Chapter 139: Amazon Lily

[Another chapter coming up]

Several thousand meters up in the sky, aboard the Ark Maxim.

Shu Mingyuan’s body convulsed violently from the excruciating pain. Crimson blood covered him entirely, dyeing him into a near-human silhouette of gore.

The side effects of the Red Pepper Pill far exceeded Shu Mingyuan’s imagination. Five minutes ago, his body had consistently maintained a hundredfold increase in its normal power. Had the power of the Red Pepper Pill not forcefully stabilized his physical frame at that moment, his flesh and blood would likely have burst apart instantly from the sheer overwhelming might!

Once those five minutes elapsed, the medicinal efficacy of the Red Pepper Pill expired, and its protective shroud over his organism vanished. Consequently, his flesh, blood, and meridians could no longer be contained, shattering and rupturing one after another.

Without a single exception, every tendon, meridian, and fiber of flesh across his entire body snapped completely!

Only his skeletal structure remained intact enough to protect his vital organs, thanks to its exceptional density preventing it from crumbling right away. Even so, every bone was webbed with countless cracks, as if the slightest pressure would reduce them to a heap of shattered debris.

With all his meridian channels severed, he was reduced to a lump of lifeless mud. It was fair to say he was now a crippled in every sense of the word. If not for his habitual practice of stimulating his flesh and blood with Busoshoku Haki to temper his physical resilience, he probably would have perished long ago.

Piercing waves of agony continuously battered every last one of his nerves. Things like death by a thousand cuts or boiling oil could not even begin to compare to his current state. The torment generated by his collapsing body was dozens, if not hundreds, of times more intense.

Under such agony, his nervous system grew hyper-sensitive, allowing Shu Mingyuan to intimately experience the horrifying spectacle of his tendons snapping one by one, his meridians fragmenting, and his flesh exploding inch by inch.

Crimson blood gushed ceaselessly from all thirty-six thousand pores across his body, staining the entire deck crimson. He was completely helpless against all of this; the only thing keeping him going was a faint, stubborn resolve in the depths of his mind that he had to endure.

Fortunately, his internal injuries stopped worsening, though the pain felt utterly endless, pressing down upon his body with every passing second.

Pale blue chakra mobilized of its own accord, suffusing every inch of Shu Mingyuan’s flesh to slowly repair his battered physique. Yet this restoration speed was agonizingly slow, crawling at a snail’s pace. Even if he could eventually recover, there was no telling how long it would take.

Bracing himself against the agony, he remembered he also knew basic medical ninjutsu.

With a mental prompt, all the pale blue chakra within his body transformed entirely into a spring-green chakra imbued with healing properties. Under the effect of the healing jutsu, the repair rate of his damaged body accelerated many times over, but judging by the severity of his current trauma, a full recovery remained a distant and hopeless prospect.

Having finally managed to cling to life, Shu Mingyuan could no longer bear this ultimate agony. His head sank, and he lost consciousness entirely. If not for his faint, lingering breath, he would have looked every bit like a corpse.

Shu Mingyuan plunged into a deep slumber, leaving only the chakra inside his body to meticulously execute his final command—repairing his damaged form. As for when he might finally awaken, heaven only knew how many months or years that would take.

For five days, the Ark Maxim drifted aimlessly among the clouds. Among the massive oars sliding along its sides, one set had suffered structural damage during the aftermath of his battle with Eneru. Suddenly, three of the oars snapped off completely, causing the vessel to lose its propulsion.

As a result, the Ark Maxim could no longer maintain its balance. Although the ship's core power source remained functional, the kinetic thrust on either side of the wing-paddles was now uneven, causing the Ark Maxim to wobble and begin a slow, unsteady descent toward the earth below.

Meanwhile, the outside world was in a complete uproar. Ghost Hunter Shu Mingyuan had dealt the World Government a resounding slap to the face right inside Impel Down. His fearsome reputation was now known to all under the heavens; single-handedly fighting three Admiral-tier peak powerhouses and even severing Magellan’s arm. Some people even went so far as to compare him to the Four Emperors of the New World, bestowing upon him the moniker of the "Fifth Emperor."

Of course, regardless of whether he possessed the actual strength of an Emperor, the Ghost Hunter’s battle record was witnessed by the entire world. He had swept through a Marine fleet like a withered weed through autumn leaves, crushing Rear Admirals and Vice Admirals without meeting a single match. If those feats could be attributed to the tactical advantages of the open sea, his subsequent battles against Aokiji, Magellan, and Shiliew of the Rain upon the glacier forced everyone to acknowledge Shu Mingyuan's true might.

That was a battle built on hard-fought, tangible achievements... The heavens and earth had changed color during that clash, and the glacier had shattered countless times over.

It was just a pity that intelligence leaked from the Marine headquarters indicated that even when the Ghost Hunter broke through the Admirals' blockade, he was already in a state of critical injury, barely hanging on by a single thread. Word also spread that the Ghost Hunter’s abruptly surging power had not originated from himself, but had been forcibly traded away through some secret art, likely at the steep cost of draining his remaining life force.

Such arguments sounded logical and well-founded, as everyone had witnessed how the Ghost Hunter had initially been suppressed and beaten like a child when facing Admiral-tier combatants, only for the dynamic to completely reverse once he unleashed his trump card.

Naturally, this piece of intelligence carried yet another underlying implication.

The Ghost Hunter, Monkey D. Shu Mingyuan, had fled while heavily wounded and was living on borrowed time. Whoever managed to track him down would likely acquire all of his secrets. During the battle at Impel Down, Shu Mingyuan had exhausted nearly all his tricks, sparking endless speculation in the outside world regarding his hidden mysteries.

Possessing multiple Devil Fruit abilities.

Immunity to seawater.

A secret technique that amplified one's abilities a hundredfold.

That colossal air-faring ark.

Every single item drove pirates into a frenzy of greed.

Rumors even spread that finding Shu Mingyuan was tantamount to securing a guaranteed ticket to the absolute pinnacle of the world!

Consequently, within the waters relatively close to Impel Down, pirate ships could be found lurking and snooping about at any moment, searching for traces of Shu Mingyuan. Driven by the desire to unearth his secrets, quite a few pirates who fancied themselves powerful even took extreme risks, venturing directly into the Calm Belt to conduct searches, reasoning that since Shu Mingyuan was severely injured, he surely could not have traveled far.

High above in the sky, numerous pirates who had eaten Zoan-type bird Devil Fruits searched aimlessly, praying they might catch wind of the missing vessel—the Ark Maxim.

As for the Ark Maxim, the World Government took even greater interest in it than they did in the Ghost Hunter himself, going so far as to issue a bounty: anyone who provided verified information regarding the flying ship would receive a reward of one hundred million Berries. Delivering the intact flying vessel directly to the World Government would net a direct reward of two billion Berries.

It seemed the World Government was determined to secure the technology of the flying ship at all costs.

After all, once acquired, it would likely mean the World Government could grasp airborne military supremacy, granting them aerial dominance from then on. That would undoubtedly add yet another layer of security to their rule over the entire globe.

Plummeting from an altitude of several thousand meters, the massive hull of the Ark Maxim wobbled as it crashed heavily into the ocean, kicking up colossal waves. Borne forward by sheer momentum, it surged straight toward an island bearing the inscribed characters for Kuja.