Bellamy was already deeply trapped in the illusion. Under Damon's instruction, he had already told Momousagi Gion everything he knew. If he had known about the Donquixote Family members, he would have said so long ago.
But.
Damon had a white Den Den Mushi that connected him to Jinbe's men, and he already knew the movements of a Donquixote Family executive. However, he had not told Vice Admiral Tsuru about it, precisely to avoid alerting the enemy. He needed to eliminate the spy within the organization first.
But these spies were so well disguised that they didn't leave a single trace.
Now, it was time for Damon to use Bellamy's words to reveal some valuable information and trick those deeply hidden spies into coming out!
Under the spell of Damon's illusion, Bellamy immediately began to weave a story:
"I said! I said!"
"Could you please take the knife off my neck first?"
Damon, wanting to go all out, immediately released the blade.
"I know the whereabouts of Rao G, a member of the Donquixote Family. He is currently active in the waters near the Sobel Kingdom in the South Blue!"
The waters near the Sobel Kingdom in the South Blue!
The reason this once-obscure winter island in the South Blue became famous was because Kuma the Tyrant was the previous king of the Sobel Kingdom.
Upon hearing the news, some naval personnel's eyes flickered, but they concealed it well, their faces remaining expressionless, and their actions went unnoticed by their colleagues.
Momousagi Gion was a little angry, and with her hands on her hips, she questioned Bellamy:
Why didn't you mention this information earlier?
Bellamy lowered his head, pointed at Damon with his finger, and whispered:
"You're not scary, he's scary."
Momousagi Gion: "..."
These words left her speechless.
Vice Admiral Tsuru gave Damon a deep look. With her keen insight and intelligent mind, she seemed to have discovered the secret, but she revealed nothing. She tacitly cooperated with Damon's performance and immediately issued orders to the entire warship:
"Turn the ship around and head toward the Sobel Kingdom in the South Blue!"
The North Blue and the South Blue were far apart, and it would take at least two months to reach the Sobel Kingdom.
No one knew whether Bellamy's intelligence was reliable. Midway through the voyage, in order to reduce unnecessary weight and consumption, Vice Admiral Tsuru ordered the warship to dock at a nearby naval base, where the thugs, except for Bellamy, were handed over to the naval base for detention. The naval base also took the opportunity to replenish and rest there after the long voyage.
Humans cannot survive away from land for extended periods because humans have social attributes and need to rely on society for survival. Once separated from society for too long, various physiological and psychological maladjustments would occur.
During the chaotic period before Roger became the Pirate King, many pirates were unaware of this and gradually descended into killing and madness, becoming murderers in the eyes of others.
In the original story, the reason why Kuro, the captain of the Black Cat Pirates in the East Blue, chose to go into seclusion was not only because he could not bear the pursuit of the Navy, but also because the heavy mental pressure brought by the life of drifting at sea for a long time after being away from the land was too much for him to bear.
To avoid excessive mental stress for soldiers working at sea for long periods, Marine Headquarters had established a comprehensive leave-rest system, whereby when one fleet was serving on the front lines, another fleet that was originally working on the front lines would be demobilized.
Currently, they were in the midst of a mission and should not be taking a break.
Firstly, Vice Admiral Tsuru was there to facilitate the smooth implementation of Damon's plan; secondly, to alleviate everyone's psychological state; and thirdly, to create conditions for the lurking spies.
Damon knew very well that the information he had obtained through Bellamy was true.
So, what would the seven spies hiding on the warship do when they learned of this?
The first possibility was that he killed to cover it up.
The second possibility was that he secretly contacted his superiors via Den Den Mushi to transmit the information to the Donquixote Family, allowing Doflamingo to prepare in advance.
Both possibilities were possible.
The sun set and the moon rose, a chilly wind blew.
A warship was moored in the harbor, the sea was calm, and a crescent moon was reflected in the water.
The long hours at sea had left many soldiers exhausted. Apart from those on night duty, most of them went back to their dormitories to sleep early.
Seamen, petty officers, and chief petty officers all lived in shared quarters, while only officers and generals had single rooms.
In the dead of night, in a single room, a figure groped around in the dark and took out a Den Den Mushi from the cabinet.
Because the room was poorly soundproofed, to avoid being noticed by his colleagues in the next cubicle, the man took out a Den Den Mushi and made a call. Then, he lowered his voice and said:
"Vice Admiral Tsuru has discovered..."
Before the man could finish speaking, the door to the room was cleaved in two.
Vice Admiral Tsuru and Damon appeared at the door. The light from the stairwell fell into the single room, dispelling some of the darkness and illuminating the scene inside.
When Vice Admiral Tsuru discovered the identity of the owner of the single room, she was incredulous, never expecting that the person she had been cultivating would choose to betray her.
The door to the private room was cut in two, and the light from the hallway shone into the room. A naval officer with green hair froze, stiffly turning his head to meet Vice Admiral Tsuru's incredulous eyes.
The man was tall, and he had already taken off his sunglasses and placed them on the counter. His thick lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to explain something.
At this very moment, the Den Den Mushi he was using to contact his superiors in the Donquixote Family, seemingly the staff member responsible for contacting Master Sergeant Brannew, didn't notice anything amiss when Master Sergeant Brannew only spoke halfway through his sentence. Instead, he urged:
"What exactly did Vice Admiral Tsuru discover?"
Pirates were pirates after all. Even if Doflamingo was good at managing his subordinates, he couldn't expect his soldiers to be well-trained.
Furthermore, the fact that these undercover agents on the warship where Vice Admiral Tsuru was stationed had not caused any problems before led this staff member to be completely unsuspecting and act as a complete liability.
Vice Admiral Tsuru slowly approached Master Sergeant Brannew, took the Den Den Mushi from his hand, and, after trying to calm her agitated emotions, spoke to the Den Den Mushi:
"Give my regards to the Joker, and tell him that his old rival is looking forward to seeing him in jail."
The Den Den Mushi vividly portrayed the staff's shocked expression, with their eyes wide open and mouth agape, as if they never expected their covert operation to be discovered.
After a while, the Den Den Mushi, like a shriveled cucumber, went completely silent. Clearly, the staff on the other end had given up on Master Sergeant Brannew and turned to report the matter to the Donquixote Family.
Vice Admiral Tsuru turned around, looked at the green-haired youth who had collapsed to the ground, and asked with a pained expression:
"Brannew, I have always treated you well, so why did you choose to betray the Navy?"
Vice Admiral Tsuru was extremely strict in managing her subordinates. She thoroughly investigated the background of every soldier and was familiar with the personality and abilities of each of her men.
Master Sergeant Brannew, like Master Sergeant Shu, came from a poor background. He joined the army because he could no longer endure the cruel exploitation by the local nobles and his family was struggling to make ends meet.
Such situations were all too common.
The World Government had 170 member states, accounting for more than half of the world's countries. To join the World Government, there was a necessary condition: one must pay a particularly large sum of Celestial Gold to the Celestial Dragons every year.
The money naturally came from the people; it was impossible for the local nobles to pay such a large sum. So, the huge amount of "Celestial Gold" had to be passed on to the common people, so that everyone could share the burden.
Countries had devised various pretexts for this, such as poll tax, single tax, marriage tax, farming tax, breathing tax, and all sorts of taxes you could and couldn't imagine, making people in various places live in dire straits.
Ordinary people who had no way to survive had only four options.
The first option was to risk going to sea as a pirate. Most ordinary people were so poor they couldn't afford to eat, let alone build ships. They could only cobble together a small wooden boat and set sail, their fate entirely in the hands of fate. If they encountered stormy weather, they would almost certainly perish at sea.
The second was selling one's children. Common people at the bottom of society often had many children and sold them to slave traders or nobles as servants. In such cases, the only hope was that the children would find a good master; otherwise, they would live a life worse than death.
The third option was to become outlaws, hiding in the mountains in groups of two or three, like the Dadan family of the Goa Kingdom in the East Blue. They couldn't stand the various exorbitant taxes and levies of the Goa Kingdom, so they had no choice but to hide in the mountains.
The fourth option was to join the military. In any case, the World Government supplied the Navy with a large amount of resources and money every year in order to maintain its rule. As long as you joined the Navy, even if you became the lowest-ranking trainee or handyman, you could at least have a hot meal and wouldn't starve to death on the roadside.
Master Sergeant Brannew lowered his head, speechless for a moment.
Whether it was Vice Admiral Tsuru or Damon beside him, their strength was enough to crush him. Master Sergeant Brannew knew he couldn't escape, and had already resigned himself to his fate.
Seeing that Master Sergeant Brannew was still stubbornly clinging to his beliefs, Vice Admiral Tsuru sighed deeply, placed her hands on his shoulders, and immediately activated her Paramecia-type Wash-Wash Fruit ability.
In an instant, Master Sergeant Brannew was like a piece of clothing thrown into a washing machine; his entire body became flattened, and in a dizzying moment, he collapsed onto the headboard like a lump of mud.
Once activated, the Paramecia-type Wash-Wash Fruit's power could turn people and objects into clothes, wash them, and then dry them. The cleansed life forms would lose their power and would no longer be able to move freely. Furthermore, after Vice Admiral Tsuru further developed the fruit's power, it could even cleanse people's souls.
If used properly, this fruit's ability, while having no offensive power, possessed a remarkably strong support effect.
In fact, if a person with a dark heart were to obtain the Wash-Wash Fruit, they might develop similar brainwashing abilities.
Damon stood aside, watching coldly as Master Sergeant Brannew went from being silent at the beginning to showing an expression of remorse. Master Sergeant Brannew knelt down, put his hands on the ground, and explained the whole story.
Master Sergeant Brannew looked distressed and cried out:
"I have been in the army for eight years now. I don't have any outstanding talent, nor do I have any superb martial arts skills, nor do I have any Devil Fruit abilities. I often engage in hand-to-hand combat with pirates on the front lines and have seen too many familiar faces fall in front of me. Even I don't know when I will stay on the battlefield forever."
"I have a family of eight to support. My monthly salary is enough to keep them from starving, but if I die on the battlefield, my family will probably have to go back to living a precarious life, aside from receiving a pension."
"I don't know how much longer I will have to live like this. Back then, I joined the army just so that my family would no longer have to eat black bread mixed with sand, and so that I could hold my head high as a person, instead of being a poor person who was despised by others!"
"At first I didn't want to betray the Navy, but the Donquixote Family gave me a large sum of money, a fortune that would ensure my family's future. My younger siblings no longer had to wear tattered clothes or spend their days aimlessly playing with the town's petty thugs. They were finally able to go to school in town, and maybe even work for nobles in the future, with a respectable and comfortable job."
"All of this is something the Navy couldn't give me!"
Master Sergeant Brannew was in tears, and his heartfelt words left Vice Admiral Tsuru speechless for a moment.
In the Navy, trainee laborers did not receive a salary. Only when they became seamen were they considered to be officially part of the establishment, earning 10,000 Berries a year. If their rank was promoted, their salary would be appropriately increased.
Despite the seemingly low official income of naval personnel, they enjoyed various subsidies, bonuses, and welfare benefits.
When the Navy was on duty to capture pirates with bounties, they could receive the corresponding bounty from the World Government. This bounty was distributed to each soldier as a form of subsidy.
When pirate ships were captured or pirate hideouts were destroyed, the spoils obtained from these looting operations did not need to be reported to Marine Headquarters or the World Government. They were consumed internally and thus became a form of reward.
The welfare benefits were reflected in terms of food, clothing, housing, transportation, and medical care. Thanks to the special funds subsidy from the World Government, naval soldiers did not need to spend money on meals in the internal cafeteria. If they were injured and needed treatment, they did not need to spend any money. If they retired and entered a hospital built by the Navy, they could also enjoy discounts.
In addition, after retiring from the Navy, one could receive a lump sum as a resettlement allowance, depending on their rank, and could also receive a monthly pension.
Of course, most of the time, naval officers and soldiers did not live to retirement age; they died on the battlefield, and many benefits and allowances were just a mirage.
Was Master Sergeant Brannew right or wrong in betraying the Navy?
Perhaps, in the eyes of his family, being able to receive a large sum of money from the Donquixote Family and live a life of luxury was not something unacceptable.
In this world, where were there really so many distinctions between right and wrong?
Every ordinary person like Master Sergeant Brannew was simply trying their best to survive.
This night was destined to be an extraordinary one.
Following Master Sergeant Brannew's capture, the other six informants were also exposed and discovered by the all-pervasive Eye of the Beacon, leading to their arrest one after another.
It wasn't until the next morning, when the soldiers woke up and went to the deck of the warship for training, that they were suddenly surprised to discover the huge upheaval that had occurred the night before.
Seven spies, including Master Sergeant Brannew, were taken from the deck to a prison at the naval base, where they would be stripped of their naval status and transferred to Enies Lobby for trial.
As Master Sergeant Shu watched Master Sergeant Brannew walk past him dejectedly, he finally couldn't accept the fact that his friend, with whom he had fought side by side for many years, was actually a spy for a great pirate. He suddenly asked:
____________
Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 49: Power of Wind and Thunder
Chapter 50: The Sobel Kingdom's crisis
Chapter 51: Kid Pirates
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