"A Sword Demon from eight hundred years ago? Dugu Qiubai?"
Zoro's mouth twitched.
"How did you even meet someone from eight hundred years ago? Don't tell me he lived all the way to the present?"
Kairo shook his head with a perfectly serious face.
"During one of my journeys, I accidentally wandered into the Rainbow Mist. That's how I ended up returning to the world of eight hundred years ago. By sheer chance, I met Dugu Qiubai there—after he had already laid down his sword and withdrawn into seclusion in a mountain valley."
"The Rainbow Mist?" Zoro's eyes shone with a very pure kind of foolish curiosity. "I think my master mentioned it before! But what he said wasn't the same as what you're saying. He said the Rainbow Mist is a kind of alternate space where time moves slower than outside. If people inside return, they age rapidly!"
"Your master wasn't wrong," Kairo said solemnly. "But what he described was only one of the spaces within the Rainbow Mist. The one I entered was a passage connected to the past."
"That's incredible!"
Zoro's curiosity was fully hooked now. He immediately dragged over a small stool, sat down across from Kairo, and asked with complete sincerity, "Can you tell me about this Sword Demon Dugu Qiubai? Did he… really defeat every strong opponent?"
"Of course." Kairo nodded calmly. "For all we know, Mihawk may have become the world's greatest swordsman because he stumbled upon some lucky opportunity and inherited part of the Sword Demon's legacy."
"After all, that man's understanding of the sword was dozens of floors above ordinary people."
"One of those floors was this—a heavy sword has no edge; true skill appears unadorned."
"And by coincidence, the weapon Mihawk carries on his back all year round—the black blade Yoru, the so-called strongest sword in the world—is also a heavy sword. Although Mihawk refined it through battle and tempered it with Haki, he still remains within the realm of hardness and softness."
"But the Sword Demon I met…" Kairo paused for effect. "After the age of forty, he had already moved beyond both the soft sword and the heavy sword. He stepped into an even higher realm of swordsmanship."
"A higher realm?"
Zoro's eyes gleamed brighter and brighter. His expression turned feverish.
"What realm?"
Seeing Zoro completely drawn into the myth of the Sword Demon, Kairo almost laughed out loud.
He somehow held it in.
"Victory without a sword."
He leaned back slightly and spoke in a tone full of quiet mystery.
"That is the meaning of no sword surpassing the sword. In that realm, grass, wood, bamboo, stone—anything in the world can become a weapon. Splitting mountains and severing rivers becomes something you can do with a casual motion."
"T-That's impossible!"
Zoro shot to his feet and stared at Kairo in disbelief.
He had trained at Isshin Dojo since childhood, yet even now, he had not truly reached the level of cutting steel.
And this so-called Sword Demon from eight hundred years ago could split mountains and rivers using nothing but grass, wood, bamboo, or stone?
For one brief, terrifying instant, Zoro felt as if the swordsmanship he had spent his life pursuing was no more than a child's game.
"There's nothing impossible about it."
Kairo turned his head slightly toward a pile of firewood stacked in the yard.
Then he casually flicked his hand.
Whoosh!
A stick flew out of the pile and landed neatly in his grasp.
"?!"
Zoro's eyes went wide all over again.
He had not even recovered from the shock of Dugu Qiubai's story, and now Kairo had just pulled an object through the air from a distance right in front of him.
At almost the same moment, Zoro felt a terrifying pressure erupt from Kairo's body.
It was only a trace.
But that trace alone made Zoro's breath catch.
For a heartbeat, he even had the absurd urge to bow.
Kairo, however, showed no hesitation at all.
Holding the wooden stick like a sword, he turned toward a large tree outside the yard and slashed downward through empty air.
Shing—
The plain, ordinary stick released a strange, dazzling flash the instant he swung it.
The light vanished just as quickly as it appeared, cutting through the night and slipping into the tree trunk in the distance.
A beat later—
Crash!
The tree was severed cleanly through the middle and toppled to the ground.
"S-So strong…"
Looking at the neatly cut tree, Zoro's eyes widened so far they seemed ready to fall out.
This was the real thing.
Using a random stick as a weapon.
Actually cutting from a distance.
For a moment, all he could do was stare.
Then his mind finally caught up, and he immediately exploded.
"And you still say you're not a swordsman?!"
Kairo flicked the stick lightly with a finger.
The wood instantly crumbled into powder and scattered into the air.
Only then did he clap his hands once, smiling as warmly as ever.
"It's just a hobby. At most, I count as half a swordsman."
"A hobby?!"
Zoro nearly coughed up blood on the spot.
"You cut down a tree that big from a distance with a wooden stick, and you call that a hobby?"
At that moment, the way he looked at Kairo was practically the same way someone might look at a monster.
Ever since Kuina had died in that absurd accident on the stairs, Zoro had turned grief into relentless discipline. From that day on, he had never allowed himself to slack off. He trained like a madman every single day.
And yet—
Forget cutting a tree like that from a distance. Even standing right in front of it with his actual swords, he would still have needed a full-power strike to bring it down.
But Kairo, a traveler, claimed swordsmanship was only his "hobby," and he still outclassed Zoro by an absurd margin.
Was there no justice in this world?
No fairness at all?
Meanwhile—
In Shells Town, Da Hong and Droopy stood hidden in a secluded corner near Marine Base 153, both of them watching the port.
Although the town was already covered in moonlight, the base was still busy.
Warships continued returning one after another, each loaded with prisoners. Soon after docking, groups of pirates tied up from head to toe were marched ashore.
These pirates had all been dragged into the aftermath of the Celestial Dragon incident, and not one of them seemed willing to accept it quietly.
The moment they were escorted into the base square, the cursing started all over again.
One shouted louder than the next.
One cursed filthier than the next.
But not a single one of them was cursing the Marines who captured them.
They were all cursing the same target—
the damned red rabbit.
"Da Hong, they're cursing you."
Hearing pirate after pirate hurl abuse at the red rabbit, Droopy tilted his head.
"You can tolerate that?"
Da Hong did not care in the slightest.
Leaning against the wall, he pulled out one of his canvas sneakers and began polishing it with grave seriousness.
"They're here, they're here!"
Droopy suddenly sounded excited.
"The one at the front of the Marine group is the hot-blooded officer I told you about—Morgan. But now we've got a problem."
"From what I've seen, the Marines already know I exist. So me dragging you in to claim the bounty isn't realistic anymore."
He lowered his ears slightly, thinking it over.
"What about Master doing it? No, that won't work either. That old Marine you beat up before would recognize him."
After a pause, Droopy slumped a little and muttered in disappointment, "Why didn't you just kill him back then?"
Da Hong blew lightly across the polished canvas shoe in his hand and answered in a flat tone,
"I didn't expect him to be that durable."
He paused, then added:
"Next time for sure."'
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