The marks left on the ruins brought a faint smile to Whitebeard's lips.
That bastard Roger was truly a willful fellow.
As Kozuki Oden's sworn brother, Whitebeard had learned to read some ancient text under his influence.
He saw the contents on the ruins and the words Roger had left behind.
Running his fingers over the carved characters, Whitebeard seemed to reunite with Roger across time at that moment.
Afterward, Whitebeard took Gan Fall and the Shandian chieftain into a tent to discuss land division plans.
During this time, Jake and Monet took advantage of the Whitebeard Pirates' gold inventory to search for information about the Ark Maxim.
With the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's enhancement, Jake's Observation Haki had reached an incredibly exaggerated level.
With little effort, he found information about the Ark Maxim's blueprint among the ruins.
It was an oval-shaped stone buried beneath numerous rocks, containing the complete manufacturing process of the Ark Maxim.
The instructions weren't in ancient text—in fact, there were no words at all, just extremely detailed diagrams.
When they discovered this stone under the pile of rocks, Monet remarked with emotion.
"To find it in a place like this... it really feels like fate."
Jake merely smiled at Monet's words.
In a way, Monet wasn't wrong.
If he hadn't obtained the Rumble-Rumble Fruit and gained this terrifying range-enhanced Observation Haki, he truly wouldn't have been able to find this stone.
One could say it was fate.
After Jake returned, Marco and the others had already tallied up all the gold, even organizing the portion belonging to the Whitebeard Pirates.
At that moment, Whitebeard happened to emerge alongside Gan Fall and the elder chief of the Shandians.
All three wore smiles on their faces.
No one knew what they had discussed, but that very night, Jake was stunned to discover that a statue of himself had somehow been erected on the island.
What's more, the statue was extravagantly adorned with large amounts of gold and even bore an inscription declaring him the God of Skypiea.
What shocked Jake and Monet even more were the Shandians and Sky Islanders kneeling in worship before the statue.
Seeing this, Jake was at a loss, but Marco quickly explained everything to him.
"After Pops took the two old men inside, he proposed a solution. Instead of fighting over ownership of this island, they should relinquish that right to someone who has no interest in it. That way, the highest authority over the island would belong to neither the Skypieans nor the Shandians, and it wouldn't matter who came or went."
At first, neither Gan Fall nor the Shandian chief agreed to this proposal.
But when Whitebeard narrowed his eyes slightly, the two elders quickly changed their minds.
However, to prevent the Skypieans from becoming too obsessed with the land and ruining the island, Whitebeard also decreed that they were forbidden from taking or damaging anything on the island.
Anyone caught violating this rule would be permanently banned from entering.
After a long afternoon of careful deliberation, Jake became the unanimous choice of all three.
Once the decision was made, They personally crafted a statue of Jake.
When Jake learned all this, he could only laugh helplessly.
This fake god he had pretended to be had somehow, without him realizing, become the true deity of Sky Island.
But Jake didn't resist this development.
On the contrary, in the following days, he actively provided free healing to the Skypieans and Shandians who had been injured during the war.
As more and more people were healed by Jake, those who had initially doubted his divine status became true believers.
Some even shed tears of emotion upon seeing him.
Since Monet had been following Jake all this time, she also displayed her abilities—helping to preserve food or assisting in medical treatment.
As a result, she too was hailed as the Goddess of Snow.
Amid this harmonious atmosphere, the Shandians and Skypieans gradually grew closer.
Their mutual hatred faded, and they even began cooperating in certain areas.
The sound of the Golden Bell rang out every day.
Down in Mock Town, Cricket swaggered through the local taverns, boasting about Sky Island and repeatedly proving that his ancestors were no liars.
After about two weeks of such days, when Jake had fully recovered, they set off with a large amount of gold.
Despite the reluctant farewells from both the Shandians and the Skypieans, the Moby Dick descended from the edge of the clouds, following the waterway down towards the Blue Sea.
As a tremendous sense of weightlessness struck, the members of the Whitebeard Pirates clung tightly to whatever they could on the ship, letting out several screams.
Seeing this, Monet sighed helplessly and raised her hand.
Ice crystals formed around them, firmly sticking everyone to the ship.
"Pops! If we fall from here, we'll die for sure, right?!" Marco's face was pale as he posed this existential question to Whitebeard, who was still laughing heartily.
To this, Whitebeard merely chuckled and said,
"Gurararara! Can't you see the brat Jake isn't scared at all? He must've known about this all along."
Jake didn't deny Whitebeard's words.
Instead, he simply smiled at Marco and pointed behind them at the clouds.
The next moment, a colossal squid hundreds of meters long burst forth, its massive tentacles instantly wrapping around the entire Moby Dick.
"Don't attack the squid! It's our parachute to the Blue Sea!" Jake's voice rang out.
Hearing this, the Whitebeard Pirates, who had already drawn their weapons, immediately lowered them.
Over the course of their time together, their trust in Jake had grown to a level comparable to that of their own division commanders.
Amidst the crew's exclamations, the squid spread its body wide, allowing the wind to rush in and slow the Moby Dick's descent.
As they took in the breathtaking scenery around them, they found themselves momentarily entranced.
Gazing at the vast ocean, Jake knew that his time with the Whitebeard Pirates was coming to an end.
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