Fleet Admiral Kong knew that Admiral Sengoku was a smart man and couldn't possibly be unaware of the special implications of this mission, but since he had agreed, it meant that he had tacitly accepted those implications.
"The world is already chaotic enough, and these scholars still have to come out and stir things up..." Garp muttered after reading the document in his hand, then asked, "Isn't there anything to doubt?"
"Ohara and Alabasta," Fleet Admiral Kong said calmly.
The Admiral Sengoku standing to the side nodded and said, "They were also my first suspects. After all, it would be impossible to build such a professional team of scholars with high quality and firm beliefs without a mature and large-scale organization behind them."
"That's right." Teacher Zephyr nodded in agreement.
Ortolan didn't interrupt, but such speculation from the bigwigs was quite normal. Ohara was Holy Land for scholars and a major camp for historians, renowned and highly influential throughout the cultural world.
As for Alabasta, before going to the Officer Training Camp for further studies, Ortolan would have been a little puzzled as to why he would doubt the country of Alabasta. However, after graduating from there with the highest score in the chemistry course, Ortolan himself gained a deeper understanding of many things about this world.
For example, Alabasta is known as the 'oldest civilization of mankind' and was even once considered by scholars to be the cradle of human civilization. Alabasta has a very long history and a huge scientific research system, and there has never been a civilization gap in thousands of years.
Such an ancient country certainly has the ability to build such a team of scholars.
Aside from Ohara and Alabasta, there may be other academic organizations in the world that could have done this, but none of them are as suspicious as the two mentioned above.
After a brief pause, Teacher Zephyr continued, "But both Ohara and Alabasta are very special. Without solid evidence, we cannot easily take action against them... especially Alabasta."
At the top of Alabasta's ruling class is the Nefertari Family. Although they are nominally an Affiliated Nation with the World Government, in reality, no one dares to treat them as ordinary royalty.
The World Government has been established for over 800 years. During this time, countless Affiliated Nation have changed. Every year, some are expelled for various reasons, while others join. However, Alabasta has never experienced such a problem.
The origin of this is the Nefertari Family, descendants of twenty kings. Theoretically, they also have the aura of 'Celestial Dragons,' but they simply gave up going to Mary Geoise.
Although over the past few hundred years, Mary Geoise and Alabasta have had various conflicts, and Ortolan even heard that Nefertari's royal family had criticized the World Government more than once at the World Conference, and even called for the abolition of the Celestial Gold system.
When the time came, no one stood up to support these proposals.
Just kidding, since it was one of their own people who brought up this issue, the people of Mary Geoise gritted their teeth and accepted it. Because of historical reasons, they couldn't easily turn against Alabasta, as doing so would, to some extent, undermine the legal foundation of their rule.
But if you, an outsider, blindly join in the fun, see if the World Government will take you down!
You don't want to pay the Celestial Gold, huh? Well, even if you kneel down and beg, Mary Geoise won't accept them. They might even throw a party for the Celestial Dragons in your country, and then the next three days of your school trip will be held at your house.
It's because of the complex historical reasons and relationships behind these things. Anyway, Alabasta is a very special country, and everyone has to give it some face.
Even setting aside these reasons, Alabasta also possesses an extremely strong armed force, making it a world-class military power. Its capital, Arbana, has a standing army of up to 100,000.
What does 100,000 mean? The population of many small countries is less than the size of their army.
To maintain such a large army, Alabasta would need a very prosperous economy and a large enough population base. At least for now, Alabasta can withstand it, so taking action against Alabasta would have extremely negative consequences.
That would be a huge problem affecting at least millions, or even tens of millions of people. How could the Marines dare to take action against Alabasta so casually?
The World Government must have had to swallow its pride and accept the tyranny of Alabasta, who always seemed to be targeting their relatives, because of these considerations.
Even thinking on a darker note, in the original story, Crocodile was able to stir up trouble in Alabasta and almost wipe out the Nefertari family. As Shichibukai, did he really not collude with the World Government?
Leaving Alabasta aside, let's talk about Ohara. Ohara also has a very long history and is known as a cultural benchmark, a Holy Land for archaeologists, and has a great influence on public opinion.
However, for many years, Ohara has maintained a good relationship with the World Government. Sometimes, when the World Government needs some positive publicity, Ohara will cooperate.
They certainly don't have the formidable strength of Alabasta, nor the cultural sphere. If they make even the slightest move, they become difficult to deal with, and all sorts of criticisms and insults will follow. If anything goes wrong, it will seriously affect the prestige and reputation of the World Government.
Therefore, without conclusive evidence, it is indeed not advisable to take action against Ohara.
Hearing Teacher Zephyr's words, Chief Staff Officer Tsuru sighed, "If they didn't have some confidence, how could these scholars dare to do such a thing?"
Steel Bone General said, "General, let's investigate in these two directions first. There's not much progress on the CP side. If there are any problems, they'll be held responsible. We'll do our best to solve them."
From these words, it's clear that as a high-ranking Marines commander, Steel Bone doesn't have a good impression of the CP Agency. Ortolan then observed the expressions of the other high-ranking officers, who all seemed calm and even somewhat disdainful.
It is clear that the Marines and the CP Agency do not have a harmonious relationship, at least not among the high-ranking officials.
But that's normal. If the World Government were as close as family, then it would be people like Old Star who wouldn't sit still.
These two institutions should maintain a balance while keeping their relationship rigid and unbroken, which is more in line with the interests of the noble lords on Mary Geoise.
Because of his impression of the original story, Ortolan had previously felt sympathy and regret for the Ohara incident. At that time, he felt that the scholars were just pursuing the truth of history and wanted to pass on the voices of the past to the future.
Enabling humanity to understand what happened in the past is a bright and noble cause.
Even now, knowing the scholars' thoughts, Ortolan still doesn't deny that their spirit does have its Glint-Glint points, and to a certain extent, it does have its greatness.
But as he listened to the analysis and discussion of these Marines leaders, he gradually understood why Sengoku later acted so ruthlessly in the Sengoku of Ohara!
Does he not know who Sakazuki is? He does! Do we really need someone like Sakazuki to deal with a group of scholars? Does the Marine Headquarters have no other available vice Vice Admiral?
No, he still chose to send Sakazuki.
Because from the very beginning, the concept of refuge ships and similar vessels was meaningless; the Admiral Sengoku were determined to eliminate any threat at all!
Ortolan can now understand the reasons behind this. The reasons why you scholars do these things are perfectly legitimate, but the risks they bring are not to be underestimated. If you accidentally expose Ancient Weapon, it will be a global catastrophe!
The Marines, too, needs to follow procedures and gather evidence. The same applies to this case involving the World Government. Although they suspect Ohara and Alabasta, due to various reasons, they still need to find conclusive evidence before taking action.
Pirates and ambitious individuals wouldn't act like that. If scholars were to work secretly and keep it a secret, that would be one thing. But now that things have escalated to such a large extent that even the World Government can't cover it up, what if some ambitious individual, disregarding evidence, goes directly to Ohara out of suspicion and accidentally discovers the Ancient Weapon? Whose responsibility would that be?
It can only be said that in this situation, both sides have their own responsibilities and their own positions.
In the end, it turned out like that, and nobody can be blamed. You have to wear the right pants for the job. If you don't have the ability, but you insist on taking on the job, then you'll only have yourself to blame for the bad luck in the end.