"As I thought—it can spit water. What an unbelievable guy."
Seeing the Wooden Dragon actually breathe water like the rumors said, Kaidō suddenly felt that the title of "strongest man in the world" suited Link more than he'd thought.
Everyone calls Logia Devil Fruits the strongest type, but to a top-tier fighter, Logias are just troublesome—elementalization and pre-emptive elementalization make them hard to pin down.
Yet for Kaidō, whose defense shrugs off blades and bullets, elements without Haki are no different from any other attack—just a tickle.
Only overwhelming Haki breaks that hide.
But now Link shattered Kaidō's assumptions.
He had pushed the Forest-Forest Fruit to drain an opponent's stamina without piercing the body, and even developed a Wooden Dragon that could breathe water.
That last bit was downright cheating on the sea—like the Ice-Ice Fruit bullying everyone. A pure, brutal downgrade for ability users.
It was almost unbelievable.
"Sage Art… Wood Release: Wood Human Technique!"
While Kaidō was still reeling, Link played the third of his "three axes."
A two-hundred-plus-meter Wood Human—an arhat—rose on Onigashima's rooftop.
You had to admit, this rooftop deserved to be the final battleground of the original Onigashima arc—tough as they come.
Even a Wood Human as tall as Marineford's walls didn't crush that skull-shaped massif.
The Wood Human reached up for the cyan dragon in the sky.
The Wooden Dragon that had just spat a torrent soared again, while the forest of giant red blossoms vomited out endlessly stretching branches like a nest of serpents, racing to bind the dragon.
"Dragon Twister—Demolition Gust!"
Without the slightest hesitation, Kaidō spun his massive body like a top, birthing several huge tornadoes that smashed into the Wood Human's reaching hand, the rising Wooden Dragon, and the swarming branches.
Clang, clang, clang—
Razor wind and rending force sliced through the dragon and the nest of branches—yet when they met the Wood Human's arm, the sound was like steel on steel.
Those blades and tearing winds couldn't even flake the bark on its arm.
The difference in defense between that and the dragon/branches was night and day.
That was the boost of Extreme Yang.
The Wooden Dragon and branches held relatively little chakra; hit past their tolerance, they snapped like ordinary wood.
But the Wood Human was Sage Art, brimming with oceanic senjutsu chakra, its vitality blazing like the sun.
If the dragon and branches were a defense of one hundred, the Wood Human was ten thousand.
It was, after all, Link's second great finisher.
Whitebeard, Shiki, even Charlotte Linlin and Douglas Bullet had all fallen to this move.
If a mere "Demolition Gust" could sever the Wood Human's arm or leave a glaring wound, Link wouldn't deserve "strongest of the new era."
Clearly, Kaidō hadn't expected that.
As his titanic body finished spinning, a wooden hand that ignored the storm clamped down on him.
A terrifying suction—like an endless magnet—drank his stamina in an instant.
This time, Kaidō could feel even his Haki being drawn away.
His draconic pupils pinched tight; without a word he shed his full dragon form to slip the grip.
Back in hybrid form, Kaidō sprinted along flame clouds straight at Link atop the Wood Human's head, both hands on the kanabō, dark red lightning crackling for a world-ending blow.
Link guided the Wood Human's other hand to rise like a sky-high wall and snatch him.
There was no time to evade. Kaidō loosed the wound-up strike directly.
"Daishō Dai—Raimei Hakke!"
With Kaidō's roar, the kanabō—tiny as a toothpick against that colossal palm—flashed with dark red arcs and purple lightning and slammed into the Wood Human's hand.
Boom—
Heaven and earth changed color.
The explosion rolled across all of Onigashima and into Wano beyond; many a strong fighter heard it from afar.
Stand on Wano's coast and look toward Onigashima—you'd see a vast mushroom cloud pulsing with red-violet lightning.
A scene like a nuclear blast.
Good thing it didn't hit the ground; even this rooftop that could bear a Wood Human might have collapsed in sheets.
When the cloud thinned, the sight made Karina—dueling King the Wildfire in the distance—blanch.
Link's invincible Wood Human, more Buddha than Sengoku's Golden Buddha, had lost half its body.
The hand that had reached for Kaidō—its arm and the entire side it was attached to—had been blown away.
After Whitebeard, a second man had broken the Wood Human's arm.
And compared to aged Whitebeard, Kaidō's single swing was even more terrifying.
Remember: at Marineford, Link's Senju Hashirama template was only 70% unlocked; Whitebeard's Conqueror's-coated punch merely shattered one arm.
Now Link had the template at 100%, blessed with Extreme Yang.
Yet Kaidō still blew away half the Wood Human.
If that palm hadn't intercepted, and the blow had landed on its head—sure, Link could've Body Flickered clear—but half the statue would have vanished anyway.
And that wasn't even Kaidō's strongest strike.
Up top, as Link poured sage chakra into repairs, he watched Kaidō shift from hybrid back to full dragon and said, face sober, "Kaidō—you're too dangerous."
Then he clapped his hands, a brilliant blue aura flaring from his whole body.
"Sage Art… Wood Release—True Several Thousand Hands!"
Rumble—
A violent quake surged from the rooftop down through all of Onigashima.
Then the impossible appeared.
The skull-shaped massif shuddered and collapsed.
In its place, a thousand-handed Buddha rose like a cliff wall—several times taller than the skull, swallowing most of Onigashima as it thrust from the earth.
The instant the great statue appeared, a single vast palm casually scooped up the cyan dragon before it.
"?"
Two hundred meters of dragon coiled like a mudfish in a fist—only the head and a scrap of tail peeking out. Staring up at a Buddha as towering as the Red Line, Kaidō wore the same blank look he'd given Nika in the original tale.
So did everyone else—Karina and King, tiny as ants nearby, and Yamato at the island's rim.
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