Chapter 327: The True Body

"Pops..." Every member of the Whitebeard Pirates stood frozen in utter disbelief. Their father, whom they had not laid eyes upon for two whole years, had suddenly appeared right before them.

"Why... why is Pops here?"

"POPS!!"

The Whitebeard Pirates could no longer restrain the surging emotions in their chests. Tears welled up in their eyes, yet their throats choked with words they could not speak.

They stood in speechless, tearful awe.

"I won't let you destroy this newly born era so easily!" Whitebeard grinned broadly, slamming the shaft of Murakumogiri firmly into the deck as white rings of seismic energy converged around his fists.

"Allow this old man... to pave the path for the dawn of the new world!" With that, Whitebeard thrust both fists forward. Fracturing spatial fissures rippled outward violently, shattering the dense plumes of dark fog into scattered fragments in an instant.

The adhesive grip of the dark fog was extraordinarily tenacious; once it enveloped a target, breaking free was nearly impossible without the ability to sever the spatial fabric itself.

That was precisely the source of Im's absolute confidence.

Without Drake's anomalous spatial powers on the field, her dark fog should have remained entirely insurmountable.

Only Whitebeard's sudden arrival had reminded her of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit—an ability she had long recognized as a natural counter to her power.

"Damn you!" Im dissolved into mist and reformed several paces away, the dark fog gradually coalescing into a distinct humanoid silhouette.

It was her true, primordial form.

"Another one appeared?!"

Counting the physical vessel containing Im that Ain had sealed earlier, two entities had now manifested.

I see! Inside Drake's sea of consciousness, the System registered a sudden flash of realization.

Through the power of that ancient artifact, Im had attained ungodly strength alongside the bizarre capacity to parasitize human bodies.

When Ain sealed the soul within Drake's mother's body, Im had forced the mother's dormant soul to bear the seal in her stead, allowing her own primordial essence to escape into the open air.

If that was the case, it proved beyond doubt that Drake's mother was still truly alive!

Drake, you'd better wake up and recover quickly, or things are going to turn catastrophic...

The System was consumed by anxiety. While Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit provided a measure of elemental restraint against Im, he was far from a match for her in direct combat.

Whitebeard and Im clashed in a continuous exchange of blows, and the legendary pirate was immediately forced onto the back foot.

Although Im's strength was currently diminished, Whitebeard's combat power was far from its historic peak; even with the amplification of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit, overcoming her was out of the question.

"Pops!" Marco was the first to dive into the fray. How could he stand by and watch his father struggle alone? "Let me back you up!"

"Phoenix Flight: Radiant Sky Soar!"

Torrents of azure-blue flames spread across the sky, blanketing the battlefield as they repeatedly clashed against the churning dark mist.

Im cast a cold glance over her surroundings. The entire plaza was swarming with hostiles; picking them off one by one was far too tedious.

"Then I shall purge all of you first! Afterward, I will eradicate that man once and for all, and the world shall return to its rightful order."

"The World Government will never fall!"

"Sky-Burying Dark Tempest!" Im's eyes flashed with a sinister violet gleam as the dark fog condensed into countless black lasers, erupting outward in an omnidirectional barrage across all four cardinal directions.

She intended to wipe out every single allied combatant in one clean sweep.

"Shatter!" Whitebeard threw a massive concussive punch, using the localized tectonic vibrations to intercept a broad swath of the incoming laser storm.

Yet while he could deflect the barrage directly before him, he could not shield everyone else scattered across the plateau.

The scope of the attack was simply too vast.

"It's Red-Haired Shanks!" In the midst of despair, Shanks stepped forward alone with his sword drawn, standing before a vanguard of allied pirates. His expression remained utterly unruffled before the incoming storm of lethal beams.

CLANG!

A sharp flash of steel erupted with soaring momentum as he unleashed a sweeping, vertical slash.

The resulting air pressure churned into a roaring tempest.

Countless dark lasers were halted in their tracks by the sheer force of his blade.

"Count us in!" Kizaru and Kuzan exchanged a glance and stepped forward simultaneously. Radiant golden light surged alongside glacial frost that sought to freeze creation itself.

"Nine-Turn Universe, Phoenix True Form: Wildfire Domain!" Weitian soared into the heavens as a radiant True Phoenix, unleashing torrents of crimson flames from both her wings and beak to incinerate the incoming dark threads.

Before the Revolutionary Army ranks, Dragon stepped forward, raising both hands to summon a cataclysmic tempest that swallowed the approaching projectiles.

Not just them—every warrior on the battlefield who held confidence in their strength stepped forward to make a stand, creating a spectacle that seized the gaze of the entire world.

Across the four seas, millions watched the broadcast with bated breath. In their eyes, Im was an insurmountable supreme demon lord dictating the life and death of mortal men.

The desperate, unified stand of these legendary figures was the living embodiment of humanity's will to survive.

"What?!" Im registered a flicker of disbelief. The kinetic output channeled into her hands intensified once more.

"Give it everything you have! We must hold her off! The bright future we envisioned is right before our eyes—we cannot fall here!"

The combined strength of the allied forces was formidable; even though their stamina was pushed to the absolute brink, they barely managed to hold the defensive line.

"Let's see you block this!" Im suddenly exploded into motion, materializing directly in front of Whitebeard in a fraction of a second and slamming a palm downward.

Whitebeard met her blow-for-blow with a straight punch.

Upon impact, Whitebeard's physical endurance fell short, and he was hurled backward by the kinetic recoil.

An obsidian blade pierced through the air, bearing down upon Whitebeard's exposed chest in an instant.

"Die!"

"Pops!" Marco intercepted the lethal trajectory in a flash, the black blade driving clean through his chest.

Whitebeard's pupils shrank. "Marco!"

With a roar of fury, Whitebeard swung Murakumogiri down at Im with both hands, the bisento coated in an overwhelming concentration of destructive seismic power.

Im dared not take the blow head-on; in her current state, such a strike would inflict genuine physical trauma.

Ripping her blade out of Marco, she evaded the descending sweep. Murakumogiri cleaved downward, splitting the bedrock of the Holy Land cleanly in two.

HUMMM... Without a moment's pause, Whitebeard gathered another wave of tremors and slashed horizontally once more.

BOOM!

Im furrowed her brows. She could tell Whitebeard was driven by reckless emotional fury; trading blows against a madman at this juncture was hardly wise.

Shifting her position in an instant, she appeared before Shanks. Her blade cut through the atmosphere with lethal velocity. Shanks brought his saber up horizontally to block the strike, but the sheer kinetic force still sent him hurtling backward.

This monstrous power...

Only after engaging her directly did he truly grasp how terrifying Im's baseline strength was. He could now fully comprehend why Luffy and the others had fallen earlier.

Yet within that fleeting thought, he was blasted thousands of meters across the plateau.

In the span of a few heartbeats, Im systematically overpowered and severely injured every top-tier combatant on the field, sending them crashing across the ruins.

"Let's see you try to block this now!" Im unleashed another massive shockwave of dark mist from her body, condensing a fresh barrage of black lasers.

"Not good!" Panic washed over the allied ranks; with their current exhaustion, withstanding another localized cataclysm was virtually impossible.

The Five Elders let out a collective sigh of relief. This time, it was truly over.

Lord Im was still Lord Im—she was an invincible existence that could never know defeat.

"Go, Kenshin!" Locke suddenly bellowed, swinging his bo staff with full force to launch Kenshin straight into the air.

Their captain would be protected by their own hands!

A shimmering phantom of lightning flickered through the sky at speeds imperceptible to the eye. Kenshin transformed himself into a living blade, using the raw power of thunder as his vessel as he streaked across the dark fog like a bolt of heavenly judgment.

"Thunder God: Advent!"

In an instant, cutting through all barriers, Kenshin achieved absolute unity between blade and soul, piercing clean through Im's shadowy form.

CRACKLE... BZZZT!

As the lightning dissipated, Kenshin's silhouette slowly materialized in the open air.

The dense dark fog began to disperse alongside him.

"As expected... was it still too reckless...?" Kenshin's vision blurred with exhaustion; that strike had drained every last drop of his energy.

"D... Did it work?"

A faint smile began to surface on Bell's face.

Suddenly, his expression froze. A plume of dark fog materialized right in front of his eyes.