"Still struggling, Pirate Hunter?"
On the pirate ship ahead, a burly man with a fleshy face stood on the figurehead, holding a massive black double-bladed axe.
He looked at the battered Zoro and laughed wildly.
"Your luck ends here, Zoro! Running into me, 'Black Axe' Buck, is the misfortune of your life! Boys, bring the ship alongside! I'll cut his head off myself and use it as a drinking cup!"
"Yeah! Boss, you're the best!"
The pirates on deck raised their cutlasses and muskets, roaring with excitement.
But those roars suddenly stopped, as though someone had seized them by the throat.
Between the pirate ship and Zoro's battered skiff, a small single-masted sailboat was cutting through the waves at an uncanny speed.
No one aboard was rowing, and its sail wasn't raised. It simply charged into the battlefield.
A young man stood at its bow.
He was sixteen or seventeen, bare-chested, with a somewhat ridiculous-looking wooden sword tucked at his waist.
He looked as though he had just woken up and gone out for a stroll, only to wander into a slaughterhouse by accident. There was even a trace of languor on his face.
"Huh? Where did this rat crawl out from?"
Black Axe Buck paused, his gaze lingering on the wooden sword for a second. The flesh on his face shook violently as he laughed. "Hahahaha! Hey, brat! Are you playing house? You dare come out to sea with a wooden toy?"
The pirates burst into laughter too, their whistles mingling with jeers.
"Probably some country brat who got lost!"
"Hey, kid! Go home and drink your milk! The sea isn't a place for you to run wild!"
Standing on the swaying bow, Lin Xuan picked at his ear, finding them rather noisy.
His gaze didn't linger on the shouting Black Axe. Instead, he looked past the pirate ship toward the skiff that could sink at any moment.
The green-haired fellow was staring fixedly at him.
Even from dozens of meters away, Lin Xuan could sense his faint but tenacious fighting spirit.
So this is the resilience that comes with so-called plot armor... Lin Xuan muttered inwardly, then curled his lips. "You're a little worse for wear than I imagined, future master swordsman."
"Boss, what do we do? Take him out while we're at it?" A pirate lackey raised his musket and aimed at Lin Xuan.
Black Axe Buck spat disdainfully, a vicious gleam flashing in his eyes. "Since he saw something he shouldn't have, he can blame his own bad luck. Turn the second cannon! Send that wreck and that brat with a death wish to the bottom of the sea to feed the fish!"
Clank, clank, clank-
With the grinding of gears, the heavy cannon slowly turned its black muzzle toward the young man standing at the bow.
"Hey! You with the wooden sword!"
A hoarse shout suddenly came from the side.
Propping himself up on his sword hilt, Zoro struggled to straighten and shouted toward Lin Xuan, "Get out of here! Don't get in the way! These guys are lunatics! Run if you don't want to die!"
He was nearly dead himself, yet he still had the time to worry about a stranger.
Lin Xuan raised an eyebrow, his hand tightening slightly around the wooden sword at his waist.
Perhaps this was what they called "humanity."
Even as a Pirate Hunter, this fellow was still a clumsy good guy at heart.
But...
"Run?"
Looking at the black muzzle and listening to the hiss of the lit fuse, Lin Xuan showed not the slightest fear. Instead, he bared his white teeth.
There wasn't a trace of warmth in that smile, only beastlike cruelty and frenzy.
"If I run, where am I going to find such good 'targets' to test my sword on?"
Boom-!
With a muffled blast, smoke erupted from the muzzle.
The iron ball, powerful enough to shatter the sailboat, flew straight toward him on a gust of hot air.
Zoro forgot to breathe.
His stamina had reached its limit and his eyelids were heavy, but he stubbornly fought to keep them open.
Zoro wanted to see the fate of that reckless young man. Perhaps a cloud of bloody mist would burst there in the next second.
But what he saw was a figure charging straight at the cannonball.
"Dangerous?"
In that instant, Lin Xuan's grin stretched to his ears, and dark golden light surged through his clear eyes.
It was a sign of Kenpachi's spiritual pressure coursing through his veins.
"Get this straight, small fry. Compared with this sea, I'm the more dangerous thing!"
Lin Xuan didn't dodge. The wooden planks beneath his feet exploded with a crash.
Using that recoil, he advanced rather than retreated, meeting the whistling iron ball head-on.
There was no fancy technique to the wooden sword in his hand. He simply raised it high, then brought it down with the most direct violence-
A downward slash.
Crack!
Time seemed to slip out of joint.
Before dozens of terrified eyes, that wooden sword cleaved the hard cast-iron cannonball cleanly in two in midair, as though it were a watermelon!
The severed halves lost their momentum and fell past either side of Lin Xuan, throwing up two tall columns of water.
Meanwhile, the bare-chested figure had already torn through the smoke and slammed down onto the Black Axe Pirates' deck.
Thud!
Wood chips flew, and spiderweb cracks spread across the deck beneath his feet.
Lin Xuan straightened and twirled the wooden sword in his hand, producing a low whistling sound.
He raised his head. His languid yet dangerous smiling face was now less than five meters from Black Axe Buck.
Dead silence fell over the deck.
The pirates stared dumbly, their cutlasses even making faint clinking sounds as their hands trembled.
What had just happened?
He had split a cannonball with a wooden sword?
Was that really something a human could do?
Even Zoro froze in the distance, his unfocused pupils trembling violently.
Not even his teacher, Koshiro, had ever demonstrated such overpowering swordsmanship.
That wasn't swordsmanship at all. It was pure strength.
"Y-you bastard!"
Black Axe Buck was the first to recover from his shock.
As a pirate with an eight-million bounty, he had never suffered such humiliation.
Fear turned into humiliated rage. The flesh on his face twisted as he slammed his massive double-bladed axe into the deck.
"What are you all standing around for? He's just one person! And all he's holding is a lousy piece of wood!"
Buck roared, spittle flying. "Shoot! Cut him down! Chop him into mincemeat! I'll double the reward!"
"Kill him-!!"
Spurred on by money, the pirates suppressed their fear.
Over a hundred blade-wielding thugs let out bestial roars and surged like a tide toward the young man in the middle of the deck.
"Yes, just like that..."
Facing sharp blades thrusting at him from every direction, Lin Xuan not only stood his ground but let out a low laugh.
It was the exhilaration of finally finding release after a long period of restraint.
No thought was needed, no strategy. He only needed to swing his arms.
"Too slow."
Just as the first cutlass was about to touch Lin Xuan's skin, the wooden sword pierced its wielder's throat first.
It was so fast that the wound didn't even have time to spurt blood.
Then Lin Xuan's figure vanished.
He plunged into the crowd, the rough wooden sword becoming the most terrifying blunt weapon in his hand.
Every swing came with the sound of shattering bones and the dull thump of bodies hitting the deck.
Bam!
A pirate attempting a sneak attack took a sweeping blow from the wooden sword to his chest. Like a rag doll knocked flying, his breastbone caved in as he flew backward over ten meters, bowling over a group of his companions behind him.
"Too light! Your blades are too light!"
Laughing wildly, Lin Xuan caught an iron club swung by a burly man with one hand, then smashed the man's wrist, bones and all, with a backhanded strike.
He rampaged through the crowd without any form or defense, fighting entirely by trading wounds.
But their blades left only faint white marks on his body, while every counterattack of his meant the end of a life.
Ten breaths.
Only ten breaths had passed.
The once-crowded deck suddenly became much emptier.
More than half the pirates lay on the ground. Some groaned in pain, while others had fallen silent.
The heavy stench of blood quickly spread through the sea breeze.
The remaining dozens of pirates stopped in their tracks.
Their sword hands shook violently. Only fear remained in their once-bloodthirsty eyes.
As they looked at the young man standing in a pool of blood, scraps of flesh clinging to him and liquid still dripping from his wooden sword, a chill shot from their soles to the crowns of their heads.
A monster.
He wasn't human at all.
Lin Xuan panted slightly, excited from the exertion.
He shook the blood and flesh from his wooden sword and, still unsatisfied, surveyed the steadily retreating pirates as though picking through stale vegetables.
"Why did you stop?"
He took a step forward.
That light step made everyone's heart clench.
Before his feet lay a corpse mangled beyond recognition, its gruesome mixture of red and white enough to make anyone vomit on the spot.
Lin Xuan didn't even glance at it, as though stepping over a stone.
Chapter 16: You split a cannonball with one slash, and you call that a wooden sword?
Before Lin Xuan's foot even came down, the remaining dozens of pirates could no longer hold out.
"A m-monster!"
Some dropped their swords, while others jumped straight into the sea, their cries drowning out the waves.
"Damn it!" "I'll cut down whoever retreats first!"
Black Axe Buck's eyes were bloodshot, and the flesh on his face kept trembling.
He knew perfectly well that fleeing from a monster like this meant certain death.
Before you continue