Evening on White Wax Island is the opposite of Orange Town.
There was no miasma, no gunshots, no shrill clashes of swords echoing through the alley; only the sea breeze blowing through the canopy of the White Wax Forest, carrying away the lingering smell of burnt pine resin from the direction of the sawmill at the end of the boardwalk.
The commercial street was already boarded up and the lights were off. The patrol team members who had stayed behind were lying haphazardly on the wooden planks of the dock, and several porters were half-submerged in the shallows, gently swaying as the tide rose.
A blunt sailor's knife was stuck in the edge of the shattered pier. Bloodstains stretched from the door of the duty room all the way to the base of the warehouse wall. A few fishing lights were still flickering on the distant sea, but all the lights on the dock were out.
Lane stood in the very center of the walkway.
He was barefoot, his dark red coat was open, and the canvas bandage wrapped around his left hand was soaked with blood and dried by the sea breeze, stiff as a layer of rough hemp.
He tilted his head and stretched his neck, making two crisp cracking sounds. A kerosene lamp, overturned, rolled at his feet, its oil spilled on the wooden board, yet to be lit.
Ram crouched on the low wall next to the warehouse, his vertical pupils gleaming with a cold gray light in the darkness.
He held a short axe that had been found in the warehouse, its blade still covered in wood shavings. There were no guards standing in front of them.
"Did you count them?" Lane asked.
Ram twirled the short axe in his palm. "Twelve at the docks, take down five from the commercial street."
Lane looked at the distant lights, a slight smile playing on his lips, when another set of footsteps came from the direction of the White Wax Forest.
Not heavy, not hurried, completely different from the guards just now, this person did not come running, every landing was extremely steady.
Damian emerged from the shadows of the White Wax Forest.
He didn't draw his sword; his right hand rested on the hilt, and his left hand hung at his side. His dark brown coat was lifted and then fell back down by the night wind in the forest. His steps were slow, but each step was firmly planted on the stone path.
The moment the Sharingan lit up in the darkness, the light of all the torches was momentarily suppressed. The Three-Tomoe Sharingan slowly rotated in the night, and the scarlet pupils seemed to be ignited from within.
Damian looked at the few young men he had personally selected for the patrol team, who were lying across the walkway. They had been helping him move furniture yesterday, and the day before, they had been helping Marcus saw wood in the old house courtyard.
His knuckles pressed against the White Wax Wood handle of the knife, the handle making a very faint creaking sound. Without asking a question or making a declaration, he strode onto the plank road.
Ram jumped down from the low wall, short axe in hand, and stepped forward to meet him. He had barely taken a step when Lane reached out and blocked him with his left arm, which was wrapped in canvas bandages.
"Don't."
Lane's tone lacked its usual vigor, but every word was delivered with firm conviction.
"Don't forget why we split up; we're not here to fight to the death. You're better than me at finding valuables in unfamiliar surroundings. I'll leave the town to you."
His amber eyes remained fixed on Damian's scarlet pupils, which slowly turned in the darkness, their dark golden luster reminiscent of felines against the backlight.
He handed it over to me.
Ram frowned. "It's not my turn..."
"I'm not being polite with you. This person is different from the other oddballs we encountered before..."
Lane met those Sharingan, his canine fangs flashing in the remaining Kakkō, and his tone surprisingly lightened.
"It ranks among the top monsters I've ever fought. Go take care of your business and come back quickly."
Ram gave Damian one last look, then turned and rushed into the shopping street.
His running speed was completely disproportionate to his size; his muscular upper body moved incredibly nimbly through the narrow alley. Only Lane and Damian remained on the dock pier, less than twenty steps apart.
Damian didn't stop them. He knew the burly men in front of him wouldn't get away easily. Their goal was probably just to rob him. Gwen and his Pops were in the White Wax Forest and should be fine for a while. He just hoped the guards left in town wouldn't do anything foolish.
The sword was drawn, its White Wax Wood hilt gleaming with a warm, off-white hue under the red glow of the Sharingan, the blade held horizontally at his side.
Without saying a word, Lane tightened the rolled-up canvas bandage, clenched his left fist against his right palm, and his knuckles cracked seven or eight times in unison. The last trace of a smile on his lips vanished.
Damian moved.
His knife wasn't a test; from the very beginning, he aimed straight for the man's neck. He knew that this crooked-nosed man had just single-handedly defeated the dock guards and dared to stand face-to-face with him on the pier without any companions to cover him.
Such people are either arrogant, or they have the right to be arrogant.
He eliminated the former at the last second before the knife fell.
Lane didn't take the incoming blade head-on; instead, he sidestepped to the right to dodge the first strike, while simultaneously throwing his left fist at Damian's elbow, which was holding the knife.
Damian retracted his arm, letting the fist graz his wrist, then reversed his blade, aiming upwards at Lane's chin.
Lane jumped back, his bare feet landing on the wooden planks of the platform, causing the entire walkway to shake violently. He had already retreated two steps away from the edge of the blade's edge.
Damian's pursuit should have aimed for his wide-open collarbone in the next instant, but Lane clenched his fist tightly, parrying the blade that was slashing down.
He actually caught the knife with his forearm and fist.
"That was strong enough." Lane looked down at the red mark on the back of his hand from the blade's spine and grinned.
He pressed forward again with his feet, repeatedly throwing out punches. His attacks were nothing fancy, just straight punches, hooks, and uppercuts, but each punch carried enough force to shatter the wooden railing.
Damian used the back of his knife to deflect a right hook aimed at his temple, then took a half-step back and readjusted his grip on the knife.
He had never seen this style of play before.
This person doesn't rely on techniques or moves, but rather on pure striking instinct, which is perfectly in sync with his body.
What's more troublesome is that Damian found that no matter how fast his blade was, he couldn't simultaneously dodge a punch and attack a vital part of the torso when the opponent got close. This person could withstand the cuts, but a single punch could cause Damian's wrist to ache from the impact.
Lane was stabbed again. Damian slashed his left forearm, cutting a long gash in the side of his arm that was wrapped in canvas bandages. The bandages broke, sending up large pieces of cloth, and blood seeped out from the cut.
Lane didn't even flinch. Instead, before his injured left arm hit the ground, he pulled his fist back and threw a punch. Damian dodged the punch by turning to the side and, using the momentum of sheathing his sword, took a knee to the abdomen with a dull thud, staggering back two and a half steps before regaining his footing.
He glared at Lane, his eyes wide, while breathing heavily.
Lane was covered in sweat and blood, yet he was still laughing, his jaw slightly agape as he gasped for breath, his chest heaving violently, but that unchanging, hoarse laugh once again echoed across the dock.
"Strange eyes and strange swordsmanship, troublesome, but I still want to see just how deep your coffers are."
After saying that, he wiped the sweat dripping from his forehead, kicked away a broken railing post from the ground, and then raised his right fist again, spreading out his four fingers to reveal knuckles covered in calluses and scars.
He remembered something.
There is an unnamed group of reefs in East Blue southern part of the South Blue. On nautical charts, it is marked with only one line of small text. "Reef Zone, not suitable for navigation."
The island is so small that only one-third of it is above the sea at high tide. There is no fresh water, no trees, only a stretch of Gravel Beach bleached white by the scorching sun and a few clumps of low shrubs.
Lane was born here.
He didn't know who his father was. His mother was the only person on the island, and she fed him by collecting shellfish that got stuck in the crevices of the rocks after the tide went out.
No boat, no neighbors, no nationality.
When he was five years old, his mother stuffed the last piece of dried seaweed into his mouth, then lay down on the rocks and never got up again.
He nudged his mother's shoulder several times, but there was no response. So he sat beside her for two days, until the high tide swept her body into the sea. That year, he learned his first lesson: crying is useless.
Between the ages of six and ten, Lane lived alone on that rocky island for four years.
He had no house, no bed, and no one had ever spoken a word to him.
He learned to use his fingers to dig crabs out of the crevices of the rocks, to use his teeth to crack open seashells, and to distinguish between fishing boats and pirate ships in the distance on the sea.
Every day he would talk to himself in front of the waves, taking the waves crashing against the rocks as his opponents, and repeatedly punching the driftwood washed ashore until the wood was covered with the blood from his cracked fists.
Driftwood turns into wood chips, and wood chips turn into sawdust.
Without weapons or the talent boost from Devil Fruit, he simply kept punching until his bones weren't broken.
When I was ten years old, a merchant ship ran aground near a group of reefs.
While the crew was making repairs, they found a wild child squatting barefoot on a rock on the island, watching them. The captain didn't dare to bother him and left some dry food and fresh water.
The next day, the crew was caught up and surrounded by nearby pirates. Lane squatted on the reef and watched for a long time. When the pirate captain broke the merchant ship captain's arm with a punch, something in his eyes lit up. It turned out that it was possible to hit someone with a fist.
As the pirates finished looting and were about to leave, Lane jumped off the reef, clutching a fist-sized rock, and smashed it into the back of the pirate captain's head.
Facing eight people, the unarmed kid was easily beaten up.
His nose was crooked that day when the pirate second mate slapped him hard in the face with the back of his knife. After his nose was broken, there was no doctor. He tried to straighten the broken bone himself, but it didn't work, and it grew crooked for thirty years.
The pirate captain grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the deck. Seeing his face covered in blood, with blood trickling down to the corner of his mouth, yet he was still baring his teeth without crying or screaming, the captain suddenly burst into laughter.
"Kid, you'll either grow up to be a monster, a madman, or both. Anyway, there's nothing to eat on the rocks, so come with me."
From then on, he became a menial laborer on a pirate ship.
At fifteen, he single-handedly Teuchi three adult sailors in his first boarding action, and at seventeen, he took command of his first small boat squadron from the captain.
At eighteen, he bid farewell to the old captain who died on the ship. He held the remaining brass pipe in his mouth for a while, then tore his shirt into strips, wrapped them around his knuckles, and knocked down ten old crew members who came to provoke him. He became the leader of the squadron by his fists.
He began his independent journey on the Grand Line at the age of twenty-two.
The dangers of the Grand Line were not exaggerated by the legends of the East Blue.
Lane was swept into the sea by storms countless times and chased by the navy countless times, but he survived.
He had an almost animalistic intuition; he would start turning the rudder before the masthead of Marine warship even appeared, and he could smell the humidity and the probability of lightning from the sea breeze before a storm.
He was illiterate and couldn't understand the markings on the nautical chart, but he could navigate the correct course by comparing the chart to the actual scenery; he couldn't do math and didn't know exactly how much food was needed for each meal, but he never let anyone on board go hungry.
He lived entirely on instinct, and instinct never betrayed him.
In the fourth year of his Grand Line, he unearthed a Devil Fruit in the frozen soil of a winter island ruin.
The fruit is pale golden and shaped like a folded lion's mane. The first bite reminded him of the last piece of seaweed his mother stuffed into his mouth when he was five years old—fishy, astringent, and tough. After swallowing it, it felt like a fire was burning in his stomach.
When he woke up the next day, he looked at his reflection on the ice and found that his roaring face had become one with the fruit; he had indeed turned into a lion.
In the years that followed, he won over Dean, Ram, Celysia, Lowell, and more than a hundred followers with sheer brute force and fists.
He ground the lion's canine tooth that his mother had left him into a pendant and wore it around his neck. He also painted the lion's mane pattern on the sail of his first pirate ship.
He made a name for himself on the Grand Line and had a bounty of 148 million Beli on his head. Until a naval captain named Garp caught up with his ship in the howling sea wind, wiped out all 120 men, destroyed the flag, and retreated back to the East Blue.
Lane never felt that he was "forced back to the East Blue".
He believes that all routes eventually lead back to home. For him, home is not the rocky island, but every change in the waves he has witnessed on the rocky island, and every time he has risen from the wood chips to throw a punch.
He didn't have grand plans to change the world, but he had an extremely simple and clear view: on this sea, there are some unattainable nobles, and some commoners trampled into the crevices of the reefs.
A wild child like him will be trampled to death sooner or later, so he might as well become a lion first.
His most chilling catchphrase was casually uttered during a break from boarding action while he was drinking rum.
"The weak cannot decide how they die, but I can decide how they live."