The Second Trial

The tunnel was longer than expected.

Ji Ming walked at the very front. The Crimson-Gold Light Core within him pulsed like a stirred heartbeat, growing clearer with every step deeper inside. Azure flames along both walls ignited automatically upon sensing his energy, then slowly went out after the group passed, as though the entire tunnel were a living creature judging every intruder in its own way. Vegeta walked behind and to his right. His deep-blue aura had receded until only an almost imperceptible film of light remained around his body, yet his fingers stayed poised at the waist of his battle suit, ready to shift from normal state to deep blue in a fraction of a second. Son Goku walked at the very back. The silver glow of Ultra Instinct had not ignited, but his steps were lighter than anyone else's. Every footfall landed with such precision that it did not stir a single speck of dust.

"This tunnel's length is wrong." Piccolo's voice came from the middle of the group. The moment he had entered the tunnel, his antennae had gone into full sensory mode. Now, he was scanning the surrounding rock walls layer by layer with an ancient Planet Namek technique. "We've taken at least several hundred steps, but judging by the width of the ravine from outside, this tunnel should have ended after going only a short distance into the mountain. Either it extends downward, or—it extends into some other space."

"It's folding." Beerus spoke of his own accord, a rare occurrence. He walked ahead of Whis, hands clasped behind his back, tail swaying lazily, but much of the languor in his golden eyes had faded. In its place was an expression Ji Ming had never seen on Beerus's face before. "This place may once have been a trial ground for the ancient gods," he said in a low voice.

"Ancient gods?" Vegeta paused.

"Not gods like Zeno. I mean something older—another kind of god that existed in this universe before the systems of Gods of Destruction and Supreme Kais were established." Beerus gave no further explanation and merely quickened his pace.

At the end of the tunnel stood a door.

It was neither stone nor metal, but an endless dark-red energy barrier. Slow-moving golden patterns surged across its surface, their paths identical to the ancient Saiyan inscriptions Ji Ming had seen on the stone pillars of Planet Sadala. Before the barrier stood a waist-high stone stele, bearing a short line of ancient Saiyan text. After the translation module broke down the characters, it provided the result.

[Second Trial: Ultimate Strength. Only one who breaks the barrier may proceed.]

Vegeta walked toward the barrier. A deep-blue aura erupted around him, and a deep-blue energy blast the size of a fist gathered in his right palm. Though it looked unremarkable, this blast had been compressed on the basis of Final Flash. Its penetrating power was even greater than when he had blasted through Toppo's defenses during the Tournament of Power. He raised his hand and fired it at the barrier.

The dark-red curtain of light rippled faintly the instant the blast struck, then remained completely unmoved.

Vegeta narrowed his eyes and brought his palms together to charge. This time, the deep-blue beam of Final Flash was not compressed. It struck the barrier head-on at maximum power. The entire tunnel was lit by blue light, while the shockwave rolled backward and nearly snuffed out the azure flames on both walls. Ji Ming raised a golden energy shield to protect everyone behind him. His ears were filled with the piercing shriek of deep-blue energy violently colliding with the dark-red barrier. The beam lasted a full ten seconds. After ten seconds, several cracks appeared across the barrier.

Yet once the residual energy dispersed, the golden patterns swiftly filled those cracks again. In less than two breaths, they had healed completely.

"This thing can't be broken by brute force. It absorbs attacking energy and turns it into fuel for self-repair." Piccolo lowered the half-charged Special Beam Cannon, his antennae trembling slightly. "If we try to wear it down with sustained high-intensity attacks, the only one who will be exhausted is the attacker. It doesn't need more attacks—it needs something else."

Ji Ming walked to the stone stele and pressed his hand against the inscription. The Crimson-Gold Light Core gave an incredibly faint tremor within him. A pedestal slowly rose from the stone platform beneath the stele, shaped like a seat and just large enough for a palm to fully cover.

He placed his hand over it.

His consciousness was suddenly dragged into a void by an immense, ancient force. There was neither ground nor sky here, only boundless dark-red light pressing in from all directions. A humanoid condensed from pure trial energy floated before him. Unlike the trial guardian in Planet Sadala's temple, this elder had no facial features, yet the outline of his body was clearer. Fine golden lines occasionally flashed through the dark-red flames flowing over his surface. His voice resounded directly in the deepest part of Ji Ming's mind.

"Bearer of the Origin Core. Welcome. But this place does not test your Core. It tests you."

"Me?"

"As the foremost among the inheritors, everyone in your party will share the burden of the trials with you. You have passed the first gate. The challenger for the second trial must possess ultimate strength. The trial ground is conducting an automatic assessment—identifying the member of your group with the strongest trait of 'ultimate strength.'"

Before Ji Ming could speak, an invisible wave of perception swept over him and rapidly spread through the trial ground's pathways to the entire party. Nearly everyone before the barrier felt the locking wave scan them from head to toe at the same moment. In the end, it settled on Vegeta.

"Target locked. Primary challenger of the second trial: Vegeta—the one who transcends his limits must abandon the limits themselves. Please enter the trial ground."

"Wait—you know my name? How did you—"

"All consciousness that enters the trial domain is shared with the contractual system of the primordial gods. There is no need for surprise. The second trial will test your ability to break through your own limits in battle. The entire test will be visible to all members, and combat energy will be strictly confined within the trial barrier. Now answer—are you willing to fight for the inheritor?"

Vegeta fell silent. His fingers slowly clenched, then relaxed. He answered with two words. "What nonsense."

The elder's figure vanished. Ji Ming's consciousness was pulled back into reality. He saw the endless dark-red barrier melt outward from its center, golden patterns flashing with blinding brilliance as they dissolved. The entire tunnel trembled, and the azure flames along the walls were pressed inward by an invisible force. When the barrier had completely disappeared, the sight beyond the doorway stopped everyone in their tracks.

Inside was a spherical space so vast that it had no business existing within a mountain. Its diameter looked large enough to contain all of Mount Paozu. The ceiling hung high overhead like a sky, casting an even, gentle cold-white radiance that left not a trace of shadow anywhere in the chamber. The walls of the space—or rather, a ring of steep circular cliffs—were made from an unnatural dark-brown material with a texture resembling ceramic. Their surfaces were perfectly smooth, reflecting a faint sheen like mirrors beneath the cold-white light. Below the edges of the cliffs lay a bottomless ring-shaped abyss, where dark-red lava could vaguely be seen rolling slowly at an immense distance. Above the abyss was no cliff—only a straight, narrow walkway extending from the entrance cliff directly to a bowl-shaped arena at the center of the chamber. The walkway was made of some nonreflective dark-gold material, with no railings on either side. It appeared to be more than two hundred meters long. The arena itself was a flat circular disk, its floor engraved with countless rings of ancient Saiyan stellar inscriptions. The distance from the end of the walkway to the disk's center was no more than forty steps, yet the entire disk surged with an extraordinarily dense dark-red energy field. That field was formless and invisible, but it made the air above the disk hum continuously in a low drone.

Ji Ming swept his gaze around the outer edge of the arena and found several similar bowl-shaped disks floating in a ring above the abyss, though none was as large as the central one. The smaller disks were connected by transparent energy bridges. When Vegeta stepped into the trial area, one of those smaller disks slid along its track to a position very close to the center. Once it settled, three layers of transparent defensive light automatically rose around it—the viewing area for the other members.

"Quite a few tricks." Vegeta stepped onto the walkway. The glow of Final Flash flashed over his right arm and vanished, as though the attack he had just unleashed against the barrier had been nothing more than a warm-up.

The arena's examiner was already waiting at the center of the disk. When Vegeta crossed the outermost ring of stellar inscriptions, the ground at the center rippled like water. Rising from the middle of those ripples was a humanoid condensed from pure trial energy. It had no facial features, but its movements possessed the precision and fluidity unique to ancient martial arts. Every wisp of dark-red flame flowed steadily over its body, never spilling outward.

"Trial challenger Vegeta, defeat me."

Vegeta did not reply. His deep-blue aura exploded fiercely as he drove a fist directly at the opponent's face. The examiner shifted aside with barely any movement—almost gliding past the edge of his fist. Vegeta's second punch came crashing down immediately after, only to be avoided in exactly the same way. After more than ten consecutive attacks, Vegeta's fist speed increased with every strike, tearing piercing whistles through the air. Yet the examiner maintained the same rhythm throughout: only at the instant before each attack would land did it move just enough to evade. It was not defending. It was demonstrating—demonstrating the minute flaw in every one of Vegeta's punches.

Naturally, Vegeta saw it too. Fury churned in his chest, only for him to forcibly suppress it. He suddenly went still. The deep-blue aura around his body drew inward instead of erupting outward, becoming extremely restrained. Every thread of energy was compressed precisely to within half an inch of his body. He punched again. This time, there were no successive heavy blows. Only one strike—a pure, straight punch without the slightest unnecessary angle.

For the first time, the examiner raised an arm to block. The instant Vegeta's fist collided with the dark-red arm, a visible shockwave exploded through the arena's air. The examiner took one step back, the dark-red flames around its body scattering for an instant. Yet it did not counterattack. It merely resumed its posture and looked at Vegeta with the exact same stance as before.

Ji Ming stood on the viewing disk, staring intently at the battle below. Bulma hovered a miniature detector above the arena, transmitting real-time combat data back to the fleet command cabin and everyone's wrist devices. Piccolo's antennae were breaking the collision energy waves into dozens of frequency bands for comparison. He spoke in an extremely low voice. "It's testing Vegeta's instantaneous burst fluctuations, while also measuring the energy compatibility of everyone nearby. The trial ground isn't a solo test. It's collecting all of our data. Whenever the gap between any of us widens, the trial formation automatically adjusts to the next stage."

As if confirming his words, the examiner suddenly changed its attack pattern. Its fist speed surged sharply. It no longer dodged to expose weaknesses, but launched relentlessly oppressive heavy strikes. Vegeta blocked the first punch by a hair's breadth, but the second slammed in from the side of his defense, sending him flying. His back and shoulder crashed heavily into the energy barrier at the edge of the stellar disk, and his deep-blue aura shook violently.

Golden defensive light burst into ripples at the point of impact.

Vegeta slid down from the barrier and dropped to one knee, supporting himself with his left arm against the ground. A trace of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. He lowered his head and watched the drop spread into a tiny stain across the dark-gold floor, his breaths heavy and scorching.

Ji Ming did not move. Of course, he could have intervened—Ultra Instinct's passive evasion combined with the attack power of Super Saiyan God would have been enough for him to tear open the trial barrier and enter the battlefield. But he did not. Because Vegeta had not looked toward the viewing area, not even from the corner of his eye. He merely kept his head lowered, braced himself against his knee, and rose again. He did not need to be saved. He had never needed to be saved. He was only curious about the style of those punches just now. Fast. Precise. Not a single wasted motion. It did not move like an image driven by a program, but like a pile driver tempered over billions of years.

The examiner pressed forward again, but Vegeta no longer met it head-on. His body reacted before his mind did—at the instant the examiner's fist was about to touch his chest, he slid half a step back and down. It was not a conscious decision. His body had sensed the strike's landing point on its own and moved to evade. At the same moment the dodge succeeded, his right arm automatically lifted. Deep-blue energy condensed in his palm, and a beam immediately stabbed into the examiner's right shoulder joint. The blow disrupted the examiner's rhythm, exposing a tiny opening at its side.

Vegeta's body had already driven into that opening with the momentum of his movement, his knee slamming into the examiner's waist. The dark-red humanoid staggered back three steps, and the flames on its body visibly dimmed.

From the viewing area, Son Goku let out a whistle. Krillin stood with his mouth open and nudged Son Gohan beside him with his knee. Son Gohan was staring blankly as well, and neither of them could say a word. Vegeta knelt on the bowl-shaped disk, gasping for air. He wiped away the blood at his mouth and revealed a genuine smile. He understood now. Saiyan pride had always been the thing he sought to surpass. He did not need to cast it aside. He only needed to hear his body's own voice beyond its roar.

He rose again and assumed a fighting stance. The examiner adjusted its posture as well, watching him as calmly as it had at the beginning. Vegeta no longer thought about how to hit it. Instead, he relaxed his body and entered a state of ease unlike anything he had experienced before. The silver aura of Ultra Instinct did not appear, yet his fists and footwork were no longer governed by anger and pride. They began changing naturally with the flow of offense and defense on the field.

He took several steps back, placing himself completely within the examiner's attack range, then allowed his body to respond on its own. The examiner's heavy strikes came in succession, and he evaded each one—every dodge accompanied by an extremely subtle counterattack angle. The deep blue around his body began to fade. It was not weakening. It was changing. The outwardly explosive flame compressed inward, becoming something quieter, something deeper. Once the deep blue was compressed to its limit, the first thread of silver light burst from its core.

That was not Ultra Instinct—it lacked that effortless sense of flowing evasion. Instead, every silver arc was like a blade edge honed over billions of years, appearing only at the final instant of his counterattacks. This was his own path. Instinctive Destruction—not making attacks miss him, but making the force of his own attack precise to the very physical limit at the instant he struck, rendering any defense below that limit completely meaningless.

The examiner's assault did not stop. Its fist speed rose again to a level Vegeta could barely follow, yet every one of its attacks was anticipated and countered in advance. Each counterattack knocked its next move back by one or two positions. When its final blow was deflected in the same manner, Vegeta's body entered a near-perfect state of relaxation—not the complete emptiness of Ultra Instinct, but a deeper balance. His consciousness remained clear, yet his body no longer required orders from his mind.

"This is—mine," he said in a low voice.

The examiner paused briefly in midair. Then it slowly descended, dropped to one knee, and lowered its head toward Vegeta.

"Trial passed. The gate to the third trial has not yet opened. Please remain where you are until the other trials conclude. The inheritor may continue forward."

Vegeta stood where he was, breathing heavily as sweat dripped from his chin onto the dark-gold ground. He looked down at his constantly trembling hands, then slowly curled them into fists. The second trial had been passed.

In the viewing area, Piccolo lowered his folded arms, his antennae gradually relaxing. Son Goku had maintained a calm observer's gaze from beginning to end, and only now did the corner of his mouth curl into a silent smile. Ji Ming still stood at the edge of the disk, the Crimson-Gold Light Core resonating quietly within him, as though a long-missing piece of a puzzle had finally fallen into place.