Chapter 239: Solving the Chronic Ailment of Alabasta

In the end, the three members of the Straw Hat Pirates still did not go directly to take back their pirate ship. On one hand, there were guards protecting it, and the Straw Hat Pirates did not want to get into a dispute with them yet; on the other hand, even if they took the ship now, they would have no chance to set sail.

After all, besides the ship, Luffy would not forget that his companion Usopp had also been taken away. Compared to the Going Merry, it was more important to rescue his companion.

Moreover, Zoro and Sanji were also concerned about what the guards had said—things like "Royal Consort"... It sounded like Uchiha Feiyu was doing quite well in Alabasta? Did he marry the Princess, or did he marry the Queen?

Having shaken off the entanglement of the guards, before the Straw Hat trio could even go to gather information, someone had already come knocking.

"Are the three of you enemies of that Uchiha Feiyu? If you want to find trouble for him, perhaps we can help!"

Several cloaked, sneaky figures appeared before Luffy and came directly to seek cooperation with them.

"Who are you people? Why have you come to find us?"

Zoro frowned and asked with some suspicion, and those cloaked figures immediately answered their question:

"We are the Rebel Army of Alabasta. As for why we are looking for you? That is naturally because we all have a common enemy!"

Uchiha Feiyu was not aware of the contact between the Rebel Army and the Straw Hat Pirates. After Alabasta gradually entered a state of negotiation, he had already shifted his targets for killing.

He had aimed his killing targets at those aristocratic classes and officials of Alabasta!

As mentioned earlier, Alabasta falling into its current state was not solely the credit of the sand crocodile; it could even be said that this Seven Warlords of the Sea's Dance Powder plan had always been just a fuse. What truly caused Alabasta to fall into its current predicament was its already rotten aristocratic class.

Princess Vivi's father, Cobra, was a very benevolent king, but that was all he had—benevolence. As for wrist, political strategy, and methods of governing, one could not say he had none at all, but one could only say it was a complete mess.

Although in this world of One Piece where things are compared by who is worse, Cobra could already be called "wise and martial," far stronger than the likes of Wapol or the Celestial Dragons, it was clear that the problems of Alabasta exceeded this guy's ability to handle them.

After all, Alabasta had a vast land area, arguably the largest country on the Grand Line, with a standing army of 600,000 alone—in comparison, Wapol's Drum Kingdom had less than 60,000 citizens in total, or Dressrosa, occupied by Doflamingo, had at most only a hundred thousand or so.

It could be said that Alabasta was one of the most difficult countries to manage on the entire Grand Line. The harsh desert environment, the massive land area, the large population, and the solidified class structure made Cobra worry until his hair turned white, yet he remained helpless.

However, for Uchiha Feiyu, this was not difficult at all. He had no political level, nor did he have the ability to solve Alabasta's problems through political means—but he could directly solve the people who constituted these problems!

In an extraordinary world like One Piece, if individual strength is strong enough to a certain degree, it can completely compensate for one's own lack of wisdom and political ability.

After all, the so-called ultimate means of politics is naked violence. In an ordinary world, one must gather a crowd to form a more powerful violent group, so the ruler must have certain political schemes.

However, in this extraordinary world, Uchiha Feiyu alone was equivalent to the strongest violent group in Alabasta. Coupled with the great cause of being Princess Vivi's fiancé and the successor of Alabasta, overturning the table was simply easy.

Because most of Alabasta's territory was desert and people could only live in oasis areas, it adopted a method close to a feudal system.

For example, Rainbase could almost be said to be Krokfar's personal city. The money and taxes obtained were never turned over to the Alabasta Kingdom. In fact, there were many such oasis cities that were close to being separatist regimes, and the Alabasta Royal Family could directly control less than one-fifth of the oases in the entire country.

However, when the masters of these oasis cities squeezed the people, they would all use the name of the Alabasta Royal Family, so the people's resentment was ultimately concentrated on the Alabasta Royal Family.

Besides this, the problem of officials in Alabasta was also not small. After being passed down for hundreds of years, almost all the officials here had turned into a hereditary system. The corruption and mutual protection among officials that this brought about formed a giant web, constantly sucking blood from this country.

Uchiha Feiyu first carried out a great purge among the officials of Alabasta. The method was also very simple: he dragged Golden Week to hypnotize the officials one by one. Facing Golden Week's paintbrush and coloring, these officials had no power to resist at all and spilled everything they had done one by one.

Then came the unscrupulous mass killing. Anyway, he himself counted as the barrel of a gun; he did not care about the resistance of these pen-pushers at all.

As for problems like the collapse of order after killing the officials—like a kingdom like Alabasta that had been peaceful for a long time and passed down for many years, it had nothing else in abundance, but it had plenty of people who could be officials! A large batch of officials could be selected at will.

During this period, every day in Alubarna, one could see officials being executed. Uchiha Feiyu strictly followed the laws of the Alabasta Kingdom and handled all problems severely and heavily.

Although Cobra was a benevolent king, this did not mean that the laws of the Alabasta Kingdom were benevolent. In fact, in the One Piece World, the laws of no country were humane; they were just very loose.

What is called loose laws? It means that the results of handling cases all depend on the mood and thoughts of the person enforcing the law.

One can handle them strictly and heavily, or one can make big issues small. And once they are handled strictly and heavily, it is basically a result of beheading.

Almost every day, Alubarna had to push out the corpses of more than a dozen officials. Although Cobra and Vivi were benevolent in character, under Golden Week's hypnosis, the confessions written by those officials left the two with nothing to say about Uchiha Feiyu's actions.

This method of slaughter, although crude, was also the fastest way to solve class solidification, official corruption, and other problems. According to Uchiha Feiyu's standards, he had killed almost 70% of Alabasta's officials, as many as over a thousand people.

But at the same time, the money obtained from raiding their homes was equivalent to more than a dozen years of taxes for Alabasta. This did not even count the many fixed assets that occupied the larger share. Honestly, when seeing the results, even Cobra and Princess Vivi wished they could drag those officials out and behead them again.

Of course, now Uchiha Feiyu's reputation in Alabasta was even more terrifying. Before, it was only the rebels who shouted things like "Slaughterer" and "Feather of Destruction," but now even the nobles of Alabasta knew that this was an out-and-out god of slaughter!

"Hmm... the problem of the officials is solved just like that. With a large amount of money to fill the national treasury, plus the large amount of state-owned assets recovered, Alabasta can be considered to have caught its breath."

"The next problem should be those separatist nobles. When the time comes, I will take a few members of Baroque Works to pay them a visit and send some warmth, checking the work situation of these nobles. I believe we will be able to concentrate power back very soon."

Sitting in a chair, Uchiha Feiyu looked at the intelligence in his hand and was slowly analyzing it. Opposite him were Princess Vivi and her father, King Cobra.

This king, who was known for his benevolence in the original work, had a complex expression on his face at this moment and said in a low voice:

"Do we still have to continue killing? The situation in Alabasta has already improved a lot, hasn't it?"

"If you are willing to wait until Vivi reaches your age to launch another large-scale rebellion and repeat what was done today, then you can indeed stop now."

Uchiha Feiyu said indifferently. In fact, these separatist nobles caused much greater harm than corrupt officials, and even among the Alabasta rebels, there were shadows of these separatist nobles.

After all, even if the rebels could kill the Alabasta Royal Family, it was almost impossible for them to hold this country. One must know that the World Government exists in this world.

At that time, those separatist nobles would naturally jump out, directly expel the rebels, and receive the fruits of victory... Anyway, in this extraordinary world, as long as one lets go of the bottom line, it is too easy to deal with pure rebels.

The root of the rebels was because the people in the country could not survive. In the final analysis, it was a problem of insufficient resources and unfair distribution in Alabasta.

Uchiha Feiyu's mass killing had indeed solved part of the resource distribution problem, but at the same time, there were still a large amount of resources in the hands of those separatist nobles that had not been distributed to the ordinary people.

With the resources and population currently mastered by Alabasta, if the rebellion subsided and it entered a peaceful era, after a few decades, it would definitely break out into new rebellions again due to population explosion, resource reduction, and other problems. In the final analysis, it was because these separatist nobles occupied too many resources.

Hearing this, King Cobra's face changed, and he gritted his teeth:

"Then I will leave it to you, Feiyu!"

"I am truly very sorry. It is because of me, an incompetent king, that you and Vivi have had to bear too much pressure, and even your reputation..."

"Reputation and such are meaningless. Under the condition that we hold the great cause, anyway, the Marine will not issue a bounty for me because of my reputation. Being able to create a deterrent effect on nobles and officials is even better."

Since ancient times, most of the wise and martial emperors in feudal dynasties were tyrants in the eyes of ministers, killing people without mercy. In the eyes of these true enlightened monarchs, deterrent power is the most important thing.

Moreover... these separatist nobles were not like ordinary officials; they had quite a few troops under their command. Now that the rebels had the idea of peace talks and could not be killed at will, Uchiha Feiyu could only set his sights on these separatist nobles and the troops under them.

"Uh... perhaps what you say is right! Blind benevolence does not seem to be able to govern a country well."

"Perhaps your iron-blooded means will be of better help when governing the country, and coupled with Vivi, the two of you can complement each other. In that case, I have no regrets about handing the country over to you."

A wry smile appeared on Cobra's face. It was not until Uchiha Feiyu interrogated all the intelligence on those officials that he knew how rotten his country had become.

Before that, although he had a vague understanding in his heart, because of his blind benevolence, he did not pursue the behavior of the officials, which led to these officials and nobles becoming even more arrogant.

"Whether it is benevolence or iron-bloodedness, in fact, the most important thing is to hold power tightly! If you, Father-in-law, had really learned from me earlier, you would have probably 'fallen into the water and died' long ago."

Although the people in the One Piece World are not very smart, their martial virtue is far too abundant. Mixing here, as long as your brain is good enough, you don't need to be too smart, but your strength must be strong, otherwise you might die into slag at any time.

"Haha, what you said is also right. Alabasta... is indeed too weak."

"Alright, let's not waste any more time. Princess Vivi and King Cobra, you two should first focus on negotiating with the Rebel Army and try to appease them. As for me, it's time to go back to cutting people down!"

Although King Cobra and Princess Vivi were the royalty of this country, the one truly in charge was Uchiha Feiyu, and judging by their expressions, they were perfectly willing to accept this.

This was not only because of Uchiha Feiyu's strength and kindness, but more so because Uchiha Feiyu's methods had truly resolved the chronic illness that had plagued Alabasta for years.

After assigning the tasks, Uchiha Feiyu did not delay and headed straight for the oasis that was the target of the mission. Alabasta currently had over a dozen separatist noble factions of varying sizes, and these noble factions had formed alliances among themselves, resulting in three main leaders.

Since he was prepared to act, Uchiha Feiyu started directly with the strongest separatist noble faction. There was nothing much to say about it—this place, Alabasta, basically had no strong fighters; even the strength of the royal family was just so-so, with only two Zoan Devil Fruit users worth mentioning, let alone these nobles.

In any case, he would just move to capture the nobles, have Miss Golden Week use Hypnosis to obtain their confessions, and then it was just a slaughter. In just over a week, those nobles and their die-hard subordinates were mostly dead, and Uchiha Feiyu's hands were stained with tens of thousands more souls.

These souls mostly belonged to soldiers or guards with decent training, providing Uchiha Feiyu with more blood energy, while also causing his body to evolve further toward a Shura. Both his physical constitution and the Armament Haki within his body had improved significantly.

Even the Sandai Kitetsu in Uchiha Feiyu's hand had completely transformed into a Black Blade amidst the constant slaughter, though unlike a typical Black Blade, the final color of this sword was a pure, dark red, as if it were a mass of congealed blood.

(End of chapter)