"I've heard a story!"
Ye Mu suddenly looked as though he was about to start telling a story, leaving everyone in the Whitebeard Pirates baffled. Weren't they in the middle of negotiations? Yamato, on the other hand, looked expectant. She loved listening to stories.
"I heard that there was an obscure country in the New World. Because it was too poor to pay the Heavenly Tribute and therefore couldn't become a member of the World Government, it became an uninhabited island plundered by pirates and human traffickers. Then, several decades ago, it suddenly began receiving a steady supply of various goods and money from an anonymous person. Only then did the country gradually begin to recover."
When this story was told, the vast majority of the Whitebeard Pirates were utterly confused. However, the captains and crew members trusted by Whitebeard were all shocked, because they understood that the protagonist of Ye Mu's story—the anonymous person—was their old man, Whitebeard, and that the country was their old man's homeland.
Yet this was something only those truly close to Whitebeard knew. How had Fire Dragon Ye Mu learned about it?
Yamato seemed to have realized something as well, and she gazed at Ye Mu.
Just then, Ye Mu continued in a sighing tone.
"To be honest, this is a beautiful story straight out of a fairy tale. But I've always wondered how long such a dreamlike story could last. What if one day the anonymous donations stopped, and the country became the uninhabited island it once was? Or what if people coveting the island set their sights on it, plunging it into war once more?"
Whitebeard's brows knitted tightly at once, but he said nothing. He simply listened in silence.
"No matter how wealthy a person is, nurturing an entire country is