As expected.
After waking up, Nojiko and Nami couldn't find their beloved belongings. Frustrated and aggrieved, they both burst into tears.
Shanu, indignant, joined Bellemere in scolding the unscrupulous thief, calling him a scumbag. He even stole children's things, worse than an animal! He then went to the market and bought a bunch of new hairpins and headbands. After much coaxing and deceiving, he finally got the two little ones to smile.
After this ordeal, coupled with some subsequent control experiments,
Shanu finally figured out the logic behind the sacrifice system.
1. The offering must be closely connected to the comic character, and its value is positively correlated with the closeness of the connection.
For example, Nami's cherished orange hairpin is far more valuable than her stinky socks.
2. The value of a sacrifice is positively correlated with the strength of the source and the role of that character in the manga.
While strength is a natural correlation, items with emotional ties to powerful individuals are harder to obtain and therefore naturally more valuable.
As for character weight, that's also easy to understand. For example, a sacrifice obtained from Nami is a notch higher in value.
After all, in the manga, Nami is the main heroine, while Nojiko is a minor supporting character, and Bellemere exists only as a memory.
To ensure this, Shanu even took advantage of Ken's nap and sent his thieving cat, Nami, to steal the windmill from his head, earning a meager 10 points.
Fortunately, even the smallest mosquito is still meat, and its low value can't be helped. After all, most manga readers don't even remember who this person is.
3. A sacrifice from the same source must wait a year before it can be offered again.
In other words, there's a long cooldown for plundering, making it impossible to plunder a single fat sheep.
Looking at his mere 25 points, Shanu sighed sadly. This rule was the reason he was so poor now.
If it weren't for this restriction...
if he were given a few years to develop quietly, he wouldn't dare to imagine how strong he would be by the time he reached adulthood and set sail.
He wondered if the three admirals combined could withstand a single blow from him.
"What are you daydreaming about?"
Bellemere waved his hand in front of him, shattering Shanu's reverie. "You've already changed, why don't you hurry up and eat? You've been working all afternoon, aren't you hungry?"
Indeed, eating was more important.
The warm light in the kitchen wafted the rich aroma of meat.
The two greedy little cats had already devoured their food, but their appetites were too small, and the table still looked overflowing with food, as if it hadn't been touched.
When they entered, Nojiko immediately acted like a lady, sipping her corn soup, while Nami was still concentrating on the crispy crust on the caramel pudding.
But when Shanu sat down, clasped his hands together, and said, "I'm eating," the atmosphere suddenly changed.
The honey glazed ribs disappeared at a rate of three seconds per piece, and the steamed fish was reduced to bones in the blink of an eye. Main dishes such as mashed potato rice and garlic bread could not last more than a few seconds, as if they were swallowed into an endless black hole.
The number of empty plates increased rapidly, and soon piled up into a small mountain.
If there were outsiders here, they would definitely be stunned.
But the family has long been accustomed to it.
About a year or two ago, Shanu began to grow taller and his appetite increased day by day.
Boys have entered puberty and do physical work every day. It's normal for them to eat a little more than little girls!
Bellemere supported her face with her hands and watched Shanu eat with relish.
She didn't know if she had saved the East Blue in her previous life, so God gave her such cute little angels, especially Shanu, who was steady, sensible, diligent and reliable.
If he was really an angel, he would probably be the most popular one in heaven, right?
Speaking of which.
Although she had served in the Marines for several years and was physically stronger than the average person, supporting such a large family single-handedly was still a struggle.
For a long time, the three children's childhoods were characterized by extreme poverty and hardship.
At one point, Nami was forced to wear her sister's hand-me-downs, a fact Bellemere often felt guilty about. It wasn't until Shanu became the family's primary breadwinner that things began to improve.
Especially during the past two harvest seasons, Shanu managed to harvest the entire orange orchard within a week, whereas before, it would have taken her a full month.
Completing the harvesting and sorting work early meant she could sell all the oranges by the time the first cargo ship arrived, fetching slightly higher prices.
Consequently, this virtuous cycle had led to a steady increase in the family's income over the past few years.
Bellemere counted on her fingers that by the time this year's oranges were sold, her savings would exceed 300,000 berries!
Oh, my, was this childhood dream finally coming true? Just a few years ago, who could have imagined that one day she'd become a millionaire?
"Was this delivered today?"
It was Shanu's voice that shattered her rosy dreams.
"Huh?"
Bellemere snapped back to reality, only to find Shanu had finished his meal and was picking up a newspaper he'd left on the corner of the table.
"Yeah, the Newsbird didn't arrive until noon," Bellemere complained. "I don't know what the World Economic News Agency is doing. They've raised their prices again. Last week it was 40 beryls, now it's 50. When I was your age, it was only 20 beryls..."
She hadn't always subscribed to a newspaper, and couldn't afford it.
It was only after she'd become more affluent in the past two years that she started, at Shanu's insistence, and he meticulously read it every day.
Bellemere couldn't understand why her adopted son was so attentive to the newspaper. He always felt that the major events at sea seemed so far removed from their lives, as they grew up in the countryside growing oranges.
Her nagging went in one ear and out the other. Shanu hummed twice and began to scan the paper.
After only a few lines, his eyes were drawn to the story at the bottom of the front page.
"A Deal! Captain Jinbei of the Sun Pirates has become one of the new Shichibukai!"
There was a picture accompanying the post. A plump blue fishman, accompanied by several naval officers, clad in a yukata and wooden clogs, gazed calmly at the camera.
Shanu stared at the photo for a long time, unable to avert his gaze.
His hand gripping the edge of the newspaper tightened unconsciously.
"Is it coming..." he murmured softly.
"What?" Bellemere tilted her head in confusion.
"Nothing."
Shanu shook his head slightly and quickly flipped through the remaining pages.
After making sure that there was no other information worthy of attention, he glanced out the window, pushed open the dining chair and stood up.
"The rain seems to have stopped. I'm going to the garden to practice sword for a while. If it's late at night, you can go to bed first and don't wait for me."
He smiled, grabbed the wooden sword in the corner, pushed the door open and walked out, leaving behind a back figure that was getting farther and farther away outside the glass window.
"Hmm..."
Bellemere retracted her gaze, pinched her chin and fell into deep thought.
She was not an intuitive person. When she was a child, she was always described by the elders in her hometown as a naughty fool with an empty head.
But after so many years of being together day and night, she knew Shanu too well, and always felt that the latter's reaction must mean that he was hiding something from her.
She suddenly remembered vaguely.
When the child was ten years old, he had a long, vivid nightmare during his nap.
He suddenly woke up, sweating profusely, and came to her, claiming that a group of terrifying pirates would soon take over the island.
She was urged to move away, far away, and start a new life on another island.
Of course, she couldn't. This was her hometown. How could she move away just because of a child's inexplicable nightmare?
Besides, the 16th East Blue Branch, where she had served, was very close. If pirates really were coming, wouldn't the navy of the 16th Branch be able to deal with them?
Bellemere was at a loss for words, and spent a long time comforting the child until he calmed down.
From that day on, the child's temperament became more stable, and he never mentioned moving again. As time passed, he gradually became the pillar of the family. She had always been relieved that Shanu had grown up and reached a certain age, and because of his difficult background, he was far more mature than his peers.
Could it be that...
the shock of that nightmare was far more intense than she'd imagined, and that it persists to this day?
---------
"Whoa!"
On the nights between autumn and winter, the temperature plummeted to around zero degrees Celsius, and the white breath from his nose was visible to the naked eye.
Shanu jogged around the orange orchard for a dozen laps, a warm-up to digest his dinner.
He then reached an open area, stripped off his clothes, and exposed his muscular chest.
He settled into a horse stance, set his wooden sword aside, and began practicing his breathing boxing technique.
He had saved up for a long time last year, spending a whopping seven hundred points to purchase it from the trading market.
The core seemed to have some connection to the breathing techniques in Demon Slayer, yet they were distinctly different.
At the edge of the orange grove, a circular clearing had been deliberately cleared.
Nine thick wooden stakes, set in the ground at varying heights and distances, formed a circle, each tightly bound with iron hoops at the ends.
Shanu had commissioned the village carpenter to modify this, using old-fashioned orange trees that had been discarded last year.
If it weren't for the crayon graffiti Nami had scribbled on each stake—clouds, moons, and bunnies—it would have had the air of a grandmaster's dojo.
Within the stakes, half a basket of oranges lay.
Most were worm-eaten or rotten, the rejects discarded during the recent harvest.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three rotten oranges were thrown into the air. The instant they landed, the black-haired boy moved.
His right foot slammed down on the growth rings of the stakes. His hips twisted with a crackling sound, and his elbow struck the first falling fruit with a precise strike.
The seventh form of the Breathing Fist technique unleashed a raging air current beneath the skin, blasting the orange into eight evenly spaced pieces.
Before the juice could even reach his eyelashes, his left knee had already crushed the seed capsule of the second orange.
With the third orange still thirty centimeters from the ground, Shanu abruptly retracted his momentum. His right foot, already within striking distance, poised to pierce the orange peel, planted its foot firmly on the ground.
Tick-tock.
Sweat dripped down his chin onto the dead leaves, emitting a wisp of white smoke.
To suddenly relax muscles when they'd stretched to their limit, to repeatedly strengthen the capillaries—this was the secret technique described in the Breathing Fist manual.
Without stopping, Shanu pulled three more tangerines from the nearby bamboo basket and repeated the process over and over again.
He finally stopped when half the basket was nearly empty, then he went to the tap and washed his face.
With a swish, the empty basket was kicked away. After a brief rest, the dark-haired boy turned his attention to the nearby tangerine trees.
These were also the varieties Bellemere had purchased earlier. Both the yield and the taste of the fruit were far inferior to the subsequent plantings.
After this winter, they would be eliminated.
Like some fish-men whose nature was inferior, they deserved to be torn into sashimi!
Breathing Fist, Form 8!
"Hah!"
Shanu growled. As his left foot crushed the dead leaves beneath his feet, his right fist struck the tree with the arc of a swooping seagull.
Where the fists passed, the knuckles of his five fingers crackled like frying beans.
Bang, bang! Punch after punch, like a violent storm, the bones of his fists colliding with the tree trunks tinged with an iron-gray hue.
This hue is characteristic of the breathing fist technique, which stimulates the hardening of subcutaneous tissue, similar to the entwining of Armament Haki.
However, its coverage is minimal and its intensity is inferior, making it a low-end version.
After the full set of punches, a subtle "crack" echoed from the center of the orange tree, but only a few knuckle-deep fist marks remained on the surface.
Continue!
After a brief pause, a mere seconds, the old orange tree groaned in pain again.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The orange grove, shrouded in the previously silent night, was filled with the dull, rapid sound of blows.
"One thousand nine hundred and ninety-six, one thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven, two thousand!"
Retreat!
Shanu returned to his position, steadying his lower body, and exhaled deeply.
From his shoulders and head, curls of nearly transparent white air emanated, fading into the night.
From his shoulders downward, his torso trembled violently, lingering for several seconds before gradually fading.
Every muscle pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and waves of heat emanated from his pores, steaming the frost clinging to the dead branches and leaves at his feet into twisting vortices.
"Pretty good progress!"
Feeling the distinct sense of strength emanating from every part of his body despite his extreme weakness and exhaustion, Shanu twisted his neck, feeling a rebirth, and a pleased grin spread across his face.
It had to be said.
He truly possessed a natural talent for physical training. He had been practicing breathing boxing for a full year and a half.
From clumsy beginnings to increasingly proficient mastery, his progress was accelerating as if on a tactical booster.
From beginner to master, it took him a year, then another three months, finally achieving some success in late summer and early autumn.
And now, before winter had even fully arrived, he already felt the barrier of breaking through his limits.
At this rate, he was confident that after ten days of hard training, he would be able to perfect his boxing skills.