The more Ye Chen experienced, the more mature and steady he became. By nature, he should have fought the government to the bitter end and never backed down. But after seeing its power during his last trip to the Holy Land, he had been forced to change tactics. He could no longer charge headlong into everything. Some problems called for thought, not brute force.
Becoming a Shichibukai, for instance, did him no harm and gave him plenty of advantages. In the past, Ye Chen would never have accepted the title.
Then there was his takeover of the Auction House. Ye Chen had a perfectly righteous-sounding justification: he tied his position to the government's and openly laid the blame for the Auction House's crimes on Disco and Grande.
The government had to swallow its anger. It could do nothing about him!
Of course, it would hate Ye Chen even more in secret. But he was no fool. Even if he did nothing, the government would still want him dead. After all the Celestial Dragons he had killed, there could never be real peace between them.
He had already offended the government beyond repair, so he had no reason to hold back. Killing Grande was also his way of showing it what he could do.
It was as though he were saying, I killed him. What are you going to do about it?
This time, Ye Chen had killed with such a solid justification that the government had no grounds to complain.
Whether Grande deserved to die did not matter to him. At the very least, he had made Sengoku and the others understand that Ye Chen was not someone to trifle with.
Chaton hurried to report the incident to Sengoku. Sengoku was stunned. "What? He killed Grande?"
"Heh?"
After a moment,