Missing a Green Algae, Gained a Pair of Red Eyes

Whether Zoro had failed to appear for some reason.

Maybe he had gotten lost, or perhaps he had crossed into the One Piece world while unconscious and unknowingly caused some butterfly effect.

But since he had not appeared, so be it.

Silently, the black in Li Mingyuan's pupils began to contract and fade, revealing a crimson backdrop that had not been there before. Then, within that newly born blood-red hue, black tomoe emerged from the edges as though alive, rotating around his pupils before firmly settling into his eyes.

When Li Mingyuan raised his head again.

His eyes had been replaced by a pair of scarlet Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

"Sorry, mountain bandits. I don't exactly have any extra sympathy for the natives of the One Piece world, and I have no grudge against you either, but I was the one who received the villagers' help first, wasn't I?"

"Besides, I just exchanged for this ability. I was already looking for somewhere to test it out."

So he could only trouble them a little.

Li Mingyuan looked over the situation and realized that things were urgent. There was no time to keep thinking.

As a gust of wind blew through the wide-open window.

The room, which had been somewhat noisy moments ago, was now completely empty.

Li Mingyuan had actually leaped toward the pasture. After jumping out the window, his entire body flickered across the grass at a terrifying speed like a phantom.

The pasture had not been very large to begin with, and under Li Mingyuan's signature Ninja Body Flicker, crossing it was practically like shrinking the ground beneath his feet.

In just a few blinks, he arrived at the center of the conflict!

Just as the mountain bandits casually kicked and stomped on the fallen Joseph and Johnny, and Dick, the bandit leader, raised a foot to crush Johnny's head.

Bang!!

Like a cannonball, a foot shot upward and caught the bandit's kick.

It did not budge an inch.

Li Mingyuan stood beside the bandit and glanced sideways at the two bandit brothers.

Compared to watching from afar earlier, their huge, burly frames felt even more oppressive up close.

"Big guy, it would've been one thing if you'd just taken the goods and run. Why go this far?"

"These two fellows aren't much of a threat to you, are they?"

Li Mingyuan looked the bandits over from head to toe, then chuckled. "How about you spare them for my sake?"

"What!?"

Dick's eyes widened in shock as he stared at the figure who had suddenly appeared before him.

It was not just Dick.

Everyone present, villagers and the rest of the bandit gang alike, stared at the scene in stunned silence.

Just moments ago, the two bounty hunters they had thought were their saviors had been beaten into the ground like dead dogs in the blink of an eye.

Facing two men covered in injuries and unable to move at all, Dick had declared that anyone who dared resist would end up just like these bounty hunters.

Yet even after that, someone still dared step forward?

And where had this guy come from?

He had actually blocked an attack from Dick, the mountain bandit with a bounty of ten million Beli?!

"You blocked my attack...? Who the hell are you!"

Unlike the calm and composed Li Mingyuan, Dick tensed up immediately as he stared at the man whose arrival he had not even noticed.

He abruptly retreated several steps and hoisted his oversized hand cannon again.

"Are you the companion of these two bounty hunters?!"

"You've got some skill... but you want me to let them go?"

Dick's expression darkened. "Honestly, killing these two wouldn't earn me a single Beli anyway. But they set their sights on my head before, so this fate of theirs is just what they deserve."

"Oh? There's no room for negotiation?"

"Of course there is—"

Dick met Li Mingyuan's eyes and grinned.

"No chance, you idiot!"

Before Dick had finished speaking, a furious roar and a gust of wind suddenly came from behind Li Mingyuan's head.

It was the younger bandit brother, who had been standing to the side. Without warning, he swung his greatsword at Li Mingyuan's back!

Amid the villagers' cries of alarm, the bandit's bizarre greatsword closed to within a hair's breadth of Li Mingyuan's neck. If that blow landed, his head would undoubtedly be severed on the spot.

Even Li Mingyuan knew that.

His body was as fragile as any ordinary person's. Although chakra had given him somewhat greater physical resilience, pitting his head against a blade probably would not end well.

However.

"You think something at this level can escape these eyes of mine?"

His calm voice rang out.

Li Mingyuan continued looking Dick in the eye, and even had time to kick Joseph and Johnny, who were lying there like corpses, out of the way.

Then, just as the greatsword was about to strike his neck.

Li Mingyuan lightly stepped a small distance to the right.

Slash!

The blade passed his neck in an instant and crashed into the ground beside him.

The younger bandit staggered, nearly falling face-first onto the ground.

As for Li Mingyuan.

He did not even have a scratch on him!

"Impossible!"

The younger bandit turned back to look at Li Mingyuan, his eyes widening in disbelief. "You dodged my sword without even turning your head!?"

"Negotiations have broken down. What a pity."

Li Mingyuan shook his head slightly. "I thought you might at least be a little smarter."

"...Can't you even see the gap in strength between us?"

His scarlet Three-Tomoe Sharingan flickered.

Li Mingyuan watched the bandits before him. He could see not only every trace of shock and panic on their faces, but also the broken fence around the pasture and the warehouse destroyed by cannon fire.

Even the swaying grass stirred by the breeze was crystal clear to him.

Nothing at the scene could escape his eyes.

The younger bandit's movements were no exception. What he believed to be a well-concealed sneak attack had been noticed by these eyes before he even made a move.

That was right.

He had not even used Kamui yet!

As part of the Mangekyō Sharingan package exchanged from the system, Li Mingyuan had naturally obtained the Three-Tomoe Sharingan, just like chakra.

Exchanging for the Rinnegan might be like the Sage of Six Paths, who had been born with the Rinnegan in the original manga and did not possess the system's corresponding base Sharingan and Mangekyō Sharingan. But exchanging for the Mangekyō Sharingan would definitely include the basic Sharingan.

That was the Sharingan's evolutionary system.

Against this trash, merely using the normal Three-Tomoe Sharingan was enough to make him invincible!!

"Then I'll start with you."

Li Mingyuan's gaze sharpened. Facing the younger bandit, who was still stunned before him, he suddenly reached forward.

At that moment, Li Mingyuan actively channeled chakra.

Without even needing hand seals, he simply made chakra flow in irregular directions, compressed it into a sphere, and unleashed it as an attack.

Its name was the Rasengan!

Logically, it should have been a ninjutsu he could use as long as he still had chakra in his body...

But as expected, although Li Mingyuan controlled his chakra just as he had when activating the Sharingan, he could clearly see that nothing was happening in his hand.

As expected, it doesn't work.

Li Mingyuan thought to himself.

He had already guessed that he might be unable to use ninjutsu, which was why he had not even tried any release techniques that required hand seals. Still, he had not expected that even the Rasengan could not be used.

Perhaps because he had anticipated it, he did not feel disappointed. After all, the system could not possibly let him exploit such a massive loophole, or there would be no point in the reward exchange system.

But...

Just because he could not use release techniques did not mean he had no way to deal with these bandits.

"Ha!"

Li Mingyuan let out a low shout. Not only did he not retract his outstretched hand, he put even more force into it and reached for the younger bandit's face with greater speed and ferocity.

Until the instant he grabbed the man's head.

Boom!!

He slammed it into the ground, smashing a small crater into the earth.

A head accelerated by human force had struck the ground, yet the impact sounded as though a meteor had exploded.

Under that incomparably fierce blow, the younger bandit's eyes rolled back. Blood flowed from his seven orifices as he collapsed onto the ground.

Instant kill!

With the Sharingan's terrifying perception combined with chakra-enhanced taijutsu, instantly killing a mere five-million-Beli nobody was only natural.

Li Mingyuan exhaled softly, looking at the result before him with satisfaction.

"B-Brother!!"

Seeing his younger brother lose consciousness, Dick finally snapped out of his shock.

His eyes bloodshot, he roared.

"Damn it! You dare look down on me...!"

He abruptly shouldered his cannon-like hand cannon. Driven by near-instinctive fear, he no longer cared that his younger brother was nearby. He aimed directly at Li Mingyuan and pulled the trigger.

"Die!"

With an explosive burst of flame, a cannonball roared out from the hand cannon's muzzle.

The spreading heat, the erupting shockwave, the black cannonball inching closer.

Too slow.

That was Li Mingyuan's only thought as he glanced back at the scene.

With the Three-Tomoe Sharingan focused to its limit, everything in the world seemed to gradually slow down, eventually becoming a series of frame-by-frame images.

Against an attack like this, even if he stood still until the cannonball reached him, he could easily dodge it.

That was the power of the Sharingan.

"If I'd had a Bloodline Limit like this in my previous life, even if I never awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan until I died, I probably wouldn't have needed those body modifications."

For a moment, Li Mingyuan could not help sighing inwardly.

Though he had immersed himself in the Sharingan's power, he had not completely lost his reason.

Out of the corner of his eye, Li Mingyuan could still see the situation around him.

The next second, facing the incoming cannonball, he suddenly drove his legs downward.

The world accelerated once more.

The speeding cannonball returned to its original velocity and rapidly blasted toward Li Mingyuan. Before the villagers' wide-eyed gazes and the bandits' excited stares, bursting flames and black smoke swallowed him and several others around him.

Boom—!

A violent explosion and shockwave spread outward.

"Hahahahaha, see? I told you! You idiot!"

"You set your sights on my head, so this fate of yours is just what you deserve!"

Dick was drenched in cold sweat, but seeing the cannonball strike its target, his entire body finally relaxed.

He threw back his head and laughed with the strange laugh unique to the One Piece world.

At the edge of the pasture, some villagers could not bear to watch and turned away. Others stared blankly at the scene before falling to their knees in despair.

Because of where Li Mingyuan had been standing, it was not just the younger bandit and Li Mingyuan himself.

The two bounty hunters who had stood up for them earlier, Joseph and Johnny, had also been within the cannonball's blast range.

In other words, that one shot had wiped out everyone who resisted Dick.

Was this the price of daring to resist?

But at that moment, the little boy who had first stepped forward against the bandits, still staring fixedly at the explosion's black smoke, suddenly pointed ahead in excitement.

"Hey, everyone, look! That's...!"

An unbelievable scene unfolded.

When the villagers and bandits heard the boy's voice and instinctively looked toward the blast site again, they were shocked to see a figure faintly visible within the black smoke.

As the flames and dark mist gradually scattered in the wind.

The figure slowly became clearer and clearer, until it could be seen distinctly.

"What!?"

"N-No way!!"

The man walked out of the flames step by step. In each hand, he carried a person—Joseph and Johnny, both unconscious.

The only one swallowed by the explosion had been the younger bandit.

Drip.

Sweat slid down Dick's forehead.

He stared blankly at the scene before him, unable to believe what he was seeing.

"The game should be over."

Li Mingyuan casually tossed Joseph and Johnny onto the grass nearby.

Looking at Dick, he said calmly, "That was a decent way to pass the time. You're called Dick the mountain bandit, right?"

"I tested one ability just now. There's still another branch ability left, and it happens to need testing too."

Li Mingyuan bent down and picked up a length of rope from the side of the pasture.

After giving it a slight tug to confirm its toughness, he held one end in each hand and let it hang down.

"While I'm at it, I'll test it on you."

Li Mingyuan smiled faintly.

As soon as he finished speaking, Li Mingyuan charged forward again before the bandits could react.

His figure seemed to turn into a black shadow as he rapidly closed in on the bandits.

Dick's pupils suddenly constricted.

Seeing this, the bandit Dick felt a chill shoot straight up from his spine to the top of his head.

He had no time to think. Instinctively, he glanced at the heavy hand cannon on his shoulder, but there was simply no time to light the fuse again.

Gritting his teeth, he simply threw the heavy hand cannon aside.

Then he quickly bent down and picked up the broadsword his younger brother had dropped earlier.

"Since you dodged it just now, that at least means this works, right?"

The bandit Dick's eyes reddened. Panting heavily, he swung the broadsword. "No matter what trick you used, I'll chop your head clean off!!"