Chapter 430

"It's broad daylight! Are you admiring the moon in your dreams!"

The entire Straw Hat crew had gathered on the deck of the Sunny.

Sima Di stood at the very front, facing everyone, looking somewhat awkward.

"Sima Di, don't tell me you're nervous?" Zoro laughed.

"Sima Di, say whatever you want. We're not outsiders anymore," Usopp said.

"Hmm... I understand." Sima Di tried to adjust his breathing.

Perhaps no one would believe it if he said it, but Sima Di himself was a conservative and shy person; communicating with others was not his strong suit. Precisely because of this, he preferred to immerse himself in the sea of books. Later becoming a freelance writer was eighty percent due to his liking and twenty percent due to his personality.

"Then... let me introduce myself first." Sima Di finally adjusted his mindset and spoke.

"Introduce yourself? That's not necessary. We all know," Nami said, startled.

"No, you don't know. My name is Sima Di, but that is not my given name."

"What do you mean?"

"My given name is a single character 'Xi', while my surname is Lin. So, like Sanji, you should address me as Lin Xi or Lin Taishi," Sima Di explained.

"Lin Xi?" Sanji tried calling out.

"Eh? So that's how it is? So Lin is the surname?" Chopper's small face was full of shock.

"Next... gender, age, and hobbies, I think we can skip those. However, I can talk about my birthplace."

"Isn't your birthplace Jin Long Country?" Zoro asked, looking confused.

"No, just looking at you, you must have fallen asleep on the train and didn't hear our conversation at all," Sima Di complained. "I am from..."

Boom—

A loud thunderclap exploded, rising completely without warning.

Sima Di was instantly startled.

Nami also looked up at the sky in confusion, finding only clear skies. Moreover, she had never felt any signs of an approaching storm herself.

"The weather in the Grand Line is truly strange," Usopp muttered.

Sima Di didn't take it to heart and continued, "My hometown is very similar to Jin Long Country, but there is a huge difference. I am actually from..."

Boom—

Crack—

Sima Di looked back at the spot where he had originally been standing with fear, seeing that the grass there had been scorched black by lightning, emitting black smoke.

If he hadn't dodged in time, that bolt of lightning would have struck him directly.

And at this moment, when everyone looked at the sky again, it was already shrouded by a vast expanse of Lei Yun, with Lei Sheng crackling within, looking gloomy and terrifying.

"This... what exactly is going on?" Nami asked in shock.

"This absolutely cannot be explained by the sophistry of Grand Line weather anymore," Usopp also looked at Sima Di.

Everyone looked at Sima Di with strange eyes, and Sima Di himself was still shaken, sweating profusely.

"Perhaps some things... really cannot be spoken." Sima Di slowly looked at the sky, then raised his voice and shouted loudly, "I understand! I won't say it! Is that fine now!"

As soon as Sima Di finished speaking, the vast area of Lei Yun in the sky rapidly dispersed before everyone's surprised eyes.

"Ah! That's amazing! Sima Di, how exactly did you manage to control them!" Luffy looked at Sima Di with starry eyes. "Is it that saying that spell gives you the ability to control them? Okay, I'll try too!"

Luffy then cleared his throat, put on a mysterious expression, and repeatedly repeated it in a strange tone.

"I am actually from~ I am actually from~ I am actually from~"

"You are actually from the Idiot Planet!" Nami punched Luffy on the head without hesitation.

Sanji looked at Sima Di and murmured, "Maybe Lin Xi really is a fairy descending from heaven or something... No, 'Lin Xi' is too strange. It should be called Lin Xian Ta!"

"Lin Xian Ta... that's even stranger," Usopp couldn't help but retort.

"Haha, it seems our first mate really comes from an extraordinary place," Robin said with a smile.

"Eh... I also noticed, it's very extraordinary. Mainly, the guys from the Spades of previous generations are from the same place as me." As soon as Sima Di finished speaking, he covered his mouth, but when he looked up at the sky, everything was normal.

Sima Di inexplicably breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that as long as he didn't touch on information about the original world, nothing would happen.

"Sima Di... maybe, just don't say it." Nami looked at him with some concern. "How do you say it in your language... it's the Heavenly Dao, right? The Heavenly Dao of this world won't let you say these things."

"Heavenly Dao? Who is the Heavenly Dao? What right does it have to stop Sima Di from speaking! Tell me where the Heavenly Dao is! I'll beat it up!" Luffy immediately said angrily.

"The Heavenly Dao is not a person!" Zoro helplessly held back Luffy who was about to rush out. "The Heavenly Dao is an existence even more ethereal than gods and such."

"Huh? Zoro knows about the Heavenly Dao? It seems you've also read Sima Di's?" Robin asked.

"Just bored, bored to death," Zoro argued.

"In your words, it's better to train than to read that! Master Zoro." Sima Di stood up, brushed off the grass from his clothes, and said with a smile, "Don't worry. It seems that guy Heavenly Dao just won't let me speak about my hometown, but I can still tell you about the Spades. Next, I just need to carefully avoid anything related to my hometown. Luffy, sit down properly and listen; this is about your future enemies."

"Enemies? I understand!" Luffy plopped down cross-legged on the ground, his expression serious, but looking like he would jump up and beat someone up at any second.

The Spades, although the Navy publicly called this organization the highest scientific research organization, was different from Vegapunk's direction of scientific research; it was a place purely researching human psychology.

The research methods of this organization were extremely different from those of ordinary psychologists; instead of observing humans, they gathered direct experimental subjects in a relatively enclosed space and formulated special rules for these people to execute, and the time was limited.

By observing the actions of these people and recording human reactions in various situations, such as under extreme fear, in situations of isolation and helplessness, or in cases of betrayal by a loved one. By integrating these data, certain conclusions were drawn.

Due to the special nature of this experiment, namely the closure and the formulation of rules leaning towards the negative, ninety-nine percent of the experimental data was about various negative human emotions, leading to some extreme situations, such as the massive death of experimental subjects.

The executors, that is, the Spades of previous generations, liked to call this experiment—Death Game.

"And I am the sole survivor of the ninety-eighth Death Game, and I succeeded to the position of Spades. That is, the tenth Spades, known as Red Heart Sima Di."

"What experiment... this is clearly locking people together and letting them kill each other!" Nami shouted.

Not only Nami, but the expressions of the others were also not good.

"I heard about this matter before, but I didn't expect it to be true..." Two drops of cold sweat also ran down Robin's forehead.

"I don't know how many times it was held here. But in my hometown... judging by the records they left behind, the first Death Game occurred fifty years ago, and up to me, a total of one hundred were held," Sima Di said. "Usopp, Zoro, do you remember the Hag Island we accidentally entered before?"

Upon mentioning the three words Hag Island, the two men's bad memories were aroused.

"Sima Di, are you saying..." Usopp said.

"Ah, yes. That is a death game. For the organizer, it is a game; but for the participants, it is death."

Everyone saw deep guilt on Sima Di's face.

"Then... the guy I saw back then, was he the organizer?" Zoro suddenly remembered that emaciated yet extremely dangerous fellow.

"Yes. What I am about to say next is exactly that."

Sima Di stepped aside to reveal the whiteboard behind him, on which their names were written in detail.

"It is likely that one of them possesses the ability to awaken souls from the Netherworld; even the dead can be awakened. Like the person Zoro saw on Hage Island was Lu Kasi, the Third Generation King of Killers, but this fellow was executed forty years ago on charges of murder. Because his crimes were too heinous and the impact too terrible, his execution was public, and there was absolutely no possibility of him surviving by luck. Yet now he appears on Hage Island; there is no explanation other than he is a special Fruit user."

"In other words, from the First Generation up to the Eleventh, except for me, regardless of life or death, they all served within the Spades and continued their so-called experiments here. The worst part is... Lu Kasi made Zoro feel a sense of danger from a dangerous person, which means at the very least the First through Third Generations' strength is above ours, and even above Luffy's."

Sima Di drew a black line under the Third Generation with a whiteboard marker and proposed the worst-case scenario.

Subsequently, Sima Di told everyone about meeting the Seventh Generation Orta and his Saint Envoy Machinaga in Alabasta, meeting the Eighth Generation Evelyn on Long Chain Island, and meeting the Third Generation Saint Envoy Brad on Enies Lobby.

"... Although Brad was easily taken down by the three of you back then, he did not display his true ability. His ability leans toward control: paralysis, mental Illusionary Realm, and so on. If your attacks had not come so suddenly, and I had not crippled one of his forms, once he recovered, we would be the ones trapped in a predicament," Sima Di said. "Judging from today's newspaper, this guy should still be alive. And when we meet him a second time, he will become even harder to deal with."

"So our enemies are these fifteen guys..." Zoro said.

"And endless Marines, and even Admiral-level figures," Sanji added.

"Right... the situation is roughly like this," Sima Di nodded.

"But... Sima Di, what exactly is their purpose in doing this?" Nami asked, confused. "Even if it is an experiment, they cannot act so arbitrarily!"

"It is an experiment to convert emotions into energy."

Sima Di explained Emotion to everyone, along with the matter of the artificial Fruit SMILE.

"Artificial Fruit?" Usopp could even imagine how powerful a scene an army of artificial Fruit users would be.

"However... they are not collecting this data solely for how to better produce Emotion. For them, perhaps this is just a side matter." Sima Di's face grew gloomy.

Subsequently, one by one, the Straw Hats were shocked into silence as Sima Di spoke.

If these guys from the Spades truly succeed, this world will no longer be as it is now. And that future is something no one wants to see.

"No time to lose! Then let us set off for Spade Island right now! Let us wipe out all those guys!" Luffy's adrenaline surged, and he could no longer hold himself back.

132 Shark Meat and Dragon Meat Are Very Similar?

"Before participating in the game, I was just an ordinary person. I knew no swordsmanship, no martial arts techniques, had no Fruit ability, no awakened Observation Haki surpassing the ordinary; I was just someone who wouldn't even dare to kill a chicken. The only reason I was selected as a participant in the death game was because of my work. Before I wrote fantasy and romance, my writing style leaned more toward suspense and horror. They felt that suited their tastes, so they chose me. In that game, I survived by luck until the end. And the previous generation of Spades committed suicide in front of me after the game ended. Thus, I was forced into the role, becoming the Tenth Generation."

"Of course, I absolutely refused to agree. I tried to escape, even attempted suicide, but failed. Later, that guy even threatened my parents' lives..."