No matter what anyone said, Tom refused to admit he had any talent for wrecking houses.
So Zhang Da Ye tried another angle.
"Alright then, how about designing a super strong, super complicated mouse trap inside this house?"
The moment Tom heard that, his eyes lit up. He jumped onto the table, grabbed a pen, and in just a few minutes sketched out a dozen detailed blueprints. Every line was perfectly measured with a ruler, precise to the millimeter.
Satisfied, he set the papers aside, picked up a hammer and a saw, and went to work.
Planks, ropes, buckets, scissors… it seemed like Tom could turn anything in sight into part of the trap. And if the room didn't have what he needed, he'd somehow reach behind him and pull out a substitute.
Five minutes later, the entire room was crammed with contraptions.
At some spots, Tom had even torn down parts of the walls to cut into usable planks.
He might claim he wasn't a house-wrecker, but inside, the place already looked like Swiss cheese.
To avoid interfering with him, Zhang Da Ye and the others quietly retreated into a corner, dragging along the shopkeeper, clerks, a few pirate-turned-slaves, and a handful of unlucky customers who had been buying human lives like groceries.
Finally, in the center of the room, Tom painted a big red X on the floor.
The trap was complete.
"Boss, Artoria," Rui Meng Meng whispered, still wide-eyed, "are you sure what Tom built is really a mouse trap?"
Artoria's calm reply was simple. "If he says it is, then it is."
Zhang Da Ye nodded. "Exactly. Alright, let's pile those scumbags on top of the X."
One by one, they dragged the shop owner, employees, customers, and former pirates onto the marked spot.
Anyone who could casually buy slaves like produce wasn't much different from a trafficker. They deserved to be handled together.
"Now the problem is… how do we get out?" Zhang Da Ye muttered, glancing around. Both the front and back doors were completely blocked off by Tom's elaborate mechanisms.
In the end, the four of them had no choice but to carve a hole in the wall and slip outside.
A short distance away, they huddled in the shadow of a tree.
"How does the trap actually trigger?" Zhang Da Ye asked quietly.
Tom gestured wildly, but since he was invisible, no one could see.
With a huff, he knelt down and traced words into the dirt: "Wait two minutes."
Two minutes later, the ticking of an old pendulum alarm clock rang out. The swinging pendulum smacked the bell while also nudging a slender iron rod.
The rod yanked back and forth, dragging along a saw, which cut through a wooden beam.
The beam toppled, striking the handle of an upright pair of scissors.
Snip! The scissors sliced through a string, dropping a suspended hammer.
The hammer fell, smashing a lever that launched a billiard ball from its tray.
The black eight-ball arced through the air in a perfect curve and landed on a wooden platform, knocking into a line of dominoes arranged in the shape of a cat's face.
The last domino tipped into a bucket of water.
That little splash was enough to tilt the seesaw under the bucket.
The water spilled neatly into another bucket tied by rope, whose increasing weight triggered a complex pulley system.
At last, a final cord snapped.
From the ceiling beam, a massive iron weight came crashing down. Painted across its surface were the bold letters: "100T."
Directly beneath it were the heap of traffickers and scum stacked on the red X.
Boom!
The floor shook as the iron block slammed down. The victims were flattened cartoonishly, like paper cutouts, embedded deep into the ground along with the weight.
The scene wasn't bloody.
This was a mouse trap, not an execution device.
If they had Tom-and-Jerry resilience, they'd bounce back soon enough. If not… who knew?
The crash made the whole house tremble. And perhaps by coincidence, cracks spread across the wall where Zhang Da Ye's group had cut their escape hole.
Moments later, every weakened wall split, and the roof collapsed with a deafening crash, sending dust clouds into the street.
Pedestrians jumped in alarm.
In a place where sudden chaos was normal, their first instinct was to leap back from danger. Weapons were drawn, eyes locked across the rubble.
Both sides instantly assumed the worst.
"They must've brought down the house to ambush us!"
In the blink of an eye, two rival gangs were facing off, blades and guns at the ready.
Not long after, the gang that controlled this particular shop rushed to the scene.
To Zhang Da Ye and his group, Tom's over-the-top contraption was nothing unusual. With a trap like that, no one would believe it had "little power."
Zhang Da Ye reached over and patted the invisible cat's head.
"And you said you don't wreck houses."
Tom shook his head furiously.
No way! The house wasn't his fault! He only built a simple mouse trap!
"Alright, let's clear out," Zhang Da Ye said. "This place is about to erupt into a full-on gang war."
Checking the time, he added, "And we've got a shop to run."
By nightfall, word of the incident had spread.
Zhang Da Ye overheard customers talking—two gangs had fought a brutal battle, only for a third party to swoop in and wipe them both out. Blades and guns had filled the street.
The ruined slave shop barely got a mention. Compared to a gang war, it was trivial.
Zhang Da Ye could only shrug. Another pile of scum wiped out. Good riddance.
He wondered who the third faction was. Supposedly, that shop had been under their protection. If he could trace them back, maybe he'd find their leader's den.
Meanwhile, far away, the man Zhang Da Ye most wanted dead was listening to a report through a Den Den Mushi.
"Apologies. We lost one shop today," the Sabaody manager said nervously, fearing punishment.
"What caused it?" The voice on the other end was calm, almost indifferent.
"Most likely a fight between small gangs. But since the slaves and staff are all missing, it could've been a rescue attempt. Still, since none of our other shops were touched, it doesn't seem targeted against us."
They hadn't found the staff's bodies. The suspicious hundred-ton weight embedded in the ruins couldn't be lifted, even with a dozen men, so they didn't believe it was used to cover up evidence.
"Then handle it yourselves," the voice said. "It's only one shop. I don't have the energy to worry about such trifles."
"Yes, sir."
After the call ended, someone nearby asked, "Trouble in Sabaody? Shouldn't we send reinforcements?"
"It doesn't matter. That business was only ever a stepping stone into the underworld. Such trade will eventually be swept away by the times. What matters now is our real plan. Let's give them a surprise… fufufufufu…"
The chilling laughter echoed in the dark.