Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Footsteps sounded through the crowd.
A figure dressed in a pure white military uniform, with an additional cloak draped over his shoulders, emerged from the parted ranks and came to a stop.
“What’s with that?
He actually changed clothes?
Some kind of weird ritual?” Charlotte Linlin curled her lip, finding the whole thing needlessly theatrical.
And honestly, she wasn’t wrong.
Hua Ye had recreated the Quincy attire he remembered—a pure white knightly uniform meant to symbolize sanctity.
But it wasn’t purely for appearances.
He had also used the process to test how much control he currently had over his new power.
The abilities of a Quincy had simply been dropped into his lap.
Just as a Devil Fruit required development, even if one’s body had already changed, adapting to that power still took time.
Hua Ye had also noticed something else.
Perhaps because of his arrival, this world itself had changed.
Something new had appeared across these vast seas.
Strictly speaking, it was an entirely new power system.
People in this world tempered their bodies, trained their Haki and swordsmanship, while Devil Fruit users developed their abilities to greater depths.
Those were the main paths available to anyone who wished to become stronger.
There weren’t many choices, and Haki was practically mandatory for anyone who wanted to stand among the true elites.
Quincy were different.
A Quincy’s combat style revolved around drawing in the Reishi that existed throughout the atmosphere and manipulating spiritual power in battle.
Reishi was power.
A form of energy.
Naturally, the One Piece world had never possessed anything like it.
But after Hua Ye arrived, an entirely new system of power had been forcibly integrated into the world along with him.
Yes.
It was that unreasonable.
From this moment onward, the world was no longer the same.
The Quincy were a people—a group created to exterminate evil spirits using weapons formed from Reishi.
But in the world of One Piece…
Who exactly counted as the evil spirits?
Whoosh—
Blue light gathered in Hua Ye’s palm.
What had begun as intangible energy gradually solidified, forming a long cross-shaped sword.
“So that’s your sword?” Rocks drew his own blade and stepped forward.
The atmosphere instantly grew heavier.
“A Reishi sword.
A basic weapon created by absorbing Reishi from the surrounding environment and converting it into a physical form.” Hua Ye nodded lightly and raised the blade upright.
“And what’s that supposed to be?” Rocks asked.
“This is how Quincy fight.”
Hua Ye had no intention of hiding anything and openly revealed the existence of the Quincy.
“That’s what I’m asking!” Rocks suddenly swung his sword.
“What the hell is a Quincy?!”
A massive flying slash tore forward, black-red lightning crackling around the blade of compressed force.
SWISH!
Hua Ye’s figure blurred and vanished from where he stood.
The sword wave screamed past a heartbeat later like a meteor crossing the horizon.
It disappeared into the distance, leaving behind a deep scar where the earth had been brutally torn apart.
Hua Ye reappeared high in the air.
He stood on empty space beneath the blue sky as though there were solid ground beneath his feet.
“You can fly too?” Rocks laughed.
Rocks’ swordsmanship was famous across the seas for being more like swinging a war hammer than a blade.
Every strike carried overwhelming force comparable to heavy artillery, enough to blast away everything around him.
That reputation was clearly deserved.
Just look at the spectators, who had already retreated an absurd distance.
Even then, after Rocks fired off several consecutive slashes, a few unlucky pirates were caught in the aftermath and instantly torn into pieces.
Unless one of those guys happened to possess the Chop-Chop Fruit, he was probably a little bit dead.
Being a spectator wasn’t easy.
At least not when the people fighting were on this level.
Watching came with a genuine risk of death.
Swish!
Swish swish swish!
Hua Ye flickered through the air at extreme speed, moving like a dragon and flashing like lightning as he avoided every one of Rocks’ attacks.
Rocks wasn’t in any hurry.
He had basically turned himself into one of those swordsmen who stood in place and spammed projectile slashes, casually sending one flying blade after another through the air.
“What kind of footwork is that?
Never seen anything like it.” Rocks even had enough leisure to ask questions while attacking.
At first, when he saw Hua Ye dodging, he’d assumed it was something similar to the Six Powers.
After all, Hua Ye could even stand in the air.
But Rocks quickly realized something was off.
This couldn’t be explained by ordinary footwork.
“Hirenkyaku.”
Hua Ye spoke softly.
His body vanished again.
This time, he appeared directly above Rocks and used the acceleration of his fall to bring his sword down from overhead.
CLANG!!
The two blades collided head-on.
Sparks erupted as brilliantly as welding arcs, while the force bursting from the clash punched holes through the ground in every direction.
“You’re not used to your own power, are you?” Rocks stared at Hua Ye from point-blank range, immediately noticing something strange.
“You’re like a baby swinging a sledgehammer!”
Hua Ye tightened his grip.
A layer of black spread over the Reishi blade in his hands, coating it like hardened metal.
Haki?!
Rocks’ pupils contracted.
Of course Haki itself wasn’t surprising.
What shocked him was that until this very instant—until literally a moment ago—he hadn’t sensed even the slightest trace of Haki from Hua Ye.
“You learned Haki one second ago?
While I was talking?!” Rocks immediately understood.
“You bastard!
You’re using me as a whetstone!”
He suddenly poured more strength into his blade and blasted Hua Ye backward.
Hua Ye didn’t fly far.
He adjusted himself in midair and quickly stabilized his body.
Hirenkyaku was the Quincy’s high-speed movement technique.
By controlling the flow of Reishi beneath their feet, Quincy could achieve extreme bursts of movement.
Put simply, a trained athlete might be able to run very fast.
But could that athlete catch up to someone who had just been launched through the air after getting hit by a speeding truck?
Obviously not.
That was essentially the principle behind Hirenkyaku.
Rather than relying purely on the legs to run, it directly generated acceleration.
And if you could manipulate Reishi beneath your feet to move at high speed, then arranging that same Reishi into a foothold and standing in midair wasn’t particularly strange either.
Spiritual power really was ridiculously versatile.
Still, Rocks had gotten one thing wrong.
Hua Ye hadn’t learned Haki just now.
He had learned it a little earlier.
The quality of pirates on Hachinosu was quite high.
Before this, Hua Ye had distributed his soul to several pirate crews.
Some of them knew how to use Haki.
When they died, the experience engraved into his soul fragments naturally returned to Hua Ye along with them, allowing him to obtain that Haki for himself.
If he could ever use Auswählen on Rocks…
Now that would be one hell of a supplement.
‘I’ve basically gotten the hang of Hirenkyaku.
Time to test something else.’
Hua Ye currently felt like a spoiled rich heir who had inherited a vault containing billions, yet had absolutely no idea how to spend any of it.
Countless abilities existed inside his head, but actually using them wasn’t like playing a game where pressing a single button automatically executed a move.
Even so, he was learning remarkably fast.
Bzzzz—
Hua Ye clenched his fist.
Blue-green lines resembling the branching veins of a tree lit up across the surface of his clothing.
Suddenly, Rocks appeared directly in front of him.
His sword was already raised high, descending with crushing pressure that seemed to cover everything in Hua Ye’s vision.
BOOM!
Hua Ye was smashed downward.
“Rocks better not kill him,” Charlotte Linlin commented from the distance.
“Oh?
You love having kids so much that you saw a handsome face and decided you want this one too?” Buckingham Stussy teased.
“Is that guy some kind of special race?” Kaido stretched his neck, trying to see more clearly.
‘Anyone capable of taking Rocks’ sword head-on can’t possibly be some nobody, but…’
Newgate concealed his surprise.
“But there’s no way somebody that strong should be that young, right?” Shiki shrugged.
“Kind of like Kaido when he first joined.
The brat hadn’t even grown hair down there yet!”
“That was five years ago!” Kaido shouted furiously.
He was twenty now, very different from the fifteen-year-old he’d been back then.
Linlin, at least, could personally confirm that much.
“Look!” Gloriosa suddenly pointed toward the battlefield.
“Rocks knocked him down, but…”
Hua Ye stood perfectly upright at the bottom of a deep crater.
Rocks was directly in front of him, but he had already lowered his sword and was staring at Hua Ye with genuine astonishment.
“I hit you with that and you aren’t injured?
Your clothes aren’t even dirty?
Come on, that’s too ridiculous!” Rocks complained.
Hua Ye calmly brushed the sleeve of his left arm.
The sword in his other hand dissolved into countless points of Reishi.
“No.
You’re wrong.”
He glanced at the sleeve he’d just dusted off.
“I did get a little dirt on me.”
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