Prelude to the God War

That smile had completely changed—his lips split wide, revealing sharp teeth, carrying an almost scorching excitement.

It was fighting spirit buried for far too long, finally catching the scent of prey—like a sleeping beast awakened, erupting with the most primal joy from the depths of his soul.

"Interesting..." he murmured, his voice rough, like a whetstone scraping across iron.

He slowly twisted his neck. His joints cracked twice, crisp and forceful.

His entire body leaned forward slightly, settling into a starting stance ready to explode at any moment.

"Truly... too interesting!"

As the last word fell, the deep purple aura around Beerus, God of Destruction, suddenly erupted. It no longer carried the feeling of suppression from before, but instead shot straight into the sky like a supernova explosion.

The purple-black flames of energy nearly solidified as they violently collided with Qi Heng's silver-white force field.

The two auras crashed, compressed, and scattered violently along their boundary, spraying countless tiny bolts of energy lightning. The already battered space was ripped into even greater ruin.

Gravity across the entire battlefield descended into chaos. Pebbles floated in midair, only to be ground into dust by invisible force fields a moment later.

A great battle was on the verge of breaking out.

The power of destruction within Beerus erupted like an ancient beast awakening.

This was not a simple leak of energy, but the spread of his will—every streak of purple light carried terrifying fluctuations of law, as if it sought to erase "existence" itself at its root.

The earlier teasing, like a cat playing with a mouse, had long vanished without a trace.

At this moment, his eyes resembled violet gemstones—cold, holding nothing but pure focus.

A tide of destruction spread outward from him. Wherever it passed, the underlying color of space seemed to corrode away, releasing a low groan that set teeth on edge.

At the same time, the silver-white aura around Qi Heng burned to its peak.

It did not resemble fire so much as countless miniature stars being born, extinguished, and exploding across his body all at once, releasing blinding brilliance.

Silver radiance and the purple tide smashed together fiercely in the empty space between them—there was no thunderous explosion, only a deeper hum that pierced straight through the soul.

It was the groan of space itself under unbearable pressure.

At the center of the collision, light was devoured and twisted, forming an expanding, spinning vortex of chaos.

The laws of physics failed completely, and colors blurred into an indescribable, decaying gray.

Black cracks spread from the vortex's center like shattered mirrors, each extension accompanied by the sharp, piercing sound of breaking glass.

The air was thick with ozone and scorched metal—the scent of the "foundation of the world" leaking out after space had been torn apart.

Even time had fallen into disorder.

Rubble near the battlefield either froze in place, suddenly accelerated into decay, or flowed backward into dust.

"Whis." Beerus's voice was terrifyingly calm. His eyes remained fixed on the silver-white figure opposite him as he spoke without turning around. "Get farther away."

The composed smile on Whis's face had long disappeared.

Without the slightest hesitation, the gem atop his staff glowed faintly, and his entire body became a streak of pale purple light.

He did not simply retreat. After several consecutive spatial folds, he instantly appeared atop a massive floating meteorite several thousand kilometers away.

With a tap of his staff, a transparent spherical barrier silently unfolded.

Almost at the same time, another pale green streak flashed past. Vados arrived beside Whis with Champa.

Her divine staff also lit up with a gentle glow, overlapping Whis's barrier and steadily protecting them both.

"This... this brat..." Champa's face was filled with shock, his fat features twisting out of shape.

Pointing at Qi Heng in the distance, who resembled a silver-white nova, his voice turned shrill and trembled from overwhelming disbelief. "When did he... come up with something like this?! I've seen Super Saiyan 4, but this... this is completely different! I've never seen him like this before! That aura... that pressure..."

"I haven't seen it either." Vados's voice had lost its usual lightness and teasing. Her rare seriousness made her expression turn cold.

Her blue eyes were locked onto Qi Heng, reflecting his wildly dancing silver hair and the blazing light surging into the heavens.

"Super Saiyan 5... a form that has never been recorded, never even imagined. Lord Beerus's true pressure of destruction must have been the hammer that shattered the last shackle within him."

Whis watched the battlefield in silence, his gaze as sharp as a blade, as though he wished to dissect every secret hidden within that silver-white radiance.

He spoke softly, his tone grave, every word carrying immense weight. "The Saiyan race's depth of potential and the evolution of its transformation system have broken all understanding time and again. From Super Saiyan 1 to 4, every breakthrough was a brutal assault on the limits of life—a miracle born from the resonance of will and bloodline. But this fifth stage..." He paused, as if calculating and sensing something. "Its energy level, in both quality and quantity, has completely surpassed the scope that ordinary Gods of Destruction can comprehend or control. Even..."

"Even what?" Vados immediately pressed, catching the highly unusual hesitation in his tone.

Whis fell silent for a moment. The air itself seemed to freeze.

A complicated light flashed in his eyes—scrutiny, recollection, and an emotion so rare it bordered on apprehension.

At last, he softly breathed out several words. His voice was like a sigh, yet heavy enough to crush stars. "It even... reminds me of some ancient, almost mythical legends that exist only in fragmented memories of the Angel race. Those vague records about... 'mortals touching the forbidden domain of gods.'"

Vados's pupils suddenly contracted to pinpoints, and the slender hand gripping her divine staff unconsciously tightened.

At the heart of that battlefield, where storm and destruction intertwined—Qi Heng and Beerus stood quietly in opposition, less than a hundred meters apart.

Silver-white and deep purple—two powers capable of shattering star systems at will and making even the laws of the universe tremble—were not clashing wildly at this moment, but continuously contending and rising within suffocating silence.

Their auras were like two world-ending volcanoes on the verge of eruption. The land beneath them had long been reduced to powder, while the stellar remains farther away were drawn in by invisible force fields, slowly orbiting around the two of them and forming a massive vortex of destruction.

Every tiny fluctuation of energy made the space at the edge of the God of Destruction Realm tremble.

Their gazes met in midair. There were no sparks—only the purest collision of will and power, waiting for the final eruption, for the moment that would drive everything toward its conclusion.

"Come on." For the first time, Beerus's voice carried undisguised excitement. Deep within his catlike vertical pupils, violet flames seemed to burn, and his fighting spirit was nearly tangible, warping the air around him with its heat.

He slowly raised one hand, dangerous yet beautiful pale-purple radiance curling around his fingertips. "Let me see with my own eyes just how strong the legendary... Super Saiyan 5 truly is."

Qi Heng remained silent.

He did not roar or make any charging motions before powering up. He merely bent his knees slightly, naturally.

The movement was so simple it was almost unnoticeable, yet it put every one of Beerus's nerves on edge.

Then—Qi Heng vanished.

This was not high-speed movement so fast that the eye could barely catch an afterimage. It was a more complete kind of "disappearance," like a spatial jump.

Even with a Destroyer God's dynamic vision, capable of clearly seeing a star's annihilation, Beerus only barely caught a blurry streak of silver light in one-thousandth of a second.