Chapter 153: Frost Giant!

The surrounding air suddenly felt suffocating. A rising sense of bad omen grew stronger in Si Kongxu's heart, and he decided that if Bai Hao truly fought desperately with everything he had, he would open the Gate of Opening to stop him, even if it meant complete bodily collapse.

Bai Hao seemed to sense the desperate resolve in Si Kongxu's eyes. Perhaps wary of the sudden, explosive power Si Kongxu could unleash, Bai Hao hesitated to make the first move.

An invisible tacit understanding hung between the two of them: the moment either party struck first, the other would erupt with full force.

Finally, Bai Hao could hold back no longer. Madness flashed in his eyes. In an instant, a massive amount of freezing mist blanketed his body, and his physical form actually began to turn into ice.

Instantly, thick layers of ice piled up. The temperature in the air plummeted by many degrees, rivaling the bitter cold of the Antarctic.

Using his ability, Bai Hao completely transformed his body into ice. Then, with a sudden, thunderous roar from the ground, an ice giant nearly ten meters tall—towering the height of a three-story building—rose straight up from the earth.

Every path the ice giant crossed was sealed by thick sheets of ice. Everything it touched froze, transforming into beautiful yet lethal ice sculptures. Reminiscent of an ancient titan made of frost, the ice giant filled everyone present with deep shock and terror.

"This is..." Looking at Bai Hao transformed into the ice titan, Si Kongxu had a vague feeling that he had seen this ability somewhere before.

"Run!" Seeing the ice giant frantically charging toward their direction and freezing everything in its path, Si Kongxu let out a sudden roar.

A ten-meter-tall giant already exceeded Si Kongxu's imagination.

He knew that such a massive and lethal ice giant was beyond the level he could currently handle. Even if he opened the Gate of Opening, Si Kongxu had no confidence in fighting it.

If he used the Eight Gates Dunjia and kicked it, the ice giant probably wouldn't even fall over before he himself was frozen into a human ice sculpture.

An entity of such a high level could probably turn the entire city of Jinling into a kingdom of ice and snow just by running a single lap around it.

Witnessing this frozen catastrophe, Mikasa didn't hesitate to fire a laser cannon blast first. Unfortunately, the destructive power of that massive sphere of light was not as terrifying as before; it only blasted away a tiny fragment of the ice giant's body, and that minor damage was repaired by the ice giant in the blink of an eye.

It turned out that the moment the light sphere contacted the ice giant and exploded, the majority of the energy released by the explosion was used up just to counteract the ice giant's freezing effect, which was why its offensive power was so diminished.

Realizing that her most powerful attack had little effect, Mikasa directly grabbed Si Kongxu and used the thrusters on her back to dash upward into the air.

As for Yoshimura, who was on the ground, he also unleashed his ukaku kakuja and sprinted forward frantically.

Everyone knew that a mere touch from the ice giant would likely turn them into ice sculptures, so they fled for their lives with every ounce of strength they had.

Yet, despite looking overwhelmingly heavy, the ten-meter-tall giant moved with abnormal speed. The distance that Si Kongxu and the others spent half a day fleeing could be crossed by the ice giant in a single stride.

Soaring through the air, Si Kongxu couldn't help but look back. The ice giant's terrifying speed of covering tens of meters per step was practically cheating! If they weren't currently in a city surrounded by buildings acting as obstacles, Si Kongxu was certain the ice giant would catch up to them with giant strides in mere seconds.

"Damn it, what should we do now! Running like this, we're bound to be caught eventually!" Si Kongxu grew increasingly agitated as he watched the rapidly closing ice giant and the streets and buildings frozen into artistic ice sculptures along the way.

"I must have seen this ability before. It's so similar, so similar..."

Si Kongxu racked his brains trying to recall. Since Bai Hao's ability did not originate from otherworldly battle qi or magic, it was highly likely from a fictional world.

In fictional worlds, abilities to control ice were countless, but each had distinct characteristics. That was why, upon seeing Bai Hao's power, Si Kongxu felt a vague sense of déjà vu.

"Ice bird... freezing gas... turning the body into ice... Could it be... a Devil Fruit!"

Suddenly, Si Kongxu felt everything click into place. Based on the characteristics of Bai Hao's power, the closest thing to it in the two-dimensional world was none of other than the Chime-Chime Fruit—a Logia-class Devil Fruit from the world of One Piece!

"If it really is the Chime-Chime Fruit..." Si Kongxu looked at the ice giant freezing everything in its path, and the tiny ray of hope that had just ignited was instantly shattered once again.

Having read the original work, Si Kongxu knew that Devil Fruits granted users formidable abilities, but they also came with a significant drawback: the inability to swim.

Regardless of whether the user could swim beforehand, after consuming a Devil Fruit, they would be forsaken by the sea, remaining a stone-sinker for the rest of their lives.

Furthermore, as long as they were immersed in a certain amount of seawater, or even if they only touched a tiny bit of seawater for too long, the user would experience severe bodily fatigue.

Even ordinary water, rivers, or hot springs covering half their body could produce a similar effect. It could be said that encountering any accumulated body of water would negatively impact the user.

Therefore, users typically tried to avoid contact with water as much as possible.

In addition, Devil Fruit users also feared a stone known as "Sea Prism Stone"!

In reality, Sea Prism Stone was the true nemesis of Devil Fruit users, capable of causing severe fatigue throughout the user's body and even turning them into ordinary humans. Unfortunately, Si Kongxu possessed no such item.

However, a problem arose!

Although Devil Fruit users feared water, there was a specific group of people in the original work who "did not fear water"!

First was the Zoan "Mythical Zoan" Devil Fruit user, Marco the Phoenix, First Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates.

Although he could not move freely in seawater, he could transform into a avian creature and soar through the sky, thus he did not fear the ocean.

The second was Brook, the musician of the Straw Hat Pirates and user of the Revive-Revive Fruit. Because he was a skeleton with very light weight, he could float and walk on the seawater, granting him a fairly high immunity to the ocean.

The last one was the user of the Chime-Chime Fruit—Marine Admiral Aokiji!

Because of the freezing effect, seawater would instantly turn to ice the moment it touched him. Therefore, for a Chime-Chime Fruit user, symptoms of weakness upon encountering seawater simply did not exist.

This was precisely why Si Kongxu's hope was shattered. Moreover, forget seawater right now; there wasn't even ordinary water around!

"Damn it, if we keep running like this, we're going to break out of the blockade zone soon! It'll be a huge disaster if such a behemoth rushes into a crowd of people," Si Kongxu thought to himself.

Long before Bai Hao's water-themed attack on the Anteiku coffee shop, the school had already used its connections to evacuate a large surrounding area and implement a blockade.

And now, with Si Kongxu and the others fleeing and the ice giant in pursuit, they would soon escape this restricted zone.

Just at that moment, a thunderous boom descended from the heavens. The sheer decibel level made Si Kongxu's internal organs tremble violently, almost to the point of rupture!

"Stop right there—"