The Divine Palace Has Malicious Intentions

Mount Paozu had only just quieted down from the bustle of the Co-Prosperity Conference anniversary celebration.

Chi-Chi portioned out the leftover flour and jam from the festivities, mailing some to the Saiyan base in Universe 6 and stuffing the rest into Kami's Lookout storeroom as emergency provisions for Dende and Piccolo. Bulma returned to West City to deal with Capsule Corp's backlog of orders. Before leaving, she handed Ji Ming the Gravity Chamber's new upgrade plans, calling it a "Zero Style Precision Feedback Module," and told him to run the data himself before Vegeta tried it. Ji Ming flipped through several pages of incomprehensible frequency-wave analysis and decided to wait for Vegeta to come collect it himself.

He had thought this peace would last at least until Zeno had another whim, but one predawn morning, Kami's Lookout detectors shattered every plan.

No alarm sounded. The monitoring system Dende and Nail had set up was a variation of an ancient Namekian sealing array. It did not emit any piercing noise; whenever it detected an anomaly, it merely sent a silent pulse through antenna resonance to every Namekian. Piccolo's call woke Ji Ming—not through his wristband, but directly through telepathy. When Piccolo's voice exploded in his mind, he thought he was dreaming. "A sealed chamber at the very bottom of the underground complex has been activated. The alert log shows that someone triggered a preset hatch switch last night. Dende checked the records. That room existed before Kami's Lookout was built, and Kami never mentioned it to anyone."

When Ji Ming got dressed and stepped outside, dawn had yet to break over Mount Paozu. A thin layer of frost coated the boulders in the yard, while pine needles rustled down in the night wind. He glanced at the empty room beside his—Chi-Chi had risen even earlier than he had and was already harvesting radishes in the vegetable patch.

The entrance to Kami's Lookout underground complex was hidden deep beneath the plaza's stone tiles, normally covered by layers upon layers of Namekian sealing arrays. Even Piccolo's antennae could only sense the uppermost layers. As Ji Ming descended the stairs, ancient Saiyan runes on the walls lit up automatically, and the Crimson-Gold Light Core within him gave off the faintest resonance.

The sealed chamber door was already open. It was a doorway formed from a pure white energy barrier. There was no writing on its frame, only a minimalist symbol—a downward-pointing prism at the center of an inverted triangle. Dende said it was the mark of the primordial divine race, though not Spela's lineage they had encountered before. This was an even older branch, one rarely mentioned even within the primordial divine race itself. When Ji Ming crossed the threshold, a row of cold white lights came on inside the room.

The room was small, its four walls made of plain white stone without any decoration. Hovering in the center was a fist-sized holographic recording sphere. A line of text slowly rotated across its surface: "An observer independent of the Angel system, brother of the current Grand Priest: Zhaermu."

Piccolo stood behind Ji Ming, his antennae snapping taut. Ji Ming reached out and touched the recording sphere. Sensing his divine ki, it began playing automatically, and a holographic image unfolded in the air.

The footage was exceptionally clear, stamped with the date: "Era of the Primordial Divine Race." An ancient starfield devastated by war burned with its last remnants of light, with the outlines of several planets blasted into fragments visible in the background. At the center of the frame stood a tall, gaunt figure in the same white cloak as the Grand Priest. His face was blurred, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed down upon the burning galaxy. Whis stood half a step behind him with his head lowered, his staff held across his body, every crystal orb at its tip extinguished. The audio track beneath the footage held only faint breathing. For a long time, no one spoke. At last, the tall figure uttered the sole sentence preserved in the recording: "Father values him more. Even my evacuation route was drawn through his jurisdiction. But it doesn't matter. There is still plenty of time."

The recording cut off abruptly with the final syllable. Ji Ming stood there in silence for a long time. Of course, he knew the Grand Priest had only one biological brother, and that this brother had vanished from all official records after the primordial divine race rebuilt its order. But Whis had never mentioned that he had been "evacuated," nor that the Grand Priest had directly overseen his territory. Ji Ming had once assumed that Whis and the Grand Priest simply shared a superior-subordinate relationship as colleagues. Yet the words "Father values him more," combined with all the other scattered clues, pointed to another answer.

He packaged all the data and sent it to Bulma, instructing her to preserve it under the highest encryption level, while copying Whis and Beerus. Whis's reply arrived a few minutes later, so brief it barely sounded like him: "Zhaermu is indeed the Grand Priest's brother. After the old divine order fell, he chose to leave Zeno's system and subsequently vanished without trace. The Grand Priest has never made any comment on the matter. I have no knowledge of records concerning his appearance beneath Namek's temple. But since the recording sphere has activated, it means he is no longer concealing his existence. I will closely monitor further developments."

Beerus's response was even shorter. He sent a voice message directly into Whis's channel. When Ji Ming opened it, he heard a lazy yawn and the words, "I'm still sleeping. Can you Saiyans stop making a big deal out of everything before breakfast?" This was followed by the rustle of bedding, presumably as he rolled over and shut off the communication channel. Ji Ming converted Beerus's voice message into text and forwarded it to Bulma. Bulma replied with an emoji.

By noon that day, Bulma's deep-data-mining results were ready. She had spent several hours in Capsule Corp's underground server room, cross-referencing communication records from recent years, energy fluctuation archives, and logs submitted by Angels from every universe. In the end, she pinpointed a set of coordinates. They lay amid the ruins of an abandoned old god temple at the intersection of Universes 7, 6, and 11. More importantly, the area had recently experienced an extremely brief dimensional disturbance. It had lasted too short a time for any universe's monitoring station to detect, but when Bulma matched the footage from the recording sphere against the residual wave frequencies from that disturbance, the correspondence exceeded ninety percent. Supplemental intelligence from Whis showed that Zhaermu's movements had never been formally recorded over the long years, yet recently, he had suddenly begun deliberately leaking several exceedingly faint energy signatures at the fringes of multiple universes—as though he were observing something.

Ji Ming synchronized the coordinates and Bulma's analysis report to Whis and Beerus, then sent a brief notice to Universe 7's core combat group: "There's a new situation to deal with. Meeting at Kami's Lookout this afternoon."

Kami's Lookout convened its strategy meeting that afternoon. Standing before the holographic projector, Ji Ming listed the known intelligence on Zhaermu, the coordinates of the old god temple, and Bulma's data report point by point. Vegeta stood with his arms folded against a stone pillar in the back row, a Silver Blue aura flowing quietly over his body. Piccolo and Nail sat side by side in the front row, while Dende activated a perception-enhancement array over Kami's Lookout. Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu had come from the martial arts grounds. Android 17 entered carrying a stack of communication protocols, while Krillin and Android 18 sat in seats to the side.

After giving his concise briefing, he concluded, "Zhaermu himself has displayed no direct hostility. He is merely observing. But the fact that a being independent of the Angel system has deliberately left faint energy traces at the edges of multiple universes is itself a signal. I need to go to the old god temple and confirm his intentions. This is neither an order from Zeno nor a commission from a God of Destruction. But since he placed the first recording sphere beneath our Earth's Kami's Lookout, there is a high probability that his next movements will still involve Universe 7."

Vegeta remained by the pillar with his arms folded, his expression unchanged. He said only two words. "When?"

"Next week." Ji Ming shut down the holographic projection and looked at everyone, his tone naturally returning to the familiar rhythm of Earth's combat cycles. "Piccolo, Goku, you're with me. Caulifla and Kale will depart from Universe 6 and meet us at the outer perimeter of the ruins. Nail will bring up the rear with the fleet. Dende will remain at Kami's Lookout to maintain the observation network for the remote sealing array. Krillin, Tien Shinhan, and Android 17, stay behind on Earth and keep all ground-alert channels open."

Krillin sent several stickers in rapid succession in the group chat, with a voice message mixed in that Android 18 intercepted. She said it was not because she was scared—she was reminding him that the last time he went to the Primordial Corridor, he had not packed enough socks. This time, he needed to bring her back a pair of the local specialty gloves. By the time Ji Ming finished giving his instructions and flew back to Mount Paozu from Kami's Lookout, night had fallen. When he pushed open the courtyard gate, Chi-Chi happened to be carrying a clay pot out of the kitchen. Seeing him, she said only, "Dinner's ready." Ji Ming took his usual seat and used his chopsticks to move aside the stir-fried meat slices on top. At the bottom of his bowl, there was still a tempura shrimp. He picked it up and bit into it. The batter was crisp, and the shrimp was sweet and fresh. Outside the window, golden light from Kami's Lookout spilled through thin clouds into the yard. He knew peace never lasted long, but fortunately, before every expedition, he could still have this bite of fried shrimp.