Chapter 255 Hunting Time
After transporting the Golden Ark back to the Alabasta royal family, King Cobra informed the people that it was a mirage.

Anyway, no matter what the people outside say, we don't have any golden ark here. It is just a mirage, the product of the refraction of sunlight. Except for those who saw it with their own eyes, no one else believed in the golden ark, and the news never spread.

Those who saw the golden ark with their own eyes also gradually changed their minds under the influence of the general environment. Could it be that they really saw a mirage? A ship made entirely of gold that could float in the sky was a bit too outrageous.

Uchiha Feiyu didn't care about the ups and downs in Alabasta. He was now preparing to do two things. The first was to use the Cloud Shell of the Thunder Fruit to create a large number of thunderclouds. Facts had proved that the Thunder Fruit did permanently change the shape of the clouds, causing the thunderclouds produced by the Cloud Shell to not dissipate even on the ground.

Uchiha Feiyu handed this matter over to Nami, and also asked Cobra to find some scientists and meteorologists from Alabasta to help Nami see if a new weather stick could be made and learn more about meteorological knowledge.

The Weather Stick is a tool made by Usopp. Although Usopp is a well-known great member of the Straw Hat Pirates, he is actually just a amateur scientist. If he can make the Weather Stick, there is no reason why there is no one in a country like Alabasta who can make the Weather Stick.

With materials such as the shellfish and thunderclouds from Sky Island, even though the scientists in Alabasta are a little inferior, they can still make a weather stick by spending some time.

The second thing is the devil fruit experiment that Uchiha Feiyu is going to carry out. Alabasta is vast and rich in resources, so naturally there are many people who deserve the death penalty.

Although a large number of them were killed by Uchiha Feiyu, and Princess Vivi and King Cobra were kind-hearted, resulting in a small number of death row prisoners - but with a population of tens of millions, it is not a problem to pull out more than a hundred death row prisoners.

It's just that devil fruits are a little hard to find - the Thunder Fruit, Yunbei, is now being used by Nami, and other devil fruit users also belong to Alabasta. Some of them are even Uchiha Feiyu's subordinates. With his current technology, he doesn't want to turn any devil fruit user into an idiot.

Fortunately, he later remembered that he still had a magnetic fruit, or to be more precise, a prisoner named Kidd.

The Magnet Fruit has great potential, and is considered top-notch among the parahuman devil fruits. However, since it's just a devil fruit experiment, there's no need to care about the host.

It took about half a month, and Uchiha Feiyu was finally able to extract the devil fruit user's ability from the body without damage. At most, the user would be slightly weak and have a headache for a day or two, but would be able to fully recover.

Of course, a side effect of this was that some strange messages began to circulate in the area where he lived. Rumors had it that this prince, who was already regarded as the incarnation of an evil god, liked to torture others, and that the palace was filled with endless screams.

Uchiha Feiyu didn't care. Rather, he hoped that the rumor would spread more. Respect is a belief, and fear is also a belief. Even in the early stages of the spread of belief, its effect far exceeds positive emotions.

Otherwise, the image of the only God in the old version of the Bible would not be so terrifying. In the Old Testament, whenever people were killed, it was basically based on race, region, or even world cleansing.

Although the vampire fruit has not yet undergone any qualitative changes, the speed of improvement is indeed much faster. At least in terms of basic quality bonus, it has been improved a lot, and various abilities have been strengthened.

However, there is still no sign of the things that Uchiha Feiyu has always pursued, such as blood transformation, dead river, and evil flame.

However, Feiyu could also feel that with his own expectations, the devil fruit did have the possibility of evolving in that direction. A perverted fruit like Shihe would definitely not appear in its complete version, but the blood transformation that was close to elementalization and the Liyan that simply enhanced special attacks were definitely possible to evolve.

Let’s put the issue of strengthening our faith aside for now. There’s no need to rush and it will all come to fruition naturally as long as we give it some time.

"You can change devil fruits! You actually have such a terrifying ability... The most important thing is Feiyu, you actually developed this ability."

"Although it was outrageous enough that you were able to forcibly seize the power of the Devil Fruit before, your current performance is even more unacceptable!"

The person who spoke was Robin, who had been with Uchiha Feiyu often during this period. Even Nami would stay away from him when Uchiha Feiyu was conducting human experiments. After all, this little thief was still kind. Even though he knew that these people were death row prisoners, he didn't want to see them struggling in pain.

Only Robin, who had faced enough darkness, could remain calm. He even helped Uchiha Feiyu deal with some experimental subjects after the experiments were completed, and he was also very concerned about Uchiha Feiyu's experimental results.

"You don't want the Hana-Hana Fruit anymore? Do you want to change to another devil fruit, or do you want to remove the devil fruit ability directly?"

Uchiha Feiyu only needed to take a look at Robin and he understood her thoughts. Robin's wanted poster was a photo of her when she was eight years old. After more than ten years, it was difficult to associate that eight-year-old girl with the current Robin.

But the Devil Fruit is different. Once the power of the Hana-Hana Fruit is used, Robin's identity can basically be locked. If the Devil Fruit powers are eliminated or replaced, then Robin can truly escape the sight of the Navy and the World Government.

"Can you give me a different devil fruit ability? I think the Thunder Fruit is pretty good."

"Please dream at night. Do you think you can really unleash the full power of the Thunder Fruit?"

Uchiha Feiyu twitched his mouth and immediately rejected Robin's request.

There is no way. Whether in terms of compatibility or potential, Robin is not worthy of eating the Thunder Fruit, not to mention that she has not yet practiced the Future Immortality Sutra. If she obtains the Thunder Fruit, she can probably only exert the most basic combat power.

In fact, Robin was just testing it out. Even if the potential of the Devil Fruit such as the Thunder Fruit could not be developed, its basic ability alone could allow an ordinary person to have the combat power of an elite navy vice admiral level after becoming familiar with its use.

This is a devil fruit with an astonishingly high lower and upper limits. To put it bluntly, most devil fruits, when developed to their limits, probably cannot reach the lower limit of the Thunder Fruit. So even though Robin knows that this devil fruit is not suitable for him, he still wants to give it a try.

"Forget it then, I'll just keep my Flower-Flower Fruit ability for now!"

Seeing that the Thunder Fruit was hopeless, Robin said nothing more. Now the only two Devil Fruits that were available were the Thunder Fruit and the Magnet Fruit. The potential of the Magnet Fruit was not necessarily lower than that of the Thunder Fruit, but the lower limit was far lower. With Nico Robin's talent, she might not be able to develop the Magnet Fruit to a level stronger than the Flower-Flower Fruit.

As for removing the Flower-Flower Fruit directly... Sorry, although exposing one's identity is dangerous, having no power is even more dangerous! After so many years of struggling in the dark world, Robin has long understood the importance of power.

With the Flower-Flower Fruit, Robin can fight even an ordinary vice admiral. Without the Flower-Flower Fruit, Robin may not be able to defeat a naval officer. In comparison, Robin still feels that it is safer to have a devil fruit.

"It's up to you... Then all that's left is to wait."

Uchiha Feiyu stretched and smiled:
“Waiting for a big storm and a new era to come… Maybe during this time, I can do something else.”

Ever since the harvest in Alabasta, Uchiha Feiyu has not had much income in this period of time. Before the two big feasts of the Battle of Marineford and Impel Down, he plans to go somewhere else to have some snacks.

Anyway, there aren't many other things in the Grand Line, except for the number of pirates. Baroque Works used to be a bounty hunter as well as a part-time intelligence dealer, so they have a lot of information on pirates.

Only after truly reading the intelligence about pirates can you understand how chaotic the world is today - in the first half of the Grand Line alone, there are at least hundreds of thousands of pirates active, and there are even many non-World Government member countries that are themselves countries of pirates.

Even most of the member countries of the World Government have some connection with pirates, and some countries' regular armies are even composed of pirate groups themselves.

For example, a certain young man’s Eight Treasures Navy is actually the regular army of the Kingdom of Flowers, and the pirate group is just a part-time job.

In short, after reading the intelligence, Uchiha Feiyu felt that at least half of the countries on the Grand Line could be directly wiped out by their armies, and among the remaining half, most of them were the kind that could be killed without any problem - for example, the Kingdom of Women, Nine Snake Island, was a country where everyone was a pirate.

"But if we act too harshly, we might even provoke the World Government... Then let's start with the pirates roaming the Grand Line!"

Compared to those pirate groups that have their bases in a certain place to commit great evil, these pirate groups that roam around and head to the New World are the ones who truly do all kinds of evil.

After all, roving bandits are always much more ruthless than stationed bandits. Pirates who have their own bases must of course consider the safety of their bases and dare not really anger the World Government and the Navy. However, those roving pirates don't think so much. They just want to die after having fun and run away after robbing. Many pirates even implement a thorough three-light policy.

Honestly speaking, if it weren't for the special geographical environment of this world, coupled with the possession of extraordinary powers, the huge difference in strength between ordinary people and the strong, the world government would have been overthrown long ago.

Uchiha Feiyu also stayed in the extraordinary world of Naruto for 20 years. Although there are many lunatics in the Naruto world and the order is not very good, most of the time, basic order can still be maintained in most places.

It's not like the world of pirates, where most people live a life of uncertainty. If you're lucky, you can become a citizen of a relatively safe country, but you still have to endure the exploitation of heavenly gold. If you're unlucky, you'll be a pitiful cannon fodder.

Looking at the journey of the Straw Hat Pirates, we can find that except for some technical countries (Water Seven City) or countries with special geographical locations (Sky Island, Fishman Island), the rest of the countries they experienced were either extremely poor or dark and chaotic.

A country that is extremely poor is exploited by gold from heaven. For example, the gold from heaven that Alabasta has to pay every year accounts for at least six percent of its national income, which is also the biggest source of its poverty.

There are also countries like Dressrosa or the Sabaody Archipelago, which appear to be prosperous but actually contain great darkness and chaos. You never know when they will become toys or be captured as slaves.

"Looking around the world, there is no one who cannot be killed... Tsk, in the Naruto world, I felt a little guilty when I killed those soldiers and ninjas, but in the Grand Line, I feel that even if I kill 90% of these pirates, there will probably be some that slip through the net."

After checking the information, Uchiha Feiyu turned into a ray of blood light, flew into the sky, and soon disappeared in Alabasta.

It was from this day that the legend of the blood-sucking demon began to spread on the Grand Line.

……

The first half of the Grand Line, the City of Seven Waters.

As the most famous shipyard in the entire Grand Route, even the navy had placed orders here and manufactured warships. Coupled with the extremely convenient sea trains that extend in all directions, the City of Seven Waters could be said to be the central location of the first half of the Grand Route.

In addition to having the protection of the navy, even pirates rarely cause trouble in the Seven Water Cities. After all, they are all sea men sailing on the sea, and it is not a wise move to offend the shipbuilders.

At the same time, just as the navy often turns a blind eye to pirates in places like Upside Down Mountain and the Sabaody Archipelago, conflicts rarely occur between the navy and pirates in special places like the Water Seven City.

Although the navy often hunts pirates, in fact, in terms of overall strategy, they are more focused on driving those pirates into the New World rather than fighting the pirates head-on - mainly because they cannot win.

Perhaps the navy has a great advantage in overall combat power, but the key is that pirates are replenished too quickly!
The navy gambles on the lives of a generation of navy and perhaps it can really wipe out all these pirates. But as long as the world continues to be in such chaos, it will only take two or three years for powerful new pirates to replace the old pirates. By then, how can the navy deal with these new generation of pirates after all the elite pirates have been defeated?

Although the shipyard in Water City 7 is not like several other key locations, most pirates entering the Grand Line will choose to build new ships here, making it a new unconventional place of no war.

(End of this chapter)