Chapter 236: The Greatest Ideas

When Sengoku’s head was smoking, Ian and the Dragon Hunter Pirates were enjoying themselves.

When they learned that the Princess of Salamis turned out to be one of the slaves who had escaped with them from Marijoa, all the members of the Dragon Hunter Pirate Group immediately regarded this country as their home. After Ian healed his crew, he walked around the island.

In retrospect, after escaping from Marijoa and setting up their Pirate Group, the people on board, including Ian, seemed to never have really rested with a relieved mind. They had been repeating only three things: fighting, escaping, and sailing. And this time, after repelling the admirals’ pursuit, everyone took a deep breath and sighed happily. They knew that the Marines would not send more troops to hunt them down for the time being.

So taking advantage of this opportunity, everyone planned to relax.

Margaret and a group of girls on the ship became good friends with the princess Sally immediately. Under her leadership, they wandered around the stores of Salamis every day, shopping and bathing in hot spring together… While Ian sent his men to refresh themselves, so they kept on looking for all kinds of food, pubs, various entertainment venues, and casinos in this country. Ian has given each of them a large amount of pocket money. They deserved it…

So, what was our MC doing?

On Salamis Island, in the private beach of his majesty Carlos, the blue sea water gently washes the golden sand, and the stimulating wind blows on the tall coconut trees making a rustling sound. This was originally an extremely comfortable coastal scenery. However, in such a fine view, no one was swimming and enjoying the seawater, instead, a huge umbrella was planted nearby.

Under the parasol, there was a square table. Ian, Fujitora, Ace, and Marco have gathered around, shuffling mahjong tiles.

That’s right, this was the gambling game that Ian promised to show to Uncle Fujitora. Among the various gambling games in this world, there was no such thing like it.

This was why Ian doesn’t like gambling, because besides playing mahjong, he doesn’t understand other stud games like Poker…

Mahjong was too different…

As long as he has the right materials, Ian can easily carve a whole set of mahjong. When he taught Fujitora how to play, who was filled with enthusiasm, and brought in Ace and Marco to join too, the four played a few games as tutorials. After a couple of rounds, they immediately fell in love with it, and got hooked…

[This game is played with a set of 144 tiles based on Chinese characters and symbols, although some regional variations may omit some tiles or add unique ones. In most variations, each player begins by receiving 13 tiles. In turn, players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand using the 14th drawn tile to form four melds (or sets) and a pair (eye). A player can also win with a small class of special hands.]

Fujitora was probably the happiest one, because mahjong was different from other gambling games. In his case, he can’t see the whole game due to his blindness, but he can touch the mahjong tiles and figure out their content!

When getting used to it, Fujitora’s movements when drawing the tiles were exactly like a veteran.

Fujitora drew a tile, rubbed it with his fingers gently, and then snapped it on the table, “Pap!” making a crispy noise, and then he laughed loudly: “Two dots! I figured it out, I’m going crazy! It’s a shame that you all lost…”

He revealed his deck and put his tiles on the table. Amid the sighs of these three, he happily collected the money.

In the past, Fujitora used to gamble and lose most of the games. In addition to his bad luck, he was often deceived because he couldn’t see the results. But now when he played mahjong, he turned into a genius. In just a few rounds, Ian, Ace, and Marco have lost their will! It felt like Fujitora has collected the missing luck of his decades of gambling.

Now the one-month appointment between Ian and Fujitora’s bet has arrived, but Fujitora has never mentioned his departure. He has now completely accepted his identity as the deputy captain of the Dragon Hunter Pirate Group.

This made Ian wonder if he was worried about leaving, then not finding anyone to play mahjong with him!?

If he remembers correctly, Fujitora used to like gambling with dice, but now, Ian has successfully changed Fujitora’s hobby…

Not only Fujitora, but even Ace and Marco, although they were losing a lot and their faces turned dark, they still shuffled the tiles blatantly and continued the struggle.

On the beach, instead of enjoying the sun and the sea, they openly gambled under an umbrella. This was a very beautiful view, but they can’t do anything about it. Except for Ian, all the rest around the mahjong table were Devil Fruit Users. None of them would dare to swim! So the so-called Royal private beach was just a background.

“Red Dragon!” While playing, Ian asked Ace: “Hasn’t you guys heard any news from the Marines?”

“No!” Ace shook his head and said, “A while ago, the Pirates guerrillas came and gave Oyaji a Den Den Mushi. Then Zephyr contacted Oyaji once, but they didn’t seem to have reached an agreement.”

In the past few days, Ian learned about the detention of Zephyr’s students, Ain and Binz. When he heard about this, he couldn’t help laughing. In fact, in the beginning, Ian never thought about arresting these two, just to prevent them from making trouble and causing too many casualties to his crew, he knocked them down and left them.

It was only the latter thing, even Ian didn’t expect that Baby-5 and Ace actually tied these students up and hid them…

Ain and Binz, one has the power of the return fruit, the other has plant growth ability… Ain’s ability was amazing and powerful, if it was possible, Ian thought about pulling them into his crew.

But unfortunately, he knew that this was impossible. The respect of Ain and Binz for Zephyr was unshakable.

Therefore, Ian put away this thought for the time being, but after seeing these two, he left this matter to the whitebeard to deal with them.

Fortunately, Ain and Binz were honest and reasonable people. After knowing who they were dealing with, they let go of the thought of escaping. Now the entire Whitebeard Pirates were stationed on this island. They can’t escape by any means, maybe Zephyr also told them not to act recklessly and stay safe, so seeing them so cooperative, the whitebeard did not seize them and allowed them to move freely on the island… he only ordered two people to follow them.

After hearing Ace’s answer, Ian nodded and did not say a thing. He guessed that at this time, the Marines and the world government were also discussing solutions. After the last incident of Mainspring Island, the Whitebeard was so angry that he sent two of his teams to destroy a marine fortress. If the Whitebeard didn’t get an explanation this time and receive the compensation, it might not be as simple as a fortress.

Maybe all the forces of the Marines in New World would get evaporated by Whitebeard Pirates…

This was probably the most important problem the Marines were facing right now. If they start chasing the Dragon Hunter Pirates again, then the Whitebeard will be provoked. At first, they had a simple task to catch a pirate group, however, not only did they fail achieving this goal, but also they aggravated the strongest man alive…

At this time, Marco opened his mouth and asked Ian, “Ian, the thing you told us about, we tried it, and found that it was not effective…”

“Oh?” Ian immediately became interested when he heard it, and asked: “How exactly?”

After baby-5 caught Ain by mistake, Ian had a great idea at the time. Although this time, the Whitebeard came forward to help him push back the Marines, mainly because of Ace’s pleading, but for Ian, this favor was significant, he had to find a way to pay it back, so he told Marco and the others about Ain’s ability…

The Whitebeard was indeed getting old now, and his physical condition was deteriorating day by day… so him getting better was what Marco and the other righteous sons were eager to see, therefore when they hear about Ain’s ability, the return fruit, their eyes shone.

Ian’s suggestion was to let Ain try to use her Ability once on the Whitebeard.

However, after Marco spoke, Ian realized that things were not as easy as he thought.

There were many reasons for the deterioration of the whitebeard’s body. Of course, age is the main factor, but in addition, there were some old injuries, and the other reason was the side effects of his Devil Fruit!

The injuries he suffered when he was young were still minor problems, but the most troublesome was the influence of his own fruit ability!