After a moment of silence, a cold wind picked up. Without a word, the next moment, both men pushed off the ground simultaneously!
The ice surface exploded, and two figures, one blue and one white, shot out like cannonballs, transforming into streaks of light. Along the centerline of the shattered ice field, they began a deadly charge!
"Ice Hockey!" Kuzan murmured. Hundreds of baseball-sized ice pucks instantly condensed around him.
Then his arms blurred into afterimages, flinging these ice pucks, imbued with terrifying freezing energy, like catapults!
"Whoosh whoosh whoosh!" The ice pucks tore through the air, leaving countless pale trails of frost.
Like a reverse blizzard, they rained down on Gern!
"Just as I wished!" Gern roared with laughter, his sprinting speed not slowing in the slightest. Fist-sized, high-frequency vibrating pale particle spheres instantly materialized in front of him.
Then he raised his left hand, and these vibrating spheres shot out like a volley of cannon fire, directly into the ice puck storm!
"Heaven Quake: Linked Stars!"
The next second, the battlefield's centerline became a symphony of destruction!
"Boom! Boom boom boom!" Ice pucks and tremor spheres collided and annihilated each other with astonishing frequency!
Extreme cold and extreme vibration, two completely opposite natural forces, fiercely wrestled in the confined space.
Each collision erupted into a blinding blue-white energy ball, and deafening explosions roared ceaselessly!
Repeated violent air bursts, where the not-fully-offset freezing energy and shockwaves forcibly twisted and merged,
caused the frozen air to shatter into billions of crystal dust particles, which were then instantly captured by new freezing energy.
In an instant, giant, grotesque "ice flowers," formed by countless ice crystal fragments and pale tremor wave arcs, continuously bloomed in the air between the two men!
These "ice flowers" were over ten meters in diameter, with intricate structures. Their petals were ice blades as sharp as knives.
They briefly hovered in the air, refracting distorted light, breathtakingly beautiful yet terrifyingly dangerous.
Then, under the impact of subsequent explosions, they shattered with a roar, transforming into a death rain mixed with ice blades and shockwaves, engulfing the entire battlefield!
The two men sprinted with all their might through this constantly blooming and destroying field of death flowers, continuously throwing more ice pucks and tremor spheres, their distance rapidly closing!
Kuzan's eyes were the first to pierce through the flashes of explosions, locking onto Gern.
Every throw calculated the lead, even intentionally hitting the ground with ice pucks to kick up ice fog and obscure vision.
Gern, meanwhile, pushed his slight vibration Observation Haki to its limit, his pupils reflecting countless incoming trajectories.
He precisely intercepted every most threatening ice puck, the shattering energy making his black hair in front of his forehead dance wildly!
Fifty meters! Thirty meters! Ten meters!
The last ice puck and the last tremor sphere collided with a roar at the centerline!
An unprecedentedly huge "ice flower" suddenly bloomed, almost filling all the space between the two men!
And in that instant, without the slightest pause, both figures, still enveloped in the unextinguished particles and cold mist around them,
swung their decisive next strike towards that giant ice flower, and towards each other!
The center of the ice flower was completely detonated by the two forces, and the immense impact instantly swallowed both figures!
........
"It's not over yet, Kuzan!" Gern flew backward, bouncing wildly on the ground. Then he braced his hands against the ground to stabilize himself, and suddenly slammed his fists together.
"Buzz—crack!" A pale vibrating sphere compressed and formed between his fists, its surface covered in dense black lightning patterns.
The air was sucked dry, and the ice layer collapsed in sheets around him.
Kuzan's pupils constricted; his Observation Haki foresaw the destructive scene of the next second.
Then, he plunged his arms into the ice, fully activating his Devil Fruit ability: "Ice Age: Wall!"
Thousands of giant ice walls rose from the ground, layered like ancient glacial ruins.
In an instant, Gern's killing move arrived.
"Heaven Quake: Twin Stars Collapse!"
Two vibrating spheres shot out in a spiral, shattering space like glass wherever they passed.
The first ice wall was instantly vibrated into a sky full of ice crystals upon contact; the second and third collapsed in succession!
The shockwave spread in a ring, lifting the frozen earth dozens of meters high.
Kuzan leaped into the air under the cover of the ice walls, his right arm fully elementalized: "Twin-Spiked Spear!"
Countless ice spears rained down, but each spear tip did not fall in a straight line.
Instead, under Kuzan's control, they traced tricky arcs, sealing off all of Gern's evasion angles.
Gern grinned, neither dodging nor evading.
"Too slow!" He stomped on the ice, shattering it, and a hemispherical tremor wave expanded.
The incoming ice spears were vibrated into graupel powder a hundred meters away, but Kuzan's true killing move was hidden in the ice fog.
Three transparent ice-thorn long spears suddenly pierced through the ice crystal fog!
Gern's pupils constricted at the sight, and he twisted his body at the last second.
"Hiss! Hiss!" Two ice spears grazed his ribs, leaving two deep, bone-chilling frost wounds.
He caught the third one with his bare hand, and high-frequency vibration instantly activated.
"Crack!" The ice spear exploded, but the extreme freezing energy had already spread up his arm.
Gern's entire right arm was instantly covered in a thick layer of ice.
"Don't be too overconfident, Gern!!" Kuzan landed, clasped his hands together, and the sky full of ice crystals suddenly condensed into countless mirrors.
Each ice mirror reflected his figure, completely confusing Gern's perception.
Gern used Armament Haki to shatter the ice shell on his right arm; the blood that seeped out immediately froze into blood crystals.
At the same time, his breathing was heavy, and white mist condensed into frost beads on his eyelashes.
"Mirror Flower Water Moon, huh...?"
Watching this, Gern suddenly closed his eyes, as if the deafening explosions and biting cold around him had all become nothingness.
All his aura and momentum converged to the extreme at this moment, like the dead calm sea before a storm.
Then, his palms slowly rose, one above the other, suspended in the center of his chest.
"Buzz!" A heart-palpitating hum was born between his palms, not from sound, but from the inherent tremor of space itself!
The atmosphere wailed, and light twisted and collapsed between his palms.
An extremely irregular pale sphere suddenly appeared!
It was not as stable as the previous vibrating spheres; its surface wildly undulated, surged, and deformed, like a spatial heart forcibly bound and eager to break free.
Inside the sphere was extreme chaos; dense black spatial cracks flickered like blood vessels on its surface, emitting a terrifying threat that made Kuzan's bones feel frozen!
"This is...? !" Kuzan's Observation Haki conveyed an unprecedented sense of crisis.
This feeling was stronger than all of Gern's previous moves!
So he instinctively wanted to elementalize and retreat, to interrupt Gern's charge.
But it was too late.