At this moment, a somewhat stern voice suddenly came from outside the door.
The two people in the room were startled. When they looked up, they found that Zhizi had appeared at the door at some point. She glanced at the photo frame and then at Tina, frowning.
Tina looked at her blankly, her eyes full of confusion.
Seeing this, Zhizi sighed slightly and softened her voice: "It's getting late, go take a shower and rest. Your sister Gion and I have something to talk about."
"Eh? But Tina also wants to..."
"When adults speak, children are not allowed to eavesdrop."
"oh……"
Tina could only leave the bedroom honestly. After her back disappeared in the corridor on the second floor, Zhizi shook her head, closed the door and sat on the bed in front of Nuo Xia.
"Sister Zhizi..." Nuo Xia could probably guess Major General Zhizi's mentality at the moment. After hesitating for a moment, he took the initiative to break the silence, "This Portcas Lujiu..."
"That's right, it's the one you were thinking of." Zhizi said quietly, "The wife of Pirate King Gol Roger, the woman who died three years ago while being chased by the navy while pregnant with Roger's child."
Died by the navy?
Nuo Xia was startled, and his eyes could not hide his astonishment.
What is this statement?
If he remembered correctly, didn't Lujiu escape from the navy's pursuit with great difficulty and die of exhaustion and blood loss after giving birth to Ace on Batelila Island in the South China Sea?
"Isn't it surprising?"
She took the photo frame from Nuo Xia's hand, looked at the little girl with a bright smile in the photo, gently brushed off the dust on it with her hands, her eyes were soft, with a trace of yearning:
"Lu Jiu, although she has no blood relationship with me, I have always regarded her as my own and as my biological daughter."
"It's a pity that this child has become rebellious since her uncle passed away. Not long after she became an adult, she left home to travel. After that, there was very little news."
"A few years later, she contacted me again and apologized for her willfulness. She also said that she had found the love of her life over in the South China Sea and was pregnant."
"I was very happy at that time and wished her a happy wedding on the phone. Later, I kept thinking about her and looking forward to seeing her bring her children and husband home to reunite with me one day."
Zhizi said this, put down the photo, and said with some self-deprecation, "But a few months later, the headquarters began to order the hunt for Roger's family orphans, and it was only then that I knew that the lover Lu Jiu mentioned was that person.
The Pirate King, Gol Roger."
"What an ironic story, Gion-chan."
Nuo Xia pursed her lower lip and remained silent.
He was actually not surprised by this. After getting Lujiu's name from Tina before Zhizi entered the door, Nuo Xia roughly guessed the story behind this series of character relationships.
As the deputy chief of staff of the Navy Headquarters, Zeng was an old navy man of the same era as Kapuzefa. The adopted half daughter met the Pirate King Roger by chance and became his wife.
It's very bizarre, but it's also a common routine.
Just based on this calculation, the age difference between the two sides seems to be a bit ridiculous.
Lu Jiu has been traveling in the South China Sea for several years. How old was she when she met Roger? She must have been in her early twenties, right?
But at that time, Roger had already disbanded the pirate group, and he was fifty-three years old, almost half an old man.
It is truly commendable that two people with huge differences in age, experience, status and strength can come together within a few months of knowing each other.
Maybe...this is the power of love.
Nuo Xia didn't want to comment too much on this old-young relationship, but she always felt something was strange.
——Since before Roger disbanded the pirate group, he knew that he was terminally ill and would not die soon, why did he develop a relationship and leave orphans and widowers miserable and helpless in this world?
Even without Garp's secret help, Luju Ace and her son might not even have the qualifications to survive.
Maybe...this is the brain circuit of a pirate, right?
He couldn't understand it anyway, and now he just wanted to find out whether Major General Shibako's departure from Marine Fando exactly three years ago, after the execution of Pirate King Roger, was related to the fact that the navy sent people to hunt down Lujiu.
This kind of approach of eradicating the roots and causing harm to innocent people is probably deeply hated by many people in the Navy Headquarters, right?
What's more, for Major General Zhizi, the person being hunted is still her half-adopted daughter.
If for this reason, there is a gap in the headquarters, and it would make sense for him to resign and return home.
But... what does this have to do with Garp?
Anyway, the conversation was already open, and Nuo Xia no longer cared about Garp's taboos with Zhizi, and was ready to speak openly and directly ask about the reason three years ago.
But at this moment, a muffled "plop" sound suddenly came from outside the door, accompanied by the little girl's cry of pain.
"It's Tina!"
Zhizi and Nuo Xia's expressions changed, and they rushed out of the door at the same time and ran downstairs.
When they arrived in the hall, they looked around and found that the lights were on in the bathroom, and the sound just now came from inside.
"Tina, what's wrong with you?"
Nuo Xia knocked on the bathroom door, but there was no response for a long time, and suddenly her heart skipped a beat.
Zhizi on the side already had a worried look on her face. She tried to twist the doorknob twice, but when she found that it was locked from the inside, she kicked it out without hesitation.
With a bang, the wooden door burst open and shattered into pieces.
"..."
Nuo Xia stared at the wooden door that had been crushed into powder. She didn't react until the skinny old lady strode into the bathroom like a god of war.
He was about to follow closely, but suddenly thought of something, hesitated for a moment, and stopped, waiting silently at the bathroom door.
After a while, Zhizi held Tina's little body in her arms, walked out of the bathroom, came to the sofa, and carefully put the latter down.
Tina was wrapped in a bath towel and looked a little pale and weak, but she seemed to be in good spirits and seemed to have no problem.
"What's going on, Sister Zhizi?" Nuo Xia breathed a sigh of relief and asked.
"I fell down while taking a shower and fell into the bathtub. Fortunately I didn't pass out."
Zhizi touched Tina's cheek and said somewhat reproachfully, "You kid, you were not careful and scared both me and your Gion sister."
"Sorry, Grandma Zhizi."
Tina's tone was still a little weak and her eyes were blank, "I don't know what happened, but when I was taking a shower, I suddenly felt that I had no strength at all, and I slipped and fell..."
"Are you feeling unwell?" Zhizi frowned, "I remember you are in your menstrual period these days. Did you neglect to keep your mouth shut and secretly eat cold drinks from the refrigerator?"
"No."
Tina shook her head quickly and pointed to the dining table next to her, "I haven't eaten anything in the past few days. I just washed some strawberries brought by Sister Gion after I came down from upstairs and ate them."
"Oh, right."
She suddenly remembered something and said with a sad face, "Those strawberries were quite delicious, but one of them seemed to be broken and smelled particularly bad. I took a bite and threw it away. Could it be that it spoiled my stomach?"
?”
broken?
Nuo Xia subconsciously glanced at the trash can next to the coffee table. There was indeed a strawberry with only one bite in it, but... why did that strawberry seem to look different from the normal one, and there were spiral patterns on the surface?
Pattern?
He and Major General Zhizi looked at each other, their expressions changed at the same time, and they blurted out almost at the same time:
"Devil Fruit!"
Nuo Xia bent down and picked up the strawberry from the trash can. He put it in front of him and looked at it carefully. His head was immediately enlarged - the pattern was dense and the texture was rough. It was indeed a devil fruit.
He recalled that when he bought strawberries yesterday, he had just completed the system task, and his mind was full of things related to points. He asked the stall owner to help select the strawberries, and he really didn't pay attention to whether there was any abnormality in it.
As a result, he was brought to Major General Zhizi's house in a daze, and was eaten by Little Tina in a daze...
How could there be such a coincidence? It couldn't just be the threshold fruit, right?
Nuo Xia murmured in her heart, and when she was about to throw the remains of the Devil Fruit back into the trash can, she suddenly noticed that Major General Zhizi and Tina on the sofa were looking at him up and down with strange eyes.
what happened again?
He was puzzled and thought he had something on his clothes. He subconsciously looked down and was stunned.
Within his sight, there were neither the astonishing rolling hills nor the slender waist, but a slender and strong man's body, a body he was familiar with and couldn't be more familiar with.
Nuo Xia finally understood why Zhizi and Tina looked at her with that look.
In the huge living room, the sound of a pindrop could be heard in silence, and only the ticking of the clock could be heard faintly.
"..."
In this weird atmosphere, the corners of Nuo Xia's eyes twitched.
After a long time, he raised his head with difficulty, looked at the expressionless Major General Zhizi on the sofa, and tried his best to force out a dry smile:
"Ahem, what about that? How about I go on a long journey now to find the fruit stall owner who sells strawberries to return the goods and compensate me?"