Chapter 425: The Toki Toki no Mi Fruit [Monthly Ticket Request]
Chapter 425: The Toki Toki no Mi Fruit [Monthly Ticket Request]
In the Land of Wano...
A desolate wasteland lay before them, overgrown with wild grasses. Several dilapidated tombs stood amidst the vegetation, their gravestones tilting at odd angles.
"Kozuki Oden," Robin read aloud, her eyes falling upon the first gravestone.
"Kozuki Momonosuke," she continued, her voice filled with wonder as she gazed at the names of the Wano Country daimyo and his faithful retainers, the Nine Red Scabbards.
"So this is..."
"The famed grave of Kozuki Oden," she whispered, following Feng Ye towards the cluster of tombs.
Despite Kurozumi Orochi's efforts to tarnish Oden's name, Robin, as an archaeologist, could discern fact from fiction in the information she had gathered. The name Kozuki Oden was not unfamiliar to her, thanks to Feng Ye's insights into the Land of Wano and her own knowledge of the Roger Pirates' past.
Oden, a companion of the Pirate King Gol D. Roger and a member of his crew, was also known for his incredibly high bounty!
"It seems we've found it," Feng Ye said, walking past Oden's tomb and stopping before a gravestone bearing the name 'Kozuki Toki'.
"Kozuki Toki, the wife of Oden, originated from the blank century eight hundred years ago," Feng Ye explained calmly, his eyes scanning the ground. "She possessed the Toki Toki no Mi, a Devil Fruit that allows her to travel into the future."
"Eh?!" Robin exclaimed, her eyes widening in surprise. "Time travel? Is such a thing even possible?"
Due to Toki's use of the fruit's power to traverse eight centuries, the existence of the Toki Toki no Mi had never been recorded in the eight hundred years that followed. It remained a speculative Devil Fruit, its presence uncertain.
"One can only travel to the future, not the past," Feng Ye said with a gentle smile. "Time is not so easily fooled..."
As he spoke, Feng Ye activated his eye power, a gleam flashing in his eyes. The ground beneath the tombs began to crack, revealing a body hidden within.
"Sir?!" Robin exclaimed, startled by Feng Ye's sudden action of unearthing the buried corpse.
Feng Ye regarded the body of Kozuki Toki calmly. "A few years ago, when Oden fell to Kaido and met his end, the Kozuki clan was destroyed. Toki used her ability to send the clan's retainers twenty years into the future..."
As he spoke, a golden glow appeared in Feng Ye's eyes, and an illusory image of a golden clock appeared deep within his pupils. The hour hand seemed to point to the Roman numeral IV.
Feng Ye had used his ability to foresee the future, and countless layered images appeared before his eyes.
It was like an infinitely extending tree diagram, constantly splitting and branching out. The further away, the more splits there were, indicating the countless possibilities of the future.
Amongst the endless branches, Feng Ye noticed a strange thread. This thread did not belong to the infinite split-screen image but ran parallel to it, leading to a distant end.
"So this is the power of the Toki Toki no Mi..." Feng Ye murmured.
The thread represented the Nine Red Scabbards, including Kin'emon, and how they were enveloped by Toki's power, creating a parallel existence with the present time.
The ability to send people to the future did not actually transport them to a specific point but rather detached them from the current timeline.
Feng Ye almost instantly understood why the Toki Toki no Mi could only send people to the future and not the past.
The fruit merely detached people from the current timeline and returned them after a certain number of years had passed in the outside world; it couldn't interfere with the flow of time itself!
"Looks like I overthought this..."
Feng Ye shook his head inwardly.
The ability to merely detach oneself from the current timeline wasn't impressive; even he could do that.
It was akin to a temporal seal, temporarily sealing oneself with a predetermined release at a future point in time.
Such an ability held no appeal for him.
The Ethereal Clock probably wouldn't find this ability intriguing either.
"But since we're here..."
Feng Ye sighed and turned his gaze back to Kozuki Toki's body, using it as a foundation to trace the future.
He could see the power of the Toki Toki no Mi detaching from Kozuki Toki's body, brewing and coalescing, and finally reappearing in the sea sometime in the future.
"Found it."
Feng Ye's eyes flashed, and the scene before him froze.
The Toki Toki no Mi would reappear in about a year, and this location would be... Well, the North Blue, it seemed.
The Toki Toki no Mi was a rather elusive Devil Fruit; once it was born and consumed, the consumer would likely activate its ability immediately.
Thus, its existence in time was intermittent.
However, for Feng Ye, finding it wasn't difficult because he now knew that the fruit didn't truly allow for time travel but merely sealed the current self.
With the power of the Ethereal Clock, he could interfere with such a seal and forcibly pull someone out of their temporal journey.
Unless it was a true space-time traversal power, once found, it would be challenging to escape his grasp.
"Let's pay a visit to the North Blue in a year or so."
Feng Ye closed his eyes slightly, ceasing his insight into the future and retracting his gaze. He turned back to Kozuki Toki's body.
He spoke softly to the corpse, "To pursue the traces of the Toki Toki no Mi, please excuse my rudeness..."
"You could have avoided death, but you chose to stay in that time and die there. I won't interfere with your choice. Now that I've obtained the Toki Toki no Mi from you, I'll take care of your daughter as compensation for my rudeness."
As his words fell,
Feng Ye moved his thoughts, and the split ground closed once more, burying Kozuki Toki's body underground again.
He retracted his gaze, turned, and walked away, a bluish gleam appearing in his eyes as they swept across Wano Country.
"Let's go, Robin.
We're going to find Kozuki Hiyori."
Momonosuke and Kin'emon were still sealed in a parallel timeline, and he had no interest in pulling Momonosuke out.
In fact, he considered adding another layer of seal so that Momonosuke could travel to the ends of the world and time, forever remaining a child and experiencing things that even he couldn't.
That would be a blessed life.
And as compensation for obtaining the lead on the Toki Toki no Mi, he would leave Hiyori, Momonosuke's sister, to experience the tempering of time; that seemed only fair.
(End of Chapter)
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