Before long, the World Government issued an official statement.
They claimed that the sudden disappearance of the sun was merely a rare astronomical phenomenon, one that occurred only once every thousand years. It was, they said, a perfectly normal result of celestial movement, and the public was urged not to panic.
For those at the bottom of society, however, such explanations sounded like nothing more than empty fantasy.
People believed only what they had seen with their own eyes.
The familiar sun had vanished, replaced by a black sun hanging high in the sky. To them, this was not science—it was a divine warning. A judgment passed by the gods themselves.
The rulers had angered heaven.
And so, for several minutes, the gods had withdrawn the light, declaring the world's sovereigns unworthy.
Across the seas, ambitious men with sharp noses for chaos immediately sensed opportunity. They fanned the flames, whispering of divine wrath, urging the masses to raise banners of rebellion.
Kings fell.
Nobles were dragged from their palaces and sent to the guillotine, their blood offered as atonement, prayers shouted skyward in desperate pleas for forgiveness.
Even the Celestial Dragons, untouchable for centuries, found their authority shaken. Rebellions erupted everywhere, pushing the World Government into a crisis unlike any before.
After all, the World Government's lifeblood was Heavenly Gold—tribute paid by the affiliated kingdoms. Yet how could unstable nations, barely able to suppress uprisings, afford to pay?
Even when government forces intervened, they were overwhelmed.
The fires of rebellion burned across the entire world.
Smoke and war filled the seas.
Xiao himself had not expected such consequences.
He had merely created a celestial spectacle—to deify himself, to scatter artificial Devil Fruits—and yet the result was an unprecedented upheaval.
But this, too, was the inevitable outcome of long-term ignorance.
For centuries, the Celestial Dragons had wrapped themselves in divinity, branding themselves descendants of gods, children of the Creator. The ignorant masses believed it. Even under brutal exploitation, they dared not resist.
At most, they fled to the seas and became pirates.
Privilege in the One Piece world was privilege taken to its absolute extreme.
Yet when a phenomenon beyond all precedent descended—something no ruler could explain—people instinctively blamed those in power.
The black sun became proof that the gods intended to reshape the world.
And with it came prophecy.
The coming of the legendary liberator—the Sun God Nika—the warrior who would shatter chains and end slavery.
Thus, after the black sun appeared, any ambitious figure who dared raise its banner could instantly gather followers.
Before long, the oppressed masses formed a new belief system.
The Black Sun Cult was born.
Faith poured forth like a flood.
Through the cyber dimension, this vast ocean of belief surged toward Xiao, converging upon him without restraint.
The God of All Machines ascended once more.
A new authority took shape: Black Sun.
Xiao's form changed accordingly.
His hair and garments turned pitch-black, blazing like inverted flames.
A colossal black sun halo materialized behind him.
Floating cannons and mechanical modules hovered in orbit, cold and precise.
Steam-like streamers coiled around his neck and under his arms, resembling an inverted, shadowed echo of Nika's Fifth Gear.
Yet unlike Nika's wild, joyous divinity, the God of All Machines bore the mark of metal and logic—an existence inclined toward ranged annihilation, forging, and control.
Appearance was merely superficial.
The true transformation lay in authority.
Previously, the God of All Machines governed wisdom, omniscience, flame, thunder, and machinery—domains bound to technology and physical law.
But as the Black Sun's faith flooded in, flame underwent a qualitative evolution, ascending into true solar authority.
Not mere heat—
but the power of world-ending fusion.
With it came comprehension.
An energy formula Xiao had long lacked finally revealed itself.
Nuclear fusion.
No longer was his golden core a crude "boiling-water engine," passively siphoning residual heat.
Now, fusion energy could be converted directly, without loss.
True infinite energy.
Moreover, because the Black Sun had become the banner of rebellion, it naturally inherited the authority of world-changing sovereignty.
To raise the Black Sun was to execute judgment in the name of the gods.
In truth, Xiao had stolen the sun god's faith.
Nika had been reduced to a substitute.
From Sun God to Black Sun's herald.
Unable to help himself, Xiao sighed softly.
"No wonder gods in the Middle Ages were so obsessed with spreading religion among the illiterate…"
Years of preaching in the cyberpunk world had achieved less than one minute of divine theater in the pirate world.
More unexpectedly still, the torrent of faith had smoothed the fusion of the Dark-Dark Fruit.
The violent resistance once threatening self-destruction steadily faded.
For the first time, Xiao discovered a new method of Devil Fruit integration:
Faith.
Devil Fruits were born from the collective will and belief of the world.
Naturally, they could be reshaped by faith.
Robin's Devil Fruit was proof—branded the "Devil's Child," hunted for decades, her power eventually mutated into a Human-type awakening.
Faith altered reality.
And so, Xiao understood the next step.
Not merely cultivation.
But domination of belief itself.
Only by becoming the god worshipped by all living beings could he truly complete the fusion of Devil Fruits—and ascend beyond their limits.
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