Yemu's question at that moment sounded extremely abrupt, almost out of nowhere.
"Yes, Captain Yemu, what is it?"
Den asked curiously.
Flare looked just as puzzled.
"What's wrong? Is there something strange about rubber?"
Yemu shook his head.
His thoughts were racing.
Rubber itself was nothing unusual. But the Rubber Devil Fruit was a completely different matter.
That was the Devil Fruit the future protagonist would possess twenty years later.
"Is it just a coincidence?"
Yemu muttered to himself. The strange look on his face made everyone on the ship sense that something was off.
Yet by silent agreement, no one interrupted him.
As if remembering something, Yemu walked to the edge of the deck. He looked down at Fish-Man Island below, glowing like a crystal sphere, then lifted his gaze to the three massive roots of the Sunlight Tree Eve that surrounded the island, and finally to the pitch-black world above.
Suddenly, he asked everyone a question.
"What do you think you need to do to split a piece of very hard wood?"
The question caught everyone off guard. But they all knew Yemu never spoke without reason, so they began thinking about it.
"You'd probably need an axe first."
Flare answered.
"And then?"
"Then… you just chop it down…"
"But what if the wood is extremely hard and one swing isn't enough?"
At that moment, Erik, the swordsman, seemed to understand something.
"Captain, do you mean finding the wood's weak point, like following its grain? If you strike along the grain, you can split it much more easily with less effort. Is that what you mean?"
Yemu nodded and looked up at the pitch-black world above them.
Then he asked another question that left everyone staring in disbelief.
"Using the same logic, if we compare the Red Line above us to a piece of hard wood, where do you think its weak point would be?"
This time everyone was truly shocked.
"Hey… Yemu, you're not saying you want to destroy the Red Line, are you?"
Flare sensed the deeper meaning in his words and asked, dumbfounded.
Enel's eyes suddenly lit up as he stared into the abyss above.
"Destroy the Red Line… that actually sounds interesting."
Erik also began seriously considering Yemu's idea.
Only Tiger seemed to suddenly realize something.
"Captain, are you saying that the place where Fish-Man Island is located might be the most fragile point of the entire Red Line?"
Everyone froze.
Yemu, however, spoke with a confidence none of them could understand.
"Do you remember what I told you before? Doesn't it feel strange? The rest of the Red Line is one solid mass. There's nothing like this anywhere else. And yet here, there's a hole."
"If we're looking for the weakest point of the Red Line… then it can only be here."
"And the existence of the Sunlight Tree Eve also proves something."
"At the very least, the Red Line above our heads isn't completely indestructible."
For a long time, Yemu's almost crazy words echoed across the deck.
No one could snap out of it. They simply stood there, staring up at the endless darkness above.
"But what could possibly destroy it? We're in the middle of the ocean. Devil Fruit abilities wouldn't even work here."
After thinking for a while, Enel voiced his conclusion.
For a brief moment, uncertainty flickered in Yemu's eyes.
Even so, he still spoke his guess.
"Den-san mentioned rubber earlier, right?"
Den paused for a moment, then nodded.
Yemu looked around at everyone and continued.
"Have any of you ever played with a toy called a slingshot?"
"Uh… yeah, of course we have…"
Everyone nodded. Even those who had never played with one had at least seen it before.
"Then… do you think something like this might be possible…"
As he spoke, Yemu pointed at the three straight roots of the Sunlight Tree Eve surrounding Fish-Man Island.
"What if we treat these three roots as the frame of a slingshot, and use Fish-Man Island itself as the projectile?"
"Then we go biu~, launch it straight at the Red Line above us like a cannonball. Do you think it could smash the Red Line above our heads in a single shot?"
"Uh…"
At that moment, to be honest, everyone felt completely lost trying to follow Yemu's train of thought. Their heads were buzzing.
Still, when they looked around at their surroundings, although Yemu's idea sounded almost like fantasy, it strangely seemed to make a little sense.
Just then, Baby-5 spoke up.
"But Yemu-sama, without a rubber band, a slingshot can't fire anything."
Everyone suddenly snapped back to their senses.
"That's right, there's no rubber band…"
"And Fish-Man Island and these three Eve roots are so enormous. Where would we even find a rubber band that big?"
Then Yemu said something that left everyone completely stunned.
"What if we used a Devil Fruit instead? For example, something like the Gomu Gomu no Mi. Do you think it could work?"
"..."
This time, no one had an answer.
It wasn't that they knew whether it was possible or not. Their minds simply couldn't picture a scene like that.
In fact, none of them had ever even seen the Gomu Gomu no Mi.
A Devil Fruit that could turn someone's body into rubber?
At that moment, Den-san finally snapped out of his daze and spoke with clear admiration.
"As expected of Captain Yemu… your ideas are truly…"
Even Den-san seemed unsure what words could describe the feeling Yemu's proposal gave him.
Tiger, however, suddenly asked in a serious tone.
"Captain… are you serious?"
From the moment he boarded the Twin Goddess and became its navigator, Tiger had known that his captain was no ordinary person.
Whether it was Yemu's wildly imaginative thinking, his reckless and bold ideas, or the secret of D hidden behind everything.
If Enel was the one who had spent the most time living with Yemu in the Sky Pirates, then Tiger was the one who understood him the most.
Because of that, he believed his captain would never say something meaningless.
Faced with Tiger's question, Yemu asked one of his own.
"Tiger… no, everyone. What do you think the Red Line actually is?"
The group froze.
"Or let me put it another way. Do you think the Red Line above us has existed naturally since the birth of this world… or was it created by some unimaginable race?"
"…What?"
Their minds simply couldn't keep up with Yemu's thinking. Confusion filled their eyes.
"Created? That can't be possible. Could humans really do something like that?"
Tiger stared at Yemu in shock as he muttered those words.
Yemu let out a quiet sigh.
"Yes, humans can't. But what about gods?"
"Gods… do they really exist in this world?"
"I don't know either. But don't forget. The Celestial Dragons are known as the descendants of the Creator, while the Clan of D is called the natural enemy of the gods."