Newcomers to the New World! Moria: Why Should I Submit to You?

After establishing a foothold on Hachinosu, Lin Yuan began "fishing" for people in the New World.

His method was simple: he used Spatial Perception to scan everything within a kilometer, then went wherever there was a fight. The New World had no shortage of battles. Pirate crews fought and killed each other every day, ships sank every day, and people died every day.

"We're not looking for the people who survived," Lin Yuan told Kaido. "We're looking for the ones who survived but don't know where to go next."

"Wororororo... you sure talk in circles."

"Put simply, we're looking for people with potential who have nowhere else to turn."

Kaido carried his iron club over his shoulder and couldn't be bothered to ask more.

Two

The first stop was a stretch of sea at the edge of the New World.

A pirate ship burned, thick smoke billowing from it. Broken timber and corpses floated on the surface, and blood stained the water red. The battle was over. The winners had left, and the losers had sunk.

But one person was still alive.

Lin Yuan stepped through a door and landed on the tilted deck. At the entrance to the cabin, a boy sat against the wall, covered in wounds, a pair of enormous scissors clutched in his hand. His eyes were vacant, as though he had just lost something important.

Gecko Moria.

"Who are you?" Moria looked up, his voice hoarse.

"Lin Yuan. Just passing through."

"Passing through?" Moria sneered. "Nobody just passes through the New World."

"Then what about you? Are you passing through, or are you planning to wait here and die?"

Moria didn't answer.

His crewmates were all dead. Just moments ago, a veteran pirate crew had attacked their ship. The captain had died in battle, his crewmates had been killed, and he alone had survived. He had fought desperately and killed quite a few of the attackers, but the pirates hadn't finished him off. They had simply taken what they wanted and left.

"Why didn't they kill you?" Lin Yuan asked.

"They said..." Moria gritted his teeth. "They said killing me would be too much trouble. That it wasn't worth it."

Lin Yuan crouched down, meeting Moria's eyes.

"What are you going to do, then?"

"Get stronger. Take revenge."

"And after that?"

"After that..." Moria froze. He hadn't thought about what came after.

Lin Yuan stood, took a piece of paper from his pocket, and wrote down Hachinosu's coordinates before handing it to Moria.

"This is my place. Once you've figured things out, come find me. If you don't want to, that's fine too. Just buy me a drink if we meet at sea someday."

Moria took the note and looked down at it.

"Why are you helping me?"

"I'm not helping you. I'm investing in you." Lin Yuan smiled. "I think you'll be strong someday. I'm giving you a hand now, so remember to return the favor when you get stronger."

Moria stared at him for a few seconds, then put the note away.

"My name is Gecko Moria."

"I know."

Lin Yuan raised a hand, opened a door, and walked through it.

Moria watched the door slowly close, then lowered his head and tightened his grip on his scissors.

"Lin Yuan... I'll remember you."

Three

A few days later, Lin Yuan encountered a second person in another part of the New World.

A pirate ship rested on the sea, an hourglass symbol painted on its sails. On deck, a young man sat at the bow with a cigar in his mouth and a newspaper in his hand. Sand covered his left hand, glowing yellow in the sunlight.

Crocodile.

Lin Yuan stepped through a door and landed in front of him.

Crocodile looked up and blew out a mouthful of smoke.

"Lin Yuan, the space user. One-billion-Beli bounty. What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you."

"Looking for me?" Crocodile raised an eyebrow. "I don't remember knowing you."

"Now you do."

Lin Yuan walked over to him and leaned against the railing, looking out at the sea.

"How long have you been at sea?"

"Two years."

"What have you gained?"

Crocodile fell silent for a moment.

"This sea is bigger than I imagined."

"What about your goal? Still aiming to be Pirate King?"

Crocodile turned to look at him, his gaze sharp.

"How do you know my goal?"

"A guess. Eight out of ten people who go to sea want to be Pirate King. But none of them manage it."

"That's because they aren't strong enough."

"Are you strong enough?"

Crocodile didn't answer. He was strong. With the Logia-type Sand-Sand Fruit, he had been practically invincible in the first half of the Grand Line. But after entering the New World, he had discovered that the people here were different. The pirates here could use Haki and strike his physical body. He had already lost several times.

"I can help you," Lin Yuan said.

"Help me? How?"

"Haki. I can find someone to teach you Haki. There are also resources, intelligence, and weapons. Whatever you need, I have."

Crocodile stared at him for a long time.

"What's the condition?"

"Whenever I need you for something in the future, you come."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Crocodile was silent for a moment, then laughed. It wasn't a polite laugh, but the kind that said, "Interesting."

"All right. I'll work with you."

Lin Yuan held out his hand.

Crocodile shook it.

"Here's to a good partnership."

"Heh heh heh..." Lin Yuan laughed. "Here's to a good partnership."

Four

Back on Hachinosu, Lin Yuan organized the information on Moria and Crocodile and put it in a drawer.

"Both of them will become important figures someday," he said.

"How do you know?" Bullet asked.

"I just do."

Kaido leaned against the wall, gnawing on a piece of roast meat. "Then let's go bring them over now."

"No rush." Lin Yuan shook his head. "They're too proud right now. They won't follow anyone. The best time will be after they've suffered setbacks and have nowhere else to turn."

"Then what do we do now?"

"Train."

"Train?" Bullet frowned.

"That's right." Lin Yuan stood up. "This sea is vast, and there are many strong people. We need to get stronger to survive."

Five

Training began early the next morning.

Kaido's method of training his Armament Haki was extraordinarily brutal: he had Bullet attack with all his strength while he endured the blows using nothing but Haki.

"The essence of Armament Haki is turning your body into a weapon." Kaido stood in the middle of the training ground, his entire body covered in pitch-black Armament Haki. "You don't put on armor. You turn yourself into armor."

Bullet slammed a fist into his chest. It landed with a dull clang, as though he had struck a steel plate.

"Put some strength into it!" Kaido roared.

Bullet gritted his teeth and drove another punch into his abdomen. This time, Kaido's body swayed slightly.

"Wororororo... I felt that one. Again!"

The two traded blows for the entire morning, trampling countless craters into the training ground.

King's method of training Observation Haki was much gentler. He had Lin Yuan hide in different places around the island while he closed his eyes and sensed him.

"Observation Haki isn't about seeing with your eyes. It's about feeling with your heart." King stood in the middle of the training ground with his eyes closed. "The presences around you, the temperature, the flow of air—it's all information."

Lin Yuan hid motionless in a room on the castle's top floor. King frowned slightly, then opened his eyes.

"On the castle's top floor, third room from the left."

Lin Yuan stepped through a door and nodded.

"You're improving quickly."

"It's not enough," King said. "I can only sense stationary targets. I can't manage moving ones yet."

"Then keep practicing."

Lin Yuan's Space Folding training was the hardest. He didn't need anyone's help; he had to figure it all out himself.

The essence of the Door-Door Fruit wasn't "opening doors," but "space manipulation." Opening doors was only its most basic application, like just learning to walk. The real advancement was treating space as a dimension that could be folded, cut, and stretched.

Lin Yuan stood in a corner of the training ground and closed his eyes. He built a three-dimensional map of the entire training ground in his mind, then located his own position and his target—a wooden stake ten meters away.

He "folded" the two points together in his mind.

The next second, his body appeared in front of the stake.

He had succeeded.

"Space Folding." Lin Yuan opened his eyes and looked at his hand. "No need to open a door. I can teleport directly. The range is still short, but at least I can use it."

He tried several more times, achieving a seventy-percent success rate. When he failed, space bounced him back, leaving his whole body aching from the falls.

"Again."

Six

That night, Lin Yuan was taking stock of the supplies in the warehouse.

He had seized quite a few things from the transport ships: Beli, weapons, food, and several Devil Fruits.

The Dark-Dark Fruit. The Gold-Gold Fruit. And two others whose names he didn't know.

He had seized the Gold-Gold Fruit from the first transport ship. At the time, he hadn't been sure what it could do. Only after consulting the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia had he confirmed it: a Paramecia-type fruit that could turn objects the user touched into gold. In theory, anyone who ate it could create a mountain of gold with their bare hands.

"I'll keep these three for now." Lin Yuan put the fruits back in the box. "They'll come in handy later."

Kaido walked in and whistled when he saw the warehouse full of supplies.

"Wororororo... this stuff will last us a long time."

"It's not enough." Lin Yuan shook his head. "We're not supporting just a few people. We're supporting an entire force."

"How many people are you planning to recruit?"

"Not many. But they have to be the best."

Kaido asked no more questions. He turned and walked out.

Lin Yuan stood in the warehouse, looking at the Devil Fruits in silence for a long time.

The Dark-Dark Fruit—the fruit Blackbeard, Marshall D. Teach, had spent his life searching for—could devour the powers of other Devil Fruits.

The Gold-Gold Fruit—if a clever person ate it, they could create a mountain of gold with their bare hands.

If either of these two fruits got out, it would unleash a bloody storm across the seas.

But for now, they lay quietly in Lin Yuan's warehouse.

"Heh heh heh..." Lin Yuan chuckled softly.

"I'll deal with the future when it comes."

(End of Chapter 15)