One Year

The Omni-King's martial arts tournament was set for one year later. The strongest warriors from all twelve universes would compete on the same stage, and the losing universes would be erased outright. When this news spread from the Lookout through Universe 7's core fighting forces, no one laughed. No one thought the Omni-King was joking. After a moment of silence, Piccolo turned and headed toward the back mountain, with Nail following behind him. The two began recalculating the possible applications and variations of Namekian sealing techniques in team battles. Vegeta entered the Gravity Chamber, and the sound of the door closing was noticeably louder than usual. Son Goku sat cross-legged on the Lookout's stone steps. For once, he did not go ask Chi-Chi for an extra meal. He merely stared at the sky, his eyes free of fear but filled with a rare solemnity.

Ji Ming gathered everyone in the Lookout plaza and spent an entire afternoon analyzing the rules and lineup. The rules were simple—each of the twelve universes would send ten fighters to engage in elimination matches in a specially constructed arena, and the defeated universe would be erased by the Omni-King on the spot. Each universe could decide its own selection method. A few hours later, Ji Ming made the final decision for Universe 7—first select the fifteen strongest candidates from the existing core fighters, then hold a round-robin tournament, ultimately choosing ten based on their overall performance. The Lookout's terminal would monitor the entire process, and any favoritism would be recorded.

After that day's strategy meeting ended, Chi-Chi made a huge pot of curry rice on Mount Paozu, with three times the usual amount of potatoes and carrots. She had grown accustomed to cooking for a houseful of fighters—Vegeta liked meat, Piccolo liked pumpkin, and Krillin could never beat those two to the food, so he always had to set up a separate little pot beside them. She served curry rice into everyone's bowls, moving more slowly than ever, yet she did not shed a single tear. When Ji Ming took his bowl, she wiped the curry sauce from her fingers on the edge of her apron and said, "Mom won't stop you this time." Ji Ming accepted the bowl and nodded. As he lowered his head and began eating, he discovered three pieces of his favorite fried shrimp tempura buried at the bottom.

The selection tournament lasted a full week. Seventeen craters were blasted into the arena outside the Lookout by ki blasts, all of which Dende had to repair overnight. Piccolo and Nail's Special Beam Cannons had evolved to the point where they could fire three beams simultaneously, each one creating a sustained energy-binding field upon striking its target. Son Gohan's power in his normal state could no longer be measured by numbers. During one sparring match with Piccolo, he accidentally triggered a shallow Ultra Instinct response, evading several consecutive attacks before he himself froze in surprise. Goten and Trunks had practiced their Fusion Dance until they were perfectly synchronized. During the day, they engaged in practical combat drills against the Saiyan mobile unit led by Nappa, and at night, they trained extra rounds of straight punches alone in the Gravity Chamber. The final ten-person team consisted of Ji Ming, Son Goku, Vegeta, Son Gohan, Piccolo, Android 17, Android 18, Majin Buu, Frieza, and Gotenks, formed by Goten and Trunks.

When Frieza was brought out of the containment chamber, he was more cooperative than anyone had expected. He did not know the Omni-King, but he knew that a being capable of casually erasing an entire universe was not an opponent his self-destruction could contend with. Ji Ming asked whether he was willing to fight for Universe 7 in exchange for a reduced sentence on Earth. Frieza remained silent for a long time. In the end, he agreed to join the team as a criminal seeking redemption. Before deployment, he would wear an energy limiter improved by Bulma and would not be allowed to release any transformation without authorization—but even under those restrictions, his combat power still ranked among the team's highest.

Majin Buu's inclusion was a completely unexpected delight. Only half a day remained before the selection ended when Bulma was taking Mr. Satan's dog to the Lookout infirmary for vaccinations. Buu spotted them and floated after them across half the Lookout plaza. Ji Ming casually had him undergo a combat test, and Dende nearly got caught in one of Buu's casually tossed ki blasts. From that moment onward, Buu was officially added to the combat roster.

Android 17 had not cared much about joining the team until Bulma sent the simulation results for tournament casualty rates and the risk of universal destruction to his wristband. After reading them, he took off his scarf, tossed it onto the couch, and said, "If this world disappears, where am I supposed to find another nature reserve this good?" Then he went to Vegeta himself and asked for a sparring match.

The spaceship fleet was also being rebuilt at a frantic pace. Bulma dragged out the wreckage of Frieza's old ships and the Saiyans' former warships, refurbishing them all. Their core energy sources were replaced with clean-energy modules jointly developed by Namek and Earth. The hull armor was reinforced by five layers, and the power system's redundancy was expanded from two channels to four, ensuring that the Gravity Chambers aboard each ship could still operate normally at faster-than-light speeds. Her temper was pushed to its limit that year, and nearly every day she had to shout down another overloaded, short-circuiting test platform. But the whole fleet understood that she was personally saving this universe—one part at a time.

On an ordinary afternoon, Ji Ming and Vegeta began their first official sparring session of the preparation period in the Gravity Chamber.

The gravity was set to one hundred and twenty times normal. The two began with basic offense and defense in their normal states. Ji Ming noticed that Vegeta's punching rhythm had changed. The old Vegeta threw every punch like an outburst, powerful but predictable in tempo. Now, there were subtle shifts before every strike. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow; sometimes he deliberately left a fraction-of-a-second gap after three consecutive punches, luring his opponent into attacking through that opening before instantly shifting to the flank for a counterattack. This style required extraordinary patience and precision—exactly the things Vegeta had lacked most in the past.

The sparring lasted nearly an hour and a half, ending when Vegeta broke through Ji Ming's guard with an elbow strike. Ji Ming rubbed his right shoulder, numb from the impact of Vegeta's elbow point, and asked what that move was called. Vegeta withdrew his hand, breathing heavily, and answered with two words—Zero Style. Ji Ming said it was a good name and told him to have Bulma register the trademark later. Vegeta snorted and walked out of the Gravity Chamber, muttering, "Instead of saving your strength to laugh at me, you should do another set of ligament strengthening."

Ultra Instinct training advanced in parallel.

Ji Ming and Son Goku underwent one to two hours of extreme evasion training every day in a specially cleared dodge field on the Lookout's back mountain. Piccolo set up multiple tracking Special Beam Cannons around the field. Each beam was compressed to a nonlethal level, but it would still leave burns if it grazed the skin. The training rules were brutal—no blocking, no counterattacking, only evading every attack with the smallest possible movements. Dodging more than half a body's width counted as an error, and more than three consecutive errors meant that, in an actual battle, the fighter would be judged to have already been struck in a vital spot. Son Goku thrived under this kind of training. His progress in Ultra Instinct was faster than Ji Ming's, and after several weeks, he could evade for the entire session with his eyes closed. The true opportunity for Son Goku to step into the complete Ultra Instinct form came after one training session. He sat cross-legged at the edge of the Lookout, staring blankly at the horizon, when Ji Ming walked over and handed him a bottle of water. Taking it, Son Goku suddenly said, "Ultra Instinct is really strange. The more I think I have to use it, the less I can. But the less I think about it, the more my body just knows how to move on its own." Then he looked thoughtfully at the bottle in his hand. The golden aura around him abruptly faded, replaced by an extremely faint, nearly transparent silvery-white glow, like moonlight spilling over moving water. He set down the bottle and stood up. With one simple sidestep, the precision and naturalness of the motion were unlike anything he had displayed before entering Ultra Instinct.

Ji Ming did not disturb him. He simply switched the Lookout's communicator to recording mode and began transmitting every frame of the breakthrough process to Bulma's terminal in real time.

Vegeta tried a different path. He did not set aside his pride, nor could he be as carefree as Son Goku, but he excelled at turning anything he was bad at into a contest against himself. He stabilized his Super Saiyan form at the peak of its second stage, then repeatedly charged at the threshold of godly power. After more than ten failures, he finally found a way, amid extreme exhaustion, to precisely coat his ki less than a millimeter beyond his fist. With one punch, he blasted through the protective wall of the dodge field.

Ji Ming stood up from the Lookout plaza and looked at the protective wall that had been pierced clean through, its edges smooth as a mirror. He said, "This is another variation of Ultra Instinct." Whis later named it Instinctive Destruction over the communicator, saying that Vegeta was forging an entirely new path—not making himself impossible to hit, but making his attacks so precise that others could not defend against them. Vegeta carved those words onto the Gravity Chamber's control panel as well, directly beneath the line that read, "Make every trace of ki precise down to the cellular level."

Bulma stood in the Lookout's war room, staring at the data on the holographic screen, the hand holding her coffee trembling slightly. Not from fear—it was because she realized that she was no longer merely designing warships and Gravity Chambers. Without noticing, she had become the chief planner of Earth's militarization system, coordinating the full integration of all major fighters and Saiyan forces. She improved the Gravity Chambers' power systems so they could automatically divert excess power to recharge the fleet during overloads, while West City's research center operated around the clock. Every time Ji Ming returned to Mount Paozu, he would spend an extra fifteen minutes in the communications room, sending Bulma the day's newest training data and energy charts. Bulma's replies always came at two or three in the morning—sometimes an optimized Gravity Chamber schedule, sometimes equipment blueprints improved for a particular fighter. Occasionally, she would add a line at the end: "Chi-Chi came over today and spent half the day learning how to use the detector," or, "Bring your mom a box of strawberries."

Chi-Chi really was learning how to use the detector. One evening when Ji Ming came home for dinner, he found her chopping vegetables in the kitchen while tapping the buttons on a wristband resting on the counter. Bulma had specially simplified that detector terminal into a civilian model for her. It could identify ki above the harmless threshold within several hundred meters. When Chi-Chi noticed Ji Ming looking at her wristband, she only said, "Last time your dad snuck some fried shrimp, I thought he didn't know I knew. Turns out he was hiding on the roof, eating and training at the same time. This thing can catch him—I put it on the dish cabinet." Ji Ming reached above the cabinet and moved aside a stack of plates, revealing a working detector with its indicator light blinking. He laughed but said nothing, merely helping her arrange the scattered spice bottles on top of the cabinet.

Every so often, the Omni-King came by.

A colorful vortex opened directly in Mount Paozu's kitchen. Chi-Chi was stir-frying when she turned around and saw a small figure tumble out of the flowing wall of light, landing beside her cutting board. The Omni-King said Zeno's Planet was too boring and that he wanted to watch a little Super Saiyan God action in advance. Yet after watching less than twenty minutes of Ultra Instinct training, he was distracted by a plate of freshly cooked braised pork that Chi-Chi brought out. The Omni-King sat at Mount Paozu's dining table, picked up a piece of braised pork in the exact same posture as a God of Destruction, took a bite, and let out a long, drawn-out, "Waaah—."

After the meal, the Omni-King solemnly announced that he would come over for food at least once a month from now on. Ji Ming said he was welcome, while silently adding this "once a month" to the preparation period's resource budget—after all, the energy needed to feed the Omni-King might exceed that of a small training tournament.

The preparation period entered its final countdown. Two months remained before the martial arts tournament when Whis arrived on Earth, divided the standard combat assessment parameters into ten portions and stored them in wristbands, then accompanied Universe 7's preliminary roster through its first high-intensity practical team drill. The Lookout's back mountain was converted into a divided combat field. Android 17 handled flanking suppression, while Android 18's infinite energy engine was recalibrated by Bulma into combat-output mode. Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu provided fire support and tactical lockdown for the team with their Tri-Beam Cannons and psychic abilities. Son Gohan, Goten, and Trunks conducted a fusion test under Vegeta's personal supervision. Once the pillar of fusion light faded, Son Gohan clenched his fist, looked at the data panel, and stated that this degree of fusion amplification was still not enough to place in the top four at the martial arts tournament.

Ji Ming set down his teacup, looked toward the control console, and spoke a name—Frieza.

The match began the instant Frieza's limiter was released, and his Golden Emperor Form unfolded. Matched against Son Gohan, he became the sharpening stone of the team's most familiar hostility, forcing the entire squad to shift formations under the level of confrontation they might face in the future. The battle lasted nearly six minutes. Frieza silently stared at his own hand—within this god-level training system, he had touched the outer edge of a limit he had never dared imagine before.

Bulma's fleet was fully completed on the seventh day of the countdown. Five main warships stood in a line at the newly built aerospace port in West City, their reflective hull coating gleaming a cold white beneath the sun. In every ship's command cabin, she installed a backup program she had personally configured, storing complete records of every fighter, from their initial combat power to research materials on Ultra Instinct. She called it "Reserve." "If the universe really is gone," she told Ji Ming late one night, "at least there'll be a backup." She did not finish the sentence, but Ji Ming understood. The backup contained not only tactical data and power curves, but also blurry clips of Chi-Chi cooking that Bulma had casually recorded, the background sounds of Oolong stealing strawberries, and birdsong from Mount Paozu.

On the night before departure, Mount Paozu hosted one final meal. Chi-Chi made twice as much as usual—braised pork, steamed fish, mapo tofu, pumpkin cakes, tempura, three huge pots of rice, and an extra bowl of garlic pork ribs made specifically for Vegeta. Bulma brought champagne, while Master Roshi brought out a jar of plum wine he had hidden away for a long time. Krillin and Android 18 sat by the window with their child. Not many words were spoken during the meal, but every bowl was full.

Ji Ming sat in his usual old seat, his bowl piled with meat Son Goku had served him, tofu from Chi-Chi, pumpkin from Piccolo, and a pork rib that Vegeta had somehow tossed into his bowl. He looked down at the neatly arranged food, flipped the tempura buried at the very bottom to the top, and placed it in Son Gohan's bowl. Son Gohan looked up at him, and Ji Ming only said, "You've worked hard this year."

Son Gohan gave an "Oh," stuffed the tempura into his mouth, and chewed with loud crunches.

Son Goku sat cross-legged beside him with his rice bowl in hand, using the end of his chopsticks to draw an arc across the table. He said that once he finished this bowl, he would go to the Gravity Chamber for another round of training. Ji Ming raised his eyes at him but did not stop him, only telling him to save some strength for tomorrow morning. In a rare turn, Vegeta did not follow him in. He simply continued to steadily pick up pork ribs with his chopsticks and slowly chew them.

At the Lookout, Dende adjusted the final trajectory of that small planet, its emerald projection drifting over Mount Paozu. As Chi-Chi cleared the dishes, the detector on her wristband gave two brief vibrations—two familiar ki signatures remained on the roof. She did not look up. She merely ladled the soup from the pot into a clay pot still warm from the residual heat and covered it.

In the middle of the night, Ji Ming sat alone on a massive rock on Mount Paozu, his legs dangling over the edge of the cliff. The Milky Way stretching overhead was exceptionally bright tonight, while the Lookout's projection slowly moved through the deep blue sky.

Tomorrow, they would meet at the Omni-King's martial arena.