Project X

So, before Sun Yu had even finished eating, Lana had kicked him out. As he flew through the sky, he reminisced about the food left on the table: grilled steak, roasted Earth Dragon, shark burgers, whale whiskers, giant squid... His whole life suddenly felt bleak.

Eager to get the Dragon Balls back, Sun Yu flew at breakneck speed.

He streaked across the sky like a flash of silver, vanishing in an instant. Even when people occasionally looked up, they couldn't make out what the streak of silver really was.

Thanks to his previous experience, Sun Yu quickly found the ruins of the former Red Ribbon Army base. It was now underwater; he had blasted the land into nothing but rubble. Who knew where the Dragon Balls had ended up?

Taking out the Dragon Radar, Sun Yu carefully searched for the Dragon Balls. Sure enough, according to the radar, two of them lay scattered on the seafloor. Sun Yu locked onto the nearer location, braced himself, and plunged into the water to search the ocean floor.

The ruins of the Red Ribbon Army headquarters were still faintly visible underwater. Sun Yu reached the spot indicated by the Dragon Radar and dug furiously through the rubble.

Every so often, Sun Yu had to surface for air. He grumbled about it, but he couldn't blame anyone else. If he'd had the sense to grab the Dragon Balls before wiping out the Red Ribbon Army, he wouldn't be going through this now.

At last, thanks to Sun Yu's tireless efforts, he dug up the Dragon Ball. He carefully put it away, afraid he might lose it again.

Only the Six-Star Ball remained. Once he found it, Sun Yu would have all seven Dragon Balls and could summon Shenron. But he wasn't particularly interested in Earth's dragon. After all, he knew there were dragons on Planet Namek, as well as Super Shenron, whose reach extended across the entire star system.

Before crossing over, Sun Yu had countless times imagined collecting all seven Dragon Balls one day and summoning Shenron to grant his wish of eternal life. It would be even more perfect if he could gain an immortal body like Majin Buu's.

But as Sun Yu's horizons broadened, he realized that nothing was truly immortal in the face of absolute strength!

Whether it was Cell or Majin Buu, or even Zamasu, who possessed an immortal divine body in Dragon Ball Xenoverse, they could all be defeated. And the ones who defeated them were Saiyans!

Perhaps Saiyans weren't born strong, but when faced with overwhelming pressure and the threat of death, they could repeatedly break through their limits and unleash unprecedented potential. Even Zamasu, a member of the divine race, coveted this kind of physique.

That was why Sun Yu didn't want to rely on the power of the Dragon Balls for now—not until he had reached the realm of the gods, at least. If he ever rose to the same heights as God of Destruction Beerus, relying on his own efforts to grow stronger would seem rather ridiculous. Mortals were mortals, after all. If he wanted to go further in martial arts, he would undoubtedly need the power of Super Shenron.

Besides, Lana had said she had a wish she wanted to fulfill, so he'd leave her this chance to summon Shenron.

Following the Dragon Radar, Sun Yu reached a massive rock on the ocean floor. It looked like the last Six-Star Ball had been buried beneath it. What a pain. Should he blast the rock apart with a Kamehameha? Or blast the rock apart with a Kamehameha?

All right, he'd made up his mind: he'd blast the rock apart with a Kamehameha!

Sun Yu backed away a few meters and began gathering his energy. Since he only needed to shatter a rock, there was no need to compress too much fighting power. A casual ten or twenty thousand should do... Uh, maybe seven or eight thousand would be enough...

Forget it. He'd keep it to a thousand, just in case he got carried away and flattened the whole area. Then he'd have no idea where to look for the Dragon Ball.

Once he had his strength under control, Sun Yu thrust out a Kamehameha. Blue light blazed across the entire ocean floor.

The Kamehameha struck the rock, pierced straight through it, and exploded at its center, unleashing a terrifying shock wave. For a moment, a vacuum formed where the massive rock had stood, and vast quantities of seawater burst outward. Beneath the rock, Sun Yu spotted a yellow glass ball: the Six-Star Ball he'd been looking for.

After finding the Six-Star Ball, Sun Yu quickly flew toward it, hoping to retrieve it before the seawater rushed back in.

He cleared the mud from around the Six-Star Ball and gripped it in his hand. At last, he had all seven Dragon Balls. They were only Earth's Dragon Balls, but Sun Yu was still curious about what Lana would wish for. Hopefully, she wouldn't ask Shenron to make her queen of Planet Vegeta.

The seawater had already begun to flow back, and Sun Yu was about to leave when he happened to notice an iron door beneath the rock. Most infuriating of all, the heavy door bore a sign that read, "No unauthorized entry."

As luck would have it, Sun Yu was exactly the sort of curious soul who wanted to investigate whenever he saw a sign like that. This was the site of the former Red Ribbon Army base, after all. There might be some kind of secret laboratory inside. And if they'd been conducting experiments on living subjects, that would be even more exciting. The appearance of the artificial human � earlier had only made Sun Yu more determined to investigate.

Could it be an unfinished artificial human �? She'd be a real beauty. Thinking this, Sun Yu smashed open the heavy iron door with a punch and strode right in.

Once inside, Sun Yu shut the iron door behind him. The sea had already returned to normal. He headed deeper inside, down a gloomy corridor lit by eerie lights. The rust-covered walls would have made a perfect setting for a horror movie—and one that needed no set dressing at all. You could haul in a camera and start filming right away. It would look completely authentic!

But Sun Yu wasn't afraid of scenes like this. At their level of strength, strange supernatural things were nothing to worry about. If some foolish ghost dared to scare him, he'd be happy to make it vanish forever. So he really wasn't trying to psych himself up here. Really!

Sun Yu made his way into the underground laboratory. He walked down a long corridor lined on both sides with labs enclosed by transparent walls. Inside were all kinds of instruments and bottles of chemicals. Sun Yu didn't understand any of it, so he promptly ignored it.

After winding through a maze of turns, he finally reached a room that looked like a library. But instead of books, the rows of shelves inside were packed with tiny spy robots. Sun Yu had seen these robots in the Dragon Ball anime. They were used to collect combat intelligence on Dragon Ball fighters like Son Goku and Vegeta, and sometimes to gather cell samples from the scene as well.

Sun Yu pushed open the door. In the center of the room, a huge supercomputer was still running. Its screen displayed black-and-white text, densely packed across the screen. Sun Yu had only read the beginning of the document when it caught his attention. The opening line read: "The Final Project X!"