Chapter 782: The Truth of the Ancient Weapons (Part 2)
Ian didn't need to call Robin over; in fact, the moment Shanks raised that tooth, Robin and the others had already gathered around.
Little Ian was held in Reiju's arms. Robin stepped out from the crowd of girls and took from Ian's hands those three... no, four rubbings, along with the one Nami and the others had brought back from Fish-Man Island.
Marco, Ace, Jozu, Vista, Ben Beckman, Yasopp, Lucky Roux, Fujitora, Enel, Crocodile, Jinbe, Zoro, Luffy, Garp, Trafalgar Law, Urouge, Sardine, Matthew, and even Waldo and Caesar, who had come down from Skypiea to attend the banquet...
And many more—the main officers of three Yonko crews had all gathered now, holding their breath in anticipation. Instinct told them that at this moment, they might hear a massive secret.
Under the gaze of countless eyes, Robin unfolded the first rubbing.
"...Contracts and promises... The Guide..."
Robin didn't read the full text aloud. In fact, the moment she saw these ancient characters, her entire mind was immersed. She only unconsciously murmured certain special terms from the Poneglyph.
She read quickly, soon flipping to the next rubbing.
"...Return Plan..."
She continued reading like this, completely forgetting the group of people around her waiting eagerly for her interpretation. This made Luffy and the others anxious, but just as they were about to speak, Bon Clay beside them covered their mouths, stopping their impulse.
Robin's expression grew serious as she deciphered the Poneglyph.
Soon, she turned to the third rubbing.
"...Theft... Betrayal... A great mistake!"
Hearing these words, the surrounding crowd also tensed up.
Finally, Robin saw the rubbing Nami and the others had brought back from Fish-Man Island.
"...Apology... An unfulfilled promise... Joy Boy..."
Ian thought to himself, *So that's how it is.*
After finishing all the Poneglyph rubbings, Robin stood still, closed her eyes, and looked up at the night sky.
Even though they knew she had finished reading, no one disturbed her, because they knew Robin would speak eventually.
She was organizing her thoughts, Ian guessed. In fact, besides these four rubbings, Big Mom had also collected many Poneglyph stones on Whole Cake Island. Robin had studied them some time ago. Following Ian, she had already encountered many Poneglyphs, and he believed she could now roughly piece together what they recorded...
Robin stood silently for a long time before suddenly speaking: "In this world, there were originally no Ancient Weapons! But when they were used in war, weapons were born..."
With this as her opening, Robin continued under everyone's gaze: "800 years ago... no, even further back, this world was home to many giant humans, animals... and trees!"
"The Sunlight Tree Eve, the Treasure Tree Adam... these are likely giant trees left over from a thousand years ago."
The two terms Robin mentioned made Jinbe and Franky both shudder.
"As for giant humans, the representatives would be the Oars clan... and the Mermaid Princess!"
Ace and the others looked surprised, thinking of Little Oars Jr., who had been left at the base, while Luffy and his crew thought of Princess Shirahoshi from Fish-Man Island.
"As for giant animals, that refers to Zunesha on Zou!" Robin said. "And... a dragon that has lived for who knows how many years..."
Hearing the word "dragon," Ian's eyes widened. Although he had vaguely sensed it before, hearing Robin say it still surprised him.
"A dragon!? Is Uranus, the Sky Sovereign, a thousand-year-old ancient dragon!?" Ian asked in shock. He couldn't help but glance at the giant tooth on the ground, realizing it might be a dragon's tooth!
The surrounding crowd also stirred restlessly. They too guessed that if a single tooth was this astonishingly large, how massive must this ancient dragon be?
"Yes!" Robin nodded. "And according to ancient people's naming, that elephant was called Zunesha, while this ancient dragon was called the Sky Lord!"
Kanjiro, Kikunojo, and Momonosuke were also among the listeners. Hearing about Zunesha on Zou, they widened their eyes in surprise.
Robin ignored the crowd's astonishment and continued.
In her account, whether humans, animals, or trees, these giant lifeforms often possessed strange powers. The Sunlight Tree Eve, at the bottom of the sea ten thousand meters deep, brought sunlight to Fish-Man Island through its breathing. The Mermaid Princess had the ability to command the massive Sea Kings.
However, neither the original Mermaid Princess nor the ancient dragon were initially created as weapons!
It was only because they participated in a massive war during the blank century that they were given the name of weapons!
A thousand years ago, people discovered the special abilities of these giant lifeforms, but they also found that certain individuals could form a resonance with them!
This resonance was called a "contract"! It allowed people to "understand" the sounds these giant lifeforms made, and even unlock their latent strange powers!
This was actually a sensing ability embedded in the Lineage Factor. Of course, people back then didn't know about the Lineage Factor, so they believed it was a bloodline connection.
Those who formed contracts with these lifeforms were called Guides or Pathfinders!
The original Mermaid Princess's Guide was a man named Joy Boy, because he could unlock her strange powers!
As for Zunesha's Guide, it was the ancestor of the Kozuki family, who could hear and understand what Zunesha said.
Of course, Robin didn't yet know the relationship between the Kozuki family and Zunesha. In fact, even the connection between the Mermaid Princess and Joy Boy was inferred from the Poneglyph's content. Only Ian, as a time traveler, knew about the link between Zunesha and the Kozuki family... but that didn't stop everyone from listening to Robin's account.
Because of this resonance, Guides could generally control and restrain these giant lifeforms, regulating their behavior to prevent them from causing too much harm. So at that time, being a Guide was a highly respected identity.
Originally, this Guide phenomenon was seen on the Blue Sea as a special power tied to bloodlines. People found it strange but didn't delve deeper.
But one day, the White Sea people arrived!
The so-called White Sea people were actually Moon People. They had come to the Blue Sea to thrive because the Moon's resources were depleted. But people back then didn't know this. They only saw the Moon People emerging from the white cloud sea, so they called them White Sea people. Over time, the Moon People accepted this name.
The Moon People's technology was far more advanced than the Blue Sea's. Their arrival brought both wonder and... a sense of crisis to the Blue Sea!
At this point, the Moon People also discovered the unique resonance phenomenon between Guides and giant lifeforms on the Blue Sea. The difference was that the Blue Sea people took it for granted, while the Moon People, driven by curiosity, used their technology to study and analyze this resonance!
When the Moon People analyzed and understood the essence of this resonance, they discovered the ancient dragon called the Sky Lord!
Dragons were real creatures on this planet at the time, but the Sky Lord was an anomaly. It had a far larger body than its kind and a strange power!
This strange power wasn't innate—it came from the Sky Lord accidentally eating a Devil Fruit!
But at that time, the Sky Lord had no Guide. No one could resonate with it, understand its words, or control it.
However, the Sky Lord's ability was exactly what the Moon People dreamed of, because this fruit power represented an endless source of... energy!
Having left their homeland due to resource scarcity didn't mean the Moon People wanted to leave. When they realized that with the Sky Lord's help, they'd never worry about resources again, they became somewhat obsessed. Using their research on the Guide resonance phenomenon, they successfully created a device that could replace a Guide!
But just as they planned to use this device to become the Sky Lord's Guide, their achievement was stolen!
On the Blue Sea, some dark-minded individuals who loved conspiracy theories feared the Moon People's technological power while deeply coveting it. They allied with others who shared their sense of crisis, stole the Moon People's Guide device, successfully established communication and connection with the Sky Lord, formed a contract, and controlled it!
Then, they began to drive out the Moon People!
Not just the Moon People—these ambitious individuals even developed a human-supremacist ideology. They not only expelled the Moon People but also targeted various strange tribes native to the Blue Sea!
These tribes included, but were not limited to, the Fish-Men, the Dwarves, the Giants, the Minks, the Longarm Tribe, the Longleg Tribe, and so on!
At that time, pure human bloodline theory was rampant. Those who promoted and led these ideas were mostly tyrants from various countries... and even pirates!
For example, the king who ruled Dressrosa at the time and cruelly oppressed the Tontatta tribe: the Donquixote family...
But similarly, some countries and gentle humans on the Blue Sea opposed these ideas. They chose to tolerate and protect these special tribes, believing the Blue Sea was big enough for all tribes to coexist.
Thus, under the intense conflict of these two ideologies, war broke out! The various strange tribes that rose up to resist, along with the humans who sided with them, fought a century-long, massive war against the racial supremacists!
But unfortunately, the allied tribes lost, because they couldn't match the enemy who controlled the Sky Lord!
Even though, during this process, to counter the Sky Lord, the people of Water Seven, with the Moon People's help, built the most powerful warship, and Joy Boy unlocked the Mermaid Princess's power, they still failed!
In the final battle, this warship and the Mermaid Princess's power were key to opposing the Sky Lord. Although they failed, they were later given the names Pluton and Poseidon. As for the victorious Sky Lord, it became Uranus...
This, of course, came from the later historians who recorded these events. But this war nearly destroyed the entire Blue Sea!
Countless islands shattered, several tribes regressed hundreds of years overnight. The most representative were the Moon People of Shandora, who were beaten to the point of civilizational discontinuity. The surviving remnants even lived like primitive tribes, forgetting their own origins.
The victors, triumphant, formed the World Government, becoming high-and-mighty rulers, calling themselves gods from then on. These... are the current World Nobles, the Celestial Dragons!
But in truth, what were their original identities? Tyrants, executioners, pirates, liars, and so on! They merely won that war, then transformed into rulers riding over everyone, enjoying tributes from the world, like parasites, continuing to suck blood from the people...
The cause of all this was Zunesha! During that war, it committed a great mistake. It seemed that by accidentally wandering into the final battlefield, it caused Pluton and Poseidon to fail in their battle against Uranus!
Why was this? Robin, combining the Poneglyphs she had read, made a guess.
Uranus, the Sky Lord, likely couldn't land! Because this ancient dragon's power came from a Devil Fruit, it couldn't touch seawater. But for some reason, it seemed to need to land and rest periodically. The war should have taken place in an open sea area. The warship Pluton, with its unparalleled destructive power, had blasted and cleared all nearby islands that could provide a landing spot for Uranus, waiting for it to be forced to land and rest. Then, Poseidon, the Mermaid Princess, would command the massive Sea Kings to drag the ancient dragon into the sea!
However, Zunesha's accidental intrusion into the battlefield gave the Sky Lord a place to rest at a critical moment: it landed on Zunesha's back!
Because of this, Zunesha committed an irreparable mistake. It caused the war to turn around at the last moment... As punishment, the Kozuki family's ancestor, as its Guide, imposed the eternal punishment of walking forever...
Similarly, the Kozuki family's ancestor, as Zunesha's Guide, was deeply remorseful. So they became stonemasons, carving and recording the Poneglyphs, hoping to preserve this history...
This was the truth about the blank century's history, as Robin reconstructed it from all the Poneglyphs she had deciphered so far.
Clearly, this thrilling truth left everyone present stunned and silent. No one knew how to describe their feelings at that moment.
"Clap! Clap, clap!" The only one who could remain calm was Shanks, who already knew this truth. He stood up, applauding vigorously for Robin's interpretation and narration, and said, "As expected of a historian. This truth is already about ninety percent correct..."