Over the following days, Hua Ye continued wandering all over Hachinosu as though he were sightseeing.
He admired the scenery while recruiting people along the way.
What he needed to do was actually very simple.
Find people.
Any people would do.
Then share the power of the Quincy with them.
And that was exactly what he did.
“Submit, or die.”
Inside a valley, corpses littered the ground and blood ran between them.
A sharp, unpleasant odor hung in the otherwise desolate air, occasionally broken by faint groans of pain.
The surviving pirates trembled before Hua Ye and hurriedly dropped to their knees to beg for mercy.
Those too badly injured to kneel didn’t even dare scream too loudly.
Once they submitted, Hua Ye continued distributing his power and converting them into Quincy in large numbers.
Becoming Quincy made these people considerably stronger.
After experiencing that increase in power for themselves, most were pleasantly surprised and became far less resistant to obeying Hua Ye.
Of course, someone might wonder why Hua Ye didn’t simply approach them from the beginning and offer them greater power.
Why beat people half to death first?
Hua Ye couldn’t be bothered explaining.
They probably wouldn’t have believed him anyway.
At its core, what he was doing was coercive recruitment.
As for the possibility that his new followers only submitted outwardly while fear and hatred grew inside them, leaving them with no real loyalty whatsoever…
That mattered even less.
“Who’s that?”
Hua Ye suddenly turned his head.
The newly converted pirates, who were still experimenting with their Quincy abilities, followed his gaze.
At some point, another figure had appeared not far away.
It was a muscular man with his upper body bare.
His physique was exceptionally solid, and his square face carried a stern, unyielding look.
There was only one unusual detail.
He had a single arm.
A plate of iron armor covered the opposite shoulder and wrapped around the stump where his other arm had once been.
A massive sword nearly as tall as a person was strapped across his back.
“My lord, that’s Seg.
He’s a swordsman,” one pirate hurried over on his knees and explained with an ingratiating smile.
“People say his one-handed sword is no weaker than another swordsman’s two-handed blade.”
“You’re…
Hua Ye?”
Seg recognized him as well and frowned deeply.
“What happened to your arm?” Hua Ye asked.
“None of your business.”
Seg answered bluntly.
“You’ve been secretly recruiting members from other pirate crews and expanding your own forces.
That’s already violating Hachinosu’s rules.”
“This place has rules?” Hua Ye asked.
“Are you their guardian?”
“I’m only warning you.”
Seg clearly had no intention of getting involved.
He looked as though he had merely happened to pass by and turned to leave.
“Apparently he lost the arm during a swordsmanship duel,” the pirate beside Hua Ye added in a low voice.
“Is one hand better, or two?”
Hua Ye’s indifferent voice carried toward Seg’s back.
Seg stopped walking.
Without turning around, he replied,
“How many legs do you need to walk?
Why don’t you try walking with one foot?”
“I can fly,” Hua Ye said calmly.
Seg had no response to that.
After a moment, he turned around and stared at Hua Ye.
“Hachinosu allows pirate crews to absorb one another.
If you’re strong enough to beat another crew into submission, nobody objects.
The condition is that you do it openly.”
“Rules are one thing.
Enforcement is another.” Hua Ye brought his palms together, then pulled them sharply apart.
“What pirate is naive enough to care that much?”
Reishi gathered between his hands in a mass of blue light and condensed into an enormous arrow.
Though judging by the way Hua Ye threw it, the thing looked more like a spear.
The attack came without warning.
Seg’s pupils contracted violently.
He immediately drew his weapon with his one remaining arm and raised the door-sized greatsword in front of himself.
The instant it collided head-on with the Heilig Pfeil—
BOOM!
The arrow exploded.
The impact forced Seg backward dozens of meters, his feet carving two long trenches through the ground.
“Can one hand really hold a sword properly?” Hua Ye’s voice reached him again.
“Wouldn’t two grip it more firmly?
I can give you your second arm back.”
The surrounding pirates finally understood.
Hua Ye had noticed Seg and was taking the opportunity to recruit him.
“Why haven’t you surrendered yet, Seg?!”
“You can’t even imagine how powerful our lord is!”
“Accept his power and even a severed arm can grow back!
It’s that simple!”
“What reason do you have to refuse?!”
Their words shocked Seg.
Yet when he looked at Hua Ye, who remained completely calm as though this were nothing worth mentioning, he found himself believing it more than he expected.
No matter how unbelievable the claim sounded, something about this man made impossible things seem ordinary.
Seg raised his greatsword again and asked in a low voice,
“What do I have to give you?”
“Everything.”
Hua Ye’s answer was immediate.
Seg thought for a long moment before making his decision.
People often praised him by saying his one-handed swordsmanship could rival other men’s two-handed techniques.
Only Seg himself knew how painful it truly was to live and fight after losing an arm.
“I’ll become your subordinate.”
He agreed without hesitation.
Hua Ye held out a cup of blood-laced wine.
The meaning was obvious.
Drink it.
Seg hesitated briefly.
What if Hua Ye had poisoned it?
The thought nearly made him laugh at himself.
If Hua Ye wanted him dead, killing him would take almost no effort.
Why bother with something as roundabout as poison?
Seg raised the cup and drained it in one swallow.
In that instant, a blood-red Quincy Cross was engraved deep within his soul.
His entire body suddenly became unbearably hot, as though he had been thrown into a furnace.
Then came the itching.
An unbearable crawling sensation spread through him, so intense that he nearly tore his own skin open trying to scratch it.
A miracle soon unfolded before everyone’s eyes.
The metal armor covering the stump of Seg’s missing arm abruptly cracked apart.
Several thick iron plates fell heavily to the ground.
At the cleanly severed end of his right shoulder, tiny buds of flesh began to emerge.
They twisted around one another like the branches of a tree.
Then, as if suddenly flooded with nutrients, they began growing at astonishing speed.
Before long, a complete arm had formed.
Its skin was unusually pink and tender, like the limb of a newborn infant, making it look almost comically out of place on the dark-skinned, heavily muscled man.
“Th-This…”
Seg’s voice trembled.
Instinctively, he tried to move it.
Clench.
Release.
Clench again.
Release again.
He could feel the blood flowing through it, the muscles contracting, the joints responding.
Every movement obeyed him perfectly.
It had truly regenerated.
A brand-new arm.
Everyone stared at the sight.
Their breathing grew heavier, and their eyes burned with feverish intensity.
“My lord!”
Seg no longer hesitated.
He lowered his head before Hua Ye and offered his complete submission.
Hua Ye looked at Seg and the surrounding pirates before issuing his first real order.
“Recruit as many people as possible.
Quality doesn’t matter.
The more, the better.”
“Should we do it openly, or…?” Seg asked carefully.
“However you want.”
Hua Ye turned and began walking away.
“You don’t need to contact me.
Make your own decisions.
If you want to leave the island and sail, you’re free to do that too.”
Then Hua Ye left.
He didn’t say another word to them.
It almost seemed as though he didn’t care whether they earnestly carried out his command at all.
Because in truth, he didn’t.
Whatever they did while using his name was irrelevant to him.
Whether they committed good deeds or atrocities.
Whether his reputation across the seas became glorious or infamous.
Who they killed, or who eventually killed them…
None of it mattered.
After Hua Ye’s figure completely disappeared from sight, Seg looked down at his two hands.
One was dark and weathered.
The other was pale and newborn.
The contrast was striking.
He suddenly clenched both fists and felt the immense power surging through his body.
At that moment, he realized something.
The man who had recently appeared on Hachinosu would inevitably stir up monstrous waves across the sea.
And those waves would swallow everything in their path.
Whether willingly or not, Seg and the others had already been dragged aboard that ship.
“Seg, what do we do now?”
At the question, Seg looked around.
Aside from those who had died, plenty of pirates remained.
Unfortunately, asking this bunch to use their brains and figure out how to carry out Hua Ye’s vague order was clearly asking too much.
They were all standing around blankly.
Some scratched their heads.
Others were still playing with their Reishi bows like children who had just received new toys.
Seg suddenly clenched his fist.
Visible blue Reishi gathered in his palm and, under instinctive control, condensed into a silver chain.
He studied it briefly, then flicked his wrist and wrapped the chain around his arm.
When he raised his hand, a silver-white cross pendant linked by a circular ring dangled beneath it.
“From this moment on…”
Seg looked at the others.
“We are Quincy.”
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