Destruction and Rebirth

His gaze crossed the vast expanse of the universe, fixed firmly on that purple figure.

His expression was complex, filled with reverence for the God of Destruction's power, yet hiding a trace of unmistakable worry.

"This move... ever since that incident, he hasn't used it in actual combat for tens of millions of years."

Vados stood beside him, her expression equally guarded.

The angel's staff in her hand shone with a cold light, echoing her icy blue eyes from afar.

With her lips pressed together, she stared unblinkingly at the wildly spinning, ever-expanding purple energy sphere between Beerus's palms.

The core of the energy sphere was as deep as a black hole leading into nothingness, while destructive purple lightning coiled around its surface. Every flash violently warped the surrounding space like rippling water.

Even Vados's normally composed gaze now carried an obvious hint of apprehension.

"Whis was right." Her voice retained an angel's calmness, but a faint tension could be heard beneath it. "'Destruction Sphere'... if this energy were fully unleashed in the universe—" She paused, as though weighing the consequences. "The blast radius can barely be calculated, but the 'existence erasure' effect it produces... will spread like an invisible plague. Hundreds of light-years? No, perhaps even farther. All structures will be 'reset to zero.' Stars will vanish as though they had never ignited. Planets, along with traces accumulated over billions of years, will be wiped away. Nebulae will return to their most primitive void... Everything—matter, energy, even parts of spacetime itself—will be completely deleted from the universe's 'record.'"

Champa's fat body trembled violently, and cold sweat instantly soaked through his ornate God of Destruction attire.

He opened his mouth, only to find his throat dry and raw, allowing him to squeeze out nothing but a faint breath.

"Qi Heng..." he called the name in a low voice. His fists clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his palms, his knuckles cracking softly from the force, his face deathly pale.

Never before had he realized so clearly that the candidate he had personally chosen was already standing at the edge of total destruction.

At the center of the distant battlefield, Qi Heng floated alone in the cold, lifeless void.

In his Super Saiyan 5 form, his long silver hair moved without wind, dancing wildly behind him like burning flames.

His eyes, now pure silver, reflected the increasingly dazzling and dangerous purple light ahead.

His senses were fully unleashed, as precise as an intricate instrument.

What he "felt" was far more than the energy impact capable of vaporizing an ordinary galaxy in an instant.

At a deeper level, he had touched upon a more fundamental, more ultimate "law"—the source of "destruction" controlled by Beerus, the God of Destruction.

It was not simple shattering or vaporization, but a denial of "existence" itself.

Anything touched by it would not turn into fragments. Rather, the very "fact" of its existence would be erased directly from the roots of the universe.

Like using the most thorough eraser to wipe every mark from a canvas, leaving behind only blank emptiness, as if nothing had ever existed there.

A bone-chilling cold climbed up Qi Heng's spine.

Yet at the same time, an unprecedented fighting spirit ignited within him.

He drew in a deep breath, as though he intended to inhale every shred of courage in the void into his lungs.

He understood that there was no way back.

Behind him lay a cliff. The only path forward—or rather, the only path that could protect everything—lay ahead, within that destructive purple radiance.

"Haaah—!!!"

A low roar, suppressed to the very limit, burst from Qi Heng's throat.

The silver-white aura around his body suddenly contracted inward. No longer did it spill outward like a fountain; instead, it surged madly into his raised right arm like rivers returning to the sea, finally concentrating entirely in his open right palm.

The power of Super Saiyan 5, combined with the laws of "destruction" he had painstakingly comprehended through countless sessions of training as a candidate God of Destruction, was now being compressed, condensed, refined, and elevated without regard for the consequences!

His entire right arm, from shoulder to fingertips, bulged with muscles. Silver energy and tiny arcs of destructive lightning surged beneath his skin, radiating searing heat.

Light began gathering in his palm—first pure white, then increasingly blinding white, until it shone so brilliantly it was nearly transparent, as though he held the light of a white dwarf's core in his hand.

Under his will, that light compressed wildly, shrinking rapidly from several meters in diameter to less than half a meter, while the energy density within it rose at a frenzied rate.

At last, an incomparably condensed silver-white energy sphere floated above his palm.

It was not as enormous as the purple Destruction Sphere across from him that blotted out the sky, but the moment it came into being, the surrounding space seemed to groan in pain as though it could no longer bear the strain.

The surface of the energy sphere was anything but calm. Countless silver-white energy arcs, as thin as hairs yet incomparably sharp, burst uncontrollably from its surface.

Every arc that slashed through the void tore a fleeting, fine black scar across the curtain of the universe.

Fine beads of sweat already covered Qi Heng's forehead and temples, only to be turned into white vapor by the intense heat the instant they emerged.

His right arm, and even half his body, trembled violently.

Forcing energy of this level into his palm placed extreme pressure and a tearing agony upon every cell in his body and every channel of energy.

His bones groaned, and his muscles were nearing their limit.

But the flames in his eyes burned ever fiercer.

Compress! Compress further!

Condense! Condense further!

Finally, when the brightness at the core of the silver-white energy sphere broke through a certain limit, Qi Heng slowly spoke. His voice was hoarse, yet it carried an unyielding calmness:

"Super 5... Star Annihilation."

As his words fell, the tiny silver-white energy sphere in his palm—yet one that seemed capable of crushing countless stars—finally stabilized completely.

No arcs splashed outward. All destructive energy was locked within the sphere, so quiet it made one's scalp tingle, and so dangerous it made hearts race.

At that moment, the boundless starry sky seemed to have been split in two.

On one side was a deep violet mass that writhed and swelled, devouring everything in its path—the ultimate embodiment of erasure and annihilation.

On the other was a silver-white sphere compressed to the extreme, burning in silence—representing an unyielding will and absolute destruction.

Two energy spheres, utterly different in essence yet both capable of defining "destruction," faced each other across the cold void.

They had not even collided yet. The force fields and pressure radiating from their mere existence warped the light throughout the vast starfield, while the fabric of space resembled parchment crumpled by an invisible giant hand, covered in bizarre folds and fractures.

The dead silence before the apocalypse weighed upon this stretch of the universe, making it almost impossible to breathe.

In the void, the light of the two energy spheres was like the first ray of light at creation, violently tearing through the endless darkness.

Silver-white and violet clashed wildly across the boundless starfield, like two ancient stars capable of destroying everything being forcibly drawn together, about to collide the next instant.

What they emitted was not merely light, but a tangible pressure that made even countless stars tremble and dim.

Beerus floated above a shattered stellar orbit, violet destruction energy winding around his entire body like a living creature, dancing and hissing at his fingertips.

Pure battle frenzy burned in his crimson eyes, and the curve of his mouth grew increasingly ferocious and excited.

He did not attack immediately. Instead, he slowly raised his arms, as though he were about to embrace the end of the entire universe.

Between his palms, that deep violet energy suddenly collapsed inward at its core, then began to spin and expand wildly!