Chapter Eighty-Six: Revival of Azure Flame

A laugh escaped him, dark with amusement rather than anger. “What an arrogant little brat,” he said. “But I rather like that arrogance. You have every right to be proud. And if I am not mistaken...” He gestured toward the man encased in ice and went on, “the diamond man should be all right, shouldn’t he?”

“That’s right.”

Chu Yi answered with a smile of his own. In truth, standing before this man, he very much wanted to keep up the bluff and claim that the diamond warrior was already grievously wounded in his hands.

But who was this man?

The future first division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates.

How could a trick woven from lies ever hope to deceive such a keen eye?

At this very moment, Chu Yi appeared to have used the powers of the Frozen Fruit to defeat the future third division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates with perfect success. Yet in reality, the diamond warrior could at any moment smash the ice from his body with sheer brute strength and break free.

Had Chu Yi not been sustaining the Frozen Fruit’s power in the manner of repairing a broken heaven over the Fish-Man Island, continuously forging layer upon layer of frost over the man’s body, then perhaps long ago the diamond warrior would have shattered the ice and escaped.

Of course, Chu Yi’s failure to utterly defeat the present-day diamond warrior with the Frozen Fruit was not because the fruit itself was lacking, but because Chu Yi’s mastery of it was still insufficient. If Admiral Aokiji had stood here instead, the diamond warrior would already have been utterly crushed.

And from the gap between Chu Yi and Aokiji in their use of the Frozen Fruit, one could clearly see just how important the cultivation of a fruit ability was to an ability user.

Take the diamond warrior, for example.

Though both used the Diamond Fruit, the difference between the present man and the one in the original tale was a chasm as wide as heaven and earth, at least in terms of defense alone.

By contrast, how long had Chu Yi even possessed the Frozen Fruit?

How could he compare with Aokiji’s mastery of it?

Yet although he still lagged behind Aokiji in his use of the Frozen Fruit, Chu Yi felt no discouragement at all. One reason was that he did not rely solely on this natural-type devil fruit in battle; another was that he had just found a shortcut to cultivating the Frozen Fruit from the diamond warrior himself.

If the Diamond Fruit required destruction before renewal, then when Aokiji cultivated the Frozen Fruit, did he use the same method?

The true terror of the Frozen Fruit did not lie in the elemental transformation of a natural-type devil fruit, but in absolute cold.

The ultimate freezing.

Having yet to comprehend the path of ice or the way of cold, Chu Yi’s Frozen Fruit ability was little different from Aokiji’s in the early days after he first ate the fruit.

Even then, when Aokiji fought strong opponents, he could not rely on frost alone; more often than not, he used the Frozen Fruit to support his battle or to weaken his enemies with its chilling effect.

But as his mastery deepened, his physical techniques gradually became dispensable.

After all, with extreme cold, Aokiji could dispose of his foes with ease.

So what was needed to bring out the true essence of the Frozen Fruit’s chill?

Fire.

Exactly.

The very opposite of extreme cold.

The necessary factor in the cultivation of the Frozen Fruit was searing heat.

The diamond fruit’s terrifying defense grew stronger with every shattering.

Then the Frozen Fruit’s cold could become ever more frigid with every melting by flame.

Having grasped the method of cultivating the Frozen Fruit, Chu Yi could faintly guess that when Aokiji trained his own powers, he likely relied on sparring with Akainu.

After all, for Akainu’s Magma Fruit to be cultivated, he would probably need Aokiji’s Frozen Fruit abilities as well.

Since Chu Yi knew that he and Akainu would inevitably clash one day, he felt that for the moment there was no need to worry about cultivating the Frozen Fruit. Instead, after answering Marco with a nod, he recalled the system’s newly issued awakening material task concerning Marco, and a faint furrow appeared between his brows.

“Pain of the Phoenix... does that mean...”

“I need to injure Marco in order to complete the awakening material collection task?”

“That difficulty is outright nightmarish!”

Although the name of Marco’s fruit had never been revealed in the original tale, Chu Yi had learned from the system’s judgment that the fruit was indeed the Phoenix Fruit, a rare type among animal-class devil fruits.

A mythic zoan devil fruit.

What made this fruit especially troublesome was one of its powers: the Blue Flames of Rebirth.

From the moment Marco first appeared in the original tale, he had demonstrated the terror of those flames to everyone.

No matter the injury, his power could swiftly mend the wounds inflicted upon his body. More frightening still, when his entire body was wrapped in those flames of rebirth, injuring him became almost impossible unless one possessed formidable armament haki.

Even someone like the admiral of light from the original story, despite wielding the powers of the Light Fruit, had been unable to lay a finger on Marco.

And now the system had issued a task that required Chu Yi, who had not awakened armament haki, to wound Marco while he was protected by those resurrecting blue flames.

Faced with such a nightmare-grade mission, Chu Yi truly felt like weeping without tears.

As he silently pondered whether he would have to rely on the Frozen Fruit to injure Marco, something sudden happened.

Marco moved.

In a blur, he vanished with a crack of displaced air, proving all too well that beyond his formidable fruit powers, his physical technique was no less exceptional.

This also confirmed the words Rayleigh had said to Chu Yi earlier.

In this world, relying on devil fruit powers alone was not enough to become a true strongman.

People like Aokiji, Kizaru, Akainu, and Marco before him all possessed not only heaven-defying fruit abilities, but also outstanding martial skill, and that was what allowed them to roam the seas as they pleased.

And Marco’s speed was beyond anything Chu Yi had imagined.

In that brief instant, Chu Yi had no time to enter a state of total focus and use his nascent observation haki to sense him. And his incomplete observation haki could not lock onto Marco’s figure, so Chu Yi had no choice but to use a simpler, more direct method to prevent Marco from defeating him through speed.

That method was...

If Marco was fast, then he would be even faster.

“Air Step!”

The instant Marco’s figure disappeared, Chu Yi vanished as well.

At that moment, unable to catch Marco’s form, Chu Yi hurled himself into rapid, successive Air Steps, using the technique to force Marco into the open as much as possible.

As for Marco, his observation haki was indeed quite refined; he could lock onto Chu Yi’s position and steadily close the distance between them.

Unfortunately, Chu Yi was simply too fast.

By repeatedly dodging with rapid Air Steps, even Chu Yi himself did not know where he would appear the next instant, let alone Marco.

And so, as the gap between them kept shrinking and then widening again, Chu Yi’s body felt no burden from the repeated use of Air Step. With the passage of time, he gradually entered a mysterious state.

It was the battle instinct of Asura.

That instinct slowly acclimated Chu Yi to the state of continuous Air Step, and little by little allowed him to enter a state of focus even while moving in that manner.

Though it took him longer to reach that state while maintaining his movement, the mere fact that he could enter it amid combat was a sign of progress.

Especially when, little by little, Chu Yi entered that focused state and all stray thoughts in his mind vanished, and once again that familiar sense of transcendence rose within him...

A hum resonated.

Observation haki.

Activated.

In an instant, the observation haki spreading from Chu Yi’s body locked directly onto Marco’s position.

And then...

“Almighty Push!”

The force of “inner explosion” surged forth with that casual stroke, slamming into Marco with a thunderous blast.

Yet just as the technique struck him head-on and Chu Yi’s inner explosion was about to erupt, unleashing a ferocious assault from within Marco’s body...

Blue flames spread across Marco’s entire form.

Under the special effect of the flames of rebirth, Marco endured the full force of the blow without retreating. Instead, he surged forward, and in the blink of an eye...

He was already right in front of Chu Yi.

“Little brother, it looks as though I may be the stronger one!”