Chapter 971

Oden bargains with Kaidou so that anyone who endures an hour in the boiling cauldron walks free. He then climbs into the seething oil and braces a long wooden plank above himself, hoisting all of his Nine Red Scabbards out of harm's reach. As the watching crowd scorns him, Shinobu steps forward to reveal the truth: Oden's weekly naked dancing was the price for stopping Orochi from seizing a hundred citizens and shipping them to Kaidou, the two having falsely sworn to leave Wano once their ships were finished.

In Oden Castle, Toki explains to Momonosuke that his life is targeted because he is the Kouzuki heir, and the boy tears up asking about his father's fate. At the capital, a guard rushing Oden slips and is scalded in the pot, underscoring the death that awaits. Oden proposes the ten of them endure a set span, and a confident Kaidou sets a clock for one hour. The moment Oden enters the oil he screams, yet he orders the Scabbards onto the plank and holds them overhead. Minute by minute the spectators marvel at his endurance, and when they grumble at the delay, Shinobu rounds on them as fools.

Shinobu recounts how Orochi, shielded behind Semimaru's barrier, admitted he targeted the shogunate to avenge the Kurozumi persecution that followed his grandfather's treason, abducting citizens as part of that vengeance. Faced with mounting deaths, Oden accepted Orochi's terms: humiliate himself each week and a hundred lives would be spared, with a promise the oppressors would depart in five years. Oden even toured the regions to check Orochi kept his word. The revelation leaves the townspeople stunned that the savior they branded a fool had borne so much.