A Global Military Deployment? No, A Global Formation!

A few days after the warning was issued, the atmosphere in Capsule Corp's largest laboratory was tense.

Bulma brought up a global satellite map. It showed various possible landing sites for extraterrestrials, alongside a pile of structural analysis reports on alien spacecraft she'd just borrowed from the military database.

Krillin sat to one side, staring at the outrageous figures. His face was pale, and he kept wiping away cold sweat.

"No, this won't work at all!"

Bulma irritably grabbed her blue hair and slammed her tablet onto the table. "Even if Goku and Tien train themselves to the limit, how much stronger can they get in a year? Ten times? Twenty times? Going by the power levels of those two Saiyans in your dream, they'd still be swatted aside with a single slap!"

She pointed at the simulated structural strength data for the Saiyans' small spaceship on the screen. "Look at the hull strength! Our conventional weapons would probably just tickle it! Unless we use our ultimate weapon...but if we do, Earth will be finished too!"

Krillin timidly raised his hand. "What if...we look for the Dragon Balls again? We could wish for the Saiyans to get lost?"

"The Dragon Balls need a year to recharge after each use! And who knows if Shenron can interfere with aliens that powerful?"

Bulma rejected the idea and slumped into her seat. "The gap in strength is just too great... This isn't something one or two martial arts prodigies can make up for..."

Lin Fan had been listening in silence. Now he slowly stood and walked to the holographic display in the middle of the room.

The display showed a rotating model of Earth.

"Individual combat strength can't make a collective leap in such a short time, and using an ultimate weapon to take everyone down with us is out of the question."

Lin Fan's voice was calm, yet carried an undeniable force. "Then why not try a different approach?"

"A different approach?"

Bulma and Krillin both looked at him.

"If we can't overpower them, we can outsmart them. If we can't raise everyone's strength, we can first build the strongest possible shield."

Lin Fan tapped a point on the virtual globe. "Earth is our home turf. Why not...use that to our advantage?"

"Our terrain?"

Bulma frowned. "You mean use the landscape? That won't work. Opponents of that level could flatten a mountain range with one move."

"Not ordinary terrain."

Lin Fan's gaze turned profound. In his mind, the basic chapters on formations from the Great Dao Source Scripture flowed rapidly past. "What I mean is...a 'formation.'"

"A formation? Like a military formation?" Krillin looked baffled.

"No." Lin Fan shook his head. "This kind of formation borrows the power of heaven and earth and harnesses the terrain of mountains and rivers. It uses specific principles to construct a domain that can trap, kill, or repel enemies. It can greatly weaken the enemy and strengthen our side."

He looked at Bulma, his eyes shining with the same light a scientist's might show upon seeing a groundbreaking new theory. "Perhaps you could think of it as...a functional energy-field generator covering a specific area. Only its energy source and operating principles aren't purely technological. They're closer to...an ancient form of geometrics and energy dynamics."

Bulma's eyes lit up at once!

"A large-scale energy field? How big an area could it cover? What would it do? How do we build one?"

She fired off questions one after another, her passion for science burning anew.

"It could be large or small. At its smallest, it could protect a room; at its largest...perhaps a city, or even an entire continent."

Lin Fan's words were astonishing. "It could serve various functions. The most basic would be disrupting the enemy's energy sensing, reducing their energy output, boosting our energy recovery, and even...gathering energy to counterattack."

He paused, then added, "Of course, the last function would require extremely demanding amounts of energy and materials, so let's set it aside for now. The most urgent and feasible option is to build a large-scale formation for weakening and disrupting the enemy."

"How much could it weaken them?"

Bulma asked urgently.

"I don't know."

Lin Fan answered honestly. "It depends on the formation's grade, its coverage, and the ability of those controlling it. But even if it can weaken them by just ten percent, that would be a huge advantage for us!"

"Ten percent...or even more..."

Bulma's breathing quickened as she immediately began calculating on the console. "If we can reduce their energy output by ten percent and their speed by five percent, Goku and the others' chances of winning would..."

The more she calculated, the brighter her eyes grew. "It's feasible! More than feasible! Even if the dream was false, creating a global force field would be a world-changing invention! Come on! What's the plan? What do we need to do?"

Lin Fan was prepared.

He picked up an electronic pen and quickly sketched on the holographic drawing board.

The lines weren't a circuit diagram, but a complex geometric design made up of countless mysterious curves, nodes, and strange symbols. It possessed a mysterious beauty that felt distinctly unmodern.

The simplified version of the Small Five Elements Maze Formation—this was the basic formation Lin Fan thought had the best chance of being realized at present.

It drew on the five elements' cycle to disrupt energy flow and confuse perception. Though it had no power to kill, it could create energy interference and disorienting shifts in direction over a vast area, greatly reducing the efficiency and accuracy of intruders.

"This is the formation diagram's basic design."

Lin Fan pointed to the pattern, so intricate it made Krillin's eyes swim. "The formation's bases must be buried at specific energy nodes around the world—usually where ley lines intersect or magnetic fields are abnormal."

He brought up the globe again and tapped several specific coordinates. "Roughly in these regions. Each formation base must be made from specific materials, and they need to be able to store and transmit a certain...special kind of energy stably over a long period."

Once again, he used the vague phrase "special energy."

"What materials do we need?"

Bulma immediately pressed him.

Lin Fan listed a string of names. "Conductivity and stability are the top priorities. We'll need large quantities of high-quality jade and crystals, especially special ores containing ley-line energy... Hmm, the crystals found alongside the original ore deposits of that 'Z-1' alloy you discovered earlier should work. We'll also need special materials with affinities for the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth..."

Bulma had never heard of many of the properties he described, but she immediately translated them into physical and chemical parameters and entered them into the database to search for matches. "High-capacity energy crystals...stable isotopes...metals with specific resonant frequencies...Leave it to me! The people in purchasing have been dying of boredom lately!"

She looked at the complex formation diagram again, frowning. "But this pattern... It's too complicated. How can we lay it out precisely? What margin of error can we allow?"

"The formation diagram charts the path of energy flow. A millimeter's deviation could lead to a thousand-mile error."

Lin Fan's expression was serious. "It requires extreme precision. Perhaps...your satellites could provide global positioning, and Engineering Robots could carry out the construction precisely."

"Global positioning...precision construction..."

Bulma murmured to herself, her eyes growing brighter and brighter, as though she could see a groundbreaking megaproject taking shape. "This is like performing energy-field surgery on the entire planet! How exciting!"

She slammed a hand on the table. "I'm doing it! I'll set up a 'Global Defense Matrix' project team right now! No—'Mother Earth Beauty Project'! It sounds catchier!"

Krillin had been listening without understanding most of it, but seeing how confident Bulma and Lin Fan looked, he somehow felt a glimmer of hope. "I don't really understand...but it sounds amazing! Is there anything I can do to help?"

Lin Fan looked at him. "Setting up the formation won't happen in a day, and we don't know what effect it will have. Don't let up on your personal training. When the time comes, you may still need to act as an eye of the formation or a mobile force, fighting the weakened enemy within the formation."

"Understood!"

Krillin nodded firmly. He felt the burden on his shoulders grow heavier, but he also had a clearer goal.

Master Roshi watched everything through the screen, stroked his beard, and let a hint of admiration and curiosity show in his eyes. "Harnessing the power of heaven and earth to create a formation...ancient wisdom indeed. Kid, you keep bringing us more and more surprises."

Just then, the laboratory's main computer gave a soft alert.

Bulma casually tapped it open. It was an encrypted report from the purchasing department.

"Hm?"

As she read, her brow furrowed. "Our large-scale purchases of special ores and rare crystals lately...have attracted the attention of several major black-market suppliers? Some unknown faction is secretly driving up prices and investigating what we're buying them for?"

Lin Fan felt a faint jolt of alarm.

The Red Ribbon Army...Dr. Gero... Their tentacles had indeed reached this far.

They had to speed up the plan to lay out the formation across the globe.