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Chapter 120is out!!!! +40 advanced chapters monthly
"D-damn it... why does it hurt so much!"
Bai Shui gritted his teeth. His body felt as if it had melted and fused to the heavy leather suit. This wasn't training; this was murder.
Thump! Thump! Thump! His heart hammered wildly in his chest. The rapid circulation of his blood was generating an intense, searing heat from the inside out. Even submerged in the icy, abyssal depths of the sea, he felt like he was burning alive, sweating profusely beneath the leather.
"I can't hold on anymore!"
It had only been ten seconds. Yet, to Bai Shui, those ten seconds stretched out like a grueling century. He frantically yanked the tether, signaling to be pulled up immediately.
Swoosh!
Instantly, Bai Shui felt himself rocketing upward. The sudden change in pressure blurred his vision, but it was just a temporary side effect of the rapid ascent. He just needed a moment to catch his breath.
"How're you holding up, kid?"
Garp casually hauled Bai Shui out of the leather contraption. In just that brief window, Bai Shui was utterly drenched, having sweat entirely through the heavy material.
"Feels great!" Bai Shui cracked a weak, exhausted grin. He had just crawled back from the absolute brink of death—how could he not feel alive?
"Ten minutes rest, then we go again!" Garp barked, plopping down onto the ground to wait for the next set.
Fifteen days later.
"Again!"
Garp tossed Bai Shui back into the churning sea, sinking him into the exact same spot.
One!
Two!
Three!
...
Forty-nine!
Fifty!
At the fifty-second mark, Bai Shui's face was flushed a dangerous, blood-red hue. His teeth ground together audibly.
Fifty-three!
Fifty-four!
Finally, that crushing sensation of reaching his absolute physiological limit returned. Bai Shui yanked the rope, and Garp hauled him out.
Swoosh!
Once more, Bai Shui collapsed onto his back like a dead dog, gasping greedily for air.
Fifteen days. Roughly fifty drops a day. Seven hundred and fifty grueling, near-death repetitions. Finally, his heart and body had reached the absolute minimum baseline required to sustain the Tekkai technique.
"Rest for ten minutes. Then, we test it out," Garp said, dragging over a heavy wooden barrel brimming with fresh water.
"Alright. Let's just hope these last fifteen days weren't for nothing." Bai Shui weakly twisted the tap and began chugging the water like a man dying of thirst.
Half an hour later.
"Tekkai!"
Following the exact forms Garp had drilled into him, Bai Shui activated the technique. Instantly, his body felt indestructible. Every muscle fiber seized and condensed, locking together with terrifying density.
Bam! A tremendous force slammed into his back, sending him flying through the air. Yet, Bai Shui hardly felt any pain. The strike hadn't even managed to break his defense.
"Excellent. To reach this level in just fifteen days... Bai Shui, you truly have a monster's talent for martial arts," Garp praised as the boy dusted himself off and walked back from the tree line. "You've basically grasped the core concept of the technique. All you need now is repetition."
"Alright," Garp continued. "Next up, we learn Kami-e. It should be a bit more straightforward, but the training is split into two phases. First, sensing the flow of air currents. Second, precise muscle manipulation to dodge."
"So, I'm assuming you've got a different torture device prepared?" Bai Shui deadpanned.
Chuckling, Garp led him toward a new area.
When they arrived, Bai Shui just stared in stunned silence. Garp called it a 'training ground,' but 'slaughterhouse' felt far more accurate.
It was a narrow, ten-meter-long corridor absolutely choked with a dense, chaotic array of swords, spears, and clubs. They were unsharpened, sure, but getting battered by solid steel and hardwood was going to be pure agony.
If those blunt weapons hit the same spot repeatedly, even someone as durable as Bai Shui would suffer severe internal injuries. And just when he thought this trap was perverse enough, Garp decided to demonstrate that there was no such thing as 'too extreme'—only 'more extreme.'
He pulled out a thick, impenetrable black cloth and blindfolded the boy. He wanted Bai Shui to navigate the death trap entirely blind, relying solely on his other senses to detect incoming danger.
Bai Shui protested, naturally. But with Garp holding all the cards, his objections were overruled. What the Vice Admiral said, went.
Blindfolded and bracing himself, Bai Shui stepped into the corridor.
Whack! Thud! Smash!
What followed was a one-sided, merciless thrashing. Stripped of his sight, Bai Shui completely lost his bearings. A torrential downpour of blows rained down on him, impossible to parry or dodge. Within ten seconds, there wasn't a single unbruised inch left on his body.
Normally, Garp would have given him time to acclimate to fighting blind. But because time was of the essence, he threw Bai Shui straight into the deep end with zero foundation.
However, human muscle memory is a terrifying thing, instinctively wired for survival. Under the crushing oppression of the weapon array, Bai Shui's ability to perceive air currents skyrocketed. Not only that, but his hearing sharpened to a razor's edge.
What Bai Shui didn't realize was that this brutal regimen was indirectly forging his Kenbunshoku Haki. It was even elevating the durability of his Tekkai and laying the groundwork for Busoshoku Haki application.
Bai Shui wasn't the type to just stand there and act as a punching bag. Driven by sheer stubbornness, he relentlessly pushed his defensive reflexes and reaction speed to their absolute limits. Slowly but surely, he evolved.
But seeing him limp back into Foosha Village every evening, battered and bloody, broke the hearts of the locals. They constantly urged him not to push himself so ruthlessly. Bai Shui would just offer a tired smile and wave off their concerns. Some things simply required you to put your life on the line.
Still, he kept their warmth close to his heart. For the first time in his life, he felt a genuine sense of belonging—something he had never once experienced back on Kuro Island. The people of Foosha Village were optimistic, radiant, gentle, and pure. It was impossible not to fall in love with the place.
Three months vanished into a blur of blood, sweat, and relentless effort.
Just as Garp had predicted, Bai Shui managed to awaken his Haki—though naturally, he lacked the ultra-rare Haoshoku Haki. But when it came to both Kenbunshoku and Busoshoku Haki, Bai Shui was wielding them with a proficiency that outstripped Marines who had been training for years.
He owed it all to that hellish corridor. Even now, just standing at the entrance of the weapon array made his body tremble involuntarily.
"Again!"
Bai Shui stepped into the corridor once more. Despite the blindfold, his face showed no fear. Only a quiet, brimming confidence.
Swoosh!
He burst into the array using Soru.
Bang!
Moving with almost precognitive grace, Bai Shui sidestepped a plunging blade. He instantly dropped into a sheer backbend, letting a sword shave past his chest, before launching himself upward like a coiled spring to evade a pair of crisscrossing clubs.
Stomping down hard on one of the wooden shafts, he moved with the agility of an ape, effortlessly weaving through a deadly rain of falling steel. Using the walls of the corridor as footholds, he ricocheted downward, threading the needle through a minuscule gap between two swinging blades.
But the moment he slipped through, a lone sword thrust violently through the air, aimed squarely at him while he was suspended in mid-air with nowhere to leverage a dodge.
Clang!
Instead of panicking, Bai Shui simply ignored the strike. He let the edge slam into his body, producing the sharp, metallic ring of steel striking iron. He was completely unharmed.
Furrowing his brow behind the blindfold, he grabbed the blade that had struck him and hurled it away. It perfectly intercepted a spear thrusting from the shadows. Using the brief collision, Bai Shui kicked off the tangled weapons to launch himself higher.
Raising his arms tightly above his head, he streamlined his body like a dart and dive-bombed toward the floor. He threaded himself flawlessly through a triangular gap formed by three clashing swords. He was only ten meters from the exit.
Thwack!
But a trap designed personally by Garp was never going to be that simple. The second Bai Shui cleared the three swords, a massive iron rod swung out from his blind spot, slamming into his back and abruptly halting his momentum.
That single moment of hesitation was all the array needed to launch a frenzied counterattack.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Bai Shui didn't dare hold back. Busoshoku Haki flared to life, flowing dynamically across different parts of his body to intercept the blows. He deliberately avoided using full-body armament, knowing it would stretch his Haki too thin and drastically lower his overall defense. Instead, he relied purely on his instincts to harden only the exact points of impact.
As for Tekkai? There simply wasn't time to lock his muscles. The rigid, immobile nature of the technique was totally unsuited for this kind of hyper-dense, high-speed evasion.
"Good kid," Garp murmured from the sidelines, nodding in deep satisfaction. "To master Busoshoku and Kenbunshoku Haki to this degree in just four months... he really is a genius."
"Though, it's mostly built on pure, unadulterated grit. To risk his life so recklessly just for power... I suppose only he could pull something like this off."
Garp had watched Bai Shui's growth with his own two eyes, drop by drop of sweat. He knew exactly how astonishing these results were. Truth be told, Bai Shui's progress had utterly shattered his expectations.
What a terrifying young man, Garp thought, shaking his head.
His mind drifted to his grandson, Luffy, and a wry smile touched his lips. If Luffy possessed even half of Bai Shui's work ethic, his achievements would probably eclipse even this. But Garp knew his own bloodline. The Monkey family's potential was boundless, but Luffy's carefree nature meant he'd never subject himself to this kind of systematic, agonizing training unless a massive tragedy forced his hand.
Back in the corridor, Bai Shui was recovering. Despite his rhythm being shattered, he endured the brutal bombardment of the array without panicking. Slowly, he found his footing again.
The second he locked back into the rhythm, Bai Shui surged forward, shattering the final sequence of the trap and bursting out the other end of the corridor.
It was a short gauntlet, but surviving it required Bai Shui to flawlessly synthesize everything he had learned. Kami-e wasn't just for sensing air currents to dodge; its greatest utility lay in relaxing the body to absorb and disperse the kinetic energy of blows that did land. It was a lifesaver that mitigated a massive amount of damage.
"Bwahaha! Excellent! I knew I didn't misjudge you, kid!" Garp strode over, his weathered face crinkling into a massive, toothy grin that looked like a blooming chrysanthemum. He slapped a heavy hand onto Bai Shui's shoulder, beaming with pride. "Four short months, and you've mastered all of this."
"Put any normal man through this, and they wouldn't learn half as much in a year!"
Bai Shui, however, didn't seem overly thrilled by the praise. He looked up at the legendary Marine hero.
"Alright," Bai Shui said steadily. "For this next month, it's time for you to teach me actual combat."