Uchiha Puppet Master, Starting from One Piece

Chapter 251 The End and the Rebirth

EXcalibur's golden light engulfed Im.

That wasn't an ordinary release of the Holy Sword; it was within Avalon's absolute defensive domain, enhanced by Shiraha's Rinnegan.

Fueled by all the emotions that had been building up throughout the battle, this was a strike that far exceeded normal standards.

A golden beam of light shot into the sky, piercing through the black sphere of the Heavenly King, through the dark clouds above Pangu City, through the atmosphere, and into the pitch-black space.

The light lasted for a full ten seconds.

Then it began to fade.

Artoria's gaze was fixed on the figure at the center of the light, the figure that had not disappeared even in the golden torrent that was enough to evaporate an island.

"It worked?"

Loki's voice trembled with disbelief.

"That guy—finally dead?"

No one answered him.

Because everyone saw it.

Even after the golden light completely dissipated, Im remained standing there.

The white mask is still there, the black robe is still there, and the right hand raised towards the Heavenly King is still there.

There wasn't even a single scratch, not a trace of char, and no sign of being struck by the holy sword.

But Im was indeed hit.

Everyone saw the golden beam of light engulf Im.

So this is neither a missed hit nor a failure to cause damage.

This is what happened after being hit, and then it recovered.

Everyone with excellent Observation Haki saw it.

The instant Ecalibur's golden light touched Im's body, Im's body was indeed destroyed, broken down into the most basic particles, and completely erased by the magic of the holy sword.

But less than a tenth of a second later, those erased particles reappeared.

It was not transferred from elsewhere, nor was it regenerated; rather, it reappeared.

It's as if time has been reversed.

Im's existence is etched into the world's underlying rules, to the point that the world cannot allow Im to not exist.

Im slowly lowered his right hand.

The black sphere above the Heavenly King Platform began to shrink, from the size of a mountain peak to the size of a house, from the size of a house to the size of a basketball, and finally back to the size of a black dot of light the size of a marble, before disappearing into the center of the platform.

The patterns on the surface of the Heavenly King faded away one by one.

The dim light converged from the edge of the platform toward the center, like a closing eye.

The platform began to decline.

It was not falling, not out of control, but descending in a slow, solemn manner, as if returning to silence after completing its mission.

It sank into the ground of Pangu City, into the foundation of that ancient building, and eventually disappeared completely, as if it had never existed.

The red earth continent is still collapsing.

The ocean is still boiling.

The earth's crust is still tearing apart.

"Do you understand?"

Im's voice came through the mask, calmer than someone who had just been struck head-on by the holy sword, calmer than someone who was destroying the world.

"It's not that your sword isn't strong enough, it's that your sword can't kill me."

Im took a step forward.

That step landed on the shattered ground of Pangu City, on those collapsing stone slabs, but it was as if there was an invisible platform beneath Im's feet, allowing Im to stand on that ruin, on that land being swallowed by nothingness.

"This sword is indeed very powerful."

Im looked at the curry stick in Artoria's hand: "If this were eight hundred years ago, this sword would have been enough to kill me."

"I don't even need this sword; half your power is enough to make me disappear forever."

"But things are different now."

Im spread his arms, his white mask facing the sky, towards the void rift that was devouring the planet.

"I am no longer an individual. I am part of this planet, the sum of all life on this planet, the underlying rules of this world itself. The moment you kill me, this planet will revive me. The moment you destroy my body, the world will reconstruct me. You don't even need to actually kill me. As long as you try to kill me, the world will protect me."

Im lowered his head, the hole in his mask pointing directly at Bai Yu.

"Because I am now one with this planet, killing me is killing this planet, and this planet—will not allow itself to die."

Bai Yu remained silent.

His Rinnegan was spinning, and the nine tomoe were slowly rotating.

He saw those life-giving threads flowing from all over the world to Im; those threads were not drawn by Im, but rather actively transported by the world.

Every second, hundreds of millions of life force units flow into Im's body, keeping Im in a perfect state—immortal, immortal, invulnerable, and indestructible.

This is not a skill.

This is a "rule".

Just as gravity causes objects to fall, just as water freezes below zero degrees Celsius, just as light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum, Im's immortality has become a physical law of this world.

It's not that it's hard to kill, or almost impossible to kill, but rather that it's logically impossible to kill.

Because killing Im would mean denying this physical law, and the only way to deny a physical law is to deny the entire physical system.

It means to deny the entire world.

Bai Yu closed her eyes.

The surrounding chaos seemed incredibly distant at that moment; the sounds of the collapsing red earth, the boiling ocean, and the tearing of the earth's crust echoed like faint, distant sounds coming through a thick layer of glass.

He heard the voices of all those whose life force was being drained by Im, devoured by the King of Heaven, and disappearing from this world.

He heard the voice of the whole world.

Then he opened his eyes.

Those nine-tomoe-shaped eyes were devoid of emotion.

Those eyes held only an absolute, calm emptiness, as vast as the universe itself.

"You mean killing this planet if I say I'm going to kill you."

Bai Yu's voice was very soft, so soft that it was almost drowned out by the surrounding chaos.

"What if—"

He raised his right hand.

Palms facing up.

Im's body stiffened slightly.

That wasn't fear; it was an instinctive alertness when facing the unknown.

Im had not felt this vigilance for a long time in the past eight hundred years.

A force began to rotate in Bai Yu's palm.

It is not an ordinary rotation, but a multi-dimensional rotation that occurs simultaneously on both spatial and temporal levels.

The trajectories they draw in three-dimensional space are not circles, but rather geometric shapes that are beyond the reach of the human eye and cannot be fully captured by the three-dimensional space.

"I will destroy this planet."

Im suddenly looked up.

For the first time, an emotion that could be described as "horror" emerged from the emptiness beneath that white mask.

"You're crazy."

Im's voice changed; it was no longer calm or composed, but carried a sharp edge that could almost be described as "fear."

"If you destroy this planet, you will die, everyone will die. Everything on this planet will disappear, and you will be gone!"

'

"But do you know the difference between you and me, Im?"

The nine magatama spun faster and faster, and the light they emitted changed from gold to white, and from white to a light that transcended the visible spectrum and could only be perceived by the soul.

Bai Yu's hair floated in the light, his clothes fluttered in the light, and his shadow stretched long at his feet, like a bridge connecting him to the deepest part of this planet.

"You spent eight hundred years binding yourself to this planet because you wanted to live, you were afraid of death, you were afraid of disappearing, you were afraid of not existing. So you used every means to prolong your existence, even if it meant sacrificing everyone on this planet, even if it meant dragging the entire world into nothingness."

"And I—"

Bai Yu's lips curled up slightly.

That wasn't a smile; it was a deeper, more profound sense of relief that came from the depths of the soul.

"I am never afraid of disappearing, because I can survive without this planet. This is the power of the Rinnegan. There is a difference in our levels."

The light surged from Bai Yu's palm, but instead of spreading outwards, it collapsed inwards.

All the light was converging on one point, which was right in the center of Bai Yu's palm, so small as to be almost non-existent, yet so large as to contain everything.

That was a singularity.

It is not the kind of rift to non-existence created by the Heavenly King, but a real, physical singularity capable of creating a new universe.

Bai Yu gripped that hand tightly.

The singularity trembled in his palm, like a newly awakened infant, like a supernova about to explode, like a new world being conceived.

"The God of the High Omori Nest."

Bai Yu uttered these six words.

There was no loud noise.

There was no flash.

There was no change that could be detected by the senses.

But the world stopped at that moment.

It's not that time stopped, but rather that existence itself became blurred at that moment. Like a painting soaked in water, the paint begins to spread, the lines become blurred, and the shapes begin to disappear.

The collapse of the Red Line stopped, not because the force disappeared, but because the concept of the "Red Line" itself was becoming unstable.

The boiling of the ocean has stopped, not because the temperature has dropped, but because the concept of "ocean" itself is being erased from the canvas of the world.

The tearing of the Earth's crust has stopped, not because the pressure has balanced, but because the concept of "Earth's crust" itself is losing its meaning.

Im's body began to tremble.

It wasn't the trembling of fear, but the trembling of existence itself.

Im felt the bond between himself and the planet loosening, not being severed, but being "dissolved"—

Just like putting salt into water, the salt doesn't disappear, but the "boundary" of the salt disappears, the "shape" of the salt disappears, and the salt becomes part of the water, losing all the properties of existing as "salt".

"Impossible—this is impossible—" Im's voice came from behind the mask, carrying a broken quality that could almost be described as "despair".

"Your power—how could it possibly reach this level—"

Bai Yu did not answer.

His consciousness was no longer focused on Im.

His consciousness was in that singularity, in that nothingness that was devouring the entire world, in that "primordial void" that was older and more fundamental than the void rift created by the Heavenly King.

There is no light, no darkness, no up, no down, no past, no future.

There are only "possibilities" there.

Countless timelines unfold in the void, countless parallel universes are born and die in the void, and countless possibilities bloom and wither in the void.

Bai Yu saw it.

He saw what the world would be like without the Heavenly King.

He saw what the world would be like if he had never traveled to the One Piece world.

He saw the truth from eight hundred years ago.

That's not a story of an evil ruler seizing power; it's a story older and more fundamental than power itself—a story of domination.

Im spent eight hundred years patching that hole, perfecting that bond, and fusing himself and the planet into an inseparable whole.

Eight hundred years later, it has succeeded.

It is the most successful life form in the world, the most perfect form of existence, and the closest to "eternity".

But it will still disappear.

Because Bai Yu is erasing this planet.

It is not destruction, not decomposition, not transformation into other forms of energy.

Instead, it means "erasure".

Just like erasing pencil marks with an eraser, wipe away every trace of this planet from the canvas of the universe. This includes its past, its present, its future, all causal connections it has had with this universe, and information about all life that has ever existed on this planet.

To erase completely, entirely, and irreversibly.

Im sensed it.

It felt itself becoming lighter, thinner, and turning into a piece of paper blown away by the wind.

The bond between it and the planet is loosening at an unstoppable pace, not because Bai Yu is severing it, but because the other end of the bond—the planet itself—is disappearing.

"No—no! You can't do this!" Im's voice distorted as he screamed, and cracks began to appear on the white mask, spreading outwards like a spiderweb from the center. "I will disappear—everything will disappear—you will regret it—you will—"

The mask shattered.

Beneath the mask was not a face, but nothingness. A humanoid silhouette composed of pure blackness, pure emptiness, and pure non-existence struggled, twisted, and screamed within that nothingness.

That shape looks a lot like a human.

But it is not human.

It was never human.

It is merely a hollow, insubstantial being shaped into human form by fear.

Bai Yu looked at that shape, his eyes showing no pity, no disgust, no emotion whatsoever.

In Bai Yu's palm, the singularity began to expand.

It's not an explosive expansion, but a kind of "growth"—like a tree growing from a seed, like a flower blooming from a bud, like a new universe being born from nothingness.

But this time, it wasn't a birth, but a "rebirth".

Those things that are disappearing—fragments of the red earth, droplets of water from the ocean, molecules of the atmosphere, rocks of the earth's crust—are not destroyed, but rather recycled. Their information is absorbed by the singularity, their essence is preserved by the singularity, and their "existence" is completely copied into a new dimension within the singularity at the moment of their disappearance.

Bai Yu does not intend to destroy the world.

He wants to rebuild the world.

The old world is completely erased, and then a new world is built in the singularity using all the information from the old world.

The last glimmer of light in the old world has been extinguished.

The Red Line disappeared, the four seas disappeared, the Grand Line disappeared, the Calm Belt disappeared, the islands in the sky disappeared, the relics in the deep sea disappeared, Mary Geoise disappeared, Pangaea disappeared, and even the last trace of Uranus disappeared.

All matter, all energy, all life, all memories, and all history were absorbed into the singularity in Bai Yu's palm at that moment.

Then he let go.

The singularity began to expand.

It was not an explosion, not an expansion, not any violent, chaotic, or uncontrollable process.

Rather, it is a calm, solemn expansion, like the first rays of sunlight shining on the earth in the morning.

Starting from the center of the singularity, space appeared, time appeared, matter appeared, and energy appeared.

Ten years later —

"Let's go, everyone, especially Tsunade, I'll show you around the world of Naruto—"

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