Hmph, Trying to Run?

"Realistically speaking, the captain setting his sights on my money and wanting to use these 15 million Beli to fill some hole makes more sense. In the East Blue, there probably isn't any hole that 15 million Beli can't fill—especially when it's just one crate among an entire ship's cargo. Even if it were the Celestial Dragons' Heavenly Tribute, this is probably all it amounts to in the East Blue."

"If the captain really is the thief, then the only question is, how did he know I had so much Beli?"

"I can't even bear to order extra food with a meal. Where did I let my wealth show?"

Li Mingyuan furrowed his brow deeply, repeatedly retracing everything in his mind, yet he remained utterly confused.

"It makes no sense at all."

No matter how he thought about it, he could not find an answer.

Li Mingyuan shook his head inwardly and simply stopped thinking about it, turning his attention instead to waiting for the rest of the crew.

Only a few minutes later, under Li Mingyuan's watchful gaze, the captain arrived on deck with the crew.

His threat of death must have been somewhat intimidating.

They had arrived much faster than expected.

A large section of the deck was packed with people. Besides the faces Li Mingyuan often saw in the dining hall, quite a few were completely unfamiliar to him.

He had not expected a mere somewhat larger cargo ship to carry so many people. Li Mingyuan could not help but feel surprised, wondering where all these people had been hiding on the ship before this.

However, contrary to Li Mingyuan's expectation that the entire crew would be trembling as they waited for him to speak, many of the crew members now gathered on deck appeared rather relaxed. Quite a few looked confused, clearly unaware of what had happened, and were still asking the sailors beside them for information.

The captain had probably only had time to issue an emergency assembly order and had not yet explained the actual situation.

Of course, it was also possible that the captain had deliberately withheld the information to keep the crew from panicking and disrupting the assembly.

Regardless of the situation.

Li Mingyuan looked at the captain, who came jogging up before him with his head covered in sweat, panting heavily.

"Is everyone here?"

Li Mingyuan said, "Just in case, you can count heads one last time. While I'm searching below, if I see anyone else, I'll treat them as the thief immediately."

Hearing Li Mingyuan's words, the captain could only give a bitter smile.

"There's no need to count. I recognize every face on this ship, including the sailors recruited on the island earlier. Besides, I issued this notice directly as captain. If someone still hasn't come under these circumstances, then they must have a guilty conscience."

"Good. Then for the time being, please remain here with the crew."

Li Mingyuan narrowed his eyes slightly and rose from his chair. "Until I say otherwise, no one is allowed to go below."

"You'll be glad you cooperated."

With slow steps, Li Mingyuan walked over to stand before the gathered crew members on deck.

He looked at the faces staring back at him, whether confused or bewildered.

At the final moment before taking action, he swept his gaze over their faces and confirmed everyone's appearance once more.

On the way here, it was not as if he had never considered whether he might have run into Nami. With such brilliant theft skills and such an enormous amount of Beli stolen, it would not have been strange if Nami had targeted him.

Now, though, it seemed he had overthought things.

Among everyone present, even the grimy, disheveled sailors, not one had orange hair.

Leaving aside that Nami had standards when it came to stealing and generally targeted pirates, even if she really had been the thief, she would have had no reason to hide her hair. In most cases, Nami only needed to steal once. Even if she disguised herself, there was no need for her to completely change her appearance. As far as Li Mingyuan remembered, there had never been such a plot involving Nami in the manga.

Since there was no orange-haired person here, that meant Nami simply was not among the sailors most likely to contain the thief.

Thinking about it, that made sense.

He was not a protagonist like Luffy. How could he casually run into the female lead?

If he could meet Nami that easily, then was Nami the female lead of One Piece, or his female lead?

"What a pity. If it really had been Nami, it would have been a good chance to get acquainted early. But if it wasn't Nami who stole it... then it's just some detestable thief."

With a grim expression, Li Mingyuan walked straight past the crew and headed toward the ship's cabins, which should theoretically have been completely emptied.

He felt like he was increasingly unable to keep himself under control.

Both his blood pressure and his anger were nearing their limits.

Returning to the cabins.

Looking at the silent space before him, Li Mingyuan finally stopped suppressing his eyes, and the Three-Tomoe Sharingan emerged.

His gaze continuously swept the surroundings, unwilling to miss even a fly.

One cabin door after another was opened.

One corner after another was searched, then passed over.

Li Mingyuan advanced downward at astonishing speed. In merely a few minutes, he had searched an entire deck of cabins and then continued further below.

The strange items discovered in each room had practically been piled into little mountains outside their respective doors.

This was the efficiency of the Sharingan.

If he continued like this, Li Mingyuan estimated that he could search the entire cargo ship alone in less than thirty minutes.

One reason Li Mingyuan had threatened the captain and demanded that all crew members leave the cabins was because of these Sharingan eyes.

For the moment, he did not want more people to see them.

Ever since confirming that he could board a ship and officially head out to sea, Li Mingyuan had been considering his future plans.

His initial plan was to prepare two identities for himself.

His normal identity would act with his current face, using chakra and taijutsu.

His other identity, meanwhile, would act with the Sharingan or Mangekyō Sharingan and a mask.

Li Mingyuan had no intention of hiding everywhere all day long.

Although as long as he dared to make trouble, he would eventually be exposed to the World Government, he still needed to conceal himself somewhat in the early stages. Every extra day of normal life was another day to enjoy.

Back in the village, because the situation had been urgent and he had not thought too much about it at the time, he had not only failed to wear a mask but had also used the Sharingan to defeat the bandits. But ultimately, he had merely been an outsider to that village. The villagers did not know him well, so they would not have a deep memory of his face.

Besides, he had activated and deactivated the Sharingan quickly in the village. Apart from Dick, the bandit who had faced him directly, and Dick's younger brother, not many people had noticed. Or rather, the villagers who could only watch from behind him could not see the change at all.

Under his watch, no photographs had been left in that village either, so there was no problem. The hand-drawn wanted posters in the One Piece world were notoriously unreliable; the Duval and Sanji lookalike incident was enough to prove that.

In short.

Any situation inconvenient for him to handle personally would be left to the "mysterious masked man" in the future. Not only would this identity handle major matters, but before his forces had developed, Li Mingyuan would also frequently use it to act alone and cause trouble.

As for his current public identity, he did not intend to use the Sharingan.

On wanted posters, only his masked identity could appear with the Sharingan exposed.

"Nothing..."

"Nothing here, nothing there."

"This ship isn't even that big. If the thief isn't a sailor, is there really anywhere left to hide a person? With the visual prowess of my Sharingan, it's impossible for someone to sneak from elsewhere into an area I've already searched while I'm exploring my current location. But if that's the case, how could the thief stay hidden right under my nose without leaving a trace?"

Twenty minutes later.

Li Mingyuan stared coldly at the cabin door before him.

This was the door to the final level.

If he opened this level and still found nothing below, that could only mean the thief was one hundred percent among the crew. Not only that, the possibility that the captain was the real culprit would increase enormously. For all he knew, while Li Mingyuan searched the lower levels, the captain might be making some small moves above.

If things really reached that point, then he would have no choice but to get some blood on his hands.

Honestly, unless he was left with no other option, Li Mingyuan did not want to take action.

He was not someone who slaughtered innocents indiscriminately.

Though he had verbally threatened the captain, those were only words. It was vastly different from actually doing it. If harsh threats could not frighten the other side, there was no point in making them. As for whether he would truly carry them out, that depended entirely on Li Mingyuan's mood.

Unfortunately, Li Mingyuan was in a terrible mood right now.

So if the situation continued to worsen, even he did not know what he might do.

Taking a deep breath, carrying a trace of hope, Li Mingyuan opened the door to the final level of cabins.

His sharp eyes swept tightly over the surroundings.

At this final level, even the cargo had grown considerably more numerous. This was a flat wooden compartment above the ship's keel. With this kind of hull structure, aside from carrying goods, it also used heavy cargo as ballast to maintain the ship's stability. Li Mingyuan did not know much about such matters, so he only gave it a cursory glance.

The real focus was the cargo itself.

Could those massive sealed wooden crates contain hidden compartments where someone might be concealed?

"There's nowhere left to go."

"If there really is a thief, then he has nowhere left to hide."

Li Mingyuan stepped into the cabin.

At the same time.

On deck, just as Li Mingyuan's search reached its critical point, the captain had already explained the entire situation to the crew.

Looking at the panicked and furious expressions before him, the captain could not help but wear a complicated expression.

"That's the situation. You may doubt whether this is true, and you may not understand why I accepted this proposal, but believe me: as captain, I've seen more than most of you, and I've dealt with the Marines as well. Even after traveling through many kingdoms, I have never encountered a man this chilling."

"Do not resist under any circumstances. Wait obediently for him to settle this. That is the captain's order."

As soon as the captain finished speaking, the sailors on deck erupted into an uproar.

Especially one disheveled sailor among them.

After hearing the captain's explanation, his body shuddered unconsciously, and a trace of tension that no one else noticed appeared on his face.

Others might not know, but how could he not? This cargo ship was specifically used to transport supplies between kingdoms—the so-called Heavenly Tribute transport. That was why he had targeted this ship in particular, laying the groundwork for a long time and infiltrating it as a sailor in order to steal from it.

The captain of such a ship had probably fought plenty of pirates. Just looking at his burly frame and the faintly intimidating aura around him, one could tell he was no weakling. Those were signs of his strength. If the captain became a pirate, his bounty would probably not be lower than 10 million Beli.

Yet now, the captain actually feared that mysterious man whose background was unknown?

The sailor could not help clicking his tongue inwardly.

"Though I deliberately approached him, he usually seemed easy to talk to, and he even listened to my stories for several days. Who would have thought he was this strong? You really couldn't tell."

"No wonder he had 15 million Beli in one pocket... I miscalculated. Should I rush out and jump into the sea while he's searching the cabins? We aren't far from the island anyway."

The sailor's peripheral vision flickered toward the rail, and the thought of fleeing arose in his mind.

An enemy the captain could not defeat was naturally someone he could not defeat either. Over the past few days, his relationship with that man had amounted to no more than playing a few bad hands of cards together. When he could not help asking to gamble, the other man had rejected him without hesitation. Under such circumstances, even if he returned the money and begged for mercy, it probably would not help. And even if the man truly spared him, the captain would likely kill him.

No matter what, staying aboard the ship would not end well.

"No choice... Go!"

The sailor casually touched his chest one last time.

After confirming that the money pouch was securely tied to him, his gaze gradually became firm.

Strictly speaking, he should have stopped long ago. After unloading the cargo on the last island, he had originally planned to leave. But the goods carried by this cargo ship were simply too valuable, and his identity as a sailor had not been exposed. He had spent so long infiltrating the crew and earning their trust—how could he not take a bigger reward in one go? With that thought in mind, he could not resist coming back for one more job.

As for Li Mingyuan, he had not paid attention to him at all at first. He had merely become curious about someone the captain valued so much. Since they were almost ashore anyway, he had thought there was no harm in adding one more target at the last minute, so he had casually stolen from him as well.

He had never expected that this would instead drive him into a desperate corner.