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"You idiot! Where are you touching?!"
Bai Ye clenched his right fist and smacked Luffy on the head, instinctively using his Golden Light Spell.
BAM!!!
Even though Luffy had eaten the Gum-Gum Fruit and shouldn't be hurt by blunt force… Bai Ye still managed to smack a giant lump on his head.
"OWWW!!! That hurt!"
Luffy stood up holding his head. He wasn't mad though—after all, everyone on the future crew ends up punching him at some point.
"Bai Ye, how could you actually hurt me? You're just like my grandpa!"
Luffy's Nika Fruit gave him rubber-like properties, so he could basically ignore most attacks that didn't have Armament Haki.
Bai Ye knew he didn't have Armament Haki.
So there was only one explanation.
Could it be… that his Qi actually worked the same way as Haki?
That thought made Bai Ye pause and look at Luffy, who was still rubbing his head. Then he punched again.
BAM!
"OWWW!!! Bai Ye, why'd you hit me again? You… wait a minute. That one didn't hurt at all?"
Luffy looked confused. Did he imagine the pain from earlier?
Bai Ye glanced at his own fist—it looked totally normal, no Qi wrapped around it—so he confirmed his theory.
It seemed like Haki and Qi were basically the same kind of internal energy in the body?
If that was true, then until they all reached the New World, Bai Ye didn't have to worry about finding some method to train in Haki.
Maybe after they got into the Grand Line, he could bring it up to the crew—there might be something there.
Just as Bai Ye was thinking about what this meant for the future, Luffy spoke up again:
"Hey, Bai Ye! You still haven't told me—where'd that giant bundle go?"
Luffy had been punched so many times in his life that he'd already brushed it off and was back to being curious about the disappearing bundle.
"Hey... Luffy, remember that place I mentioned before?"
Bai Ye snapped back to reality and decided to be honest. Sooner or later, this power of his would be exposed anyway, and honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal for him.
So with his crewmates, there was no need to hide anything.
"Ehh? So you're saying you stashed all the treasure in that place?"
"Can I go in there too? Please?"
Luffy, of course, was still hung up on that mysterious space Bai Ye mentioned.
"Alright, alright. I promise—once I figure out how to let people in, you'll be the first one to go. Deal?"
Bai Ye looked at Luffy's overly excited face, a bit helpless, and then pulled out a wad of Berries from his inner world and shoved it into Luffy's hand.
"I heard the BBQ around here's amazing. Are you seriously not gonna try it?"
"This should be enough to cover it. Have Koby take you around."
As someone who had rewatched the original series, Bai Ye knew exactly how to handle Luffy.
Sure enough, the moment he heard that—
"MEAT!!!"
"I WANT MEAT!!!"
"Gomu Gomu no... Rocket!!!"
Driven by the smell of roasted meat, Luffy didn't even hesitate to use his Devil Fruit powers. He grabbed Koby with one hand and launched the other toward a stone pillar near the port.
With a loud laugh and Koby screaming, the two of them shot off like a rocket toward the harbor.
"Well, guess it's my turn now," Bai Ye muttered to himself.
The ship flying the heart-shaped Jolly Roger belonged to Iron Club Alvida. She had a bounty of 5 million Berries—pretty high for the East Blue, the so-called weakest of all seas.
So the moment the stationed marines spotted that flag, they rushed back to base to report it.
It didn't take long for a group of marines, all armed with rifles, to march out toward the pirate ship.
Bai Ye could clearly see the fear in their eyes… but there was also a hint of determination.
"Huh, guess they're not all that bad," he murmured.
Then came the shouted warning from the harbor:
"Hey! Alvida Pirates! This is Captain Morgan's Marine base! Leave the port immediately!" the marine shouted, his voice growing more strained with each repetition. "Hey! Alvida Pirates! This is Captain—"
BANG!!!
Just as the marine tried to repeat himself for the third time, a huge figure suddenly flew off the pirate ship and crashed right in front of them.
"Alvida? You mean this lady right here?"
It was Bai Ye, of course. And now that the marines had snapped out of it, they looked down at the round figure tied up in ropes.
Wait a minute… this was Alvida? The same one with a 5 million bounty?
All tied up like that? So she's been defeated?
Then the guy who just spoke…
"I'm just a bounty hunter passing through," Bai Ye said casually. "I thought I'd hand her over to the Marines for her bounty—shouldn't be a problem, right?"
Before the leading marine could respond, Bai Ye was already walking over with Koby and a whole bunch of tied-up pirates from the ship.
Smiling, he pointed behind him at the long line of captured pirates, their wrists bound together.
"These guys don't have bounties, but they're pirates too, right? I'll leave them with you."
Bai Ye was playing the role of the polite, professional bounty hunter—and he had his reasons.
Inside the Marine Base
"Here's your reward, Mr. Bounty Hunter. Besides Alvida's 5 million Berries, some of the others had small bounties too. Altogether, it comes to 5.34 million Berries. Feel free to count it."
After seeing a whole pirate crew tied up like that, the marines had no reason to make things difficult for Bai Ye.
And just like that, Bai Ye—a pirate himself—waltzed right into the Marine base like it was no big deal. Heck, they even served him tea.
"No need to count it. I trust the Marines."
Honestly, Bai Ye was relieved. In the original story, Captain Morgan taxed the whole town dry just to build a giant stone statue of himself.
He was seriously worried that this Marine base might be so broke they couldn't even pay out the bounty.
Thankfully, things hadn't gotten that bad. Even a lunatic like Morgan wouldn't dare mess with the bounty funds sent by Marine HQ.
Bai Ye placed his hand over the pile of Berries, and in the blink of an eye, the 5.34 million disappeared into thin air.
"Wha—"
The marine next to him nearly popped his eyes out of his skull.
"Just a little ability of mine, nothing major," Bai Ye said casually.
He didn't care about hiding his power, and he sure wasn't gonna explain it to some random Marine.
"No wonder you were able to take down the Alvida Pirates… So you're a Devil Fruit user," the marine said, trying to get a read on him.
But Bai Ye didn't take the bait. Instead, he changed the subject:
"Actually, I was hoping to talk to you guys about something—some kind of collaboration, maybe."
"....."