The Straw Hat crew knew nothing of what had happened to Ace.
Otherwise, with Luffy's personality, he would have definitely dropped everything and gone to fight Blackbeard.
But given Luffy's airheaded nature, he had always received information extremely late. His habit of never reading newspapers was rather similar to Roger's.
For now, Luffy was simply charging toward the New World with his usual spirit of adventure. Along the way, he naturally encountered the ship's ninth member, Brook, the wielder of the Revive-Revive Fruit.
After Luffy invited him, and following a brief incident, the big skeleton officially joined the Straw Hat Pirates.
And so, aboard the Thousand Sunny, the Straw Hat crew arrived at the Sabaody Archipelago.
This gateway to the New World for most pirates stood at the forefront of the Red Line, where countless factions mingled.
The Marines, the Revolutionary Army, the Celestial Dragons, the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the Four Emperors, reclusive masters—traces of seemingly every force could be found in this chaotic place.
Of course, the Celestial Dragons remained the most powerful faction here.
No matter the world, humans were creatures who found it difficult to learn from their mistakes, especially the self-important Celestial Dragons.
The battle at Mary Geoise twenty years ago had not taught them any lessons. Perhaps they had restrained themselves and lived in fear for several years afterward.
But when they realized that the disaster they had anticipated never came, and that Uchiha Shin seemed uninterested in them, they began trying to throw their weight around again.
After Uchiha Shin vanished completely from the eyes of the world, these Celestial Dragons reverted to their old ways, revealing their nauseating superiority complex and reopening the slave trade.
Most Celestial Dragons received rather reliable information. In their minds, since Uchiha Shin had not wiped