"I've been in the Dragon Ball World for three years now. There are still five years until the original story begins. I've grown a lot stronger, but my talent still falls far short of a Saiyan's. This body is gifted, of course—almost as talented as Krillin, who's hailed as the strongest Earthling, and perhaps even a little more so. But I can't do it all on my own."
The speaker was a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy dressed in a martial arts uniform. He looked exceptionally resolute, with an air of heroism about his features. In truth, he was only twelve, but all those years of martial arts training made him look several years older.
The boy was named Jiang Yun. He came from Blue Star, and when he learned he'd arrived in the Dragon Ball World, he was thrilled. Back in his old world, after becoming the head of a publicly listed company, his greatest passion besides making money had been martial arts. He was obsessed with traditional martial arts and wuxia, but the world he came from was ordinary, with no such martial arts to speak of.
Still, years of training had given him a fine physique, every bit as good as a professional boxer's.
He'd met his end in an earthquake while climbing a mountain in search of martial arts and wisdom.
"My fighting power is about the same as Kid Goku's when he first set out. It's time to build a force that can help me train."
Training took enormous resources. In the original story, Vegeta never lacked resources like training rooms, thanks to Bulma, and never had to worry about money. As the saying went, wealth, companions, techniques, and a place to train were all essential. If Goku had been wealthy in the original story, Chi-Chi might not have opposed Gohan's training so strongly. After their marriage, the burden of supporting the family fell entirely on Chi-Chi.
Chi-Chi had given so much for her family. She loved Goku deeply, and no matter how hard life got, she never let him go hungry. Even though she knew Bulma's family was rich, she never asked her for help. Bulma was always the one who offered assistance to Goku's family.
"Since I've come to this world, I'll make up for the regrets. I won't let Earth become a stage for the Saiyans to steal the show while Earthlings are relegated to bit parts."
Jiang Yun wore an earnest expression. Beneath the rising sun, he looked full of vigor. The morning light stretched his shadow far behind him, lending the scene an air of optimism.
"Ah, it's a shame I haven't found the Turtle Hermit. Training on my own has been too slow."
Jiang Yun had indeed searched for the Turtle Hermit, but the man was somewhere out on the vast ocean. How could he be easy to find? In all those Dragon Ball novels from his previous life, the protagonists found the Turtle Hermit with ease and successfully became his disciples, or trained for a few years and effortlessly defeated him, despite his title as the God of Martial Arts.
After experiencing the hardships of training for himself, Jiang Yun knew that those effortless leaps in fighting power were utterly unreasonable. If getting stronger were that easy, Vegeta wouldn't have spent more than twenty years under Frieza without making much progress. Even allowing for the fact that Frieza deliberately assigned him easy missions, it was clear how difficult it was to increase one's fighting power.
Still, Jiang Yun's years since arriving in this world hadn't been fruitless. He'd borrowed ideas from the traditional martial arts of his previous life and managed to achieve some results.
Traditional martial arts spoke of realms like clear energy, Dark Energy, and transformation. In Jiang Yun's theory, clear energy was the process of tempering the body. Dark Energy was something else entirely: clear energy and Dark Energy were completely different concepts. With Dark Energy, one could send force through the body and outward. It let him unleash twice his normal fighting power.
What did that mean? In the original story, the only technique that could increase fighting power was Kaioken, a crucial martial art throughout Goku's life.
Through training in Dark Energy, Jiang Yun had also touched the threshold of ki training. You might think he'd reached this point through sheer talent, and there was some truth to that. But he'd also had a teacher. He hadn't lacked guidance in physical training, but the passage of time had wiped out many traditions. By now, even the art of ki training had been lost.
Jiang Yun guessed that King Piccolo had caused the loss of so many traditions centuries ago. Perhaps only the teachings Mutaito had left behind remained: the Turtle School and the Crane School.
Jiang Yun had also been able to touch the threshold of ki thanks in part to being a transmigrator. He had unusually strong mental power and far greater insight than an ordinary person—by a wide margin. His talent might have been about the same as Krillin's, but his insight was far greater. Don't assume Krillin was weak in the original story. As the strongest Earthling, he was formidable in his own right. It was only in comparison with the Saiyans that he seemed insignificant. Put him in the wider universe later on, and few could stand against him.
Looking back, his training in Dark Energy had helped him understand a few things about ki and form some theories about it. His Dark Energy involved sending out two waves of force at once when he struck. But it placed great demands on his body. He suspected those waves of force were what multiplied his fighting power, though the effect was different: it was only a momentary increase, not a sustained one, and still a far cry from Kaioken.
He was still working to improve it. He'd completed his Dark Energy training by chance and understood what it did without knowing how it worked. He suspected he'd stirred the ki inside his body, but perhaps his ki was too weak for him to sense it. Or perhaps he simply didn't understand how ki training worked.
Still, Jiang Yun firmly believed he now had what it took to challenge the protagonist. As he saw it, the Dragon Ball World judged victory and defeat entirely by the amount of ki one had. There weren't many standout martial arts techniques. Everyone focused on raising their fighting power and neglected the study of technique.
In Jiang Yun's view, ki was the foundation, while martial arts were an extension of the body—a weapon. When two fighters had similar fighting power and experience, the one with a weapon was bound to be stronger.
This might have been because learning martial arts techniques took so much time, slowing the cultivation of ki. In the original story, Goku dominated the world with a single move, the Kamehameha. Perhaps he'd spent so much time on techniques that it had held back his ki training, making the effort not worth the cost, so he'd focused on perfecting the Kamehameha.
But there was a great deal of potential in martial arts training. Take Hit of Universe 6, for example. The Time-Skip he'd mastered was incredibly powerful, as Dragon Ball Super showed in full. If Goku hadn't possessed extraordinary martial arts talent, figuring out how to counter Time-Skip would have been exceedingly difficult.
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