"Huh?!" Luo Na's hollow eyes widened instantly in disbelief.
She had never encountered such "filthy," "lowly," and "utterly undignified for a strong warrior" tactics! Even worse, the pellets seemed to be coated with explosives and a potent mixture of chili powder and rotten eggs—their intense irritants instantly shattered her concentration, disrupting the Negative Thought Wave she had been maintaining.
"Ah—! My eyes! It burns! It stinks! It's disgusting!!" Luo Na let out a piercing scream, no longer the hollow whisper of a ghost but a cry filled with agony and visceral revulsion.
Clutching her face, her translucent body convulsed violently, her ability collapsing. The oppressive shroud of Negative Thought Wave dissipated instantly.
With Luo Na's ability nullified, the heavy chains weighing down Xiao Ke, Xia Ling, Sun Long, Zhao Yan'er, and the others melted away like ice. The venomous whispers of self-doubt retreated, and strength surged back into their bodies.
"I…" Xiao Ke abruptly raised his head, his eyes regaining their sharp clarity. Seeing his kneeling posture and the gun he had dropped, shame and fury instantly replaced his despair.
"Bastard! How dare they use such underhanded tricks! What a vile ability!"
"Disgraceful!" Sun Long roared, snatching up his three blades in an instant, his killing intent soaring to the heavens!
"Unforgivable!" Xia Ling stood up, the cold energy around her more frigid than ever!
"You made me cry?!" Zhao Yan'er wiped away her tears, the flames on her fists erupting with a deafening roar, fiercer and more violent than before!
"Wu Xingyun! Well done!" someone shouted.
Hearing the praise, Wu Xingyun looked up in confusion. "Huh? Me… what did I do? Did their ability break?"
He stared at Luo Na, writhing on the ground in agony, her ability lost, then at the Executives, their fighting spirit restored like enraged lions. His mind was still reeling.
"Hold the line!" Xiao Ke's voice regained its usual calm as gunfire rang out again, precisely blasting apart the core of a Zombie Sea Beast lunging at Qiao Ling'er.
The Executives, fueled by even greater fury and resolve, swiftly cleared the surrounding Zombie Sea Beasts, stabilizing the nearly collapsed defensive line.
The crisis had been resolved—by Wu Xingyun's utterly undignified yet pivotal strike.
Inside Skull Castle, Moya watched the scene in the Dark Mirror: Luo Na clutching her face and screaming, her ability nullified, while the Ba Yu Executives erupted with rage. His face darkened, as if dripping with malice.
"Useless! All of them!" He gnashed his teeth, his eyes flashing with fury and a trace of… something even more deranged.
"It seems I'll have to rely on my final evolution and old friends after all! Ye Yu, your shadow will be mine!"
His gaze returned to the area in the mirror, shrouded in dense death energy. There, the resurrected zombies of powerful warriors—Jin Mo, Ba Ye, Yang Luo, and others—had surrounded Ye Yu. Their cold, malicious attacks surged toward him like a tidal wave of death.
Meanwhile, Ye Yu continued to defeat the powerful zombies, including Yang Luo.
Ye Yu's voice was icy, like the pronouncement of death itself, as he pointed his blade at the remaining zombies of Jin Mo and Ba Ye.
"Your true forms are nothing but trash to me. Mere shadows and corpses dare to show themselves again?"
Before the words even faded, Ye Yu's figure had already vanished, leaving only a faint afterimage in his wake.
The Jin Mo zombie instinctively raised its death energy-wrapped weapon to block, while the Ba Ye zombie roared and swung its iron fist! Yet—
Clang! Boom!
Black Blade Night collided with the famed sword, producing a piercing metallic screech as the dark red Haki crushed the blade into fragments. Simultaneously, Ye Yu's left fist, wrapped in the same Haki, struck faster than the Ba Ye zombie's punch, slamming squarely into its iron fist.
A terrifying shockwave erupted. The Ba Ye zombie's fist, harder than steel, along with its forearm, shattered like fragile glass under the Haki's impact, splattering decayed gray flesh and bone fragments everywhere.
"Roar!" The Jin Mo zombie let out an inhuman howl, attempting to counterattack—but Ye Yu's blade was faster! A Slash wreathed in dark red lightning flashed past its neck as if teleporting.
Thud!
The Jin Mo zombie's head soared into the air, the ghostly flames in its hollow eye sockets flickering violently before extinguishing completely. The massive headless body stood frozen for a moment before collapsing with a thunderous crash.
Of the elite zombies, only Ba Ye remained, staggering back with one arm lost, its hollow eyes filled with nothing but instinctive fear of Ye Yu.
"Moya!" Ye Yu's voice thundered through the black mist, piercing straight into Skull Castle!
"Your tricks are over! Come out and die."
Inside the castle, Moya watched through the Dark Mirror as his proud creations were effortlessly destroyed like rotten wood—especially the instant defeats of the Yang Luo and Jin Mo zombies. His facial muscles twitched violently.
"Impossible!!!" Moya let out a beast-like roar, shaking the entire Skull Throne. He shot to his feet, clawing at his thick hair in madness.
"My Shadow-Shadow Fruit is invincible! My zombie army is flawless! Why?! Why can't they stop him?!"
Buck had long collapsed to the ground, trembling in terror.
"It's the corpses! The corpses aren't strong enough! No... it's Ye Yu—he's stronger than the intel described! Level fifty... is this the power of a level fifty monster?!" Moya's eyes were bloodshot, brimming with resentment, fury, and a trace of cornered desperation.
"No! I haven't lost yet! I still have one last Trump Card—myself! The most broken of all. The strongest Devil Fruit in my eyes, the Shadow-Shadow Fruit!"
"Right now, I can't defeat Ye Yu, not even Yang Luo in a one-on-one. But this isn't my strongest form. I'll go all out now and finish Ye Yu!"
"Shadow-Shadow Fruit—Shadow Gathering Ground!!!"
Moya shrieked hysterically as the shadows around his body surged like boiling ink! The darkness beneath his feet expanded and twisted into a bottomless abyss. Inside the castle, every shadow—on the walls, the ceiling, the floor—began madly converging toward him.
Even the lingering shadows from the fallen zombie corpses on the battlefield outside were forcibly stripped away, transforming into wisps of black mist that tore through space to flood into the castle!
"Ahhh!!!" Moya let out a roar that intertwined pain and power as his body began to swell and distort under the envelopment of shadows so dense they seemed tangible. His skin turned as dark as the deepest night, his bat-like ears elongated into grotesque shapes, and his fangs protruded menacingly. His entire aura surged at a terrifying rate, brimming with chaos, savagery, and a dark will that sought to devour everything.
BOOM!
The entire Shadow Island trembled violently. The reefs formed from shipwrecks and bones along the island's periphery began to crack and collapse. At the center of the island, the massive Skull Castle, wrapped in thick shadows, started to twist and reshape like a melting wax figure.
Under the horrified gazes of the Dominant Feather Pirate Crew, the Skull Castle, along with the enormous mountain beneath it, merged with the endless shadows and transformed into a towering, monstrous Giant!
This Giant stood hundreds of meters tall, its body entirely composed of flowing, ink-like shadows. The outlines of the castle's spires and skeletal remains could still faintly be seen embedded within its shadowy form. The Giant's head bore Moya's face—now enlarged, covered in shadows, with only his crimson eyes and terrifying fangs visible.
"ROAR!!!"
The Shadow Giant, Shadow Warrior Moya, unleashed an ear-splitting roar. The sound waves materialized into tangible black shockwaves, instantly shattering large sections of the docks.
Countless zombies were pulverized into dust by the terrifying sonic blast. There was no need for them anymore—Moya had already absorbed his limit. Any further, and he would explode. Now, he had assimilated the shadows of five hundred of the strongest zombies, including powerful figures like Yang Luo.
"See this, Ye Yu!!!" Shadow Warrior Moya's voice thundered across the sky, brimming with madness and the overwhelming sense of absolute control.
"This is the ultimate power of the Shadow-Shadow Fruit! Now, I am the strongest in this world—not you! You may have contracted seven powerful pirates, but I have absorbed five hundred! Seven versus five hundred—the gap is too vast! You are no match for me now!"
His colossal shadow arm rose, blotting out the sky, carrying an aura of utter annihilation as it descended toward the tiny figure of Ye Yu and the Tyrant Feather Pirate Ship behind him on the docks.
"Captain!" Xiao Ke and the others paled in shock. They hadn't expected the Shadow-Shadow Fruit to be this powerful—this was no longer within the realm of human resistance. It was a calamity!
They felt that with this single strike, an entire island could be shattered.
Ye Yu couldn't help but marvel. This Moya had greater innate talent than Moria from the original pirate world. Moria had trained harder and honed the Shadow-Shadow Fruit's abilities to an even greater extent—he could withstand a thousand shadows. In the original story, after absorbing them, he became immensely powerful, capable of splitting islands with a single strike. But Moria himself was weak, unable to endure the strain, and ultimately collapsed.
Facing the shadowy palm descending like divine punishment, Ye Yu's eyes burned with an unprecedented, blazing fighting spirit. After reaching level fifty, this was exactly the kind of opponent he craved—one who could make him fight seriously. And the stronger the foe, the more Experience Points he would gain.
"Perfect. Become my vast source of Experience Points."