One Piece: Hashirama Template

Wood Release: Wood Locking Wall was one of Senju Hashirama's most famous defensive Wood Release techniques. Its defensive power was so great it didn't even require Sage chakra, yet it cleanly stopped Uchiha Madara's Armored Susanoo blade.

An attack that could shave down several mountain peaks failed to leave the faintest mark on the fanged demon-faced shield, to say nothing of a wooden shield infused with Sage chakra.

Even Wang Zhi was taken aback.

A sword strike amplified to the utmost by the Power-Power Fruit had been blocked as if nothing.

That slash was one of the reasons he could roam the seas with Rocks and be taken seriously by monsters like Whitebeard.

If it had been neutralized by an advanced application of Haki, or blocked by a special Devil Fruit ability, Wang Zhi could have accepted it.

But a mere wooden shield? How?

Had this brat developed the resilience of the Mori-Mori no Mi up to the level of Treasure Tree Adam?

No—Treasure Tree Adam wouldn't come out unscathed from that slash either.

Yet this wooden shield didn't show a single trace of damage.

Was this really the Logia Mori-Mori no Mi at work?

Before Wang Zhi could figure it out, his expression suddenly changed.

In his perception, the figure behind the demon-faced wall vanished.

A fluctuation of aura appeared out of thin air behind him.

Wang Zhi turned with his sword and swept horizontally. The swing looked ordinary, but it carried the power to cleave steel, a terrifying might that outstripped even the giant race.

At range it could split mountains and seas; up close it crushed everything.

The fusion of a Power-Power Fruit user's strength with swordsmanship was one of the reasons even the Four Emperors preferred not to provoke Wang Zhi.

Just as Golden Lion combined the Paramecia Float-Float Fruit with swordsmanship, and Whitebeard fused the Paramecia Quake-Quake Fruit with his blade, this was Wang Zhi's unique sword path.

Link did not meet the slash head-on. As a mage, until he mastered the advanced applications of Haki, even entering Sage Mode left his physical attributes far short of the top fighters of the pirate world.

Seeing he couldn't finish Wang Zhi with a seal while the latter was distracted, Link used the Body Flicker to flash past Wang Zhi's flank.

A boom.

With just a brushing contact, Wang Zhi was hurled away as if struck by a fist.

He had in fact been hit.

Link had drawn on the surrounding natural energy and, in that passing moment, unleashed a unique form of Haki emission.

The inspiration for the move came from Naruto's Frog Kata, which mobilizes natural energy to extend the reach of one's strikes.

It was a sly technique, and the reason Link believed Sage Mode would become the nemesis of Logias.

The most infuriating ability of Logias isn't elementization after the fact, but preemptive elementization. Combined with Observation Haki, it lets a user foresee where a Haki-coated blow will land and turn that spot of their body fluid and intangible in advance, making the attack whiff.

With that ability, Kizaru could emerge unscathed no matter who he faced, not even getting his clothes dirty.

Only attribute counters, Armament Haki emission, or Conqueror's Haki coating can suppress that preemptive elementization, and even then only barely, because the visual tells of Armament emission and Conqueror's coating are far too obvious.

By contrast, Frog Kata's method of stirring the surrounding natural energy has no visual cues and no wind-up. A Logia who can't turn their entire body fluid and dares to use preemptive elementization in front of Link will find their solid parts struck by natural energy.

Once Link himself masters Haki emission, combining the two will be even more unanswerable.

At that point, Link's attacks will, like Luffy's Gear Five making all things rubber, hard-counter Logias.

Sage Art… Wood Release: Hotei Technique.

After blasting Wang Zhi away with one strike, Link immediately fed chakra into the ground. A colossal wooden hand burst from the earth, rising right along the path of Wang Zhi's flight.

It appeared so suddenly that Wang Zhi, who hadn't foreseen it, couldn't react and was seized by the wooden hand.

Compared to the giant hand, the more-than-five-meter-tall Wang Zhi was like a fly in a human grasp.

By rights, being caught by such a massive wooden hand meant the fight was essentially over.

Like tree branches, the wooden hand could absorb vitality. Its toughness and strength would only grow stronger and stronger.

But Wang Zhi was, after all, one of the great pirates of the Rocks era, with a bounty of 2,188,000,000. Even in the original story, Blackbeard had to go all out and team up with Wang Zhi's rivals to defeat this veteran pirate.

Just as the wooden hand was about to close around him completely, Wang Zhi decisively tossed aside his greatsword and spread his hands. With strength that could snap mountains, he actually forced the wooden hand not to close.

And this was the Hotei Technique at Sage Art level.

Even without Sage chakra, the Hotei Technique could pin down the complete Nine-Tails and hold it immobile against the ground. It could barehandedly catch the katana of a Complete-Body Susanoo. It could even grab a Tailed Beast Bomb, absorb it, or hurl it away.

A wooden hand like a five-fingered mountain was absolutely one of the great trump cards of Wood Release.

Now that hand was fused with natural energy, its toughness and power vastly greater.

Yet Wang Zhi not only stopped it; from the look of things, he was slowly forcing it open.

His terrifying strength, together with Armament Haki emission, pushed against the palm until cracks webbed across the wood.

But the next instant, Wang Zhi's face changed again.

The cracks that had just appeared healed themselves immediately.

Outside, Link raised his index and middle fingers and, through the ground, continuously channeled Sage chakra into the wooden hand.

Not only that, he formed a single hand seal. From the hand's palm grew a mass of branches that bound the over-five-meter Wang Zhi into a tight bundle and swiftly began draining his vitality.

In an instant, Wang Zhi realized that his stamina and Haki were rapidly ebbing away.

His expression shifted once more. He hurriedly unleashed Armament Haki emission with all his might. A fearsome shockwave shattered the branches on his body, but it couldn't shatter the wooden hand, which was powered as if by a nuclear reactor.

Cracks that had just surfaced healed again at once.

A fresh wave of branches surged out and twined around him.

This time, after Wang Zhi was bundled up, he could no longer use Armament Haki emission to blast the bindings apart, nor could he exert the horrifying strength of the Power-Power Fruit.

The branches that wrapped him radiated a blue flame-like aura, and countless tadpole-shaped sigils flowed along them onto Wang Zhi's body, ruthlessly stripping away his control over his limbs.

Deprived of control, Wang Zhi was sealed within the wooden hand, which rapidly drained his vitality.

This was precisely one of Link's go-to moves: Sealing Technique, Four-Limbs Heavy Seal.

Sealing techniques are the most unique and most terrifying techniques in the shinobi world, as unanswerable as rule-type Devil Fruits.

A powerful sealing technique in a weakling's hands remains weak; an ordinary sealing technique in the hands of a supreme master becomes a killing move.

Even Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, progenitor of chakra, fell to a sealing technique.

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