One Piece: Revenge of the Slaves

A straight path was instantly created.

Enel and Ace were about to use fire and electricity, but Nolan the giant snake, rolling from head to tail and then back again, cleared a path. All the Sky Islanders, including women and children, were mobilized; women and children gathered gold from the rubble Nolan expelled, while the men went to the Shandorian ruins to transport the gold.

The amount of Shandorian gold was truly immense. So much that Enel and Ace used their full power to melt it into bars, which were then cooled and transported to the village by the Shandorians.

The Shandorians had no objections. As long as the Golden Bell, their sacred object, remained intact, they no longer considered the other gold theirs. At this point, the Shandorians' repeated failures had led to a generally peaceful mindset—except for those like Wyper, who remained fiercely independent.

Previously, Wyper would certainly have refused to acknowledge the gold as belonging to Alistair and his crew, and would have fought them. However, after witnessing the overwhelming power of Enel and Ace, no one dared to harbor such thoughts. Especially considering Alistair's crew also included the even stronger Boa Hancock.

"If Shandora were in the Blue Sea, this would be much easier," Alistair said apologetically. "A city made of gold would be the ultimate guarantee of our regime's credit; anyone seeing it would have no reason to doubt our trustworthiness or ability to repay debts."

"Unfortunately, this gold, located up here in the sky, won't convince the merchants."

"We will melt it down into gold bars, then transport them down below to convince the merchants of our financial strength, and finally secretly bring the gold bars back up to store them."

This is the first of the Thirty-Six Stratagems- deceiving heaven and crossing the sea. After the gold is publicly transported down by hot air balloon, Ace can secretly bring it back up at night.

The important thing is not that Alistair and his crew possess the gold, but that the merchants believe they possess the gold. Whether the gold is with Alistair or on Skypiea is ultimately irrelevant.

A credit system is based on the principle that as long as others believe in you, it holds value. This is why we have worked tirelessly to build our credit system for many years. Even with countless slanders, you cannot hide the truth. Credit is credit; dishonesty is dishonesty. Everyone understands this.

Alistair's current reputation and brand are built on Boa Hancock's; the merchants' trust in him stems from her. But there will come a day when they must separate from Hancock's reputation. When that day arrives, what will Alistair be able to rely on? Only his own brand will allow merchants to forget the name of the Shichibukai.

Ace was initially not very skilled at Enel's lightning-based gold refining, but after Alistair gave him a few pointers, he discovered that flames could also be used to shape gold—the essence of lightning goldsmithing is using high heat to turn gold into a jelly-like state that can be easily shaped and quickly cooled. Previously, Ace had been using too much force, turning the gold into liquid and scattering it. Now, after Alistair's advice, his control over his flames has improved significantly.

Ace still has a long way to go in developing his Logia-type abilities. Although in the original storyline he was the second division commander of Whitebeard's crew, his combat strength, while impressive (above a Rear Admiral, but not quite Admiral level), is clearly insufficient for truly high-level battles. However, now, Ace seems to be developing into a truly high-level combatant, learning more techniques and abilities, and no longer relying solely on his large-scale fire-fist attacks. This is a very positive development.

Not only the Shandorians and adult Sky Island men were carrying the gold bars to the gathering point, but the pirates were also sweating profusely while carrying them. A single gold bar weighs 500 kilograms, yet is only the size of a square stone; its density is astonishing. Ordinary people need to exert maximum effort to carry one for a few kilometers. If Nolan the giant snake hadn't already cleared a path, simply getting these gold bars out of the dense forest would have been enough to drive anyone to despair.

Ordinary people couldn't carry much; even if the pirates tried their hardest, a 200-person pirate crew could only carry one ton of gold at most, which is a tiny fraction of the entire gold city's reserves.

That evening, Alistair summoned the Shandorian chief, Gan Fall, McKinley, and Wyper. Then, Van Augur, Mihar, Nico Robin, and Lafitte sat in a circle, and Alistair began to teach a lesson. The subject was economics, a course that requires a certain level of knowledge to understand. However, the people here were not fools; even if they didn't understand, such as McKinley and Wyper, they didn't show their lack of understanding, only planning to ask Gan Fall and the chief later.

"As you can see, I intend to make Skypiea a moneyless nation."

"But even without money, we need credit."

"We can't treat lazy and hardworking people equally."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Actually, having your own currency on Skypeia is a good thing, but as you can also see, Skypeia's currency has become inflated to a certain extent. One Blue Sea Berry can now exchange for ten thousand Ik. Everyone is now mostly using Blue Sea Berries, and your Ik is practically worthless—you'd probably rather use it to wipe your behind."

Gan Fall chuckled awkwardly; clearly, Alistair was not wrong. The fact that Ik has devalued to the point where hundreds of thousands or millions are needed to buy even one is why the entire island's prices have inflated to a certain extent, to the point where almost everyone has stopped using it, with Berries largely replacing Ik.

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