75: Chapter 75 A Resonance Spanning Half a Century

The thick fog in the Florian Triangle presented a viscous state that defied conventional meteorological laws.

Water molecules suspended in the air completely obscured the photon paths generated by solar radiation.

Visibility across the entire sea area dropped to freezing point, the temperature plummeted like a cliff, and the water pressure above the sea surface even caused a slight feeling of suffocation in biological respiratory tracts.

The dark gold ship, along with the going merry, which had completed its keel reconstruction, were like two iron blades cutting through cold butter, docking side-by-side next to that dilapidated giant sailing ship that looked like a floating corpse.

On the right side of the going merry, a large amount of seawater was being rudely displaced by volume.

That giant whale—Laboon—whose size was as large as a small island, was swinging its massive tail fin capable of shattering reefs, following the Straw Hat Pirates' warship like a moving fortress.

On Laboon's broad head, covered in old impact scars, Ship Doctor Crocus, the former Pirate King's exclusive ship doctor and the tower keeper of Twin Capes, sat cross-legged next to that huge straw hat skull graffiti.

Holding a cup of warm rum in his hand, he resisted the chill of this shadowy sea area.

Since leaving Twin Capes, this giant whale and the old ship doctor had been an inseparable part of the Straw Hat Pirates, crushing the waves of the first half of the Grand Line.

At this moment, on the wapol metal deck of the ship.

Standing there was that skeleton—Brook—with his iconic afro and nothing but pale, withered bones remaining.

He held a steaming cup of black tea in his right hand, his hollow eye sockets sweeping over the group of cold-faced female crew members on the ship's deck. Without the refraction of any ocular lenses, the rules of the Yellow Springs Fruit forcibly granted him the authority of visual capture.

Brook very gentlemanly took off his tattered top hat, his spine bending ninety degrees mechanically, performing a standard salute.

"Beautiful ladies, being able to strike sparks of fate under such deadly vacuum air pressure is truly a gift from Yellow Springs. May I... ask if you would allow me to admire your panties?"

The moment the words fell, a short sonic boom exploded in the air.

Nami crossed the gap between the two warships directly, her figure like a lightning bolt.

The thrust from her thigh muscles sent her instantly in front of Brook, and a fist wrapped in angry kinetic energy smashed heavily onto Brook's skull.

With a dull "thud" of collision, Brook's pale calcium carbonate skull was forced to sink under the massive inertia.

His cervical vertebrae made an unbearable grinding sound, and his entire skeleton instantly collapsed onto the wooden deck of the ship, erupting with the crisp sound of bone striking solid wood.

The teacup fell to the ground, and ceramic shards splashed everywhere.

"You perverted bag of bones! Lower your skull a bit!" Nami's angry roar vibrated back and forth in the dense water vapor.

Rice stood less than three meters away from the withered bones, ignoring this farce.

He strode to the pile of scattered bones, his bronze-colored body emitting a cold, high heat, his black eyes like two bottomless black holes, staring fixedly at Brook.

Without the traction of muscle groups, without the energy pumping of a cardiopulmonary circulatory System, without complex neural centers to transmit biological electrical signals.

Rice reached out with one hand, his five fingers like hydraulic steel pliers, grabbing Brook's cervical spine and lifting him into mid-air.

What the nerve endings in his palm fed back was a sense of bone hardness.

The destruction logic in his mind ran wildly, preparing to test the fracture critical point of this skeleton under extreme tensile stress.

Just at this moment.

The giant whale Laboon, which had been pressed tightly against the right side of the going merry, suddenly experienced a violent physiological tremor in the seawater.

Laboon's huge eyeballs, with a diameter of several meters, slowly rotated, their line of sight passing through the obstruction of the fog, precisely locking onto the skeleton being held in mid-air on the ship's deck.

An animal's auditory cortex can often capture micro-frequencies that humans cannot distinguish.

The tone of Brook's voice just now, that iconic "Yo-ho-ho" exclusive sound wave frequency, crossed the fifty-year timeline, like a sharp steel needle, instantly piercing the dusty database in Laboon's hippocampus.

"Woooo—!!!"

A long whale song that pierced the eardrums and was enough to cause resonance in nearby objects roared in the deadly silent sea area.

The massive kinetic energy carried by the high-frequency biological sonar, like a materialized air cannon, blew the dense fog within a hundred-meter radius into a vacuum zone.

Sitting on top of Laboon's head, the rum glass in Ship Doctor Crocus's hand suddenly froze. The old ship doctor's gaze passed through the refraction of the air, seeing the skeleton with the afro, and his pupils contracted violently.

Brook, held by the cervical spine by Rice, had his entire skeleton fall into a System crash state.

Those hollow eye sockets stared fixedly at the familiar giant whale on the sea surface.

His entire body's skeleton shook uncontrollably, his upper and lower jawbones colliding at high frequency, making a crisp "clack, clack, clack" sound, like a mechanical clock about to fall apart.

"This body size... the arrangement of the old scars on the head... isn't this..."

Brook's voice carried uncontrollable trembling.

Fifty years. Sailing alone in the dark for half a century, experiencing the demise of companions, turning into a pile of withered bones in despair. The only power source that kept him from completely falling apart, that kept his spirit from completely collapsing, was the promise made while waiting at Twin Capes.

And now, this whale had actually crossed the ocean currents of half the globe, appearing alive in this devilish sea area!

"Woo..."

Laboon made a low, aggrieved whimper. Huge tear glands secreted salty liquid crazily, water droplets rolling down from the eye sockets like a breached waterfall, smashing heavily into the seawater below, stirring up bursts of huge white spray.

Rice loosened his five fingers, withdrawing the mechanical grip applied to Brook's cervical spine.

He let the skeleton fall and sit on the dark gold deck under the effect of gravity.

Brook's entire body's bone joints were trembling, extending his pale finger bones, reaching into the lining of his tattered suit, and taking out that violin he regarded as a treasure, its body covered in scratches.

He rested it above his collarbone, his right hand gripping the bow made of horsehair.

The strings were pulled in extreme trembling, mechanical friction converting kinetic energy into sound wave vibrations of a specific frequency.

"Yo-ho-ho... Yo-ho-ho..."

"To deliver Binks' Sake to you..."

The tune of "Binks' Sake," joyful yet filled with endless sorrow, pierced through the mist of the Florian Triangle.

While playing the violin, Brook opened that throat without vocal cords and cried loudly. Despite having no tear gland tissue, a transparent liquid that defied common sense gushed out crazily along the skeleton's cheeks, dripping onto the wooden planks.

"Laboon... It really is you! I'm sorry, I made you wait for a full fifty years! Brook... Brook didn't die, I still exist in this world!!!"

Laboon let out a happy, high-pitched long cry, its huge body rolling in the seawater, matching the beat of Brook's violin, constantly slapping the sea surface with its huge tail fin.

The members of the Straw Hat Pirates stood by the ship's side, watching this reunion that spanned dimensions of time, their eyes all bloodshot and red.

With Brook's return, the Straw Hat Pirates had completely filled their roster with a musician.

The physiological catharsis of emotion lasted for ten minutes.

Rice stood on the ship's prow ram, his bronze-colored body like a heartless killing machine, coldly opening his mouth to break the silence.

"The reminiscing ends here. Continue advancing."

The two warships, along with the giant whale Laboon, pushed aside the thick seawater and sailed toward the depths of the fog.

A giant structure so massive it could change the direction of local ocean currents stood squarely in front of their course.

The perimeter was tightly surrounded by a circle of steel walls dozens of meters high, with a gloomy Gothic castle standing inside, dead forests swaying in the cold wind, emitting a strong smell of rotting corpses.

Thriller Bark.

"Drop anchor. Go ashore."

Rice issued a cold, ruthless order.

The muscles in his legs contracted and exploded instantly, his figure like a solid cannonball fired from a gun, leaping down directly from the deck more than ten meters high.

Gravity acceleration intertwined with the initial velocity given by his muscles, smashing heavily into the dirt cemetery on the outskirts of the island.

Boom!

The hard surface was smashed into a deep pit with a diameter of more than five meters, dirt flying everywhere.

The female crew members of the White Dove Adventure Group followed closely behind.

The Straw Hat Pirates also rushed onto this island full of eerie atmosphere.

Just as they stepped into this vast cemetery, the originally dead-silent soil around them began to roll violently.

Zombies, emitting a highly foul odor, their skin and flesh already weathered and shriveled, broke out from the deep underground. Their shells had long lost their vital signs, relying entirely on the external shadows forcibly stuffed into their bodies to provide driving force. The zombies held rusty swords in their hands, squeezing hoarse roars from their throats, forming a massive encirclement.

"The biological magnetic field of the living! Strip their shadows!"

According to the conventional knowledge circulating on this sea, to deal with shells stuffed with shadows, one must use crystalline substances like salt to change the osmotic pressure in their bodies, destroying the connection rules, thereby letting the shadows leave the corpses.

But in Rice's combat logic database, there were no techniques targeting weaknesses. Facing the huge army of the undead, the only thing to do was to exert absolute dimensional power to crush them!

"Clean up this trash that's blocking the view." Rice didn't even glance at those zombies.

Paula sneered, the cell structure of her arms changing instantly, turning into blood-colored thorns intertwined in the sky.

Swish, swish, swish!

The thick iron steel thorns broke through air resistance, directly piercing the torsos of a dozen zombies in front. She suddenly exerted force to perform violent mechanical stretching to both sides.

Crack!

The zombies' bodies were directly torn into two halves by the tension! Even without the osmotic pressure destruction of salt, the bodies torn into fragmented pieces could not perform any form of muscle tissue splicing.

Mikita held up her lemon-yellow parasol, using anti-gravity rules to float into mid-air.

"Weight Change: 10,000 Kilogram Pressure!"

The rules were instantly reversed.

Her delicate body surged to a terrifying mass of 10,000 kilograms.

Gravity converted crazily during the descent.

Boom!

The absolute pressure of 10,000 kilograms smashed heavily into the dense zombie group. The earth collapsed and sank. Dozens of zombies, along with the iron armor they were wearing, were crushed into meat paste and powder.

Those invisible shadows screamed and flew out from the rotting flesh.

The number of zombies surged crazily like a tireless black tide.

Rice took a big step forward, his right arm stretching backward. The muscle fibers of his biceps and deltoids twisted densely. Black Armament Haki overflowed from his pores like boiling molten iron, tightly wrapping around the surface of his fist.

The Haki shell caused slight refraction in the air.

"Dead people should just shut up quietly under the burial of the soil!"

Rice did not aim at any single zombie.

His gaze locked onto the geological layer beneath his feet, his waist and abdomen twisted, gathering all his strength into one point, and he threw a heavy punch squarely at the hard cemetery soil!

Rumble—!!!!

The violent kinetic energy did not leak at all, following the trajectory of his arm bones, pouring vertically into the rock layer underground.

The earth seemed to have triggered a magnitude ten tectonic earthquake.

The massive power could not be vented, and could only conduct rudely underground.

Huge, bottomless cracks, several meters wide, spread crazily in all directions with the point of Rice's fist impact as the center.

The terrifying shockwave rebounded from deep underground, like an invisible heavy iron hammer, striking everything on the surface indiscriminately.

The zombie group preparing to pounce, just as their legs touched the vibrating surface, the destructive resonance was instantly transmitted to their entire bodies.

In front of this absolute violent shockwave, numbers had no meaning!

Crack! Crack! Bang!

The continuous sound of bone cracking resounded throughout the entire cemetery.

Hundreds of zombies had all their load-bearing bones and joint cartilage shattered by the vibration at the same time.

The shriveled flesh and skin that lost skeletal support collapsed to the ground like a pile of scattered rotten wood.

No matter how the shadows inside struggled, they could not drive a pile of bone powder turned into debris to perform any displacement.

The undead legion, the pride of Gekko Moriah, was smashed into a pile of debris that could never be pieced together again!