Sailing: I was falsely accused of watching Nami bathe, but I'm blind.

Outside the cave, night was falling and the cold wind was howling, as if mocking his disheveled state and loneliness.

In this boundless darkness and silence, Kai's thoughts involuntarily drifted back to the past.

Those moments on the Going Merry, like fragments of a movie, kept flashing through his mind.

He recalled his initial awkwardness and curiosity upon boarding the ship, Luffy's carefree and hearty laughter, Nami's sly look as she counted money, Usopp's animated boasting, Zoro's focused training on the deck, Sanji's meticulously prepared delicacies, Chopper's innocent smile, and Robin's ever-present, slightly mysterious smile...

Those once incredibly real moments of warmth and laughter, those experiences of fighting side by side and sharing life and death, those bonds he once thought would last forever... now, recalling them feels like a series of poisoned knives, stabbing deeply into his heart, forming an incredibly stark and cruel contrast with the cold reality before him.

Then, the scene abruptly shifts to the courtyard in Whispering Town.

The doubts, anger, and coldness in his crewmates' eyes; Luffy's judgmental roar; Nami's tears filled with fear and disgust; Sanji's guilty and framing "testimony"; and finally, the ship that carried all his hopes and sense of belonging, and his resolute departing figure...

Warmth and betrayal, trust and abandonment, light and darkness... The stark contrasts collided and tore at his heart like two enormous forces, causing his resentment and anger to reach their peak, like a volcano about to erupt!

"Why...why?!"

Chapter 21 The Different "Auras" Emitted by Various Creatures

Kai could no longer suppress his emotions. He suddenly raised his head and let out a roar that had been suppressed for too long, like a wounded beast, towards the dark cave wall—a darkness that he perceived as representing nothingness and despair!

"What did I do wrong?! I just can't see! I just live a different way! Is that a sin?!"

“Trust…partners…hah…” He chuckled softly and nervously, his laughter filled with endless bitterness and self-mockery. “So this is what trust and partnership are all about. They’re so fragile in the face of doubt and fear!”

“Luffy…Nami…Sanji…Usopp…Zoro…” He uttered each of those once-familiar names, and with each one, the pain in his heart deepened. “How could you…how could you so easily deny me? How could you so easily abandon me?!”

His body trembled violently with excitement, and the wound on his arm reopened, staining the area that had just been simply bandaged with rags with fresh blood, but he seemed to feel no pain.

At this moment, the emotional trauma is far more intense than the physical pain.

Anger, resentment, grievance, pain... all the negative emotions surged like a tidal wave, assaulting his reason and almost engulfing him.

But just as he was on the verge of collapse, an even stronger and more stubborn force emerged tenaciously from the deepest part of his heart.

That was defiance! That was resistance! That was a roar against the injustice of fate! That was a silent declaration of war against those who betrayed us!

He suddenly slammed his good hand against the stone wall beside him. The hard rock hurt his knuckles, but he didn't care.

He raised his head, his empty eyes seeming to pierce through endless darkness and shoot towards the unknown distance.

His voice was low and hoarse, yet carried an unwavering, steely resolve as he made a solemn vow to the darkness that bore witness to his pain and despair:

"I, Kai, will never be defeated like this!"

"I will not simply disappear into obscurity!"

"I want to become stronger! Stronger than anyone else!"

"It's not just about surviving! It's about reclaiming my dignity!"

"So that you... so that you who so easily deny and abandon me will one day have to raise your heads and face my existence!"

"I will no longer entrust my fate to others! I will take control of my own destiny! I will show you how foolish and ridiculous your choices were!"

The vow, like a thunderclap, echoed in the silent cave.

It had no witnesses, only the boundless darkness and the howling cold wind.

But it was deeply imprinted on Kai's soul, becoming the only driving force that supported him and an inextinguishable beacon on his future path.

From this moment on, Kai, who may have once been somewhat optimistic and valued his partners, was dead.

Instead, there is a completely new Kai, whose heart is filled with struggle, tempered by the pain of betrayal, and whose sole purpose is to become stronger and prove himself.

His path was destined to lead him further and further away from his former companions, ultimately leading to an unavoidable fateful showdown.

The days Kai spent recuperating in the cave were the darkest, yet most crucial, period of his life.

The physical injuries healed slowly under the rudimentary conditions, and the knife wound on my arm would occasionally send shivers of pain through me.

Hunger and cold remain constant nightmares.

What's even more tormenting is the boundless loneliness and the excruciating pain in one's heart when recalling the scene of betrayal.

However, it was precisely under this extreme predicament and repeated torment that Kai's vow became even more steadfast.

He knew that wallowing in pain and resentment was pointless; becoming stronger was the only way out.

For him, the only way to become stronger is to hone his innate and only reliable "perception" ability to the extreme.

Thus began his systematic and rigorous self-cultivation.

This was no longer the kind of occasional practice done on the ship to assist one's companions, but a life-or-death training exercise where one's life was at stake.

He no longer passively receives information from his surroundings, but actively and consciously trains and expands his perception—that is, the still nascent "Observation Haki".

Every day, he would spend a lot of time sitting quietly in the cave, immersing his consciousness in that silent and lightless world, trying his best to cast the "net" of perception further.

At first, he could only clearly perceive a range of a few dozen meters around the cave; beyond that, the view became blurry.

But he was not discouraged and tried again and again, pushing his limits.

He tried to capture the sounds of the wind rustling through the grass in the distance, to distinguish the frequency of the flapping of different birds' wings, and to feel the faint vibrations coming from the ground in the distance.

The process was tedious and painful; each instance of excessive mental exertion brought on a severe headache, but he gritted his teeth and persevered.

In addition to expanding the scope, he also focused on training the precision of his perception.

He began to try to discern the more subtle information that he had previously overlooked.

He listened carefully to the sound of the air movement, trying to discern subtle changes in wind direction and speed, and even to sense differences in air pressure.

He used his fingertips to touch the rocks, trees, and soil, feeling their different textures, temperatures, and humidity, trying to decipher more environmental information from them.

He tried to discern the different "auras" emanating from various creatures—was it vigilance? Fear? Hunger? Or hidden murderous intent?

Each hunting trip became a practical exercise for him to hone his abilities to "perceive intentions" and "predict".

He no longer merely sensed the presence of the beast as before, but tried to anticipate its next attack.

By capturing the subtle tension in a beast's muscles, the instantaneous changes in its breathing, and the direction in which its killing intent gathers, he tries to react in the instant before the opponent launches an attack.

This process was fraught with danger. Several times, he was nearly injured by the claws or fangs of wild beasts due to misjudgment. But each time, he learned from his mistakes, making his senses sharper and his predictions more accurate.

Every walk through the rugged mountains and forests became a training ground for him to hone his spatial awareness and obstacle avoidance skills.

He forced himself to speed up, and while sensing obstacles such as trees, rocks, and ravines, his body had to make almost instinctive dodge movements.

He has fallen countless times, and getting bruised and battered is commonplace for him, but he never stops.

He wanted to completely adapt his body to this way of acting entirely based on perception, making perception his new "eyes".

Chapter 22 "The Bounty Hunter"

Blindness, a physical condition that he might have once considered a defect, has now become his only advantage, or rather, his only path of no return, a path he has no other choice but to take.

Because he is blind, he must devote all his energy to his other senses and that mysterious sixth sense.

Because he had no other choice, he had to push this path to its extreme, to a level beyond what ordinary people could imagine.

Through constant trials and struggles on the brink of life and death, Kai began to explore his own fighting style.

He no longer pursued imitating the visual combat of normal people, but began to think about how to combine his unparalleled hearing, touch, and smell with his increasingly powerful Observation Haki to form a unique combat system that was entirely his own.

He began to try to incorporate his perception into every punch, every kick, and every dodge.

He tried to sense the changes in his opponent's center of gravity, predict the opponent's point of force, and find the weak points in the opponent's defense.

He began practicing how to determine the location and movement of multiple enemies in complete darkness (which had always been the case for him) by relying solely on changes in sound and airflow.

Although there was no teacher to guide them, no systematic training methods, and everything was in the most primitive exploratory stage, the prototype of a combat system that relied entirely on perception and was characterized by unpredictable movement techniques and precise and deadly counterattacks had quietly begun to take shape in this lonely, dark cave, along with Kai's heart, which had been tempered and hardened by pain and anger.

This path was destined to be full of thorns and loneliness, but in Kai's eyes (if one could see them), there was no longer confusion or despair, only an almost obsessive determination and a thirst for power.

He wants to forge his own path to the pinnacle in the darkness.

Time passed quietly in the cave as people practiced and struggled to survive day after day.

Kai's wound on his arm had healed, leaving a hideous scar, much like the indelible mark of trauma in his heart.

But compared to his physical recovery, his internal changes were more significant.

After this period of honing his skills, his survival skills have made a qualitative leap.

He was no longer as disheveled as he had been at the beginning, but was able to deal with the various challenges in the wilderness with greater ease.

His perception—the ability he called the “web of the mind”—was broader and more precise.

He could easily "hear" the faint sound of a wild rabbit nibbling on grass roots hundreds of meters away, judge the time when the prey left by the residual scent in the air, and even vaguely sense the surging veins of an underground spring.

For Kai now, hunting is no longer a struggle of luck, but has become a more efficient "job".

He can approach his prey silently, like the most experienced hunter, and choose the best time to strike by sensing the prey's vigilance and intention to escape.

He even learned to use wind direction and terrain to conceal his scent and sound, luring his prey into his "sensory trap" without their knowledge.

He was no longer content with just catching small animals; he would occasionally try to challenge larger and more dangerous beasts in order to obtain more food and also to test his fighting skills.

However, the laws of survival are always fair and cruel.

As Kai grew stronger and became more effective at hunting, he inadvertently became a more prominent link in the wilderness's food chain, attracting the attention of higher-level, more powerful predators.

This wilderness is not only home to docile herbivores and common small predators.

Deeper into the mountains and forests lurk some truly ferocious beings.

It might be a giant bear with a massive body and the strength to break wood, or a saber-toothed leopard with lightning speed and sharp claws and teeth, or a pack of wolves that are ferocious and cunning.