"Is that Cake Island, the center of Whole Cake Island and the headquarters of the Charlotte Pirates?"
"It's so beautiful! It's practically like a fairy-tale kingdom from legend!"
Breathing in the sweet scent of fruit juice and gazing at the sea of colorful juice, both Baby5 and Violet wore expressions of surprise, even longing.
It couldn't be helped. Cake Island was simply too much like something out of a fairy tale. Though, if one looked deeper, it was more of a dark fairy tale, at least on the surface it looked exactly like an ordinary children's story, enough to greatly stir Baby5 and Violet's girlish hearts.
What was more, Minos had already had more than enough sweets, but for girls, desserts went into a separate stomach!
"This place feels so lively. Dressrosa's annual visitor traffic probably isn't even as high as Cake Island's traffic in a single day," Violet said with some amazement.
"No, even Whole Cake Island normally doesn't see this many people." Standing on the deck, Katakuri explained to them, "But Big Mom's Tea Party is different. At this time, basically every underworld king making their way in the New World has to come to Cake Island to pay their respects!"
Compared with Kaido's Beasts Pirates and the Whitebeard Pirates, the Charlotte Pirates were the crew with the most subordinate pirate crews and tangled connections to all kinds of forces.
That was all thanks to Charlotte Linlin being so fertile. With so many sons and daughters, excluding those too young and those powerful family members Charlotte Linlin was unwilling to let go of, the Charlotte Pirates had at least forty or fifty married men and women. The forces their spouses came from had to be at least on the level of the Supernovas.
The web of interests formed by the connections between these forces practically encompassed the entire underworld of the New World, with its reach even extending into the Four Seas and the Grand Line.
To put it bluntly, Doflamingo might have looked like he could summon the wind and rain throughout the underworld after becoming a Shichibukai, but compared with the Charlotte Pirates' influence in the underworld, he was nothing but a little brother.
And Big Mom's Tea Party was not only a place for everyone to placate Charlotte Linlin, but also the best venue for them to negotiate and divide up benefits among themselves.
After all, when negotiating elsewhere, none of those underworld bosses would feel safe. If talks broke down, someone might simply disappear. That could never happen on Cake Island; everyone had to give Charlotte Linlin face.
Before the Sun God, the protagonist of destiny ten years later, caused havoc at Charlotte Linlin's Tea Party, this Tea Party had a safety rate of 99%.
Well, the remaining 1% of danger came from Charlotte Linlin herself. After all, Big Mom was the kind of dangerous person who might directly kill a partner because she disliked a gift or found the food unpalatable.
Even so, the kings of the dark world and the various New World forces had never missed a single Tea Party. After all, Charlotte Linlin might not remember who had given her gifts, but she would definitely remember who had not.
"These people don't look like ordinary figures. Are they all subordinates of the Charlotte Pirates?" After entering Cake Island, Violet looked at the leaders of other forces, each faintly carrying the scent of blood and dressed completely out of place on this fairy-tale island, then spoke softly.
"Some could be considered allies." Katakuri nodded. "But overall, the vast majority should be subordinates."
Even among so-called allies, there were still ranks and distinctions. Clearly, the Charlotte Pirates held the dominant position.
"That's the Sea Transport King. They say he controls the routes of many secret ocean currents."
"Mm, that guy is the funeral parlor magnate Drug Peclo. He actually traffics human organs and also takes on assassination work from time to time."
As Katakuri introduced them, he was also giving the group a chance to show their faces before the many dark-world kings. Charlotte Linlin only cared about collecting money; the people truly maintaining the network of relationships were clearly Big Mom's children.
Once they had shown their faces before these dark-world magnates, they could receive intelligence and logistical support for various operations in the future.
For example, Morgans, president of the World News Agency. In terms of intelligence-gathering ability, he was probably no worse than the World Government's CP agent organizations. The reason the Charlotte Family was known as the pirate crew with the best intelligence network in the New World had much to do with this news-industry tycoon.
And the Sea Transport King's ocean current charts would also be of tremendous help when the Charlotte Pirates carried out various plans.
However, the person Minos paid the most attention to was a beautiful woman with blond hair and blue eyes, dressed fashionably, elegant in appearance, and exceptionally lovely.
Katakuri was not particularly surprised. In his view, it was perfectly normal for Minos, at his age, to pay attention to pretty girls. Still, he offered a warning. "That is Stussy, the Queen of the Pleasure District. Be careful. She's no pushover. Many people in the dark world who have set their sights on her or offended her in the past have vanished without a trace."
"And her age does not match her appearance. She and Big Mom could even be considered the closest of friends."
Being close friends with Big Mom was no simple matter. Of course, if it was Stussy, then it made perfect sense. After all, she was an agent of CP0.
The reason Minos had noticed Stussy was not because he had spotted a beauty, but because he had an idea to stir up trouble. One could never have too many karma points, after all!
He frowned slightly, and an idea came to him. He said to Katakuri, "Brother Katakuri, there may be something wrong with this Queen of the Pleasure District."
"Hm?" Katakuri froze for a moment. He knew Minos's personality well enough to know that he would never make baseless claims, so he asked quietly, "What, did you see something?"
Minos spent every day using Thousand Mile Eye to look around everywhere. While training his eyesight, he occasionally discovered quite a few secrets. Katakuri had long grown accustomed to him suddenly knowing things others did not.
"I once saw this Queen of the Pleasure District meeting with members of a CP organization," Minos said. "And judging by the situation at the time, she was not cooperating with them at all. She was their leader through and through."
"What?!" Katakuri's expression changed. It was perfectly normal for underworld organizations like these to have ties to the Government's intelligence agents. It could even be said that every force here, including the Charlotte Pirates, did not reject cooperating with Government agents when there was profit to be made.
But if she could command Government agents, then Stussy's identity required serious consideration.
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