Starry Sky Cage

The vacuum of space was eerily silent, like a solidified ocean of ink. Only the sparse stars in the distance, scattered like crushed diamonds, glimmered with a cold light.

In this boundless darkness, even time seemed to lose its meaning, leaving behind only eternal silence and nothingness.

Broly was wrapped in a flowing, flickering emerald energy shield. The light was not dazzling; it was more like a candle in the wind, struggling to maintain its existence in the absolute dark.

He curled his muscular body, like a lonely, burnt-out meteor, dragging a faint and fleeting trail of light through the endless void.

The trail extended behind him, only to be swallowed by the darkness, leaving nothing behind.

It had been six hours since he left the thin, violent atmosphere of Vampa. That ugly, desolate planet, covered in rocks and eternal wind-blown sand, had long since shrunk into an invisible, dim speck, finally vanishing into the bottomless darkness behind him.

Ahead, his target—which felt like a flickering candle in his perception yet carried a distinct aura of life—remained despairingly far away.

It was like a cruel phantom woven from starlight; although it seemed right before his eyes, he could never reach it.

"How... much further..."

Broly licked his cracked lips, a hoarse whisper squeezing from his throat.

The sound collided and echoed within the narrow energy shield, muffled and sticky. The sensation of oxygen deprivation grew increasingly pronounced, like viscous liquid pouring into his eardrums.

His chest heaved violently.

Every breath sent a dull ache through his ribs.

It wasn't exhaustion—with his constitution, flying this distance was nothing—the problem was that the air within the shield was finite and precious.

As time ticked by, the air grew thinner and more stagnant; he could feel it clearly.

A faint metallic scent of rust began to permeate the air, a signal that the carbon dioxide concentration was rising.

He instinctively raised his right arm, but there was nothing on his wrist, only rows of white scars left by past battles.

In the end, the movement was merely a habit.

He desperately wanted to grasp the passing time, but he could only count silently by his heartbeat and biological clock.

Four hours.

At the limit speed he could maintain after leaving the planet's gravity—somewhere between sub-light and the speed of light—he had likely traveled ten light-years.

The number sounded daunting, enough to fill pages in any civilization's astronomical records.

But in this boundless universe, to Broly, it was but a small step beneath a giant's feet, a fleeting blink in eternity.

"Ten light-years..."

He calculated in his throat, "Still at least... twenty-two light-years to go."

At his current balance of energy output and physical load, he would have to fly for at least another seven hours.

He gritted his molars, the muscles in his jaw clenching with a rhythmic creak.

Seven hours—a simple, clear, yet despair-inducing number.

The air in the energy shield would last, at most, another four hours.

He had already compressed the shield to wrap tightly around his body, thin as a membrane.

At the same time, he had reduced his breathing and metabolism to his physiological limits, forcing himself to live like a turtle in a shell.

Yet, even pushing himself this hard, he could last five hours at most.

In other words, before he reached that star of hope, he would long since have become like a fish out of water, suffocating and freezing in this vacuum wilderness, eventually turning into a corpse drifting forever in the cosmos.

"Damn it...!"

He let out a low growl, all his anger and resentment bitten back between his teeth.

He slammed his eyes shut, not to rest, but to concentrate all his spirit.

The veins on his temples throbbed as he channeled that innate, battle-honed perception, pushing it out like invisible tentacles, desperately reaching toward the direction of that planet once more.

Thirty-two light-years, to the vast universe, was practically "right next door," a neighbor just across the way.

But for a Saiyan who needed to breathe, required atmospheric pressure, and had to withstand absolute zero and cosmic radiation, this distance was harder to cross than a chasm.

The physical laws of the universe stood coldly before him, as if mocking any fool who tried to force their way through with sheer power.

Fragments of memories from before his arrival suddenly surfaced in his mind—those nights huddled in a cheap rental, holding a dying old smartphone, flipping through Dragon Ball fan fiction page by page.

How easily those authors wrote: "The protagonist explodes with energy to cross the star sea," "Saiyans survive in a vacuum," "Aura shields ignore the environment"... It was as if, as long as one's combat power was high and one's fists were hard, they could kick aside the laws of thermodynamics and punch through cosmic constants.

"All... absolute... nonsense!"

He cursed through gritted teeth, his chest heaving more violently in his agitation, his breathing becoming increasingly labored.

Reality was like a cold stone, crushing those beautiful fantasies into dust.

What was a Saiyan?

They were natural warriors, a race capable of fighting beside magma and dueling in extreme frozen wastelands.

Their recovery was absurd; they could even break through limits while near death to become stronger.

Yes, they were strong enough to destroy planets.

But in the end, they were still "biological."

They require oxygen to breathe and food to eat; their cells can only function properly in relatively mild environments.

No matter how strong they are, they cannot rewrite the survival code etched into their DNA. It is impossible to turn lung lobes into nuclear fusion reactors, nor can skin be transformed into a completely insulated shield.

Regardless of how great the power, one cannot escape the limitations of their biological form. This is the "definition" of a species' genetics.

Fish gills cannot absorb oxygen from the air, and bird wings cannot cut through the deep-sea currents.

Some boundaries cannot be crossed simply by being strong.

"Ha... ha..."

Broly took a deep breath, even though the air he inhaled was so thin it tasted sweet and was laced with the scent of rust.

He could feel that cold current rushing into his lungs, bringing a stinging sensation, but it also helped clear his muddled mind.

He snapped his eyes open. In his beast-like gaze, the golden pupils seemed to burn within the faint, emerald-green energy glow. It was defiance, stubbornness, and a near-manic will to survive.

Forty-one years of imprisonment!

On that abandoned trash planet, fighting beasts for scraps and struggling against storms, loneliness and rage had ravaged him day after day.

He thought he had finally seized that ship that had crashed by chance. He believed that as long as he could break free from the shackles of gravity, it would be the beginning of freedom and rebirth.

Yet, he never expected that the universe would offer him not freedom, but a larger, more ruthless cage—this sea of stars that looked boundless but was, in reality, filled with chains at every turn.

"Could it be... that I really have to go back?"

As soon as this thought emerged, a chill colder than the universe itself gripped his heart.

Return to Vampa? Go back and face that hellhole of only rocks, sandstorms, and wretched food? Go back and endure that endless, crushing solitude? No, he absolutely refused.

If he were destined to turn into dust in the starry sky, that would still be better than going back.

He whipped his head around, staring fixedly at the deep universe beyond the energy barrier, as if he could pierce through the vast distances and lock onto the planet he had sensed.

The sky was as black as velvet, and the stars shimmered with a cold, indifferent light.

That starlight had traveled tens, hundreds, or even tens of thousands of light-years to reach this place. Each ray was like a distant, cold dream, silently recounting the ruthlessness and vastness of the universe.

The star he was aiming for was hidden within this sea of stars—it wasn't particularly bright, but at this moment, all his hopes and struggles were pinned upon it.

His blood roared in his ears, and the dizziness from oxygen deprivation slowly spread, threatening to swallow his will.

Yet, something more primitive and savage suddenly erupted from the depths of his soul—Saiyan instinct.

Try one more time!

This time, it wasn't a whisper in his heart or a secret calculation, but a roar pushed to the limit and finally unleashed!

His muscles tensed instantly, and his veins bulged.

The emerald-green energy barrier, which had already been teetering on the edge of collapse, jolted violently as if injected with a stimulant, suddenly flaring with brilliance.

He was no longer satisfied with merely maintaining flight; he began to frantically squeeze every ounce of energy from his body, wanting only to make the flame of life enveloping him burn brighter and push him further!

Even if the air he breathed were to burn away, even if his body hadn't fully adapted to the space environment, and even if this acceleration might tear him apart, he didn't care.

In the absolute darkness, this mass of emerald light resembled an unstable star that had suddenly gone mad, pulsing rhythmically as it lunged toward its target in the deep void, leaving behind a dazzling, yet inevitably fleeting, trail.

Broly slowly closed his eyes, pressing his hands together, his fingertips trembling.

He took a sharp breath, and the violent energy within his body began to circulate in a way he had never attempted before—not an unbridled explosion, but something he forcibly organized, compressed, and guided along a precise yet fragile path.

This technique was something he had spent twenty years experimenting with, failing, and suffering injuries for, across countless lonely planets and empty reaches of space, before finally figuring it out—a short-range instant transmission.

It sounded simple: use his own energy as a probe to sense and lock onto the coordinates of a distant target, then use raw power to forcibly fold space, achieving a "leaping" form of movement.

This move relied entirely on power and will to forcefully interfere with the laws of the universe, with no help from technology.

However, the limitations of this move were almost cruel.

First, it could truly only be used for "short distances."

On a planet, he could jump over a hundred kilometers at most by giving it his all.

In the vacuum of space, the resistance was lower and the distance could be extended, but the limit... had never exceeded one light-year.

For interstellar travel, this distance was practically negligible.

Second, there had to be an absolutely precise "anchor point."

He had to clearly perceive the energy or life signature of the target location to use as a coordinate.

Without a "lighthouse," he was like a ship lost in a storm-tossed sea, unable to jump at all.

And right now, his target—the strange planet twenty-two light-years away—emitted a life signature so faint it was nearly despairing.

The sensation was like staring fixedly at a dying candle flame in the boundless dark of the universe; the light was flickering, as if it would be swallowed by the darkness in the next second.

There was no turning back; he had to try, no matter what!

Broly snapped his eyes open, that emerald green in his gaze glowing like the core of a star.

He gritted his teeth, the veins on his forehead and neck bulging, as he cast his entire perception out like a net into the depths of the universe, desperately trying to catch that faint, flickering fluctuation.

The energy within his body roared and flowed with unprecedented speed and pressure, producing a buzzing sound like twisting metal.

His body began to tremble uncontrollably within the energy barrier, and the space around him rippled visibly—a groan from the very structure of space under the weight of his savage power.

Lock on!

Now is the time!

Get... across!

He let out a low growl mixed with pain and determination, pouring all his energy into the core of the technique in a single instant.

At that very moment, the space for several meters around him distorted violently, light bent, and his surroundings became strange and blurred.

Immediately after, Broly and his spherical energy shield vanished from the spot, leaving behind only a ripple in space that quickly dissipated.

A brilliant emerald streak of light, like a comet traveling in reverse, viciously tore through the silent void, completing its first arduous jump toward an invisible target deep in the universe.

A distance of approximately 0.7 light-years was forcibly crossed by him through the folds of space.

The next moment, in another corner of the universe, the void was broken like the surface of water, and Broly's figure re-emerged amidst a chaotic flash of energy.

Cough—! Pfft!

The moment he appeared, he couldn't help but double over and cough up a large mouthful of blood.

Under zero gravity, the bright red blood droplets turned into small, round crimson spheres that floated inside the energy shield, looking particularly jarring.

His face was as white as snow, devoid of any color, and with his heavy gasping, the mist inside the energy shield began to disperse in waves.

The backlash from forcibly folding space was far more severe than he had anticipated; not only did it instantly drain a third of his energy, but it also severely damaged his internal organs and meridians.

Worse still, the spherical energy shield sustaining his life became unstable due to the intense energy fluctuation, emitting a harsh "zizzing" sound as the oxygen indicator alarm grew increasingly urgent.