Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece

Chapter 249 King of Heaven

The golden pillar of light that Rungomminiad, the spear of the end, transformed into fell from the sky, growing faster and faster, heavier and heavier, and more and more unstoppable.

It covered the entire front square of Pangu City.

With a diameter of over a thousand meters, it pierced straight down from above the clouds, covering the Five Elders, thousands of elite naval troops, the remaining forces of the Knights of God, and the entire land in front of Pangaea City in its shadow.

The barrier formed by the Five Elders is collapsing.

One layer, two layers, three layers—the multidimensional defensive geometry, formed from eight hundred years of accumulated power, was collapsing layer by layer from the outside in. Each layer's collapse was not a destruction, but an absorption. Rungomminiad did not "destroy" them, but merely incorporated them into his domain, then made them a part of himself.

This is the essence of the interlocking structure connecting the world.

It is not destruction, it is convergence.

Everything enveloped by it will be dragged into the tower at the end of time, preserved there forever as a specimen, neither born nor dying, neither increasing nor decreasing, until the end of time.

The Five Elders' bodies were trembling violently.

It's not because of fear.

It's not because they are losing, but because they are losing.

Every second, hundreds of years' worth of power drained from their bodies. That power wasn't consumed; rather, it was recorded by the tower, "collected" by it, and became part of the tower's collection.

Their bodies are weakening, their strength is waning, and their very existence is becoming blurred.

It wasn't out of loyalty, though they were indeed loyal, but because they knew that if they retreated now, the light would devour everything in front of Pangu City without hindrance—the soldiers, the weapons, and the life force that was the source of Im's power.

Lord Im is about to return.

At this critical juncture, any loss of strength is unacceptable.

"continue!"

The leader of the Five Elders, the old man with a long beard who held the first generation Kitetsu, issued a hoarse command.

The other four nodded in unison.

They didn't speak, they didn't communicate; their tacit understanding of eight hundred years was brought to its fullest extent at this moment.

The five individuals simultaneously unleashed the deepest power within them—not the kind of energy detectable by any instrument, but the primal power hidden deep within their souls, directly bound to the underlying rules of this world, and stemming from their identity as the founders of the World Government.

The force burst forth from their bodies, not spreading outwards, but contracting inwards, shrinking into an extremely small, almost infinitely dense point.

That point hovered above their heads for 0.01 seconds.

Then it exploded.

It didn't explode outwards, it exploded inwards.

Centered on that point, a completely new defensive field unfolded in an instant.

This defensive field is unlike any other defensive field before; it has no shape, no color, and no perceptible properties.

It is not made of energy, not made of matter, and not even made of any known physical laws.

The golden beam of light continued to fall.

It came into contact with the newly established rule-based defense field of the Five Elders.

There was no explosion.

There was no shockwave.

There was no flash of light from energy collisions.

There was only silence.

An absolute, complete silence, as if time itself had stopped.

The moment the golden beam of light made contact with the rule-based defensive field, neither of them changed.

The beam of light continued to fall, and the defensive field continued to exist. The two sides were like two parallel lines, not affecting or interfering with each other.

But this state lasted for less than three seconds.

Three seconds later, cracks appeared on the rule-based defense field.

Those cracks didn't appear from the outside, but from the inside.

It wasn't that Rungominiad breached it from the outside, but rather that Rungominiad's very existence rendered all the rules ineffective.

It's not like an arrow shot from a bow, with a definite trajectory and a definite direction of approach from point A to point B.

It's like the equals sign in a mathematical formula; the moment it's written down, the expressions on both sides of the equals sign are already equal.

The same is true for Lengominiad.

The moment it was summoned by Artoria, it existed simultaneously in every location in the sky, on the ground, in the square in front of Pangaea, and on all timelines related to these locations.

It does not need to be near Pangu City.

It's been here from the beginning.

The crack is widening.

The rules-based defense field is collapsing.

The Five Elders' bodies are enduring unimaginable burdens.

Their skin is aging at a visible rate, not just getting old, but time is being stolen by Lengominiad.

Every second, years of lifespan are lost from their bodies, dragged into that tower at the end of time.

If we just persevere a little longer, until Lord Im completes the final transformation, until that dark golden pillar of light disappears from the top of Pangu City, until their master returns to this land.

then.

Then everything changed.

It wasn't because the Five Elders succeeded.

It wasn't because Lengominiad was blocked.

Rather, it was an ancient, powerful, and irresistible force that awakened from the deepest part of Pangu City.

That power didn't come from any particular direction, but rather emanated simultaneously from every brick, every inch of land, and every breath of air in the entire Pangu City.

It was like the beating of a heart, or the breathing of an ancient behemoth—slow, heavy, and oppressive.

The five elders froze simultaneously.

It's not because of fear.

It was out of reverence.

A kind of awe that comes from the deepest part of the soul, has never changed in eight hundred years, and is more instinctive than breathing and heartbeat.

They both turned their heads at the same time and looked in the direction of Pangu City.

At the top of Pangu City, the dark golden pillar of light still exists, still stretching towards the sky, still drawing life force from every corner of the world.

But inside the pillar of light, at the deepest part of that dark golden light, a silhouette was emerging.

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 unremarkable, 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 Lungonium, 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 is it 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 a 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!!