Pirates: How Many Divisions Do the Five Elders Have? Life Is Looking More and More Promising

After a short wait, the communication screen lit up again.

"Mr. 7, what are you doing?"

Crocodile was furious as he watched the man on the screen, who had oranges, cola, cream pudding, and French fries on his desk while he lay sprawled on the sofa like a Salted Fish, engrossed in studying an erotic magazine.

He felt like all his salary had been wasted.

"I think I told you before that if you messed things up, I would kill you."

"Oh, President, what brings you here to inspect our work?"

Capitalists despise things like installing surveillance cameras in workplaces.

Ma Qiao quickly pointed to the magazine in his hand. "President, would you like to take a look at it together?"

"Stop making pointless jokes. If you can't give me an explanation, I really will kill you."

"Here's what happened."

Crocodile was always threatening to kill him, and Ma Qiao was used to it. But this time, he was truly innocent, Ma Qiao had to explain himself:

"President, as everyone knows, King Cobra is a very lecherous man. I'm currently putting myself in the shoes of a lecherous king to predict Cobra's various behaviors. In psychology, this method is called role-playing, and it's a very effective analytical model."

Crocodile: "..."

After calming himself down and refraining from uttering any vulgarities, Crocodile's face darkened.

"I don't care what methods you use, I only care about results. Have you gained Cobra's trust and become a high-ranking official in the Alabasta Kingdom yet?"

"Certainly!"

Ma Qiao said confidently, "I have completely gained the trust of that Cobra. He treats me like a son, not only appointing me to a high-ranking official position but also bestowing upon me a title..."

I have now successfully persuaded that old Cobra to invest 300 million Beli in growing vegetables in the desert.

"Growing vegetables in the desert? You're such an idiot, hahaha."

Crocodile nodded with satisfaction. "However, merely depleting Alabasta's national strength and financial reserves is not enough to shake the royal family's beloved status in the hearts of the people."

Only Dance Powder plan could deliver Decisive Strike to the royal family's credibility.

The entire kingdom is now facing drought, and when the Dance Powder, which can plunder moisture from the air, is discovered on the docks, and these foolish people are convinced that their king has been using the Dance Powder to satisfy his own selfish desires, plunging the whole country into Infinity Edge drought, this is crucial for our Operation Utopia."

"Don't worry, everything is proceeding according to plan."

Ma Qiao nodded, giving him a trustworthy and reliable look.

"In order to better undermine the morale of the Alabasta people, as a loyal employee of the organization for ten years, I have made some minor improvements to our plan."

I believe that simply exposing those Dance Powder at the docks and letting word spread among the people is not only inefficient and limited in its reach, but also lacks credibility. The Nefertari Family is a royal family with a history of four thousand years; we must increase the dosage!

"You mean we need to use more Dance Powder? It's a prohibited item by the World Government, but you can buy as much as you want on the black market."

Speaking of the underground black market, Crocodile immediately thought of Donquixote Doflamingo's smug face from earlier:

"You should have the phone number for Dressrosa, right? Contact them yourself, and then ask Miss AllSunday for reimbursement. I don't want to get involved in this."

"Understood, I will reimburse you accordingly."

Ma Qiao nodded, but then changed the subject and said:

"Actually, I wasn't talking about increasing the amount of Dance Powder used. What I meant was that we should find a way to let more people see Cobra's evil deeds with their own eyes."

In short, in order to frame Cobra, I plan to first promote the widespread use of Visual Den Den Mushi in Alabasta in a seemingly legitimate way.

This would, on the one hand, further deplete the country's resources, and on the other hand, if we had enough Visual Den Den Mushi, we could livestream the discovery of the Dance Powder, completely destroy Cobra, and then assemble an online army to stir up public opinion and launch a cyberbullying campaign against him.

"Social suicide? Online trolls? Cyberbullying?"

Crocodile paused for a moment, then roughly guessed the meaning of the words.

While it seemed that Ma Qiao was being a bit overly cautious—given Crocodile's understanding of the world's ignorant masses, such meticulous preparation didn't seem necessary—he was ultimately acting in the company's best interests, and being cautious wasn't wrong.

"There's just one thing: 'internet army' sounds really bad. How about 'Sand Army' instead..."

After hanging up with Crocodile, Ma Qiao became bored again.

He felt a little nostalgic for the days he spent fishing in the East Blue.

Shurima, with its endless yellow sands, is actually a good place to fish.

The desert here is actually like an ocean, teeming with countless creatures.

A few days ago, when Ma Chaoqiao was directing Rek'Sai to dig a burrow, he caught a lot of desert fish.

However, many of these strange sharks are poisonous, and Ma Qiao didn't know how to cook them.

I wish Sanji were here.

Of all the Straw Hat Pirates, Ma Chao most wanted to recruit Sanji.

Who could resist a man who's a great cook?

Unfortunately, nowadays, Ma Qiao is quite wealthy and has many female relatives, making it unsuitable for this womanizing child to get close.

Just as Ma Qiao was hesitating about whether to spend 69 million Beli to unlock Tahm Kench's Five-Star Chef Skin, the ground suddenly shook violently, as if a small earthquake had occurred.

What 'Heimerdinger up to now?

Ma Qiao mounted Tahm Kench, whose large, PU-plated feet, perfect for swift walking on sand, swung around incredibly fast.

Soon the two arrived at the scene of the incident—a Secret Base on the outskirts of Shurima.

Although it's called Secret Base, the level of secrecy here isn't actually that high.

Because in the desert, it's very difficult to hide large areas of Hextech Photovoltaic Silicon Panels; they offer no real secrecy.

What is relatively secret, however, lies beneath these regulations: the enormous cave excavated by Rek'Sai, which is Heimerdinger's small workshop where he researches and produces Hextech photovoltaic panels.

The main component of photovoltaic panels is silicon, which is also the main component of sand. Theoretically, it is inexhaustible.

As for how Heimerdinger is refined, the answer is the amazing Hextech.

Because production is currently only on a small scale, no factory has been built, and Heimerdinger alone in the small workshop.

We will consider hiring employees only after we expand production capacity in the future.

Currently, the original inhabitants of Shurima number over two thousand, Ma Qiao is directing them to build houses for themselves and so on, without stopping them.

Otherwise, once people develop the habit of getting something for nothing, it will become difficult to develop Shurima in the future.

Small gun emplacements were placed at the entrance of the workshop and around the solar photovoltaic silicon panels laid on the ground.

Originally, Ma Qiao envisioned Heimerdinger as a purely utility character, similar to Teemo.

However, Ma Qiao later discovered that although Heimerdinger Head's skills seemed somewhat clumsy in the game, they were surprisingly useful in the real world.

The H-28G Evolution Turret can automatically identify and attack enemies that emit Laser Beams.

It's simply the perfect choice for protecting your property, whether at home or traveling.

Ma Qiao has now upgraded Heimerdinger to level five.

The purpose was not to use him as a combatant, but to acquire the Level Three H-28G Evolution Turrets and use them as a defensive system around Shurima.

The desert is home to all kinds of fish, and of course, there are also monsters like Sea Kings.

Moreover, there are Sand Pirates in the desert, just like sea pirates, who travel around in sailing ships, stirring up trouble.

These turrets with automatic recognition capabilities can save Ma Qiao a lot of unnecessary harassment.

However, at this moment, all the gun emplacements and photovoltaic panels were tilted and damaged.

The entrance to the underground laboratory has also completely collapsed and is buried by sand.

Fortunately, Queen Rek'Sai, who had arrived earlier, had already crawled out of the ground carrying the badly wounded and dying Professor Heimerdinger.

Ma Qiao glanced at his health bar; this squishy little guy actually had only a single-digit health bar left. He was incredibly lucky to be alive.

After being force-fed a large bottle of Restoration Potion, Heimerdinger slowly woke up.

"It is wonderful to see you again, my master. Praise be to the great God of Science."

Ma Qiao kicked the dark-skinned Yordle aside. "Heimerdinger, what's wrong with you? I told you, safety is the top priority. How did you manage to cause an explosion? Did you conduct some strange experiment without my permission?"

"That's not true, my respected master."

Although Heimerdinger felt pained by Ma Qiao master's restriction of his brilliant mind and adventurous spirit, which constantly encouraged innovation, absolute obedience and loyalty were paramount. He dared not question or express any dissatisfaction with his master.

He dusted himself off, but there was a black stain that he couldn't bear to wipe away. Instead, he carefully tore off that piece of skin as if it were a precious treasure.

"Look, my master! Look what I've discovered! Sure enough, my judgment was correct just before I lost consciousness."

"This is... oil?"

Ma Qiao was stunned. He had never actually seen crude oil before. But being in the desert and seeing a black, oily liquid that came from the ground, Ma Qiao instinctively thought of that thing that haunted his dreams.

"That's right, it's oil, and there's also a large amount of associated natural gas!"

Heimerdinger exclaimed happily, "With them, I have materials for many of my experiments!"

Oil is a really good thing.

Although in the world of One Piece, the value of oil as an energy source is underestimated.

After all, this is a world where most ships use wind power for propulsion and can even burn cola as fuel.

Besides, there are too many energy alternatives in this world, such as the Flame-Flame Fruit and Gas Humans.

In fact, one of Ma Qiao's plans included removing the son of a certain Pirate King and making him a boiler worker for life.

In conclusion, from an energy perspective, the discovery of oil is a good thing, but not exactly exciting.

But besides being used as fuel, petroleum is also a basic raw material for many chemical products.

They can even be used to make fertilizer and clothing.

Alabasta is a hot region, Ma Qiao had had enough of the local linen clothes.

There are no mulberry trees or silkworms here, so wearing silk clothes is out of the question. Synthetic fabrics or cool fabrics are a better option.

Seemingly anticipating his master's thoughts, Heimerdinger quickly added, "Besides being used as industrial raw materials, the remaining caverns are very sturdy after the oil and gas are extracted. We can use them to build air compression chambers, so that during the day we can use photovoltaic power generation to compress air and store energy. At night, when there is no sun, we can use this compressed air to release energy to supplement the power shortage."

Ma Qiao was very pleased to see Heimerdinger speaking so eloquently.

I'm definitely the mature capitalist now, unlike that Crocodile who's always worrying about his subordinates slacking off.

Only...

Ma Qiao bent down, staring at Heimerdinger's deformed head. "I understand the logic... but why did the explosion happen? Could it be that you are..."

"That's right. When a suspected natural gas leak occurred in my lab, I lit candles to try and locate the leak."

Heimerdinger replied with great pride.