Flower Country ranked among the very top nations in the West Blue. More importantly, several characters from this country had fairly substantial roles in the original manga's Dressrosa arc.
Not only did those characters dress in a Chinese-influenced style, but even their signature fighting technique, "Hasshoken," had a touch of martial arts fiction about it, so Xie Wen was quite looking forward to Flower Country.
But after Xie Wen took another good look back through what he remembered about Flower Country, he noticed a few things that did not quite add up.
Logically speaking, Flower Country had Chinjao, a great pirate whose bounty had already reached five hundred million Beli decades ago, and Sai, the Happo Navy's thirteenth leader, was also a powerful fighter capable of using Armament Haki. The country itself should have been very strong, practically unmatched in the West Blue.
Yet in the manga, because Doflamingo sold weapons to their opponents, Flower Country suffered defeat after defeat on the battlefield, eventually having to bring Chinjao out of retirement and send him to Dressrosa to destroy the Heavenly Yaksha's underground arms supply routes...
Leaving aside how ridiculous that strategy was, Xie Wen did not believe anyone in the West Blue could beat the Happo Navy's top fighters... unless Red-Haired Shanks happened to be back in his hometown buying booze.
Even Capone Bege, who did not know Haki at all, could become one of the giants of the West Blue's underworld. How the hell was Flower Country getting beaten down when it had Chinjao, who could use all Three Types of Haki?
Against Conqueror's Haki, numbers meant absolutely nothing.
If it were just a manga, that could be explained as the Happo Navy benefiting from a power upgrade in a later arc or something. But to Xie Wen, the