White Night yawned.
He slowly sat up from the lounge chair, stretched, and his bones let out a series of satisfying cracks.
"Hmph…"
"These brats really don't give me a moment's peace."
He rubbed his sleepy eyes and looked towards High Town in the Goa Kingdom.
Even from a great distance, the extremely oppressive atmosphere was still clearly palpable.
In the air, there was a faint smell of napalm.
And the nearly boiling despair and anger of countless lower-class citizens.
"Well, but then again…"
A playful curve appeared at the corner of White Night's mouth.
"If they were too easy to deal with, that would be boring."
Just then.
He slowly looked up, his gaze precisely locking onto an unusual color in the night sky.
A streak of azure light tore through the pitch-black night, rushing towards the harbor without hesitation.
Its speed was incredibly fast, carrying a resolute determination to break free from all worldly constraints.
"Tsk, this kid really just charged straight in, huh?"
White Night propped his chin with one hand, commenting with interest.
He, of course, knew the owner of that streak of light.
Sabo.
The boy who should have been blown into the sea by the Celestial Dragons' cannon fire during this great fire, picked up by a certain man, and lost his memory ever since.
"The script… it's completely messed up now."
White Night murmured to himself, the smile in his eyes growing even wider.
He could clearly feel it.
Ever since he bestowed the power of wind upon Sabo, the threads of "destiny" surrounding the boy had become blurry.
The originally clear, heavy path of fate leading to the Revolutionary Army's Chief of Staff was now covered with countless branching cracks.
And now, this little guy was flying with the wings he personally gave him, actively crashing into the first, and most crucial, turning point of his destiny.
"How interesting."
White Night comfortably leaned back into his lounge chair and closed his eyes.
He didn't need to see with his eyes.
Ever since he cleared the "Song of Wind and Poem of Dragons" dungeon and obtained the "Authority of the Wind God," all the "wind" in the world had become his eyes and ears.
The wind was whispering to him.
He "heard" it.
Ace and Luffy, those two flames, one large and one small, yet equally scorching and explosive, had already rushed into the Outolook family mansion.
Presumably, the "family matters" there would be handled quite spectacularly.
He could also "hear" it.
Throughout the entire Styx, countless streams of terrified, angry, and desperate air currents were converging into an extremely oppressive, about-to-erupt hurricane.
And most interestingly… White Night's consciousness followed the azure streak of light all the way to the sea near the Goa Kingdom.
He "saw" an incredibly luxurious giant ship, with the Celestial Dragons' "Hoof of the Soaring Dragon" emblem carved on its bow, slowly approaching the harbor.
White Night could even "hear" a certain corpulent fellow on board complaining in his foolish and arrogant voice about how polluted the air in the East Blue was.
However… White Night's attention was not on that Celestial Dragon at all.
His perception bypassed the giant ship and cast itself further, into the deeper, darker night sea.
There, was a third wind.
It was different from the oppression and despair of the Goa Kingdom.
And also different from Sabo's resolve and burning spirit.
This wind was deep, cold, and terrifyingly silent.
It neither roared nor whimpered.
It was like the breath from the abyss, heavy, steady, carrying a will powerful enough to freeze all things.
"Oh?"
White Night's eyebrows finally raised with a hint of genuine surprise.
His body, lying in the rocking chair, sat up slightly.
He "saw" a ship.
Approximately twenty nautical miles from the Celestial Dragons' "Hoof of the Soaring Dragon" behemoth.
A ship, completely black, without any flags, with an ancient and menacing design, was silently cutting through the waves like a ghost, speeding towards the same direction—the harbor of the Goa Kingdom.
Compared to the Celestial Dragons' foolishly luxurious giant ship, this black ship was unpretentious, even somewhat crude.
But the killing intent and coldness it exuded were a thousand times more intense.
As if it were not sailing on the sea, but traversing the Styx of hell.
And on the bow deck of that ship.
A man stood silently.
He wore a dark green hooded cloak, which flapped fiercely in the sea breeze, revealing a well-tailored black suit underneath.
The man's figure was not burly, yet he was as unshakeable as a mountain; merely standing there made the air of the entire sea heavy.
He wasn't wearing his hood, and a distinctly contoured, stern face was exposed under the moonlight.
Most striking was the diamond-shaped dark red mysterious pattern on his left cheek, like an ancient totem, adding a touch of strangeness and majesty to him.
His gaze was also fixed firmly on the distant coastline of the Goa Kingdom.
There was no emotional fluctuation in those eyes.
No pity, no anger, only an unfathomable, solidified darkness.
It was a look that regarded the entire world as an enemy, and overthrowing everything as his mission.
The Revolutionary, Dragon!
The World Government's number one criminal!
Known as "the World's Most Evil Man"!
On the Revolutionary Army's ghost ship.
The salty sea breeze ruffled everyone's clothes.
A transvestite with a disproportionately large head, exaggerated purple eyeshadow and lipstick, and a huge afro, sashayed with a charming cat-like walk to Dragon's side.
He curled his pinky finger, placed it to his mouth, and let out his characteristic "Hmm-ma!" sound.
"Dragon boy~"
"Up ahead is your hometown, hee-haw!"
Revolutionary Army executive, "Okama King" Emporio Ivankov, broke the silence on the deck with his uniquely androgynous voice.
Dragon did not turn around.
His astonishingly sharp gaze consistently pierced through the deep night, firmly fixed on that distant, familiar yet strange coastline.
Goa Kingdom.
The "most beautiful" country in the East Blue.
And the place where he was born and resolutely fled from.
"Indeed."
Dragon's lips barely moved.
Two words squeezed out from deep in his throat, low, hoarse, carrying an unshakeable heaviness.
Ivankov's huge head leaned over, and he blinked his exaggerated false eyelashes, looking in the direction of Dragon's gaze.
"Tsk tsk tsk, how incredible."
"The Celestial Dragons are coming to inspect, so they have to burn an entire Grey Terminal for a 'clean-up'; only those hypocritical nobles would do such a thing."
His tone was filled with undisguised contempt and disgust.
"They're a million times more scummy than the criminals in Impel Down! Hee-haw!"
"This is the 'truth' of this world."
Dragon finally spoke, his tone devoid of anger or pity, only a cold statement.
"Under the rule of the World Government, in the shadow of the Celestial Dragons, this 'truth' plays out every day, every second, in some corner of the world."
"That's why we must fight, isn't it?"
Ivankov dropped his cynical expression; he looked at Dragon's profile, that resolute face, now like carved rock under the moonlight.
"To completely overthrow this rotten, twisted, inhumane world!"
Dragon did not respond.
But that silence, in itself, was the most steadfast answer.
They had come to the East Blue, to the Goa Kingdom, precisely because they had received intelligence that the Celestial Dragons were about to visit.
Dragon wanted to witness it with his own eyes.
To witness with his own eyes how this homeland he had abandoned would display its ugliest, most despicable side to please that group of trash who called themselves "gods."
He wanted to record this sin.
And then, use it as another spark to ignite the flames of resistance across the world.