Fruit of the Tree of Might, the fate of an entire planet rests on this single bite

Chen Mo left Turles's dying barren planet.

He scanned the star map.

He locked onto an unnamed rocky planet three warp-minutes from his current position.

No atmosphere. No life signs. No signals of valuable mineral deposits.

It was just a huge rock drifting through the vacuum.

Perfect.

He spread his ki over his body, forming the vacuum protection barrier Android 18 had taught him.

Then he flew toward it at full speed.

Three minutes later.

Chen Mo landed on a grayish-white rocky plain.

He crouched down and untied the pouch at his chest.

Nine Fruits of the Tree of Might lay neatly arranged before him.

Golden radiance flowed beneath the starlight, as though something alive were breathing beneath their skins.

The largest was the size of two fists, while even the smallest was bigger than an egg.

Every one of them felt heavy, their weight utterly disproportionate to their size.

One fruit was the condensed life force of an entire planet.

Chen Mo took out his capsule case and opened it. There were six empty capsules left inside.

He stored eight fruits separately in the capsules and pressed the seal.

They shrank to the size of pills one by one. He returned them to the case, snapped the lid shut, and tucked it into his inner pocket.

He kept one.

The largest one.

Chen Mo held it in his palm.

Turles had eaten thirty-seven of these things, rising from just over thirty thousand to four hundred and seventy thousand.

On average, each fruit had raised him by around twelve thousand.

But that was Turles's absorption efficiency.

Saiyans had exceptional physical constitutions, but their cultivation foundation was practically nonexistent.

He had simply forced his body to consume them, wasting a tremendous amount of energy.

Like using a leaking bucket to catch rain. No matter how large the bucket was, more leaked out than remained.

Chen Mo was different.

He had a body transformed by Ultra Divine Water, the ki foundation Master Roshi had laid for him, the experience of a year of grueling training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, and all the potential the Grand Elder had unlocked.

As well as the accelerated metabolism of the Infinite King Kai Fist.

With the same fruit, his absorption rate should be far higher than Turles's.

Chen Mo looked at the golden fruit in his hand.

Honestly, he wasn't sure.

This thing had never received any detailed explanation in the original work.

It had flashed by in the movie. Turles ate one and grew stronger; Goku ate one and grew stronger too.

Exactly how it worked, whether there was a limit, whether there were side effects—none of it had been explained.

But Chen Mo no longer had room to hesitate.

He opened his mouth.

And took a bite.

The skin was thin and burst the instant he bit into it.

The moment the flesh entered his mouth.

Chen Mo's mind went blank for a moment.

An indescribable sense of fullness.

It surged from the tip of his tongue, down his throat, like someone had poured a flooded river straight into his body.

Every cell in him expanded.

Chen Mo dropped to one knee on the rocky ground, his fingers digging into the stone.

His body glowed. Gold. Faintly, shining through beneath his skin.

This was the life force of an entire planet.

Condensed by the Tree of Might from the soil into a fruit the size of a fist.

Then he bit into it.

All that life energy surged into a human body.

Chen Mo continued eating.

One bite. Two bites. Three bites.

He finished it.

There wasn't even a core left. He devoured the entire fruit cleanly.

Then—

The real change began.

Chen Mo felt his body being reconstructed.

It wasn't the toxin-tempering transformation of Ultra Divine Water. Nor was it the gradual strengthening accumulated in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.

It was something more fundamental.

Genes.

He could feel it.

The potential nodes unlocked by the Grand Elder. The meridian pathways pushed to their limits through grueling cultivation. The muscle fibers and skeletal structure reshaped by Ultra Divine Water.

All of them were flooded with the Fruit of the Tree of Might's energy.

Then they were shattered open.

It was like every floor of a building had a ceiling.

His previous training had been him desperately jumping upward on each floor.

But what the Fruit of the Tree of Might did was tear down the ceilings altogether.

The barriers between each level vanished.

Energy flowed freely through his body without obstruction.

Chen Mo's ki was skyrocketing.

Across the rocky plain, cracks spread in every direction from where he stood.

Chunks of earth flipped up one after another. Rubble floated in midair, pushed dozens of meters high by the waves of ki.

The golden glow grew brighter and brighter, then slowly receded, withdrawing into his body.

It retreated from the surface of his skin, sinking into his bones, into his cells.

Chen Mo opened his eyes.

He lowered his head and looked at his hand.

A layer of extremely fine golden powder covered his skin, like flakes shed from a snake's scales.

He rubbed it with his fingers, and the powder scattered.

Beneath it was flawless new skin.

It wasn't just his hand.

He moved his shoulder. The blow from when Turles had kicked him away, the bruise on his ribs from the impact.

They were gone.

There wasn't even a trace of pain.

He examined himself carefully. The hidden injuries accumulated from long-term, high-intensity training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. The wear in his right knee. The old injury in his left shoulder. Even the faintly aching bump on the back of his head from when Android 18 had slapped him.

All gone.

Completely clean.

The Fruit of the Tree of Might's life-restoring effect.

The concentrated life force of every living thing on an entire planet, used to heal one human's injuries.

It was stronger than a Senzu Bean.

A Senzu Bean healed quickly, restoring damaged areas to their original state.

The Fruit of the Tree of Might raised the condition of the entire body to a completely new baseline.

Chen Mo stood up.

His body felt light.

He clenched his fist.

His knuckles cracked sharply.

He could feel the ki within his body.

It was completely different from before.

Chen Mo took out his Scouter.

At himself.

He pressed scan.

A number popped up on the screen.

2,000,000.

Two million.

From five hundred thousand to two million.

One fruit had quadrupled it.

Two million.

His base battle power was two million.

If he activated the thirtyfold King Kai Fist...

Sixty million.

Chen Mo drew a deep breath.

Sixty million. That number had already reached the threshold of Frieza's final form.

But he did not take out a second fruit.

He could not rush this.

His body needed time to adapt to this new level of energy.

A breakthrough in genetic potential was not something that ended with a jump in numbers.

His cells needed to stabilize. His meridians needed to readjust to the new volume of qi. His muscle fibers and bone density needed to match his new battle power.

If he ate another one now, before his body had finished digesting the first fruit's energy, and new energy flooded in...

The two forces would clash. At best, it would be wasted; at worst, his body would explode.

The reason Turles's absorption efficiency was so low was likely because he ate them too quickly.

One after another, without giving his body time to digest them. Most of the energy was simply lost.

Chen Mo would not make the same mistake.

Eat one. Digest it. Train. Stabilize it.

Once his body had fully adapted to the two-million baseline, then he would eat the second one.

Nine fruits, absorbed in batches.

Combined with training, that would maximize the benefits.

That was the proper way to do it.

Chen Mo put away the Scouter and stretched his limbs.

He threw a few basic punches and kicks, feeling out the power output of his new body.

Fast.

Incredibly fast.

His reaction speed, punching speed, and the circulation of qi had all risen by an entire tier.

The explosive power he had previously needed the thirtyfold King Kai Fist to achieve was now nearly within reach in his base state.

If he activated the King Kai Fist...

Chen Mo suppressed the thought. This was not the time to test his moves.

He checked the time on the Scouter.

Eleven minutes had already passed.

Six minutes remained.

He had to return.

Chen Mo wrapped himself in a qi barrier, rose from the rocky plain, and flew back toward the spaceship's coordinates at full speed.

Two minutes later.

He landed beside the spaceship.

He restrained his aura, lowering his base battle power back to fluctuations of around five hundred thousand.

He pushed open the hatch and walked inside.

The lights in the passageway were somewhat dim. Android 18 was not in the cockpit.

Chen Mo walked farther down the corridor. As he passed the hibernation pods, he glanced over and saw that Trunks's capsule was still safely sitting on the rack, untouched.

He reached the rear compartment.

Android 18 was sitting there.

Her back rested against the bulkhead, one leg bent and the other stretched out. In her hand was the Scouter Chen Mo had previously left on the control console.

She was looking at its screen.

Chen Mo stopped walking.

Android 18 lifted her eyes and looked at him.

"Where did you go?"