"Everyone~ Welcome to the Saint Blabo auction! I'm your host, Sweetheart Lilia~"
A scantily clad young woman held a microphone, striking alluring poses for the audience below as she announced loudly.
"Whooooo!"
"It's Miss Lilia from the Pleasure District!"
"Miss Lilia, look at me! We just had afternoon tea together last week!"
Quite a few men and a small number of women cheered loudly for the beautiful host onstage, but even more people remained unmoved, and some even looked impatient.
After briefly warming up the crowd, Lilia quickly got down to business.
"Now, let's begin today's auction! Bring out our first item! The strongest tree, which remains standing no matter how devastating the war! It's also the finest shipbuilding material, with only a handful of trees in the entire world-Treasure Tree Adam!"
Soon, several burly men wheeled a huge log onto the stage, then took out clubs and machetes and hammered and hacked away at it. Next, they switched to guns and fired at it, and eventually even brought out a flamethrower and sprayed it for quite a while. In the end, aside from a few soot marks that wiped right off, the log suffered no damage whatsoever.
"...Impressive!"
Even though Xie Wen knew how incredibly tough the stuff was, he still couldn't help voicing his admiration after seeing it firsthand.
Although it was wood, it was actually tougher than steel while still retaining some of wood's properties. No wonder it was hailed as the finest shipbuilding material.
Clearly, Xie Wen wasn't the only one who wanted something this good. Quite a few pirates were determined to get it too, so before he had even placed a single bid, the price had already climbed to 130 million Beli.
If Xie Wen remembered correctly, four or five years later, Franky would