Chapter 133: The Brand
When it came to covert infiltration, anyone with decent agility could pull it off, but sometimes details determined success or failure. Ian felt fortunate at this moment to have encountered Walnut, a user of the Silence-Silence Fruit. With the soundproof barrier in place, even though he had just crushed a skull fragment underfoot, it had eerily made no sound at all.
According to Walnut, the range of this soundproof barrier was only a radius of 10 meters. She had only recently acquired this ability, and this range was already her limit. However, as long as sounds were made within this range, they would not be transmitted to the outside.
The greatest advantage of this Paramecia-type Devil Fruit ability was that as long as the user did not actively cancel it or die, the applied ability would persist.
So Ian confidently began to run through the garden, pushing his speed to the limit as he dashed toward a building ahead.
He had no idea what this building was. It didn’t look like a residence for Celestial Dragons, but Ian wasn’t very familiar with the layout of a Celestial Dragon’s estate, so he could only explore slowly.
However, just as Ian was about to reach the building, he suddenly stopped in his tracks and immediately dropped flat to the ground.
Because he saw something dark and bulky moving slowly ahead of him.
Lying on the ground, Ian lifted his head to look. The object’s shape resembled an oversized Den Den Mushi, with a round shell on its back and two large, upright eyeballs in front, swiveling left and right.
“Looks like a walking Video Den Den Mushi?” Ian thought to himself, a bit puzzled.
Although the security here seemed lax, the necessary measures were still in place. This walking Video Den Den Mushi was a surveillance tool. That oversized Den Den Mushi would transmit everything its eyes saw back to a dedicated monitoring room, where Celestial Dragon’s black-suited bodyguards were surely watching.
Ian stayed pressed tightly to the ground until the Video Den Den Mushi had moved far away, then he stood up again and ran toward the building ahead.
This time, he didn’t dare be careless, fearing that there might be fixed, smaller Video Den Den Mushi inside the building. So he flipped himself up onto the roof, found a ventilation duct, and crawled inside.
The ventilation duct was naturally the safest route. Ian crawled forward slowly along the duct until he saw a glimmer of light ahead. Crawling over, he found a downward vent that allowed him to observe the scene inside the building through the grating.
From his observation, the area below seemed to be an empty warehouse with no one around. So he carefully opened the grating, poked his head out, and took a thorough look.
He checked every corner but found no Video Den Den Mushi monitoring the place. However, the warehouse was filled with large cages, each topped with a solid iron plate. From above, Ian couldn’t see what was inside the cages. He wondered, could this be where the Celestial Dragons kept their slaves?
After a moment’s thought, Ian climbed out of the ventilation duct, grabbed a handhold, gently swung his body, and dropped down lightly onto one of the large iron cages.
Not a single sound was made. The soundproofing was truly impressive.
Ian lay flat on top of the iron cage, leaned over, and peered down into it.
What he saw startled him. Inside the cage was a massive lion!
He lifted his head to look at the other cages and found all sorts of animals, all of them ferocious. Besides the lion beneath him, there were tigers, crocodiles, giant pythons, and the like. But strangely, these fierce beasts were all listless, huddled motionless in their cages.
Ian realized that this was probably where the Celestial Dragons kept their wild animals.
The soundproof barrier could eliminate the sounds Ian made, but it couldn’t mask his scent. Animals are most sensitive to smells, and the lion in the cage beneath him seemed to catch his scent, letting out a weak, feeble roar.
That roar set off a chain reaction, causing the beasts in the surrounding cages to join in, though all their cries sounded equally weak and powerless.
Hearing these roars, Ian knew something was wrong. His soundproof barrier had a limited range, but the warehouse was large, so some sound must have escaped.
He realized that someone would likely be coming soon.
In a monitoring room on the estate, a group of black-suited men had been drinking coffee, but when they faintly heard the beasts’ roars, they tensed up immediately.
“What’s going on?! Weren’t the animals in the menagerie injected with sedatives?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the sedative’s effect is wearing off?”
“Quick, send a few people to shut them up! If the master hears this, we’re in trouble!”
“Right, hurry up! Bring the sedatives! If they disturb the master, none of us will survive!”
A group of black-suited men rushed out of the monitoring room, carrying tranquilizer guns, and headed straight for the menagerie.
When they burst into the warehouse, they saw a bunch of caged beasts roaring at them.
“Fire! Knock them out!” one of the black-suited men commanded.
The tranquilizer guns made little noise, firing with soft thuds. A large number of darts hit the beasts, quickly calming them down. The black-suited men breathed a sigh of relief and filed out of the warehouse one by one.
After they left, Ian jumped down from the ventilation duct again. He had sensed trouble earlier and had already leaped back up into the vent.
Looking at the sleeping beasts in their cages, Ian felt relieved but also a bit sorry for them. Where was the majesty of wild beasts now?
He slipped out of the warehouse quietly and followed the black-suited men, guessing that their base was the estate’s monitoring room. He planned to take them out to make his next moves easier.
Soon, Ian tracked the black-suited men to another building.
It was clear that these black-suited guards were quite lax. Only a few stayed to watch the surveillance screens, while the rest were playing cards, chatting, and drinking coffee.
Ian crouched outside the window, watching everything, and changed his plan.
He didn’t know how many guards were on the estate. If he killed all the black-suited men in this building, other guards might come and discover something was wrong, which would expose him.
But leaving them completely unchecked wasn’t ideal either. Though only a few were watching the monitors, there was still a chance he might be unlucky enough to be spotted by them.
So, after thinking it over, Ian walked up to the door, stood outside, held his breath for a moment, and then suddenly unleashed his Conqueror’s Haki!
Ian had always felt that his awakened Conqueror’s Haki might be related to his Nen ability. In his perception, this Conqueror’s Haki seemed more like a higher-level application of Nen.
If he had to describe it, it might be something like: Nen Impact and Nen Vibration!
Combining these two methods could also achieve the impact and stunning effects of Conqueror’s Haki! Ian’s awakened Conqueror’s Haki was essentially a preview of how to use these two Nen techniques.
Since awakening his Haki, Ian had been training to strengthen it. He still couldn’t direct Conqueror’s Haki at a single person, but he could freely control the release of this power. With a sudden burst of Haki, the force penetrated through the door and spread inside. The black-suited men in the room all foamed at the mouth and passed out.
With this wave of Haki, Ian had poured all his Psychic Power into it. The force was as strong as when he had used it at the Human Auction House. These black-suited guards would likely be unconscious for a long time.
In truth, these so-called black-suited men weren’t that formidable. Their attire resembled that of the World Government’s CP intelligence agency, but they were nowhere near the level of CP agents. They stayed by the Celestial Dragons’ side mainly to obey orders and handle tasks, valued for their loyalty and obedience.
Ian pushed the door open and walked in. He arranged the unconscious black-suited men one by one, making it look like they had fallen asleep from exhaustion, then clapped his hands and walked out.
Since he hadn’t revealed himself, when these black-suited guards woke up, they would probably think they had really dozed off from being too tired.
After handling this, Ian could finally move freely and boldly through the estate.
He had also glanced at the surveillance screens earlier but saw no trace of the Celestial Dragons. It made sense—there was no reason for the Celestial Dragons, as masters, to be monitored by their own subordinates like that.
So Ian still had to rely on himself to search. He figured that the most beautiful building on the estate was undoubtedly the Celestial Dragons’ residence. But in Ian’s mind, he wasn’t looking for their living quarters—he was looking for their treasure vault! The two Devil Fruits that had been transported here would definitely be in the vault. He just didn’t know whether the vault was inside the residence or somewhere else.
He would search first. If he couldn’t find such a place, he could head to the Celestial Dragons’ residence later.
Ian picked a direction and continued running forward. This time, he arrived at an even larger building.
However, just as Ian jumped onto the roof, preparing to infiltrate from above like before, he suddenly heard a bloodcurdling scream from inside the building.
Peering through a window, Ian saw that this was where the Celestial Dragons imprisoned their slaves. Inside were rows of smaller iron cages, each containing emaciated people with their hands chained to the walls, their bodies covered in blood and wounds.
In the middle of the room, a blazing iron furnace was burning. A group of armored guards took a red-hot branding iron from the furnace, approached a kneeling slave, and pressed it directly onto the slave’s back!
Every time this happened, the slave branded with the iron would let out a piercing scream before collapsing unconscious.
But the armored guards showed no mercy. They tossed the unconscious person into an iron cage and moved on to the next.
This scene was like a living hell. Ian knew that the Celestial Dragons were branding their slaves, marking them with the so-called “Heavenly Dragon’s Hoof” imprint.