One Piece: My Imperial Authority Surpasses the Four Emperors

In the twenty-first year of the Jiajing reign, at Qianqing Palace, sixteen palace maids looped a yellow rope around the Ming emperor's neck.

They tied the knot wrong. He survived.

A crimson-gold fruit lay beside his pillow, its skin bearing the image of a five-clawed dragon. He thought it was the immortal pill he had prayed for over twenty years.

He ate it.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in the East Blue. On an unknown island being slaughtered by pirates, surrounded by an ocean where the word "emperor" did not exist, in a world where no one even understood the word "We."

A blade struck his shoulder and dissolved into a wisp of golden mist.

He stood perfectly still and asked just one question:

"How dare you? Why do you not kneel before Me?"

This world had pirates, the Marines, the World Government, and four sea warlords known as "Emperors."

They settled things by whose fists were stronger.

But this emperor had spent twenty-one years mastering the hearts of men and the machinery of government, and making his ministers surrender themselves of their own accord.

Others offered a hundred million in bounties. He issued only a stamped, empty letter of appointment, then sat back and waited for two pirate crews to slaughter each other.

Others subdued powerful foes by defeating them. He chained Kaido to the Meridian Gate of his new capital and beat him every day with the force of imperial authority, until Kaido finally said, "I submit."

Others feared Imu. He scrutinized Imu.

"All under heaven belongs to the king."

"From this day on, there will be only one emperor in this sea."

I am the state. I am the world.