51: Chapter 51: It was all brought up by the old man.

Bang.

A dull, massive stomp suddenly exploded on the steel bow of ship.

Rice stood there.

His clean white shirt snapped in the gale, revealing the perfect, bronze-colored torso beneath, as if chiseled by a blade.

Looking at Paula and Mikita, frozen into ice sculptures, and the despair in Nami's eyes, the invincible arrogance in Rice's bloodshot black eyes, originally belonging to a Disciple of Garp, transformed in that instant into a profound and brutal intent.

"Touch my people, and whether you are an Admiral or not, you're going to take a punch."

Rumble—!!

A terrifying air pressure, exceeding the spiritual limits of any Mortal and causing the entire frozen sea surface to crack crazily over a vast area, erupted from above Rice's head without warning.

[Conqueror's Haki · Full Power Burst].

The dark red spiritual thunder transformed into dozens of thick black arcs of electricity, weaving a terrifying web of lightning above ship.

Under the scouring of this Conqueror's Haki pressure, which could even tear space itself, the deep blue ice trapping the hull began to shatter inch by inch.

The transparent ice covering the bodies of Paula and Mikita cracked with a 'snap' under the high-frequency vibration of the Conqueror's Haki, countless fine spiderweb patterns appearing before it shattered with a roar.

The two women, freed, collapsed on the deck, gasping for air, their hearts filled with the terror of having narrowly escaped death.

"Oh? This level of Aptitude... no wonder that old man treats you like a treasure."

Kuzan's gaze finally showed a subtle change; he straightened his body from the bicycle seat, letting his Marine coat flap wildly in the strong wind.

However, Rice did not stop.

The perspective of the All-Knower, combined with instincts honed on the edge of life and death thousands of times, allowed him to push his nerve conduction speed to its absolute limit in that instant.

[Observation Haki · Future Sight].

In Rice's line of sight, filled with ink-black metallic luster, the physical scene of several seconds in the future appeared eerily in the Void Realm ahead:

Kuzan's right side would turn into pure ice.

A giant, double-sided ice spear, several meters long and capable of freezing molecular motion solid, would pierce through the sea mist and drive straight into his own throat.

"I've seen through your trajectory."

Rice whispered lowly.

On the surface of his bronze skin, in that instant, strands of blinding, bright blue violent lightning suddenly began to light up.

That was the power of lightning—after being struck by natural lightning, he had forcefully consumed it with his flesh and perfectly integrated it with his own cells.

Boom-crack!!

Bright blue electric light surged at high frequency beneath Rice's skin and flesh.

The vitality brought by the lightning caused his muscle cells to expand several times over in an instant.

At the same time, the ink-black Armament Haki poured without reservation down his right shoulder into his entire right arm, dyeing the skin and flesh upon it a color of absolute, pure black.

Conqueror's Haki Infusion, Observation Haki future sight, lightning-activated flesh.

Three forces representing the pinnacle of the world, at this moment, perfectly fused together on Rice's right fist.

[Soru · Thunder Flash].

Boom—!!

The ice field in front of ship suffered a devastating collapse in an instant.

Rice's figure had completely vanished from everyone's sight.

His speed surpassed the sound barrier, carving a white, vaporized path over a hundred meters long on the ice surface, caused by high-temperature friction.

"So fast!!"

Kuzan's dead, black eyes contracted violently.

In his line of sight, the young anomaly who had been standing on the bow a second ago had already crossed dozens of meters of the Void Realm the next second, and that black iron fist, wrapped in black lightning and bright blue electricity, had already struck squarely in front of his face.

There was no avoiding it.

Kuzan could only cross his arms, his entire body turning into high-hardness black ice in an instant.

Rumble—!!

A terrifying collision sound that made the entire continent of Alabasta tremble slightly, and even turned the submarine reefs below into powder layer by layer, suddenly exploded on the shattered ice field.

The deep blue ice within a radius of hundreds of meters, under the venting of this fist pressure that exceeded the limits of a Mortal, couldn't even last half a second before being smashed into fine ice shards flying across the sky in an instant.

Large waves of white surged into the sky accompanied by scorching lightning, forcibly carving out a vacuum, ice-free zone with a diameter of one hundred meters in the center area between the two.

Step, step, step.

Kuzan's figure slid backward for dozens of meters, his feet plowing two deep trenches in the shattered ice, before he slowly came to a halt.

He raised his arms, and saw that the surface of his forearms, formed by black ice, had been smashed with several clear, charred cracks by that iron fist, which had fused lightning and Conqueror's Haki infusion.

Black electric arcs were still crackling at the edges of the cracks, resisting the repair of the cold.

"Ara ara... I was truly careless."

Kuzan exhaled a turbid breath mixed with ice shards and reached out to pat the residual black lightning on his shoulder.

He looked at the violent young man in front of him, barefoot and wrapped in blue lightning, and his lazy face suddenly revealed a strange smile, part nostalgic and part helpless:

"This kind of completely unreasonable brute force that only believes in one's own flesh... in terms of seniority, which anomaly are you that the old man brought out as a final Disciple? When I was a soldier at Marineford back in the day, I was also hammered on the head by those iron fists every day. Our flesh and blood were both hammered out under the same old man."

Rice stood in place, the lightning on his right fist slowly receding, his violent black eyes staring fixedly at Kuzan.

Kuzan rolled his eyes and sat unceremoniously on the crossbar of his bicycle:

"I was the first grunt that old guy ever brought out. Since he let you go out to sea, I naturally won't really turn all your members into ice sculptures and send them to the Holy Land today."

He fished a somewhat shriveled plum from his pocket, tossed it into his mouth and chewed, but the depths of his eyes added a touch of extremely grave coldness:

"However, Rice, as a soldier who also survived under those iron fists, I must give you a few words of advice. You have now crushed the Gorosei's encrypted Den Den Mushi and obtained the underground secret map you shouldn't have. That guy Crocodile, although he is a cripple hiding in the sand, the water behind him is deeper than you think."

"Those old men in the World Government are using Alabasta as bait, trying to fish out the lost historical residue from eight hundred years ago. If you crash into it now, you're just turning yourself into a live target for both sides. If you can't handle it, then die back in the East Blue; don't lose face for that old man."

Rice sneered.

He raised his young face, etched with arrogant contours, and clenched his right fist slightly again, the black metallic luster slowly creeping on the surface of his knuckles:

"Since I dared to come, I didn't intend to go back empty-handed. That piece of trash playing in the mud in the sand, I'm going to peel off his Shichibukai skin, that's for sure. As for those rotting old immortals in the Holy Land, if they dare to reach out, I'll smash their claws right along with them."

"Truly lawless."

Kuzan shook his curly hair and sighed wearily.

He remounted his bicycle, feet on the broken pedals, and his figure slowly moved in the direction away from ship amidst the goose-feather snow falling again across the sky:

"I've left the path for you. Whether you can survive the coming sandstorm depends on your own fate."

With Kuzan's departure, the absolute ice field that had been frozen for over ten nautical miles instantly cracked, right from beneath the bow of ship, opening a black waterway channel several fathoms wide leading straight to the cliffs of the west coast.

This was a privilege granted by an Admiral standing at the pinnacle, left for this junior who shared a common origin.

Moo—!!

Deep in the engine room, Sea Cow Mohmoo, having recovered its body temperature, let out a high-pitched roar.

The pure steel chains pulled taut, emitting a series of dense metallic clanging sounds.

Following the black waterway that had torn through the solid ice, ship, pulled by the giant beast, charged at full speed like a black heavy sword, smashing straight through the last patch of floating ice, and rammed arrogantly into a hidden canyon on the western coastline of Alabasta.

Rumble.

The heavy steel hull rammed through the dry sand layer, followed the hidden water gate marked on the royal secret map, and completely submerged into that underground passage that had been silent for hundreds of years.

The surrounding light dimmed in an instant, with only the windproof kerosene lamps on both sides of the deck emitting a faint glow.

The current was rapid, with black granite walls on both sides; the chill belonging to the winter island in the air faded in an instant, replaced by a muggy, humid atmosphere belonging to the desert underground.

On the deck.

Chopper rubbed his sore blue nose, put down the heavy wooden medicine chest on his back, and plopped down into the pile of parchment medical books that Nojiko had just organized.

Paula and Mikita looked at each other and walked to Rice's side; their delicate bodies, having experienced the baptism of ice and thunder, felt faintly weak at this moment.

"Captain... we're in."

Paula spoke in a low voice, her tone lacking a trace of the coldness of an agent, and possessing more of a genuine sense of reliance.

Rice stood at the bow.

He wore his white shirt, buttons left casually open.

He looked at the dark waterway extending straight ahead, leading directly beneath the royal palace of the capital, Alubarna, his eyes flickering with the cold light of controlling everything.

Crocodile thought he could control this country by relying on Baroque Works and by inciting a million-man civil war.

But he could never dream that a massive pure steel beast, loaded with brutal iron fists, an all-knowing perspective, and awakened beauties, was currently moving along a blind spot underground that he couldn't reach, stabbing straight toward his heart with a violent speed that surpassed the era.

This large-scale hunt for the Paradise stage finally began in the darkness.