"You will understand that the physical body is a mirror image of the spirit, and by controlling one, you influence the other."
As Bill spoke, his hair stretched out for dozens of feet and wrapped around Nelson. But in his soul, he realized the harsh reality: those shadow entities he had only glimpsed were the very soul he was now speaking of.
"Once this enlightenment occurs, you will have complete control over your body. And in the reality in which we live, this will become the basis for great power."
By the time he finished speaking, Nelson was completely wrapped up and hanging upside down. Bill's hair had become rooted in the deck of the ship and hard as stone. And while the onlookers oohed and aahed and Nelson screamed, "It's impossible!" Bill was solidifying his understanding of his new abilities.
The return of life was an internal enlightenment of the existence of the soul and its influence on the body, and Haki is the will of the soul that influences the outside world.
As Bill found himself surrounded by his crewmates, laughing and answering their questions, it was as if he was in two places at once.
But if his theory was correct, then what happens to the soul when a person eats the devil fruit?
"Can Devil Fruit users also use Haki? If Haki can still be used, doesn't that mean the soul hasn't been replaced?"
With his current level of understanding, Bill couldn't answer for sure. He assumed that there was an equal chance that the Devil Fruit essence would absorb the person's soul, or that they would merge together.
He thought about it because he knew his father before and after he ate the devil fruit. If Aramakki were to become possessed, it would be a very good possession. So good that Bill couldn't believe it.
"But can the human soul mutate?"
Bill came to the conclusion that if it was possible, then that was the answer. Maybe Vegapunk was right when he said that Devil Fruits were wishes that simply wanted to exist in the outside world.
With the island clearly visible, the crew began discussing their duties once they got ashore, and Bill pulled Nelson back upright, although he was still wrapped in hair.
Back to reality, Bill's last thought was, "But if it's just a mutation, why does it feel so... wrong?"
Using his bare hands to smash the huge iron gear, Bill reflected on the past few months.
The color of observation. The color of weapons. The color of the conqueror.
These were the three broad categories that Aramakki gave Bill to describe the manifestations of Haki.
His father called them "colors" for lack of a better description. Just as no two people see "red" the same way, no two people use Haki the same way.
"In general," Bill thought about what his father had told him, "Haki takes the form of presence, tenacity, and compulsion. All beings have these abilities, whether they manifest or not, because they are fundamental to all life."
He went on to explain that in the past, Haki was called psychic power, but these days it is called Haki because it is a more accurate description of the spiritual power that affects the user's environment.
Psychic powers, as Aramakki explained, were different in that despite using spiritual energy, unlike Haki, which was a natural sense of all living things, psychic powers could be completely separated from anything that existed in nature.
One of his examples was predicting the future, which Aramacchi said was an unreliable but still real ability that some people had.
All this made Bill wonder what other potential psychic powers might exist, but after a while he put those thoughts aside and continued his work.
Breaking the large iron pieces one by one, he broke them into pieces that could be held by hand and piled them into his pile of debris.
After three months of work, the ruins of Clock Island were reduced to numerous large mounds of scrap metal, and rocks and earth had been moved to form a protected harbor.
Standing up straight and looking around, Bill realized that, unfortunately, the island was doomed to wash away. There was nothing he could do about it, as the fall had completely destroyed the foundation of the island, and even now he could feel that the soil was looser than it had been when they arrived.
However, there was still time left, and Bill believed that he could make it. But because of this, he had to change some plans.
First of all, this concerned the plan to use Pobeda as a kind of floating home while the new city was being built.
It made sense at first because of the galleon's large size, but now he needed to leave the Victory here to tow as much material as possible.
The ship was indestructible, but even with the weight of the huge towers on its deck, Bill and the others calculated that it could support about nine hundred tons.
This was about three times more than the largest wooden galleons on Earth could carry, and the ship could have carried even more if they had had more time to properly retrofit it.