The monks continued counting the money with practiced ease.
Just then, someone suddenly knocked on the locked doors of the main hall from the outside.
The knocking was urgent.
The doors were being pounded with a loud bang.
The ruddy-faced Fat Abbot frowned and barked unhappily, "What's all the noise about?"
An urgent shout from a monk came from outside the door.
"Monk Leader! Something terrible has happened, pirates are attacking!"
"Pirates?"
The warrior monks who were counting money stopped, their expressions turning grim.
The Fat Abbot's face darkened slightly, but he didn't panic, only saying in a deep voice:
"If pirates are attacking, let the Warrior Monk Institute intercept and eliminate them. This isn't the first time we've encountered such a thing, why the panic?"
"But... but it's the Rocks Pirates! And it's their main force! I saw Golden Lion, Charlotte Linlin, Whitebeard, and even their Captain Rocks D. Xebec is here!"
"Nani???"
Upon hearing it was the Rocks Pirates.
And their main force at that.
And even Rocks himself had come.
The abbot and warrior monks, who had been calm just a moment ago, immediately had a drastic change in expression.
"Quickly contact the nearby Marine base and have them send warships!"
"Put the money away and hide it! We absolutely cannot let the Rocks Pirates steal this money; these are donations we worked so hard to solicit!"
"Lie! Liu! Take your men and stop them immediately. You must buy time for the Marines to arrive!"
The Fat Abbot shouted in a panic.
"Yes, Monk Leader!"
Several warrior monk leaders took their orders, immediately dropped the Berries, grabbed their Khakkhara staves, and were about to rush out.
But before they could open the hall doors.
The tall hall doors shattered into pieces, as if sliced by something sharp, and crashed into the hall.
A man with shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing a robe and wooden clogs, holding twin swords, rushed in with a wild laugh.
Seeing the mountain of Berries piled on the long table, his eyes lit up.
"Jiehahahaha! Berries! So many Berries!"
"I'm rich, I'm really going to be rich this time!"
Golden Lion swung both hands, his two famous blades, Koutetsu and oto, instantly flashing. Two wide slashes erupted from the blades, flying horizontally toward the dozen or so warrior monks on both sides of the long table.
"Get lost, get lost! You stinking baldies! Get away from my Berries!"
"It's Golden Lion Shiki!"
The warrior monks were shocked, angry, and terrified.
But the abbot was behind them.
And beside them were the donations they had worked so hard to collect.
Even Golden Lion Shiki couldn't make them retreat at this moment.
The warrior monks were about to rush forward to fight Golden Lion with their lives.
Suddenly, the abbot's shout came from behind them.
"You're no match for him, get down!"
Without a moment's hesitation, the warrior monks threw themselves to the ground.
This actually made the rushing Golden Lion pause for a moment.
Then he saw the Fat Abbot standing behind the long table, with his back to the three Buddhas of the Past, Present, and Future, suddenly glaring and shouting as he struck out a palm directly at him.
"World-Honored One Subdues Demons!!"
"Boom!"
The moment the Fat Abbot struck his palm, a violent wind erupted within the entire hall.
Countless air currents surged, forming a giant palm in front of him. It shattered the two slashes Golden Lion had sent out with a single strike and continued unabated toward Golden Lion through the air.
The speed of this giant palm was incredibly fast.
Golden Lion certainly hadn't expected a monk to possess such power.
Caught off guard, just as he flew to the table and reached out to grab the Berries, the three-to-four-meter wide hand slammed into him, pinning him and blasting him out of the Grand Hall of the Great Sage!
Seeing this, the warrior monks' spirits were greatly lifted. They shouted "The Monk Leader is mighty!" and then grabbed their staves and rushed out in a swarm.
The Fat Abbot also walked out of the hall.
Outside the hall, Silver Axe, Gan Sui, and the others who had run in with Golden Lion hadn't even steadied their footing when they saw Golden Lion being pressed down by a giant palm, crashing into a massive bronze incense burner with a boom and falling miserably to the ground.
Incense ash billowed from the bronze burner, leaving Golden Lion looking quite disheveled and covered in dust.
Seeing Golden Lion in such a sorry state, Silver Axe, Gan Sui, and the others were all stunned.
"For real? There's actually such a powerhouse here? Even you, Shiki, are no match..."
"Bastard!!"
Golden Lion was furious. His hair and beard bristled as he floated up from the ground, his gaze cold as he looked at the Fat Abbot walking out of the Grand Hall.
"I'm going to kill you! You damn baldy!!"
He discarded the sword in his right hand and made a grasping motion from a distance toward the crowd of monks rushing out.
"Earth Roll!!"
"Rumble!"
The entire Grand Hall shook violently, and the ground within a hundred-meter radius began to churn.
Thousands of tons of soil and bricks rose from the ground like a tsunami, wrapping and coiling toward the Fat Abbot and the others.
This massive disturbance even affected his own side.
Silver Axe, Gan Sui, and the others standing on the ground were tossed high into the air by the churning earth.
"It's useless, Golden Lion Shiki!"
Facing this apocalyptic scene of disaster, the Fat Abbot assumed the appearance of a wrathful Vajra and roared.
"This is Puttelocrone, the International Charity Temple Headquarters!"
"Before the Lord Buddha, evil shall not prevail over righteousness!"
"Even if you are the Rocks Pirates, don't think you can take even a single piece of glazed tile from here."
With a solemn and dignified air, he pressed his palms together and then made a flower-pinching gesture with his right hand.
"Descent of the Wisdom King! Thousand-Armed Buddha!!"
In the next instant, to the wide-eyed shock of Silver Axe, Gan Sui, and the others, the endless soil rushing toward the monks exploded.
The Fat Abbot's body sank into the earth and immediately disappeared.
And in the next moment.
The ground for hundreds of meters around shook even more violently.
With a world-shaking explosion.
The ground beneath Golden Lion's feet suddenly bulged into a giant Buddha several hundred meters high, composed of millions of tons of earth.
This Buddha bore the face of the Fat Abbot from before.
Its body was covered in hundreds, even thousands of arms that sprouted and grew frantically, raining down like heavenly flowers, covering the sky as they struck at the floating Golden Lion!
Golden Lion gritted his teeth, "A Devil Fruit user?"
He made a grasping motion in the air.
"Lion's Majesty! Earth Roll!"
"Roar!!"
A chilling lion's roar sounded. In front of the Thousand-Armed Buddha, countless tons of soil suddenly surged, instantly piling into a hundred-meter-tall earthen lion. It opened its mouth and roared, meeting the countless descending giant palms.
"Rumble!!"
The deafening roar echoed throughout the entire island of Puttelocrone.
The dust and smoke rose hundreds, even thousands of meters into the air.
Even Carlo and the others, who were a thousand meters away, could see it.
Rocks raised an eyebrow and said in surprise:
"Oh? I didn't expect there to be this kind of combat power here. Not bad. Is this... the Stone-Stone Fruit, the Earth-Earth Fruit, the Island-Island Fruit, or the Combine-Combine Fruit?"
"You certainly know a lot, Rocks."
Carlo glanced at the giant lion and Buddha fighting in the center of the island, then turned his head toward the sea outside the island.
"However, now is not the time to be interested in that. It seems we're in trouble."
"Hmm?"
Rocks was startled and turned to look along with Whitebeard, their pupils suddenly shrinking.
On the vast sea outside Puttelocrone Island.
Large amounts of bubbles were gurgling up from dozens of places on the sea surface.
Massive shadows were rapidly expanding beneath the surface.
Before long.
The sea water burst open with a splash.
Large dark-green warships emerged from the sea one after another, completely surrounding the entire island of Puttelocrone!
Whitebeard exclaimed in surprise, "How can there be so many warships? Were they coated and hidden underwater?"
Rocks' face darkened as he looked back at the Puttelocrone temple behind him.
"So, this was a trap?"
"A fine scheme indeed, Marines!"