Heilai's Arrogance

"Oh! Xiuka, are you suggesting I cooperate with you to capture a brat from a major family?"

Heilai swirled the wine in his glass and downed it in one gulp.

"Heilai, you're living quite the comfortable life, aren't you!"

Xiuka looked at Heilai with an amused expression, then picked up his own glass and drained it as well.

"I'm not like you, Young Master Xiuka. My life was bought with blood! Unlike you, living so luxuriously under your brother's protection!"

Heilai retorted with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

"Hmph! I don't have time to waste on your nonsense! We split the profits fifty-fifty this time!"

Xiuka hated it when people implied he relied entirely on his brother, as it made him feel like a useless waste.

"No, no, no! Sixty for me, forty for you."

Heilai said greedily, his tone leaving no room for negotiation.

"You! Fine! Forty-sixty it is, but I want that kid alive!"

Xiuka gritted his teeth, glaring at Heilai.

"Hahaha! That's the spirit. I'll get it done for you!"

Heilai said, clearly delighted.

"Hmph! Let's go!"

Feeling slighted, Xiuka didn't want to stay a moment longer and hurried away with his subordinates.

However, no one noticed that as Xiuka turned away, a faint smile flashed across his lips. His goal this time wasn't the wealth Jiang Yun possessed, but that miraculous Capsule Technology.

If he could master that technology, wealth would flow in endlessly. Heilai thought he had gotten the better end of the deal, little knowing that he was the one who would ultimately lose.

Hahaha!

Wild laughter echoed in Xiuka's mind.

Xiuka thought he was the final winner, but he didn't realize that his little scheme had long been seen through by Heilai.

Once Xiuka had completely vanished from sight, one of Heilai's henchmen spoke up: "Boss, that Xiuka is notoriously stingy. I can't believe he agreed so readily!"

"You don't understand. That kid thinks he's clever, but his little tricks are amateur at best. If it weren't for my friendship with his brother, I wouldn't even bother with him."

"The fact that he agreed so quickly means there's a secret, and that secret must lie with the kid he mentioned. Once we capture that boy, we'll naturally uncover the secret ourselves!"

Heilai's eyes gleamed with greed, and he laughed with excitement.

"The boss is the boss for a reason!"

A henchman chimed in with flattery.

Hahaha!

The hall was filled with the joyous sounds of the Heilai Bandits.

On the other side, Jiang Yun and his team were preparing to set out to deal with the Heilai Bandits. After obtaining information about the bandits from the Mercenary Guild, they were ready to depart.

They were capable of sensing energy signatures, so as long as they approached the star sector where the Heilai Bandits operated, they would naturally be able to detect them. As for whether the bandits would flee upon encountering them, there was no need to worry. The Heilai Bandits had their own scanners, and the Blazing Squad's surface power levels were quite low—even lower than the bandits'. Most importantly, the highest power level among Jiang Yun's group was hidden; the bandits would only see Jiang Yun as a naive young master.

A tiger does not fear a flock of sheep.

But what the Heilai Bandits couldn't imagine was that Jiang Yun and his team were wolves in sheep's clothing, and Jiang Yun himself was a wolverine.

During the year the Martial Alliance members spent training, Jiang Yun hadn't been idle. With the help of the upgraded Gravity Training Room built by Dr. Brief, his power level had risen from fifty thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand. You read that right: one hundred and twenty thousand. This level was already equivalent to that of Ginyu, the captain of the Ginyu Force.

Not to mention that Jiang Yun held many hidden cards; with his full power unleashed, he wouldn't even fear those with power levels around a million, at least in the current timeline.

As long as he didn't encounter those from the original story, his power would absolutely surpass 99.9% of the beings in the universe.

However, he couldn't afford to be too careless. The universe was vast, and who knew what kind of powerful entities might emerge? One had to remember that there were many long-lived races in the universe.

Frieza's family had only been on the rise for a few hundred years, and their ancestor, Chilled, was nothing more than a space pirate.

He couldn't rely too heavily on the original plot; it could only serve as a reference, not as absolute truth. After all, this was a real world.

Still, Jiang Yun believed that as long as he had the strength, he could handle any conspiracy or change. Power could break all laws.

Their destination was an asteroid belt, the main area of activity for the Heilai Bandits and rumored to be their base of operations. It was likely chosen because of its complex terrain.

However, combat might take place in the vacuum of space, which would require specialized battle suits. The drawback was that if the enemy breached the suit, one would be directly exposed to the vacuum.

Jiang Yun had considered this issue. In the past, he had seen Earth frequently destroyed by enemies who wanted to expose Goku and the others to space, as neither Saiyans nor Earthlings could survive there.

Jiang Yun had been speechless when he first saw that; even with such immense power, they still couldn't survive in space.

Over the years, Jiang Yun had been researching how humans could survive in the cosmos. He intended to improve the human constitution—in simple terms, to evolve the human body.

But the knowledge he had access to was still too limited. He needed to deepen his foundation, which was the purpose of this journey into the stars.

Although they had not yet reached the level of traversing the universe with their physical bodies alone, they had developed a method to survive in space.

That method involved using energy to form an isolation shield, which could convert the scattered Vital Energy in the starry sky into the substances essential for the human body; since the essence of Vital Energy was the source of life, it naturally possessed this effect.

It was different from the protective shields seen in the original work; it could not defend against attacks and could only form a transparent isolation barrier.

Jiang Yun and his group traveled through the asteroid belt.

Just then!

Suddenly, Jiang Yun and his companions discovered a large group of people lying in ambush ahead, but they did not move, pretending not to have noticed them, and played along by continuing toward the ambush site.

Shortly after, a blast of energy struck a large floating rock, and the enemies emerged like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, surrounding them completely.

"Hahaha! These fools fell for our ambush so easily!"

"Let's see how they escape now!"

The ones speaking were clearly the underlings under Heilai.

"Oh ho! You actually dare to come and cause trouble for me, Heilai? You really are newborn calves unafraid of tigers; aren't you afraid of coming here with your lives only to never return?"

Heilai spoke up as well, his attitude appearing extremely arrogant. As he spoke, a group of his underlings chimed in with laughter, treating Jiang Yun and his group as if they were lambs waiting to be slaughtered.

"Kid, if you beg me for mercy, I might let you suffer a little less! Hahaha!"

Heilai wore a smug expression, seemingly wanting to see a look of terror on Jiang Yun's face.

But clearly, Jiang Yun disappointed him, remaining calm as if he were facing nothing more than a bug.

The members of the Blazing Squad around him also looked as if they were watching a fool.

Their expressions infuriated Heilai. A look of extreme rage appeared on his face, and he could not help but order, "Tear them to pieces! Leave this young man; I want him to experience deep, profound fear!"