Chapter Seventy-Six: Sweeping Away All Obstacles [First Update]

What I mean is that everyone present is nothing but garbage!

Shu Mingyuan’s faintly mocking voice rang through the grand hall, and the four senior officers of Baroque Works flew into a rage at once.

Mr. 1 charged out first, his hands transforming into blades in an instant as he brought them down savagely toward Shu Mingyuan’s body.

The sharp edge sliced through the air. Shu Mingyuan lightly pushed off the ground and slid backward, while Mr. 1’s arm immediately changed from a slash to a thrust. The blade tip clung to the boy’s throat, only a hair’s breadth from piercing straight through it.

Mr. 1 was a blade man who had eaten the Dice-Dice Fruit; every part of his body could become a steel sword, and the parts that turned into blades were as hard as iron.

In a single breath, Shu Mingyuan seemed to be completely at a disadvantage.

“Little brat, is that all you’ve got?” Mr. 1 said coldly. If he kept retreating, he would soon hit the wall of the hall and have nowhere left to go. A cruel grin crept across his face.

Shu Mingyuan suddenly halted. A streak of black light shot out and caught the blade tip that was about to pierce his throat. Looking up into Mr. 1’s eyes, he said, word by word, “No. I was merely deciding how to kill you faster. It seems one strike will be enough.”

His lips curled. The veins on his arm bulged violently, and the force surging from within his body bent the blade tip with brute strength. Under that crushing grip, even the edge cutting into his hand left not the slightest mark.

“Agh... my hand!” Mr. 1 cried out in pain. His expression turned ferocious. With a twist of his waist, his left leg had already risen and slashed out in a sweeping kick.

“Dust-Cutting Speed Strike!”

A slash tore through the air, aiming to cut the boy in half at the waist. Shu Mingyuan stomped the ground and leaped straight into the air, and that strike actually severed the wall of the hall ahead clean through.

“Okama Kenpo: Toe Kick!”

A sharp cry rang out in the air as the swan-suited Bon Clay also sprang into the sky. Spinning his body, he hurled out a savage kick, and the technique even produced a sonic boom for an instant, proof of just how explosive his kicking power was at that moment.

“Heh, trying to outkick me?” Shu Mingyuan said with easy amusement. He flicked out his right leg, and a pale blue wind blade crashed violently against his toe.

“Rankyaku!”

Rankyaku was like a slash. Though he had not especially devoted himself to training it, with his current physique even a casual strike was enough to rival Rob Lucci. Thus a line of blood blossomed in the air, and the head of Bon Clay’s swan boot was cleanly severed.

“Moon Walk!”

“Lion Combo!”

With a step that seemed to tread on air itself, Shu Mingyuan appeared above Mr. 2 as though teleporting. Twisting his body around, he flung his heel hard into the man’s stomach. Bon Clay was instantly blasted out of the sky like a cannonball, smashing the palace floor below to pieces.

“Damn it! Take this, Candle Lock!”

A spark ignited in Mr. 3’s hair. With both hands sweeping outward, a mass of white sticky substance surged toward Shu Mingyuan. He was a Paramecia Candle Man, able to freely control his body or use his power to create candles as hard as steel.

His only weakness, however, was fire. Under high heat, his candles could last only three seconds.

“Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!”

His hands formed seals in a blur of afterimages. Heat gathered in his mouth, then he opened it and spat forth a blazing fireball over twenty meters across, swallowing the oncoming mass of sticky substance and burning it to ash.

To him, the so-called candle power was utterly useless; he did not even care to waste the interest of a single exchange with it.

“Sea Urchin Spikes!”

Miss Doublefinger’s entire body sprouted spikes a foot long. She bent low and rolled forward like a war chariot. Her spinning body pierced the hard floor with hole after hole, and an attack of this intensity could smash a house apart.

Shu Mingyuan looked at that spiked sphere with a cold sneer. If it was a question of brute force, who had ever feared Choji’s Human Bullet Tank?

“Partial Expansion Technique!”

“Armament Haki: Hardening!”

His right hand clenched into a fist, and his arm rapidly enlarged several times over. A layer of dark sheen covered the massive fist, making it look indestructible. Shu Mingyuan threw a heavy punch, and a sonic boom detonated along with it.

Miss Doublefinger, transformed into a spiky sea urchin, was blasted away by a single blow. Amid a wretched scream, all her spikes snapped almost simultaneously.

“Pathetic.”

Shu Mingyuan stood with hands behind his back. He had defeated each of them with a single strike. Calmly standing in the center of the hall, he looked down upon the four as though he were an insurmountable war deity.

“All of you come at once. Splitting up will only give you no chance at all,” Shu Mingyuan said flatly.

The moment his words fell, Bon Clay’s figure was already upon him. Treading with ghostly steps, his body suddenly spun at high speed, and in an instant countless leg shadows poured down like a storm, engulfing Shu Mingyuan from all directions. Every strike could snap steel in two.

“Okama Kenpo: Ten-Thousand-Circle Spinning Kick!”

Shu Mingyuan opened his eerie crimson three-tomoe Sharingan. His Observation Haki also spread across a radius of thirty meters. Like a small boat in a sea of shadows, he moved effortlessly through the rain of leg images, unharmed in the slightest.

“Have you had your fun?”

Shu Mingyuan said indifferently. He raised a leg to block Bon Clay’s kick, then caught the man’s ankle with one hand and smashed him viciously into the floor. As the tiles cracked apart, bright blood sprayed out.

Mr. 3’s candle slime surged again, but Shu Mingyuan grinned and casually hurled Bon Clay’s body at it, where it was wrapped up perfectly.

“Idiot.”

He stepped off the ground, his body following instantly, and drove a heavy punch into Bon Clay’s candle-wrapped body. Shu Mingyuan’s immense strength exploded at that instant. The hard outer candle shell shattered under the blow, and the force surged into Bon Clay’s body. A spray of blood, mixed with shards of internal organs, burst from his mouth.

As his falling body slammed into Mr. 3 as well, the two rolled together across the floor. A crackling burst of electricity sounded in the air. Shu Mingyuan strode forward and clenched his hand in the void, drawing a lightning spear that swept down toward Mr. 3’s head.

“Candle Wall!” Mr. 3’s eyes filled with terror. His hand-to-hand combat skills were poor, and his abilities were completely restrained by Shu Mingyuan’s Fire Release, leaving him with little more than defensive measures.

A hard wall of candle material formed instantly before him. The lightning spear struck it with the clang of metal against iron. Shu Mingyuan’s mouth curled slightly, and he let out a faint breath.

“Idiot... lightning carries not only paralysis, but also tremendous heat.”

No sooner had he spoken than the candle wall touching the lightning spear had already begun to melt. The electric glow bursting from the spear in his hand grew ever more brilliant. With a violent wrench of his arm, the lightning spear carved a deep fissure through the candle wall.

Amid a torrent of blood, a human head slowly rolled to the ground.