The Prankster Lawyer
"Ah, right, right, right."
Yang Ning rolled his eyes. He didn't feel like arguing. He didn't know what Hei Lu had just consumed, but it definitely wasn't a Devil Fruit.
Judging by the drastic physical change, Yang Ning guessed it was the life essence the old man had mentioned earlier.
That treacherous bastard!
Even Arthur—the current Grim Reaper—couldn't extract that essence freely, yet Hei Lu had hoarded an entire box of it. No wonder he'd refused so fiercely to let them stay at the temple.
Who could sleep peacefully in a place where a rat hides its stash?
Boom!
A thunderous stomp shook the earth. Hei Lu's six-meter frame shot forward like a cannonball.
His face was twisted, eyes bloodshot, fluorescent green muscles bulging like a grotesque bullfrog. The wind from his charge alone nearly knocked Yang Ning off his feet—then came the fist.
A single green fist, bigger than half Yang Ning's body, slammed toward his chest.
This time, Yang Ning didn't try to tank it. His Observation Haki screamed warning—this strike carried real lethality.
He twisted aside at the last second. The wind pressure still ripped at his clothes.
Unfazed by the miss, Hei Lu laughed—a guttural, unnatural sound—and swung again.
His fists pounded like meteors, turning the ground into a dust-choked drumbeat. Each strike trembled the earth.
"Not bad strength," Yang Ning called out, dancing between the blows, "but too slow."
The mockery enraged Hei Lu. His face flushed crimson. He pounded his chest like a berserk gorilla.
"Aaaaaahhhhhhh!"
The roar wasn't just noise—it triggered something. The green aura around him accelerated. His next two punches came faster, almost blurring.
An ordinary fighter would've been crushed.
But Yang Ning's Observation Haki mapped every micro-shift in Hei Lu's stance before he even moved.
"Heh heh—hmm?"
Hei Lu's smirk died. Yang Ning's blade was faster.
Kotetsu flashed—two clean intercepts—and Hei Lu's knuckles split open, great gashes tearing through his swollen flesh.
If his fingers had been thinner, those slashes would've turned him into a six-meter, green, thumbless Doraemon.
"Ughhh~~~!"
Hei Lu threw his head back—not in pain, but in ecstasy. His gums bared in a rictus grin.
"Eh~" Yang Ning grimaced. "You admirers are truly perverted."
Then—he watched as the wounds sealed shut in seconds. Green light pulsed like a heartbeat beneath Hei Lu's skin.
"Hmph. Regeneration at supersonic speed? Expected, I guess. Swallow enough life essence, and you'd regrow from a drop of spit."
But the thought of fighting this muscle-bound monstrosity made Yang Ning's stomach turn.
Who the hell wants to duel a forty-ton green gym rat?
He raised Kotetsu.
"One-Sword Style: Heaven Opening!"
A vertical pillar of white energy split the sky—and Hei Lu clean in two.
"Village Chief!"
"Impossible!"
"He's dead!"
"No! The Chief can't die!"
The surviving natives collapsed into denial.
But they were right. Hei Lu wasn't dead.
In Yang Ning's Haki-perception, the two halves still registered as one living entity—and its aura was growing stronger.
"He really can live," Yang Ning muttered.
He didn't wait. He unleashed a storm of long-range slashes. White crescents tore through Hei Lu's body, then the ground, then back through the remains—again and again—until flesh and earth became a churned slurry.
After dozens of strikes, Yang Ning stopped.
His face wasn't triumphant. It was grim.
Because according to his Haki… the mess was still alive.
Worse—the aura now radiated lethal threat.
And faintly, beneath the carnage, Yang Ning heard laughter.
"Tsk tsk tsk. Weak as it is, its vitality and pain tolerance are impressive."
"But you're not human anymore, are you?"
He reached inward—activating Feast.
With its Noble True Injury effect, even the holiest body would crumble.
But Hei Lu reacted.
The slurry exploded.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Hundreds of glowing green fragments—"Black Herrschers," Yang Ning called them—shot outward like shrapnel.
His Observation Haki flared. In an instant, he unleashed over a hundred slashes, vaporizing every fragment aimed at him.
But he couldn't stop them all.
The rest impaled the watching natives—living and dead alike.
One by one, the villagers began to convulse. Their limbs twisted unnaturally. Their eyes clouded with green light.
Yang Ning lowered Kotetsu, sighing.
"Even the dead can be used, Hei Lu-chan. You never fail to invent new horrors."
He stepped back, arms crossed, and waited.
Let's see what masterpiece you'll stitch together this time.
He didn't wait long.
In the time it took to smoke half a cigarette, every native—whole, severed, or already dead—was absorbed. Flesh melted, bones fused, screams turned to groans.
From the pile rose a forty-meter-tall monstrosity—a writhing mass of fused bodies, oozing green veins like capillaries.
And in its forehead—a single, black head slowly formed.
Its eyes snapped open.
Green pupils spun 360 degrees, then locked onto Yang Ning.
The giant's mouth stretched into a grin.
"Now… round two begins."
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