Ancient Proving Ground

Two months after the Tournament of Power ended, life on Earth gradually returned to its normal rhythm. The vegetable patch on Mount Paozu had been tilled again, and Chi-Chi planted a new season of radishes and pumpkins. Goten and Trunks started school, though they still skipped classes most of the time to sneak into the Gravity Chamber and watch Vegeta train. Krillin and Android 18 built a small wooden house beside Kame House, its window facing the sea, where they could watch the sun rise over the horizon every morning.

Ji Ming had thought this peace would last at least half a year. However, one urgent call from Bulma threw everyone's schedules into disarray.

That morning, Ji Ming had been sparring with Son Goku in the silver form of Ultra Instinct on the back mountain of Mount Paozu when their wristbands suddenly rang with Bulma's emergency transmission. Her voice slammed into their ears without preamble. "The Cosmic Frontier Observatory has picked up an anomalous signal. All of you, come to West City headquarters—right now."

By the time Ji Ming and Son Goku pushed open the door to Capsule Corp's top-floor laboratory, Vegeta had already arrived. He stood behind Bulma with his arms crossed, staring at lines of data scrolling across the holographic screen. Piccolo stood on the other side, his antennae tilted slightly forward as he used Namekian perception to decipher the signal's wavelength structure. A moment later, Nail pushed through the door as well, still clutching a sealing-technique scroll he had not had time to put down.

"What kind of signal?" Ji Ming asked as he approached the holographic console.

"See for yourself." Bulma's fingers flew across the control panel, and a filtered, decoded version of the raw signal began playing through the speakers. It was not speech, nor was it code, but an exceedingly ancient compressed message compiled from fluctuations of ki. The translation module took quite a while before it produced a result. Words emerged line by line across the holographic screen, and Ji Ming's pupils narrowed slightly.

[Heir... Holder of the Origin Core... Return to the Trial Domain...]

The message stopped there, followed by endlessly repeating coordinate data. The coordinates pointed to a desolate star region at the edge of Universe 7—marked on standard star charts as an "Abandoned Quadrant," far from any known star system, any civilization, even the God of Destruction's usual patrol range.

"The signal came from a completely barren star system, the sort even a God of Destruction would be too lazy to visit." Bulma pulled up a star chart and highlighted the target coordinates. It was an empty, pitch-black stretch of space with no known stars or planets marked on it, only a faint point of light automatically labeled by the system as an "Unknown Anomaly." "And this signal wasn't broadcast to the entire universe. It's a directed compressed message, with its intended recipient pinpointed down to the genetic level—in other words, only those carrying ancient Saiyan blood can receive and decode it. Other than the Saiyans of Universe 7, no civilization can even hear it."

"Origin Core." Ji Ming repeated the words. The crimson-gold light core within him trembled slightly the instant it heard the signal, as if an impossibly fine string had been gently plucked from the far end of the universe. He recalled how, during the Tournament of Power, the vanguard of Universe 1 had shown wariness toward the light core, while Universe 4 had briefly locked onto it before launching its final strike. And now, this core that had slept for years was being directly called out by an unfamiliar signal.

"Before Whis left, he said the Grand Priest was looking through records on the ancient Saiyans." Ji Ming looked up at the blinking coordinate on the holographic display. "And during the Tournament of Power, people from both Universe 1 and Universe 4 noticed the existence of the light core. That leader from Universe 1 never made a move from start to finish, but his attention toward the light core was abnormally high. If Sadala was only the Saiyans' homeworld, then this trial ground... may be something even older than the homeworld."

"Older than the homeworld?" Vegeta tapped the edge of the table with one finger. "Planet Sadala is the earliest recorded birthplace of Saiyan civilization. Go any further back and all you find are mythical tales of divine wars. In every archive, those legends are nothing more than fragments a few hundred characters long."

"So if whatever sent this signal is still alive, and has survived from the era of the divine wars until now, then its lifespan is measured in at least hundreds of millions of years." Ji Ming spoke softly, but every word landed precisely in the silence.

He immediately called Whis. The holographic screen flickered, and Whis's image appeared in midair. He was standing on Zeno's Planet, his left hand behind his back and his right holding his staff. His smile was as gentle as ever, but Ji Ming noticed that the crystal ball atop his staff was already lit when he answered, automatically tuned to Universe 7's communication channel.

"Oh my, what a coincidence. I was just about to contact you," Whis said, tilting his head slightly. "You received that signal, didn't you? The Grand Priest has already conducted a preliminary search—the source can be traced back to an ancient Saiyan ruin, a trial ground. It is older than Planet Sadala. It existed before the Saiyans developed spacefaring civilization and has been abandoned for at least several billion years. Every record concerning it has been erased with extraordinary thoroughness over the course of a very long history. Only a few of the earliest manuscripts on the creation of the universe retain vague annotations. The manuscripts contain only two sentences—'An heir must abandon the limit itself,' and 'At the end of the Trial Domain, stars grow cold.'"

"Stars grow cold?" Son Goku's attention was caught by those words. "How hot can a star be? I kind of want to give it a try."

"Did you not understand the important part at all?" Vegeta cut in irritably.

"The important part is clear." Ji Ming had read every ancient manuscript regarding Sadala Temple. He stepped up to the holographic console and placed Sadala's coordinates beside those from the signal for comparison. After several rounds of matching the directions of the star-map projections, they discovered that if the destructive energy Jiren had used during the Tournament of Power was broken down in a specific manner, it could yield a temporary wave-frequency key. That meant if they wanted to reach that abandoned star region, they could use existing destructive energy to resonate with godly ki and open a path.

"I need to borrow Lord Beerus's destructive energy—not the kind used in battle. I need it calibrated precisely to the wave-frequency level."

Beerus appeared on the other side of the communication screen. He was lying on the enormous bed in his temple, his tail dangling lazily over the edge. Supposedly, the quality of his recent naps had improved by another fifteen percent because Whis brought him a box of Chi-Chi's freshly made snacks every so often. "Huh? You want my help? No, no—wait, you said Chi-Chi's snacks would be unlimited? Fine. But only this once."

He lazily extended a finger and flicked it at the air. An extremely thin beam of purple energy passed through a wormhole and was caught perfectly by Bulma's receiving array. In a matter of hundredths of a second, the signal analysis was complete, and the wormhole's precise coordinates had been locked in.

Bulma scheduled the fleet's departure for two days later. On the evening before they left, Ji Ming went to Kami's Lookout. Piccolo was teaching Dende a new variant of healing technique, while Nail stood nearby with his eyes closed, sensing distant ki. Ji Ming told them everything about the signal in detail. Piccolo remained silent for a moment, then only said that ancient Namekian records had also mentioned the phrase "one who makes stars grow cold," which had long been regarded as some sort of rhetorical description.

"Not anymore," Ji Ming said.

On the day of departure, Chi-Chi got up before dawn and made more than a dozen lunch boxes. She affixed a handwritten label to every one of them. Vegeta's had extra garlic as usual; Piccolo's were wrapped in double layers of thermal insulation; Krillin received a fried shrimp set identical to Android 18's; and in the huge box prepared especially for Son Goku, she secretly tucked away a Senzu Bean. She pressed the lunch boxes into everyone's arms, then finally walked over to Ji Ming and slung a cloth bundle over his shoulder. Her movements were slow, but she did not let her hand linger for long.

"Go early and come back early," she said. Her voice no longer trembled, but Ji Ming could still read all the words she had left unspoken from the knuckles clutching the edge of her apron.

The fleet sped through deep space. Bulma refurbished and modified the old spaceship wreckage Frieza had left behind, along with the Saiyans' old warships. Their core power sources were replaced with clean-energy modules jointly developed by Namek and Earth; the armor was reinforced with several additional layers; and the power system redundancies were expanded from two channels to four. In the flagship's command deck, she held a cup of coffee and watched the star-map screen. Her eyes were bloodshot from working continuously, but her gaze was as clear as it had been back on Namek.

The wormhole opened before the target coordinates, and the fleet plunged into it. Moments later, the galaxy beyond the portholes was replaced by emptiness.

A brown planet floated alone in the void. It had no atmosphere, no starlight, no moons orbiting it, and no trace of life. Yet the irregular ripples of gravitational fields across its surface showed that the entire planet had repeatedly been scoured by extraordinarily dense energy, utterly transforming its landscape—a colossal rift stretching thousands of kilometers ran from the north pole to the equator, while the mountains on either side had been sliced flat by some force, their cross-sections smooth as mirrors.

The fleet landed on a flat expanse at the bottom of the rift. Ji Ming descended the gangway, and beneath his feet was a layer of extremely fine gray powder. It was the only form left after rock had been ground down again and again by energy impacts billions of years ago. He crouched and pressed a hand against the ground. For the first time, the crimson-gold light core within him gave off an active, unmistakable resonance. It was not a vibration, but an echo—as though a key had slipped into a lock and the tumblers were clicking open one by one.

"This is the place."

Yawning, Beerus came down the gangway, sniffed at the air, and lazily headed deeper into the rift with Whis. Bulma remained aboard the fleet to coordinate the remote survey data, while everyone else followed Ji Ming farther in.

At the center of the trial ground stood a massive stone stele. Only one extremely simple line of ancient Saiyan writing was carved on its surface. The translation module spent a long time breaking down the glyphs before producing the corresponding text:

[The Trial Domain tests the heir's limits. One who surpasses limits must abandon the limits themselves.]

It was almost word-for-word identical to the inscription at Sadala Temple.

Son Goku tilted his head as he looked at the line of text, then ran a finger along its final stroke and pointed downward. Beneath the stele was a low stone platform that nearly blended into the ground. At its center lay a long, narrow groove—the exact same size as the stone key Ji Ming had held in Sadala Temple.

Ji Ming took out the stone key and placed it inside. The platform silently sank into the ground, and a passage slowly opened in the stone wall deep within the rift. Ancient cold light lit up one after another from the depths of the passage, staining the entire tunnel a deep, ghostly green. Piccolo's antennae snapped taut. "The energy wavelength inside—it overlaps with records of the origin of Majin Buu's dark magic, but it's older than Buu."

"This is becoming more and more interesting," Whis said softly.

Once Bulma sent scouting drones into the tunnel and completed the first round of scans, confirming that there were no direct offensive defense mechanisms inside, Ji Ming turned to look at the others. Vegeta had already dismissed his deep-blue form, but one hand remained on the waist of his battle suit. Piccolo and Son Goku nodded to him at the same time.

He stepped into the passage. More ancient blue flames lit along both stone walls. Darkness opened before them, door by door, stretching endlessly into the depths.