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This creates a vicious cycle, a self-reinforcing, ever-accelerating vicious cycle that eventually devours the entire planet.

The red earth continent is collapsing.

It didn't collapse slowly and gradually, but rather in a violent and unstoppable way.

The landmasses separated by the cracks began to tilt, overturn, and collapse. Hundreds of millions of tons of rock fell from the heights into the wildly expanding void channels, disappearing completely the moment they touched the void.

The continental shelf is breaking apart.

The earth's crust is tearing apart.

The mantle is gushing out.

A fissure thousands of kilometers long stretched outwards from the red earth, crossing the doldrums, the Grand Line, and the boundaries of the four seas, cutting the planet's crust into countless fragments.

The ocean began to boil.

However, none of this affected Bai Yu and the others who were bathed in the light of Avalon.

"EXcalibur!"

Once unsealed, the curry stick radiated an unparalleled golden light, instantly covering Im's entire body...

Chapter 251 The End and the Rebirth

EXcalibur's golden light engulfed Im.

That was not an ordinary release of the Holy Sword, but a strike that far exceeded normal specifications, erupted within Avalon's absolute defensive domain, empowered by Bai Yu's Rinnegan, and catalyzed by all the emotions accumulated throughout the entire battle.

A golden beam of light shot into the sky, piercing through the black sphere of the Heavenly King, through the dark clouds above Pangu City, through the atmosphere, and into the pitch-black space.

The light lasted for a full ten seconds.

Then it began to fade.

Artoria's gaze was fixed on the figure at the center of the light, the figure that had not disappeared even in the golden torrent that was enough to evaporate an island.

"Success?"

Loki's voice trembled with disbelief.

"That guy... is finally dead?"

No one answered him.

Because everyone saw it.

Even after the golden light completely dissipated, Im remained standing there.

The white mask is still there, the black robe is still there, and the right hand raised towards the Heavenly King is still there.

There wasn't even a single scratch, not a trace of char, and no sign of being struck by the holy sword.

But Im was indeed hit.

Everyone saw the golden beam of light engulf Im.

So this is neither a missed hit nor a failure to cause damage.

This is what happened after being hit, and then it recovered.

Everyone with excellent Observation Haki saw it.

The instant Excalibur's golden light touched Im's body, Im's body was indeed destroyed, broken down into the most basic particles, and completely erased by the magic of the holy sword.

But less than a tenth of a second later, those erased particles reappeared.

It was not transferred from elsewhere, nor was it regenerated; rather, it reappeared.

It's as if time has been reversed.

Im's existence is etched into the world's underlying rules, to the point that the world cannot allow Im to not exist.

Im slowly lowered his right hand.

The black sphere above the Heavenly King Platform began to shrink, from the size of a mountain peak to the size of a house, from the size of a house to the size of a basketball, and finally back to the size of a black dot of light the size of a marble, before disappearing into the center of the platform.

The patterns on the surface of the Heavenly King faded away one by one.

The dim light converged from the edge of the platform toward the center, like a closing eye.

The platform began to decline.

It was not falling, not out of control, but descending in a slow, solemn manner, as if returning to silence after completing its mission.

It sank into the ground of Pangu City, into the foundation of that ancient building, and eventually disappeared completely, as if it had never existed.

The red earth continent is still collapsing.

The ocean is still boiling.

The earth's crust is still tearing apart.

Do you understand?

Im's voice came through the mask, calmer than someone who had just been struck head-on by the holy sword, calmer than someone who was destroying the world.

"It's not that your sword isn't strong enough, it's that your sword can't kill me."

Im took a step forward.

That step landed on the shattered ground of Pangu City, on those collapsing stone slabs, but it was as if there was an invisible platform beneath Im's feet, allowing Im to stand on that ruin, on that land being swallowed by nothingness.

"This sword is indeed very powerful."

Im looked at the curry stick in Artoria's hand: "If this were eight hundred years ago, this sword would have been enough to kill me."

"I don't even need this sword; half your power is enough to make me disappear forever."

"But things are different now."

Im spread his arms, his white mask facing the sky, towards the void rift that was devouring the planet.

“I am no longer an individual. I am part of this planet, the sum of all life on this planet, the underlying rules of this world itself. The moment you kill me, this planet will resurrect me. The moment you destroy my body, the world will reconstruct me. You don’t even need to actually kill me. As long as you try to kill me, the world will protect me.”

Im lowered his head, the hole in his mask facing Bai Yu.

"Because I am already one with this planet, killing me is killing this planet, and this planet... will not let itself die."

Bai Yu remained silent.

His Rinnegan was turning, and the nine tomoe were slowly rotating.

He saw those life-giving threads flowing from all over the world to Im; those threads were not drawn by Im, but rather actively transported by the world.

Every second, hundreds of millions of life force units flow into Im's body, keeping Im in a perfect state—immortal, immortal, invulnerable, and indestructible.

This is not a skill.

This is a "rule".

Just as gravity causes objects to fall, just as water freezes below zero degrees Celsius, just as light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum, Im's immortality has become a physical law of this world.

It's not that it's hard to kill, or almost impossible to kill, but rather that it's logically impossible to kill.

Because killing Im would mean denying this physical law, and the only way to deny a physical law is to deny the entire physical system.

It means to deny the entire world.

Bai Yu closed her eyes.

The surrounding chaos seemed incredibly distant at that moment; the sounds of the collapsing red earth, the boiling ocean, and the tearing of the earth's crust were like faint, distant echoes coming through a thick layer of glass.

He heard the voices of all those whose life force was being drained by Im, devoured by the King of Heaven, and disappearing from this world.

He heard the voice of the whole world.

Then he opened his eyes.

Those nine-tomoe Rinnegan eyes were devoid of emotion.

Those eyes held only an absolute, calm emptiness, as vast as the universe itself.

"You mean killing this planet if I say I'm going to kill you."

Bai Yu's voice was very soft, so soft that it was almost drowned out by the surrounding chaos.

"What if..."

He raised his right hand.

Palms facing up.

Im's body stiffened slightly.

That wasn't fear; it was an instinctive alertness when facing the unknown.

Im had not felt this vigilance for a long time in the past eight hundred years.

A force began to rotate in Bai Yu's palm.

It is not an ordinary rotation, but a multi-dimensional rotation that occurs simultaneously on both spatial and temporal levels.

The trajectories they draw in three-dimensional space are not circles, but rather geometric shapes that are beyond the reach of the human eye and cannot be fully captured by the three-dimensional space.

"I will destroy this planet."

Im suddenly looked up.

For the first time, an emotion that could be described as "horror" emerged from the emptiness beneath that white mask.

"You're crazy."

Im's voice changed; it was no longer calm or composed, but carried a sharp edge that could almost be described as "fear."

“If you destroy this planet, you will die, everyone will die. Everything on this planet will disappear, you—!”

"But do you know the difference between you and me, Im?"

The nine magatama spun faster and faster, and the light they emitted changed from gold to white, and from white to a light that transcended the visible spectrum and could only be perceived by the soul.

Bai Yu's hair fluttered in the light, his clothes rustled in the light, and his shadow stretched long at his feet, like a bridge connecting him to the deepest part of this planet.

"You spent eight hundred years binding yourself to this planet because you wanted to live, you were afraid of death, you were afraid of disappearing, you were afraid of 'non-existence'. So you used every means to prolong your existence, even if it meant sacrificing everyone on this planet, even if it meant dragging the whole world into nothingness."

"And I..."