone, a crystallization of the ocean… could it be that Dyna Stone…"
At that thought, Rowen vanished from where he stood.
When he reappeared, he was already behind Shi Ji.
"So this is your natural enemy?"
With one hand, Rowen grabbed a Dyna Stone exposed to the air. With his left hand, he seized Shi Ji and shoved it straight into the channel in his right chest, the one blasted open earlier by the lightning shot.
"Let's see what happens!"
Under Shi Ji's horrified gaze, the Dyna Stone was forcibly inserted. The Dyna Stone that had been on the verge of detonating upon contact with air instantly went silent, its glow extinguishing.
But in exchange, Shi Ji's body rapidly turned red.
Vein-like patterns spread outward from the Dyna Stone, causing the Seacrystal fragments within his body to shift from blue to crimson. His eyes turned blood-red.
Watching Shi Ji convulse like a system crash, twitching violently, foaming, smoke constantly rising from his body, Rowen narrowed his eyes.
"This feeling… it's awfully familiar…"
Naturally it was familiar, because in the very next second,
BOOM!!
BOOOOM!!!
Shi Ji exploded.
(End of Chapter)
This novel is finished, and I have posted all the advanced chapters on my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395