In case you missed it, in Wano we learned that Koushiro, Zoro's master, is a descendant of Wano people and taught Zoro a Wano sword technique which the fans have been calling "the breath of all things" for lack of a better term
As you can see, Koushiro even describes Mastery of this technique as "The pinnacle of Swordsmanship" and now given Koushiro's heritage, his words might be more literal than we actually thought. This technique could literally be the highest possible technique to master among swordsmen in the entire world.
And what's interesting as of now is that this technique is essentially a Haki ability. The highest form of swordsmanship is in fact rooted in haki.
Now this thread is going to be an analysis of how this technique "Breath of all things" fits into the current scheme of Haki we know now.
Let's go through what Zoro was capable of exactly while using this technique.
Here we can see that Zoro showed precognitive abilities as well as clairvoyant abilities. This of course we can classify as a variation of Observation Haki
But let's break this down further. Zoro being able to sense the location of his swords can be written off as vague swordsman mumbo jumbo but the pre cognitive ability of knowing where the stones will fall is a whole other thing.
See the versions of precognition in the story such as Enel and even current Luffy aren't supposed to allow one to sense things like where falling rocks will land. As Enel was defeated because Luffy carried no intent in his attacks, Luffy also was able to see Katakuri's attacks because they carried intent and his Observation haki could predict intent.
Falling rocks have no intent as far as we know so Zoro can't be using the same precognition as Luffy and Enel. This in fact is more akin to Katakuri since Katakuri is stated to see the actual future and not the intent of things like Luffy was. Of course the story isn't in Katakuri's point of view so we can't know the specifics of how his ability works but Oda did make sure to describe Luffy as predicting intent while Katakuri is described as seeing the future which can functionally be the same thing in some regard but is fundamentally different
Next
This of course is the main point, to cut nothing and cut anything. In essence, this ability allowd swordsmen to cut things they otherwise shouldn't be able to cut such as steel since either the sword they are using isn't built to be capable of this or they themselves don't have the physical force to pull this off or both. Therefore what actually does the cutting ends up being their willpower/haki.
Notice how Zoro uses the same sword with about the same amount of force to NOT cut the leaves but cut clean through the rock since his will had augmented the capabilities of his sword. He then proceeds to cut steel yet he failed to do so when he had way more energy at the start of the fight indicating that his actual physical strength isn't what allowed him to do this.
Does this sound familiar? The fact that a character wants to defeat someone with pure haki alone since their physical strength is no longer factored in since the person they are defeating has very high durability.
What Zoro did is quite similar to Luffy’s strategy against Kaido to use Haki to destroy him by bypassing his natural durability since we know Zoro's swords never got sharper and he never actually got physically stronger and with only his will/haki he bypassed whatever natural durability that Daz bones possessed and cut through the steel without actual physical force
And there you have it. The breath of all things is a haki technique that is the pinnacle of Swordsmanship so it fits that it applies the highest forms of both Armament and observation haki to pull off.
Lastly before anyone asks how Zoro essentially pulled off Haki techniques that Luffy is just learning now, let's remember that knowing advanced Haki techniques doesn't equate to being the top of the verse given The boa sisters and sentamaru knew said techniques and secondly, Oda made sure to tell us that this isn't an ability Zoro can pull off whenever he wants and its arguable if he can even now since he has admitted that there are things he has to learn like cutting fire
Finally let's examine certain aspects about the Breath of all things that are distinctly DIFFERENT from Haki techniques we've seen now.
I've explained how what Zoro does is fundamentally rooted in advanced forms of haki but the big question is, why is it BOTH Armament and observation haki?
As you can see, it's being made out to seem that you MUST use observation haki in some form to sense the environment before you are capable of using the armament haki to either cut or not cut things.
As far as we can tell, neither Luffy nor Rayleigh required observation haki to destroy those collars with advanced armament haki. In fact, there isn't a single technique or ability we've ever seen in the series that requires two colors of Haki to achieve except this Breath of all things. We've seen one color of Haki and devil fruits be used in tandem such as Enel's devil fruit ability and mantra but we've never seen anything like Conquerers being used with Observation in some way to create a unique effect or singular technique.
Therefore even though the things Zoro does in Alabasta can be feasibly considered Haki, there are still aspects of how they were explained that show how much of a retcon this is. And it is a retcon obviously. For now though we shall have to wait and see whether Oda will double down and create a concise explanation for how breath of all things fits into the current scheme or he'll just ignore some of these inconsistencies and proceed to redefine the breath of all things in a new way in the current scheme.
