"Kehahaha!"
The fake Ron laughed proudly again. He drew the long blade hanging at his waist. The sword reflected a cold light in the smoke, and his tone was full of contempt. "If you think you can do it, then go ahead and try, Charlotte Linlin."
Linlin's gaze sank. She did not answer. Gripping Napoleon, which was already wrapped in Conqueror's Haki, she swung fiercely.
Swish.
The speed was so fast that the fake Ron had no time to react. In a flash of blade light, his right arm was severed cleanly from the shoulder and fell into the rolling smoke.
The huge impact that followed swept him away, sending his whole body tumbling across the ground dozens of times.
Afterward, the fake Ron staggered back to his feet. Yet the smile still hung on his face, as if he had never been injured. "It's useless, Charlotte Linlin. Do you see? I possess an immortal body. No matter what kind of attack I suffer, my body will recover."
But the moment his words fell, the smile on his face suddenly froze.
At the cut where his severed arm should have regenerated, black mist surged, but it seemed suppressed by some invisible force. For a while, it actually could not heal.
"What's going on?" the fake Ron's voice suddenly rose, carrying panic he had never shown before. "Impossible. Absolutely impossible!"
The suppression from Conqueror's Haki made the recovery of his immortal body extremely slow.
The fake Ron panicked.
The confidence of "I won't die" was like a collapsing wall, every brick falling piece by piece.
"Hm?" Linlin held Napoleon and walked toward him step by step, neither fast nor slow. "Not laughing anymore? Weren't you laughing happily just now?"
"No..." The fake Ron's expression twisted, and he kept backing away in disbelief. "How is this possible... Why isn't my immortal body working?"
He suddenly raised his head, his gaze like a drowning man clutching at the last thing he could reach. "Have you abandoned me? Great god, have you abandoned me?! Don't abandon me! I can still be useful...!"
His voice changed from initial arrogance to trembling, then from trembling to pleading, and finally into a hoarse sound close to collapse.
Tap, tap, tap.
Linlin's steps suddenly quickened. Napoleon, wrapped in dark-red lightning, drew a cold arc through the air. Amid the flash of blade and shadow, the fake Ron's body was cut into countless pieces, leaving only a single head rolling alone on the ground.
Whoosh.
That head suddenly sprayed a burst of scalding steam. His face melted like wax. His features twisted, collapsed, and reshaped, revealing an entirely new face.
A fat head and big ears, dark skin, and long, rough black hair scattered messily across the ground.
"Tsk." Linlin looked at the fake who now had only a head left, her face wrinkling with disgust. "That appearance of yours... you really do look a lot like the Celestial Dragons I've seen before."
She did not look at him again. Bending down, she grabbed his rough black hair and lifted his head.
The imposter's eyes were still open, and his mouth moved slightly as if he wanted to say something, but he could no longer make any sound.
Linlin turned and walked away with the head. When she passed the burly man, his legs went soft, and he collapsed to the ground as if his bones had been pulled out. His eyes were full of fear and confusion.
Linlin's footsteps paused. She turned her head and looked at that man in silence for a moment.
Although she disliked some of Ron's methods, one thing was one thing and another was another. She felt there was still a need to explain.
She slowly raised the head in her hand and said in a voice neither high nor low, "See this? He's an imposter. The real Ron has never left the Rocks Pirates."
"Most importantly, Ron is very, very strong. How could he possibly be this kind of coward?"
After saying that, Linlin did not wait for the man to answer. She carried the head and strode forward, her figure gradually disappearing into the rolling smoke.
The burly man sat frozen in place for a long time. Only then did the anger of being deceived surge up belatedly. Immediately after, he let out a heavy breath of relief.
"Hehehe..."
The burly man laughed quietly, his eyes carrying a rekindled light. "So he was an imposter... I knew it. How could he be so weak?"
At the same time, on Ron's side.
Smoke still filled the surroundings.
Ever since they had sent the "sandworm" home, they had stayed in place chatting about various things.
Swish!
The smoke behind Kurama was suddenly torn apart.
A huge wild boar burst out from within the churning mist. Its four tusks turned into blades, carrying a piercing sound as they stabbed at Kurama's back with extreme speed.
Along with it came a low voice. "Then, at such close range, what will you do?"
When Kurama heard that, his fox mouth suddenly split into a curve, carrying the smile of someone saying, 'You finally came.'
He turned almost instantly, reached out a huge front paw, and precisely grabbed the wild boar's blade-like tusk.
Rumble...
The fierce impact made Kurama slide backward, his feet carving two deep trenches into the ground.
But his paw did not loosen. The smile on his face deepened instead. "Idiot. With malice that strong, I've been waiting for you to deliver yourself."
As his voice fell, Kurama fired several Tailed Beast Bombs in succession. One after another, like tossing pebbles into an open bag, every single one was delivered into the wild boar's mouth, which was open from exerting force.
Boom!
The wild boar's body exploded from within in that instant. Broken limbs and black mist surged outward like a blooming black firework. Then the mist contracted and vanished at extreme speed, as if drawn away by the wind, leaving nothing behind.
"..."
Ron stood inside the golden Nine-Tailed Fox and looked at that scene, slightly stunned.
That tactic of pretending to be foolish, then ambushing someone at the last second was truly insidious.
Whoosh.
At that moment, sharp wind pressure came from above.
The skeletal horse in human-beast form had arrived. The black blade in its hand was gathering powerful pressure, dark-red arcs of lightning constantly leaping and churning along the blade, as if it were about to release some powerful sword technique that required charging.
Crack, crack, crack.
Almost at the same instant, Gyuki's octopus tentacles suddenly wrapped around its own body. Then, like a wound-up spinning top, it began rotating at high speed.
Gyuki top, start spinning.
Ron, Kurama, and Son Goku's expressions changed at the same time.
"You bastard!" Kurama's voice pierced through the spinning wind, carrying dissatisfaction. "We're all still here! Who counters like that?!"
Kurama's voice did not reach Gyuki's ears at all. It was swallowed directly by the enormous commotion.
Gyuki spun faster and faster, like a storm being shattered apart and erupting in place. Stones and clods of earth were rolled up by the spiral airflow, rising along the spinning pattern.
Rings of soil sank inward, suspended in the muddy current. They followed the spiral higher and higher, thicker and thicker, like a giant dragon turning over from beneath the earth.
Gyuki rotated.
"What?"
The human-beast skeletal horse's gaze sank, and its expression stiffened. It abruptly withdrew its blade, rose even higher, and then made no further move, simply overlooking the scene.
"It seems we have completely missed this opportunity..." the human-beast skeletal horse muttered. Its body gradually turned into a cloud of black mist, like smoke scattered by the wind, leaving no trace behind as it completely disappeared in midair.
...