Serie was absolutely right: the secret of longevity was not so easy to unravel.
In the blink of an eye, half a month passed.
During that half month, Vegapunk and the others stayed holed up in the laboratory, performing massive amounts of experiments and calculations every day, yet they still failed to crack the secret of longevity.
There had been some progress on constitutions, but not much. They still needed a huge number of experiments.
Because of that, Egghead's funds quickly began to run dry.
Rowan had to admit that experiments really burned through money.
So he had no choice but to take Hashirama, Smoothie, Yamato, who had recently joined the group, and the others out to make some money.
Speaking of Yamato, Rowan had no idea what Kaido had been thinking. Anyway, on the second day after they returned from Totto Land, Kaido sent Yamato over, claiming it was so she could train with Rowan.
Rowan strongly suspected that Kaido had deliberately sent Yamato over to disgust him.
Because when Yamato first arrived, every other sentence out of her mouth was, "I am Kozuki Oden."
It made Rowan genuinely sick.
He truly couldn't understand it. People actually admired that abstract-brained idiot Kozuki Oden?
But considering Yamato had been raised by Kaido since childhood and hadn't read many books, falling onto the wrong path was somewhat understandable.
At the end of the day, she had suffered from a lack of education.
So Rowan endured his disgust and asked Yamato:
"Let me ask you something. If you were the crown prince of a country, and you went off to war, then came back to find your country occupied by an enemy, what would you do?"
Yamato answered without hesitation, "Of course I'd kill the enemy and take back my country."
"Then what if your enemy threatened you with your people?" Rowan asked again.
Yamato immediately fell silent, not knowing what to do.
After that, Rowan listed out all of Kozuki Oden's stupid actions and his god-tier brain circuits.
He also offered several possible solutions.
In reality, given Kozuki Oden's position and situation back then, it wouldn't have been difficult at all to deal with Kaido.
Any normal person would have known what to choose.
Whether contacting Whitebeard or the members of the Roger Pirates, he had ways to break the situation.
Even on his own, he had the ability to turn the tables.
Kurozumi Orochi had taken Wano's people hostage, but could he guard every single one of them day and night?
With Oden's strength, if he had become an assassin, killing Orochi would have been ridiculously easy.
If he wanted to assassinate someone, who could stop him?
Not even Kaido, much less Kurozumi Orochi.
Yet he chose the stupidest method possible: dancing in the street for five years and becoming the so-called fool daimyo.
Was that something a normal person could come up with?
So Rowan felt not the slightest pity for Kozuki Oden's death. If anything, he wanted to say: good riddance.
At first, Yamato was furious that Rowan looked down on Kozuki Oden. But as Rowan laid out the facts and reasoned with her, she gradually fell silent, then even sank into deep self-doubt.
Could it be that she really had idolized the wrong person? Was Kozuki Oden not as great as she had imagined?
Was he actually just an idiot?
Then didn't that make her, who idolized him, an idiot too?
Looking at Yamato's conflicted face, Rowan couldn't help sighing.
In the end, she was just like Kaido—uncultured. The fact that she could read and write already put her above more than ninety percent of people in this world. Expecting her to understand complicated issues was just too much.
After all, people in the One Piece world didn't seem very bright in general. Had they traded their brains for their physiques?
Even a guy like Kuro of a Hundred Plans could be considered highly intelligent.
Rowan had long since stopped holding out much hope for the people of this world.
So he sent Nico Robin to handle it and had her correct Yamato's thinking.
"Leave it to me, Boss."
Robin said she would need only a week to change Yamato's mindset.
But reality proved that Robin had been too conservative.
She had underestimated Yamato's brain capacity. In just four days, she successfully made Yamato forget Kozuki Oden.
No, not exactly forget him.
She gave Yamato a new idol.
"Boss, from today onward, please call me Wonder Woman Yamato."
When Yamato reappeared in front of Rowan with an expression that basically said, "I'm the strongest woman alive," Rowan was utterly dumbfounded.
What the hell was Wonder Woman Yamato?
Rowan pulled Robin aside and asked carefully, "What exactly did you do to Yamato?"
Robin said calmly, "Since Yamato likes tragic heroes so much, I translated Wonder Woman and gave it to her."
Logically speaking, merely translating the book shouldn't have been enough to make Yamato worship him.
So out of curiosity, Rowan looked over Robin's translation. Then he discovered that Robin had made certain adaptations.
In her version, Wonder Woman became a powerful woman, proficient in all three types of Haki. Because she was dissatisfied with the World Government's oppression and the Heavenly Tribute system, she rose in rebellion against the tyrannical Nazi—
No, wait. Against the World Government.
It told how Wonder Woman led her soldiers into battle against the Marines, burned her boats and broke her cannons, defeated four hundred thousand Marines in one battle, and even defeated the then-Fleet Admiral with her overwhelming strength.
Her following battles were nine fights and nine victories, shaking the seas.
At that point, the World Government realized wonder woman had become unstoppable. Under the pretense of inviting her to become a Celestial Dragon, they set up the God Valley.
When Rowan read that part, he suddenly felt as if phlegm had gotten stuck in his throat and he had no idea how to spit it out.
Was the God Valley set up for Wonder Woman?
He continued reading.
At the God Valley, Wonder Woman sensed killing intent on all sides and, relying on her wits, escaped. After returning, she openly declared war on the World Government.
At one point, she even attacked the Holy Land and burned Mary Geoise.
For some reason, when Rowan read this part, he felt no sense of dissonance.
In the end, the hidden master of the World Government, Imu, personally acted and caused Wonder Woman's defeat.
The fleeing Wonder Woman was finally surrounded on an island. Facing the God's Knights and the Five Elders' ambush from all sides, she still roared:
"Today I may die, but I am still the strongest woman, Wonder Woman!"
After reading Robin's heavily modified version of Wonder Woman, then looking at Yamato, whose face now clearly said, "From today onward, Wonder Woman is my idol," Rowan had no idea how to comment.
"So she believed it?"
"I told her this happened several hundred years ago, and that it was history hidden by the World Government." Robin said calmly. "Considering my identity, do you think she believed it or not?"
Rowan: "...Well."
Now he finally understood why Yamato had changed her mind.
The reason Yamato admired Kozuki Oden was because she had read Oden's journal.
But compared to Wonder Woman's life, what the hell did Oden's journal amount to?
Did it have anything like Wonder Woman's legendary life?
This was pure dimensionality reduction.
What kind of idiot was Kozuki Oden? How was he worthy of being compared to Wonder Woman?
In the end, Rowan patted Robin on the shoulder and said, "Well done."
After Yamato abandoned the so-called Kozuki Oden and chose Wonder Woman as her idol, Rowan no longer rejected her.
A woman who was beautiful, ridiculously good at fighting, and worshiped Wonder Woman—who could refuse that?
So this time, when they went out to make money, Rowan brought Yamato along without hesitation.
As for where they were going to make money?
Naturally, Skypiea.
Don't forget, Skypiea still had a massive treasure.
The golden flying ship: the Ark Maxim.
Of course, anyone who had read One Piece knew that this thing already had an owner. The owner of the Ark Maxim was the man who called himself a god, the Logia-type Rumble-Rumble Fruit user—
Enel.
In terms of practicality, the Rumble-Rumble Fruit was absolutely not inferior to any Devil Fruit.
Unfortunately, in Enel's hands, it was wasted.
Well… maybe not completely wasted. Enel was actually pretty strong, and his development of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit had its own unique brilliance.
The problem was that he was far too arrogant. He focused only on developing his fruit and neglected his physical ability, then ran into Luffy, the Protagonist, and was ultimately defeated.
Then again, readers initially thought Luffy had eaten the Gum-Gum Fruit and was rubber, an insulator that didn't conduct electricity, so he countered the Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
But later, everyone found out Luffy hadn't eaten the Gum-Gum Fruit at all.
He had eaten the Human-Human Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Model: Nika.
He was a genuine Sun God.
So not conducting electricity became a little hard to justify, didn't it? Rubber and Nika were two completely different fruits, one Paramecia and one Zoan. What did non-conductive rubber have to do with Nika?
No matter how Rowan thought about it, he couldn't make sense of it, so he could only complain: Oda is just a guy who draws manga. What the hell does he know about One Piece?
And anyway, Devil Fruits were very likely born from human desire. Their very existence was rooted in idealism.
Since they were already idealistic, maybe it made sense for the Nika Fruit to not conduct electricity after all.
After all, not long ago, Rowan himself had used idealistic magic to bisect Charlotte Linlin.
The power of "I think it works" was just that absurd.
Ahem. He'd gotten off topic.
Back to Enel.