Chapter 176: The Serpent's End and The Silent Executioner
"Now..."
Suzaku's voice floated through the cold air of the wrecked throne room, carrying a terrifyingly casual amusement. His smile widened, revealing teeth that seemed sharper in the dim light.
"He's just poorly faking his death. A rather clumsy performance, wouldn't you say?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the atmosphere in the room shifted instantly.
The massive, headless snake body lying on the ground, which had been still and limp just a moment ago—perfectly "faking its death" down to the cessation of breathing—suddenly trembled violently!
How could he know?!
The thought screamed through Orochi's mind like a banshee.
How could he possibly know the secret of my Devil Fruit ability??? No one knows this! Not even Kaido knows the specific mechanics of my resurrection!
A massive wave of shock, cold and paralyzing, surged in Kurozumi Orochi's heart. His ruse, his greatest survival strategy that had allowed him to navigate the treacherous waters of Wano's politics for decades, had been seen through instantly by this outsider.
With his biggest life-saving trump card exposed on the spot, he could no longer maintain his pretense!
The instinct for survival overwhelmed everything else—shame, dignity, anger, all of it vanished.
Run! I must run!
The next second, the giant snake corpse suddenly sprang up with the speed of a coiled spring releasing its tension. Its remaining seven heads, which had regenerated in the darkness of his feigned death, hissed in unison.
Ignoring everyone—ignoring the terrifying woman in white, the demon with wings, and the smiling man—he chose flight.
His massive body, heavy with scales and muscle, erupted with astonishing, desperate power. He threw himself forward, not at the enemies, but away from them.
He recklessly slammed his bulk into the frozen gate that Esdeath had sealed shut!
Rumble...!!!
The sound was deafening. Accompanied by the loud crash of shattering ice crystals and the groan of tearing wood and stone, a massive hole appeared in the wall of the General's Mansion.
Orochi chose the most desperate and direct method available to a cornered beast: escaping by breaking through the very structure of his own palace!
Along with the loud crash of the ice wall dissolving into shards and the mansion wall exploding outward, a massive, shocking hole appeared in the outer fortifications. Amidst the swirling smoke and dust of destruction, a nightmare emerged.
Orochi's huge, seven-headed snake body, carrying debris, broken beams, and wood chips on his back, embarrassingly rushed out onto the busiest street in the Flower Capital!
He didn't look back. The instinct for survival was a drum beating in his blood, drowning out all logic. He didn't even stop to wonder why the enemy hadn't pursued him immediately.
He just frantically twisted his serpentine body, slithering and crashing through the street, his massive tail whipping around and destroying stalls. He was trying to escape this place of trouble, this "Suzaku," as quickly as possible.
"Aaaahhh! Monster!!"
"It's the General! Run!"
Countless terrified screams erupted from the throats of the citizens.
The people of the Flower Capital, who were happily shopping for the Fire Festival or enjoying the afternoon sun, froze in horror. Seeing this fierce beast—a creature they had only ever heard of in legends or seen in stylized paintings—suddenly appear in the flesh was too much for their minds to handle.
They were scared out of their wits.
The crowd scattered frantically like ants under a magnifying glass. For a moment, total chaos reigned. Stalls selling dango and masks were overturned, carts filled with rice were flipped, spilling their precious cargo into the mud. People pushed and shoved, horses reared in panic, and children cried for their mothers.
The entire prosperous street turned into a living hell of confusion and fear.
During the chaotic escape, Orochi didn't care about the ants he was crushing. However, two of his seven remaining heads didn't forget to twist back vigilantly. Their yellow, reptilian eyes stared intently at the hole he had smashed through in the mansion wall.
The smoke and dust gradually cleared, revealing the dark, gaping maw of the breach.
Behind it lay a dead silent courtyard.
Those figures, like ghosts or gods, had not pursued him. There was no sign of the ice woman chasing him. No sign of the winged demon.
Safe?
"Hoo... hoo..."
Orochi's seven mouths simultaneously gasped for air, his forked tongues flickering in and out. A ridiculous, bubbling sense of glee rose in his heart, displacing the fear.
"They didn't chase me! They really didn't chase me!"
He laughed, a rasping, hissing sound.
"That's right! It must be! They thought they had already won! They thought cutting off one head was enough! These arrogant bastards! They don't know my true ability at all! They underestimated the great Kurozumi Orochi!"
His confidence returned in a rush, fueled by adrenaline.
"As long as I escape back to Onigashima... No!"
He corrected himself mid-thought, his cunning nature surfacing.
"I can't go to Onigashima! If Kaido, that bastard, knew I was in such a sorry state, running away like a beaten dog, he definitely wouldn't spare me! He despises weakness!"
His eyes darted around the panicked city.
"I need to find a place to hide. Hakumai? No, Udon. I will hide in the prisoner mines. I will wait for them to fight amongst themselves. When Kaido kills them, or they kill Kaido... then I'll emerge! I'll still have a chance! Wano Country will still be mine!"
The ecstasy of surviving against the odds and the fantasy of his future comeback caused his fear-stricken brain to become active again. He had even thought up a hundred different plans for his revenge in the span of a few seconds.
However, fate has a cruel sense of humor.
Just as he was congratulating himself on his "cleverness" and the opponent's "negligence," an inexplicable chill—colder than Esdeath's ice—caused his massive body to suddenly freeze mid-slither.
It was the feeling of a blade resting against his jugular.
Subconsciously, he raised one of his central snake heads and looked ahead.
At the end of the empty street, blocking his path to freedom, a figure had appeared.
He didn't know when the figure had arrived. There had been no sound, no gust of wind.
The person floated silently in mid-air, a few feet off the ground. He was clad in pure white Western-style attire with a high collar, starkly contrasting with the antique Japanese-style architecture surrounding him. His hands were buried deep in his pockets.
His skin was pale as snow, almost translucent. His helmet, resembling a broken skull, sat upon his head. But it was his eyes—green, devoid of emotion, holding a profound emptiness—that exuded a chilling eeriness.
Ulquiorra Cifer. An officer of the Suzaku Pirates.
When did he appear there?
Question marks simultaneously appeared in Orochi's seven heads. His brain couldn't process the speed. But he had no time to search for an answer.
Because the moment that figure appeared, a sense of oppression far more terrifying than death itself—a heaviness that felt like the crushing weight of the ocean—had completely enveloped him!
"Damn it! This is endless! Do they really think I'm a soft persimmon anyone can squeeze?!"
Orochi let out a roar of frustration and fear. The desire to survive drove him to instinctively propel his massive body forward.
"Move out of my way!"
He prepared to bypass this strange obstruction, to crush the small man beneath his bulk.
But at the exact moment that thought arose, the white figure moved.
No, perhaps "moved" wasn't the right word to describe it.
He merely... vanished.
Zip.
And then, in the blink of an eye, he appeared right in front of Orochi's face, hovering in the air. As if he was meant to be there all along, a fixture of reality.
"So fast..."
One of Orochi's heads barely managed to squeeze those two words out of its throat.
The next instant, a condensed, dark green blade of light flashed in Ulquiorra's hand and disappeared just as quickly.
Pfft...!
Pfft...!
Two clean, wet slicing sounds echoed in the street.
Orochi didn't even feel pain at first. He only saw his vision spin dizzily, the world tilting on its axis.
Then, he crashed heavily onto the cobblestones.
Thud!
His last conscious thought from those two perspectives was seeing his own neck, now missing two heads, spurting fountains of dark blood. Two more heads, their expressions frozen in shock and confusion, rolled onto the ground like discarded toys.
"Aaaahhh!!!"
Excruciating pain and terror finally surged like a tide, crashing over his mind and driving Orochi into complete madness!
"Don't underestimate me, you bastard!!!"
His remaining five heads roared simultaneously toward the sky, shaking the nearby buildings. Then, filled with hate, they fiercely aimed at Ulquiorra hovering in front of him.
Their mouths opened widest, unhinging their jaws. An ominous, purplish-black light surged deep within their throats, glowing with toxic heat.
"Yamata: Poison Flame!!"
Five streams of highly corrosive, poisonous Dragon Breath erupted!
Powerful enough to melt steel and erode the earth, the purple flames shot from five different angles, weaving a net of death that instantly swallowed Ulquiorra's figure!
Whoosh!
The temperature of the entire street instantly soared. The ground scorched by the Poison Flame emitted sizzling corrosive sounds, turning the cobblestones into bubbling sludge. Plumes of black, acrid smoke rose into the sky.
Its terrifying power caused the faces of the distant onlookers to turn pale with horror!
"He... he burned him!"
However, Ulquiorra, standing in the center of the Poison Flame, didn't even twitch an eyebrow. His white uniform remained pristine, untouched by the heat or the acid.
He merely watched everything with his hollow green eyes, utterly indifferent.
"Is this... the ability of the so-called Mythical Zoan Type Devil Fruit?"
He murmured to himself, his voice completely flat, cutting through the roar of the fire. It was as if he were commenting on a piece of uninteresting trash he found on the roadside.
"To possess such a powerful Mythical Zoan Type Devil Fruit... regeneration, multiple lives, elemental control... yet its user is merely trash of this caliber... Truly disgusting."
The instant his voice fell, he didn't even draw his sword.
He simply raised his right hand slowly. He pointed his index finger at the center of the inferno.
A small point of highly condensed dark green light quietly lit up on his fingertip.
"Cero."
Whoosh...
A beam of destructive light, deeper and more dazzling than the Poison Flame, shot out fiercely!
The five streams of "Yamata Poison Flame," which seemed capable of destroying the heavens and the earth, instantly met the dark green light beam.
Like thin ice encountering the scorching sun, they couldn't offer even a moment of resistance. They were utterly pierced, scattered, and annihilated!
The dark green energy beam pierced through the torrent of Poison Flame, turning the fire into nothingness, and accurately struck Orochi's center head.
Boom!
There was no splashing blood. There was no scream.
That snake head, along with a short segment of its neck, was completely evaporated. It was erased by the destructive beam, turning into thick smoke and vanishing from the spot instantly.
Orochi's four remaining heads had their pupils instantly shrink to the size of pinpricks.
His rage, his hope, his plans for revenge... they were all utterly shattered at this moment.
All that remained was endless, pure terror.
He wanted to beg for mercy, but found his throat was choked by an invisible hand. He couldn't make a sound.
He wanted to flee, but discovered his body had already stiffened from extreme fear, leaving him immobile.
He could only watch helplessly as the white figure, the Angel of Death, walked toward him step by step through the dissipating smoke.
Ulquiorra walked as if strolling in his own backyard. Every step felt like a stomp on Orochi's heart.
Ulquiorra slowly drew the sword from his waist. The metal sang a quiet song of death.
Slice!
Slice!
Slice!
The sword rose and fell, swift and clean. No wasted movement.
The last few snake heads shot into the air almost simultaneously, their faces frozen in eternal, comical terror.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
As the last head rolled onto the ground, staring blankly at the sky, Orochi's massive Yamata no Orochi body finally lost all signs of life.
It collapsed like a landslide.
Boom!
The massive carcass kicked up a cloud of dust across the main street of the Flower Capital, signaling the end of an era.
...
The entire street, and even the whole Flower Capital, fell into a deathly silence at this moment.
The wind stopped blowing. The cherry blossoms seemed to pause in mid-air.
All the citizens of the Flower Capital, hiding behind door cracks, peering through windows, and crouching behind overturned carts, witnessed this scene that shattered their understanding of the world.
Orochi the General.
The man who had oppressed the people and ruled tyrannically for twenty years. The man who was considered invincible, backed by Kaido. That legendary eight-headed demon with an immortal body...
Just... died?
Was he effortlessly slaughtered by a mysterious person who came out of nowhere, as easily as a chef chopping vegetables?
After a brief, suffocating silence, someone, identity unknown, let out the first trembling cry from an alleyway:
"The General... General-sama... is dead!!!"
This cry was like a huge rock thrown into a calm lake, instantly stirring up massive waves!
"The General is dead!"
"That monster is dead!"
Panic, shock, confusion, and a hint of unbelievable, forbidden ecstasy—all these complex emotions spread through the crowd like wildfire.
Immediately following was an even greater panic!
The General is dead, but what about Kaido? What about the retribution?
"Quick! Close the doors! Hurry home...!"
"Something terrible is going to happen...! The sky is falling!"
People awoke as if from a dream, rushing frantically back to their homes. The sound of slamming doors and locking bolts echoed throughout the city.
The street, which had been noisy moments ago due to the disturbance, turned into a ghost town within minutes.
Leaving behind only Orochi's massive, headless corpse, the wreckage of the stalls, and the silent, white figure standing amidst the ruin.
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