Annihilating the Blood Knife Pirates: Three-Rank Volley Fire Slaughters Pirates

The sea at midnight was purely black.

All five warships had extinguished their lights. Their sails had been coated black with pot soot mixed with fish glue, and beneath the sparse moonlight, they resembled several enormous shadows gliding silently across the water.

The oar blades were wrapped in thick cloth, making only the faintest, nearly inaudible splashing sound as they entered the water.

Yang Yunzhi stood on the sterncastle of the command ship as the night wind, carrying the briny scent of the sea, rushed toward him.

He raised his wrist. The faint glow projected by the Pod, Thunder Emperor, outlined a translucent interface in the darkness—five green dots represented their warships, moving southeast at six knots.

"Correct heading by two degrees," he said quietly.

The order was instantly relayed through the Link Network to the helmsmen aboard every ship. There were no signal flags, no light signals. The entire fleet adjusted course in absolute silence, like a well-trained nocturnal beast of prey.

This was another marvelous use of the Link-Link Fruit. At night, determining one's heading was exceedingly difficult, and Base 36 had no highly skilled navigators. Logically speaking, they should not have been able to sail at night.

But now that they had Little Bean, they could navigate by using the linked target as their destination.

At the third quarter of the hour of the tiger, the fleet dropped anchor at the designated position.

The transfer to rowboats was astonishingly fast.

Ten small boats were silently lowered from the ships' sides. Each carried twenty-eight men. Uniformed soldiers boarded in a crouch, one after another, their weapons secured with cloth strips to prevent any clattering.

Luo Ma's assault team departed first. The big man was astonishingly nimble at that moment. Squatting at the bow, he controlled the oars steadily with arms capable of rowing at one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, keeping even the splashes to a minimum.

Yang Yunzhi watched the boats vanish into the darkness, his fingers unconsciously tapping against the railing.

"Nervous?" Hina's voice came from behind him. She had changed into combat gear, and the power of the Cage-Cage Fruit had covered her arms in hard, black, barred material that gleamed coldly under the faint starlight.

"A little," Yang Yunzhi admitted frankly. "No matter how thorough the plan is, there are always variables once you reach the battlefield."

"But you've already reduced those variables to the minimum." Hina stepped to his side and looked toward where the boats had disappeared. "The rest... leave it to them."

The gravel beach felt rough and cold.

Luo Ma was the first to step ashore. His boot crushed several shells, producing a faint crack.

He crouched halfway and raised a hand—eighty soldiers behind him froze in unison, as though someone had pressed pause.

Through the Link Network, Luo Ma's vision was shared with the command ship.

Yang Yunzhi saw the vague outline of the camp in the darkness: four crude shack areas, with the largest one in the center likely being Henry's quarters. Sure enough, two figures holding blades dozed at its entrance.

Farther away, a three-masted black-sailed ship lay quietly moored in the bay, with a faint point of fire on its deck—the oil lamp lit by the night watch.

"First squad, second squad, circle around the left flank. Third squad, follow me," Luo Ma silently issued the order in his mind.

The soldiers split up and moved.

These recruits, who had trained for two months, displayed astonishing discipline at that moment. Their footsteps were as light as cats', their breathing suppressed to the lowest level, and their hands gripping their blades were steady without the slightest tremor.

Two months of formation drills, nighttime infiltration exercises, and countless scoldings from instructors that their footsteps were "louder than elephants" had finally become muscle memory at this very moment.

Luo Ma led ten men to the side of the ship.

A rope ladder hung there, swaying gently with the waves. He gave a signal, and two soldiers climbed up like apes. Moments later, a rope dropped over the side—safe.

All eighty men boarded in succession.

The scene in the cabin matched the intelligence perfectly. Five pirate sentries sat around a barrel, gambling away their last copper coins with dice. The oil lamp flame flickered, casting wavering shadows across their faces.

"Three, two..." Luo Ma counted down in his mind.

The instant he reached one, ten soldiers burst in through the cabin door and portholes at once. Mouths covered, throats slit, bodies pinned down—five muffled impacts sounded almost simultaneously, followed by the gurgling flow of liquid.

One pirate widened his eyes before dying. A gurgling sound came from his throat, then his pupils lost focus.

The entire process took less than ten seconds.

"Clear," Luo Ma reported through the Link Network, his voice carrying a barely noticeable tremor. He lowered his head and looked at the blood on his blade. It was thick and warm, completely different from the feeling of killing fish.

"Received," Yang Yunzhi replied simply. "Maintain vigilance."

Meanwhile, in the southern woods.

Drake lay prone on damp humus, his nose nearly pressed against the soil.

The old sergeant was like an experienced hunting dog at that moment, his ears catching every sound in the forest—the faint snores from the distant camp, leaves rustling in the wind, and... footsteps.

Three pirates slipped out from the edge of the camp, probably to relieve themselves. They yawned and cursed about the mosquitoes, completely failing to notice the thin tripwire stretched three meters ahead of them.

Drake raised his hand.

The soldiers behind him leveled their weapons—not the Navy's standard flintlocks, but three-meter-long spears.

"Thrust," Drake ordered in his mind.

Three sounds of blades piercing flesh. Spearpoints tore through the night and drilled precisely into the pirates' throats and hearts.

They did not even have time to cry out before collapsing limply.

"Drag them away." Drake waved a hand, and soldiers immediately stepped forward to drag the bodies deep into the bushes, covering the bloodstains with fallen leaves.

The blockade was silently tightening.

At the seventh quarter of the hour of the tiger, Luo Niu's second echelon arrived outside the camp.

The big man was exceptionally cautious at that moment.

He lay behind a small dirt slope, observing the shack area through gaps in the grass. Every building and every sentry position marked in the intelligence matched reality exactly.

"Prepare." Luo Niu took a deep breath and silently recited, "Operate by squad, groups of three. Targets: sentries near doors and windows. Move quickly and quietly."

One hundred and twenty men flowed through the darkness like water, splitting into forty groups and silently infiltrating the camp.

The first group reached the eastern shack.

A dozing pirate leaned against the door, clutching a machete in his arms, drool running down his collar. Two soldiers approached from either side. One abruptly covered his mouth while the other drove a dagger diagonally upward beneath his jaw, straight into his brain. The pirate's body twitched twice, then stopped moving.

The second group, the third group...

The killing proceeded in silence. The rising and falling snores from within the shacks made perfect cover, and the sound of blades slicing flesh was swallowed by the night wind. Occasionally, a pirate muttered in his sleep and rolled over, unaware that death had just brushed past his pillow.

From the command ship, Yang Yunzhi watched the red markers in the shared vision continually decrease—life signals representing pirates. Eighty, seventy-five, seventy... everything was going so smoothly that it was unsettling.

Then, when the number dropped to fifty-eight, something changed abruptly.

Inside the largest central shack, the previously steady breathing suddenly stopped.

Henry woke in pain.

The old wound on his right shoulder flared with agonizing pain, as if scorched by a branding iron. This was the almost beastlike danger warning he had developed over many years—whenever deadly danger approached, the old injury would alert him several seconds in advance.

He snapped his eyes open, and his senses exploded in the darkness.

Something was wrong. It was too quiet.

The camp's usual snores, sleep-talking, and the occasional cough from the night watch had all vanished. In their place was a... thick silence, as though something had covered everyone's mouths and noses.

Then he smelled blood.

A heavy, fresh scent of blood, still carrying body heat, seeped in through the gaps in the shack.

"Enemy attack—!" Henry roared, snatching up the broad-backed machete beside his pillow and smashing through the wooden wall like a cannonball.

Almost at the same time, the western shack exploded apart.

Good's pale figure leaped out, his rapier drawing a cold arc beneath the moonlight. The germaphobic man's face was livid as he saw dozens of his companions' corpses sprawled across the camp grounds.

"Damn it! Get up! All of you, get up!" Henry roared, slashing through the wall of a nearby shack and dragging out the still-confused pirates inside.

But it was already too late.

The moment he shouted his first word, Luo Niu rasped an order through the Link Network: "Form ranks, all troops—fire!"

Bang bang bang bang bang—!

Gunfire tore through the silence.

It was not scattered shooting, but coordinated, layered volleys falling like a torrential downpour.

The first rank knelt on one knee, the second crouched, and the third stood. The three-rank firing formation, drilled countless times on the training grounds, bared its fangs on the battlefield for the first time.

A metal storm of bullets instantly engulfed the center of the camp.

Three bloody flowers burst across the chest of a pirate who had just rushed out of a shack. He looked down at them, then fell in disbelief.

Another pirate tried to charge with a blade, but a bullet shattered his wrist. His weapon flew from his hand. He clutched his severed arm and screamed, only for his head to burst open the next second.

"Find cover! Find cover!" Good shrieked, his rapier spinning into a ball of silver light as it rang against several stray bullets.

But the man known as the White Sword had his judgment greatly impaired in the dim light. A bullet grazed his cheek, taking a chunk of flesh with it.

"Kill them—!" Henry's eyes turned bloodshot. He swung his broad-backed machete in a full arc and actually charged forward through the rain of bullets.

This pirate with a bounty of seventeen million was indeed ferocious. The shriek of his blade cutting through the air drowned out the gunfire. Bullets burst bloody flowers across his body, yet he seemed unable to feel the pain. One step, two steps—

Then he stopped.

Because the second volley had arrived.

Not a single volley, but endless shooting, wave after wave like the tide.

Whenever one squad finished firing and crouched to reload, the adjacent squad immediately filled the gap in firepower. The gunfire barely paused, and the barrage was so dense that not even a fly could pass through.

Henry slashed several bullets apart, leaving his palm numb from the impact.

Only then did he see clearly—there were countless eyes in the darkness, countless gun barrels, calmly and methodically pouring metal at him.

This was not an encounter battle.

This was a massacre.

"Good! Break out!" Henry howled, turning to rush toward the shore—the ship! As long as he could get aboard!

But even denser gunfire came from the direction of the coast. Drake's blockade had long been set up, and any pirate who tried to flee toward the sea would run straight into crossfire.

Good screamed as he stabbed down a soldier trying to approach from the side, but three guns were immediately aimed at him.

Bullets punched through his shoulder, thigh, and abdomen. The cleanliness-obsessed man was now covered in blood. His rapier slipped from his hand, and he fell to his knees.

"No... impossible..." he muttered, staring at the silent gun barrels in the distant darkness. "Since when did the Navy..."

Henry's last memory was a wall—a wall made of bullets, impossible to cross. He roared and charged forward, his machete cutting through the air, through the night, through everything it could cut.

Yet it could not cut through that endless metal downpour.

He wanted to curse. He wanted to shout that it was unfair. If you've got the guts, fight me with blades!

But at some point, his windpipe had already been shot through, and he could no longer speak.

The seventeenth bullet shattered his kneecap, and he staggered to his knees.

The twenty-third pierced his lung, turning his breathing into a bellows-like rasp. The thirty-first entered through his eye socket, and the world went dark.

This "Blood Blade," with a bounty of seventeen million and years of rampaging through the West Blue, ultimately lay sprawled in a pool of blood like a dead dog, his body riddled with bullet holes like a honeycomb.

The gunfire gradually ceased.

Silence returned to the camp, leaving only the lingering smell of gunpowder and blood so thick it could not disperse.

At the beginning of the hour of the dragon, the horizon began to pale.

By the time Yang Yunzhi stepped onto the nameless island, the battle had been over for an hour.

The soldiers were clearing the battlefield—moving corpses, collecting weapons, and tallying the spoils.

Several medics were bandaging the lightly wounded. The worst injury was an arm grazed by a stray bullet. The bone was intact, and it had taken seven stitches.

"Casualty report." Yang Yunzhi walked over to Hina.

"Zero dead, zero seriously wounded." Hina's voice was slightly hoarse. She looked at the soldiers organizing their ranks in the distance, her expression complicated. "Eleven lightly wounded. Ten suffered minor injuries in combat, and one..." She paused. "A recruit from Third Squad, Second Company. He was too nervous during the nighttime infiltration, stepped on a stone, and twisted his ankle."

When she turned back to Yang Yunzhi, her eyes held not only affection, but also a trace of worship.

He was incredible!

It was not difficult to wipe out pirates without casualties. She had done it before, but only when she had fought as well, using Black Cage to hold back the enemy's strongest fighters.

But now, she had not participated in the battle at all, and the soldiers had taken down pirates worth seventeen million!

Yang Yunzhi's lips curved upward.

Then he walked toward the center of the camp, where two corpses lay side by side. Henry's body had almost been blown apart, and the bloody hole in his face was particularly horrifying. Good was in slightly better condition, but he too had more than twenty bullet holes in him. His white shirt, always kept immaculate, was now a blood-red rag.

Yang Yunzhi crouched and reached out to lift Henry's eyelid.

His pupils were dilated. He was thoroughly dead.

"Seventeen million bounty," he said softly.

At the current rate of inflation, that was equivalent to more than thirty million ten years later.

Hina walked up behind him.

"A pirate like this can run wild through the West Blue," Yang Yunzhi continued. "His blade work is fierce, his strength astonishing, and his combat experience extensive. If we fought the traditional way in a boarding battle, we would have to sacrifice at least thirty men to take him down."

He stood and brushed the dust from his hands.

"But now, he died to gunfire. Thirty-one bullets, costing less than five hundred Beli." He turned toward the soldiers cleaning their gun barrels. "And we had zero deaths."

The morning light grew brighter, shining upon the soldiers' young faces.

Some were still trembling slightly—not from fear, but from the physical reaction after the adrenaline wore off. Others looked exhilarated, quietly gesturing to their companions about their firing angles just now.

"I always thought," Hina said softly, "that dealing with pirates of this level required a duel between experts. Blade against blade, sword against sword, using Haki, using Devil Fruit powers..."

"That's the logic of the top-tier battlefield," Yang Yunzhi said. "But at our level, the power of firearms has been seriously underestimated."

He walked over to a pile of confiscated weapons—mostly machetes, short axes, and harpoons. There were only a few guns, and they were in terrible condition.

"These low-level pirates aren't nearly as resistant to firearms as the stories claim." Yang Yunzhi picked up a flintlock and pulled back the hammer to inspect it. "Look at Henry and Good. Their bodies were far stronger than ordinary people's, but bullets still pierced them. Maybe guns really are useless against people at the level of a General or one of the Four Emperors. But below that..."

He set down the gun and looked toward the sun, now fully risen in the east.

"The vast majority of pirates have little resistance to firearms."

Luffy was immune to bullets because of the Gum-Gum Fruit, and Moria might have developed some kind of physical damage reduction ability—but those were exceptions.

Hina seemed thoughtful. "You mean..."

"I mean," Yang Yunzhi said, turning around, his eyes exceptionally bright in the morning light, "with these tactics and the firepower of guns, we might be able to push all the way from the West Blue to Marine Headquarters."

He paused and smiled. "Of course, that's a bit exaggerated. But at least the path from lieutenant commander to rear admiral can be walked steadily—without exposing too much of our strength while minimizing casualties."

In the distance, Luo Niu was organizing the soldiers to move the pirates' bodies aboard the ship—they had to bring them back to verify their identities and claim the bounties. The big man's movements were steady, though the muscles in his arms visibly tightened when he lifted Henry.

Yang Yunzhi looked in that direction and suddenly recalled what Luo Ma had said quietly at the end of last night's meeting: "My brother... this is his first real battlefield. I hope all of us can survive."

Now Luo Niu was alive, alive and well.

Wasn't that the meaning of revolutionizing warfare? To let more people survive.

And there would be many more battles like this in the future.

"Let's go." Yang Yunzhi patted Hina on the shoulder. "Let's head back and request commendations for the boys. Also..."

He winked. "Tell the cooks to add meat. I keep my word."

Hina watched his receding figure as he walked toward the shore and suddenly felt that his steps were much lighter than when he had arrived.

Perhaps because of the victory.

Or perhaps because he had truly found a path that would let more people return home alive.

Morning light spread across the sea as the warships raised sail and set off.

Atop the masts, Navy flags snapped in the wind, their deep blue gleaming beneath the rising sun like freshly polished gun barrels.