Chapter Seventy-Seven: Total Annihilation [Second Update]

Van Corlay had been pressing down on Mister Three when he saw the head suddenly tumble to the ground, and his face turned deathly pale in an instant. Mister Three, who was no weakling, had been killed so casually. Though the difference in their abilities was due in part to their powers canceling each other out, the gap in raw strength was still far too obvious.

Two crossed slashes came sweeping in from the side. The boy bent down, picked up Bell’s saber from the floor, and a streak of black light immediately cloaked the blade. With a curl of his lips, he mocked, “I’ve heard you claim that no swordsman has ever laid a finger on you. Today, I’ll show you what real swordsmanship looks like.”

With a casual motion, he knocked both slashes aside. Then he took a sword-drawing stance, stamped the ground, and shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow.

“First Style, Draw Slash!”

The saber left its scabbard, and a pale blue sword radiance cleaved out. Mister One crossed his arms, which became blades, and blocked in front of himself.

“Think you can stop it?”

Shu Mingyuan smiled coldly. He had not yet grasped the breathing of all things as Zoro had, but once a sword’s momentum became sharp enough, it too could sever steel.

This was swordsmanship fused with chakra and battle aura, giving him the capital to contend for the summit of the sword in this vast and magnificent world of great swordsmen.

With a light laugh, the pale blue sword radiance seemed to split the air open. Mister One’s blade-turned arms were brutally cut open beneath that strike, the wound deep enough to reach the bone.

His arm nearly had been severed clean through, and blood poured out in torrents, dripping onto the palace floor.

“What kind of swordsmanship is this... How could it cut through my body?” Mister One could not believe it, but the pain in his arm told him this was no illusion.

“Ninja swordsmanship.”

Shu Mingyuan smiled faintly. In the tale of the Hidden Leaf, Mifune was a swordsman who had trained himself to the level of a sword master, capable of cleaving through the roots of the Divine Tree with a single strike. Shu Mingyuan could fully absorb and integrate all of his sword techniques, essentials, and forms.

Because of this, his confidence on the road to becoming a great swordsman had multiplied a hundredfold. If one day he were to grasp the breathing of all things, he even had the confidence to split a diamond with one sword. To open mountains when mountains stood in his way, and to cleave the sea when the sea blocked him!

“Damn it, take this kick from your lady!”

“Transvestite Fist Technique: Memories of That Summer!”

With Mister Three dead, the candle power of the Devil Fruit naturally dissipated, and the wax that had bound Van Corlay vanished. He lunged forward in a burst, balancing on one foot as he spun at high speed, the toe of his other foot instantly tearing through space to kick at Shu Mingyuan’s head.

The boy casually slashed out a sword radiance five zhang long, its overwhelming sharpness unstoppable, cutting through the air and the ground alike. Van Corlay’s face changed in alarm. He bent his legs and sprang upward, then used the force of his falling body to spread his arms wide as if a swan were opening its wings.

“Swan on the Wind Kick!”

His heel slammed down from the sky, and from the other side Miss Double Finger also rushed back from where she had been blasted away. A thorn lance thrust out from her palm; she seized it in one hand and drove it straight toward the boy’s throat.

The two of them worked together with exquisite precision. No matter which way Shu Mingyuan dodged, he would still be met with a storm of attacks.

“Lightning Release: Ground Walk!”

His calm voice rang out. Countless crackling, brilliant bolts of lightning exploded over his body, and before their attacks could land, serpentine streams of electricity had already coiled around him.

The two were struck as though by lightning itself. One fell helplessly from the air; the other collapsed limply to the ground. Furious arcs of electricity coursed through their bodies, blackening them from head to toe.

As Shu Mingyuan’s chakra and ninjutsu grew stronger, so too did the power of his lightning. The most obvious change was that the lightning condensed from his chakra was gradually turning into a bright, gleaming white.

Slashes, kicks, thorns—none of it mattered. Every method was crushed before him with overwhelming force.

In the original story, Mister One, the strongest of Crocodile’s subordinates, was merely imprisoned on the fourth underground level, the Hot Hell, while Crocodile himself was held in the sixth underground level, the Infinite Hell. The difference between them was simply too vast.

Shu Mingyuan walked toward the two of them, his expression calm. “Did you really think a bounty of three hundred fifty million was so easy to claim?”

His wrist flicked, and the saber in his hand stabbed viciously toward Miss Double Finger.

“Mister One, save me!”

Miss Double Finger groaned weakly. The tip of the blade swelled in her pupils, and at that critical moment, a section of blade knocked it aside, saving her life by the thinnest margin.

Shu Mingyuan glanced up at him, his eyes full of disdain. “No need to rush here and die. Relax. None of you will escape.”

“Run! This guy is monstrously strong. He’s on a completely different level from us! I’ll hold him off! Maybe only the boss can deal with him.”

Mister One took a deep breath. The arm that had nearly been split open by that earlier strike once again transformed into a pair of sharp blades.

“Dust Slash!”

His gaze sharpened, and the blade swept out, sending a rain of vicious slashes toward Shu Mingyuan’s vital points from all directions.

His attack could cut objects into countless tiny particles. Surely it could tear the body of this boy apart as well.

“Not a bad technique. Too bad... it’s still not enough.”

The boy’s sigh drifted through the palace hall. He moved his arms, and that almost impossible-to-evade assault was effortlessly intercepted. Not only that, but he counterattacked in the gaps, and blood bloomed repeatedly across Mister One’s body.

“Ghost Hunter, don’t get too proud! Spiral Draw Slash!”

He drew in his arms and clenched his fists. His arms transformed into ring after ring of blades, each spinning at terrifying speed like a razor-sharp drill.

He punched fiercely at the boy’s chest, vowing to tear him apart.

“Foolish. Perhaps up to now, you still haven’t understood where the gap between you and me truly lies.”

A trace of pity appeared in the boy’s eyes. Lightning flashed in the air, and his body turned into a phantom as he passed by Mister One.

“S-so fast.”

Time seemed to freeze. Then a blood arrow burst from Mister One’s body. His eyes flew wide open as he looked down at the wound deep enough to expose bone, the life within him completely severed by that single strike.

Mister One’s corpse fell to the ground. Shu Mingyuan looked up at the other two, who were already nearly at the gate, and murmured to himself, “You... won’t be running anywhere.”

A faint smile appeared on his face. His movement technique burst forth, and with the explosive acceleration of Shave, the distance between the three of them shrank drastically.

Shu Mingyuan casually swung out a sword. As the sword radiance approached, Van Corlay had no choice but to sidestep out of the way, and by the time that brief opening passed, Shu Mingyuan had already caught up.

“Ghost Hunter!”

The two were struck with alarm. They had clearly seen that the strongest among them, Mister One, was already lying in a pool of blood.

“I did say that all of you would die here.”

Shu Mingyuan’s indifferent voice rang out like the sigh of death itself. After only a few exchanges, every senior officer of the Baroque Works had been wiped out here.

P.S.: The results of Pirate Hunter keep getting better and better, and it’s all thanks to everyone who reads it! Thank you all!

Thanks to Gu Fengchao for the tip of 1,888 book coins. Thank you!