Victor

The azure beam, like a roaring dragon, tore through the air with a piercing shriek, instantly flooding the shattered arena with blinding light. The tens of thousands of spectators in the stands were dazzled into shutting their eyes, yet they still forced them open, terrified of missing this mythical sight.

"Haahhh—!!"

Son Goku's feet dug firmly into the cracked marble floor, veins bulging across his forehead as he poured every last trace of ki in his body into his palms without restraint. This Kamehameha was the pinnacle of his year of grueling training. The gale stirred up by its energy whipped his gi into a violent flutter. He stared at the end of that beam, his heart pounding faster than ever before.

It was not fear. It was the purest tremor and exhilaration belonging to a martial artist facing an insurmountable wall.

On the other side of the beam, Chen He's right fist had already swung out completely.

Tiny bloody tears split across the muscles of his right arm from the overload, but amid the agony that nearly tore his body apart, that surging ki seemed to find an outlet, condensing at a single point as never before.

Boom—!!!

The heavy punch collided head-on with the blue pillar of energy.

There was no evenly matched deadlock as imagined. Before absolute power, the Kamehameha that contained all of Son Goku's effort shattered the instant it struck Chen He's fist, like fragile glass crashing into granite, breaking apart inch by inch before exploding violently!

The raging energy aftermath turned into tangible rings of white light that spread madly outward in a fan shape. In that instant, the entire marble arena was ripped apart and hurled into the air, becoming a rainstorm of flying rubble.

"Waaah!"

The spectators in the front rows were thrown off balance by the sudden, powerful wind pressure. The referee directly dropped to the ground with his head covered, his hat blown away to who knew where.

At the center of the storm, Son Goku felt an unbearable, suffocating force slam into him. It was not a technique—it was merely the terrifying wind pressure created by Chen He's fist pushing through the air. He did not even have time to scream before the mountain-shifting blast of air sent him flying head-on. He flipped through the air more than a dozen times before crashing miserably onto the grass dozens of meters away, motionless.

Dust slowly rose over the ruined venue.

Chen He stood silently in the crater that had once been the arena. His black training uniform was in tatters, and faint sparks occasionally flickered over the exposed gravity vest. It was the wail of its internal components operating under the extreme load of fifty times gravity.

"Whew... whew..."

Chen He breathed as heavily as a bellows. After that strike, the fighting power within him was nearly depleted. Cramps spread from his calves all the way to his back, making even the slightest movement of a finger unbearably difficult. His precise and clear-headed mind told him that if Son Goku had held on for even one more second, he himself would have been the first to fall.

Without the system, forcing his body to endure its limits like this was indeed perilous to the extreme. But he had still won. In the shadows, a cold curve slowly formed at the corner of Chen He's mouth.

"O-Out of bounds! Contestant Son Goku has fallen outside the arena!"

The referee crawled out of the wreckage and wiped the muddy water from his face. His voice shook so badly it was barely recognizable. "The... the winner is contestant Chen He!!"

As the declaration fell, scattered applause arose throughout the stadium, only to turn into a deathly silence tinged with awe. Tens of thousands of spectators looked at the black-haired youth standing amid the ruins, his eyes as cold as an abyss. Not one of them dared to make a sound.

At the contestants' seats.

Krillin and Yamcha practically scrambled toward Son Goku on the grass. Bulma, heedless of her high heels, lifted her skirt and hurried over.

"Goku! Goku, are you okay?!" Krillin was so anxious that tears were nearly spilling from his eyes as he hurriedly helped Son Goku up and held him against his chest.

"Cough, cough..."

Son Goku suddenly coughed twice and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. His face, which had been bruised and darkened, was now filled with blankness. He stared vacantly at the blue sky, his right hand clenched tightly around the gi over his chest. Even now, his body still trembled instinctively from the lingering force of that punch.

"So strong..."

Son Goku's voice was soft, but it carried a nearly numb shock. "Krillin... that punch just now, he didn't even touch me. I thought the gap between us had narrowed, but in the end... he'd been fighting me while carrying a mountain like that on his back."

Yamcha stood beside him, looking at his trembling hands as he let out a long sigh. He patted Krillin on the shoulder. A complicated emotion flashed in his eyes—there was disappointment, but even more than that, resignation before power like that of a god. "Don't think about it, Goku. We're already lucky just to have survived facing that monster head-on."

At the highest point of the venue.

Master Roshi silently put his sunglasses back on. He watched Chen He step down from the ruins one heavy step at a time. The setting sun stretched the youth's shadow long, making him appear solitary and cold.

"This era no longer belongs to old bones like us," Master Roshi murmured softly, the fist hidden in his sleeve loosening weakly. He turned his head toward the direction of the Other World and the Lookout, his eyes behind the sunglasses filled with deep concern. "I only hope the end of this child's pursuit of strength... is not destruction."

Chen He paid no attention to the clamor and stares behind him. He slipped both hands back into his pockets, allowing the fiftyfold gravity to continue madly draining every last bit of strength from his body.