Exhaustion

Kapok City's night breeze carried a hint of seaside dampness, mingling with the neon lights that filled the streets, thick and clammy.

Chen He walked slowly along the sidewalk beside the streetlights, which were switching between red and green. The burden of fifty times gravity still had his breathing in a death grip. Beneath his black martial arts uniform, his muscles repeatedly stiffened and chilled—he was on the very edge of total exhaustion. Casually, he tore an iron bar from the shadows beneath a roadside bench and held it in his palm. The solid bar, as thick as his little finger, was kneaded between his fingers like dough into a flattened lump of iron.

He took out one of the few remaining Senzu Beans. His only option now was to recover first. He no longer had enough stamina to spend the night anywhere nearby; he had barely twenty percent of his strength left.

He wanted the radar, and he was getting it tonight.

"Beep—beep—"

Two crisp honks abruptly sounded at the entrance to the silent back alley.

The pink Capsule camper slowly came to a stop beside the curb. Its window rolled down, revealing Bulma's conflicted and uneasy face. She had been gripping the steering wheel, but when Chen He turned around and she saw those pitch-black eyes devoid of any living emotion, she instinctively swallowed the words she had prepared. Her fingers fidgeted unnaturally against the leather steering wheel.

"Um... Chen He." Bulma averted her gaze, letting it fall on the window's weatherstripping, her voice somewhat shaky. "Goku and the others already went with Master Roshi to Great Prosperity Pavilion for barbecue. I saw you walking this way alone... Where are you going? Do you need a ride?"

Bulma was not a timid girl. She had seen the Red Ribbon Army's planes and tanks, and she had dealt with monsters in deep forests alongside Goku. Yet when facing Chen He alone, she always felt the oppressive presence of a cold, unfeeling robot. Especially after what happened in the arena—Chen He had shattered the ring platform dozens of meters away with a single punch. That was no ordinary destructive power.

Chen He did not get in. He merely walked over and stopped outside the passenger-side window.

Under the pressure of fifty times gravity, his footsteps sounded especially heavy in the quiet alley. As he approached, the camper's chassis even sank slightly.

"Do you have the radar on you?" Chen He asked bluntly, his voice hoarse like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

Bulma froze for a moment, then an inexplicable sense of grievance rose within her. She had only meant well, seeing how hard it was for him to walk alone at night—after all, they had gone through the Red Ribbon Army incident together, so they could be considered friends. Yet the moment he spoke, there was not even a polite word. He was as cold as if he were talking to a machine.

"It's... it's in the bag on the back seat." Bulma bit her lip and, almost petulantly, opened the glove compartment. She rummaged around and pulled out a disc-shaped electronic device that glinted with a cold metallic sheen, then handed it directly through the window. "Take it! Goku hasn't really used it much this past year anyway. Just remember to return it when you're done."

Chen He reached out and took the Dragon Radar. The cold texture beneath his fingertips as he pressed the green screen cleared his mind a little. He flipped the switch at the top, and several faint green dots immediately lit up across the screen. The nearest one was in his own pocket.

"Thanks."

Chen He shoved the radar into his tattered pocket, where it bumped against the Four-Star Dragon Ball with a crisp little clink. He looked at Bulma's face, filled with complicated emotions, and for once offered an explanation. "The Red Ribbon Army may have fallen apart, but some things are even more troublesome than they were. Having this isn't good for you."

Without waiting for Bulma to react, he turned around and walked back into the alley's shadows, his steps still somewhat sluggish but utterly without hesitation.

Bulma watched his back swiftly vanish into the darkness and angrily punched the steering wheel.

"What a weirdo... He acts like the world's ending every day." She muttered, though her eyes had reddened slightly. She did not understand why Chen He always kept everyone at arm's length, much less what kind of crushing secret lay behind a strength so overwhelming that no one could even feel jealousy toward it.

The Capsule camper started up again, its engine rumbling with a hint of irritation as it disappeared around the street corner.

Meanwhile, in a private room at Great Prosperity Pavilion several kilometers away, beneath its glowing neon sign.

A tall stack of empty plates had already piled up on the tatami. Goku was gnawing on a massive beef rib, his face slick with grease, but his usual ravenous eating seemed distracted today. He bit through a piece of cartilage, chewed twice, swallowed, then suddenly tossed the bone onto a plate and sprawled flat on the mat.

"Goku, you're full?" Krillin asked, wiping his mouth with a towel as he watched him curiously. Normally, Goku would never stop until he had eaten the restaurant out of stock.

"I can't eat anymore, Krillin." Goku stared at the yellowing hanging lamp overhead, absentmindedly touching his chest with his right hand. A burning bruise was still there. "Whenever I close my eyes, all I can see is Chen He's punch from earlier. Krillin, tell me... if I hadn't slacked off back on Mount Paozu, if I'd tried carrying that weird fifty-times thing too, would I have become that strong?"

The private room fell silent.

Yamcha paused with his drink halfway to his mouth. The pale yellow sake rippled in circles against the cup's walls. He turned to look out at Kapok City's nightscape, while the bandages around his chest still ached faintly. That battle had not only shattered his New Wolf Fang Fist, but also his understanding of the word "genius" built over the past twenty years.

"Goku, don't think about it." Yamcha drained the sake in his cup in one gulp. The spicy liquid made him frown, while a trace of self-mocking relief flashed through his eyes. "We're training in martial arts, but Chen He... he's using his life as the stakes, gambling against something we can't even see. Didn't you see the look in his eyes today? That wasn't how someone who'd won the World Martial Arts Tournament was supposed to look."

Master Roshi, seated at the head of the table, sighed and set down his chopsticks.

He looked at his two most prized disciples, his eyes behind the sunglasses filled with an elder's complicated concern and affection. His original intention had been to let the younger generation understand that there was always someone stronger, so they would not slack off in the years ahead. But Chen He's oppressive, brutally pragmatic power, which seemed to contain not a trace of human emotion, had completely gone beyond the scope of simply guiding juniors.

"Everyone has their own path, Goku." The old man reached out and stroked Goku's slightly messy hair, his voice turning low. "Chen He carries too much on his mind. His energy has a ruthless drive that forces him onward. Training like that does too much damage to the body. Your martial arts are pure now, and that is good. Don't imitate him."

Goku said nothing. He merely rolled over and buried his face in the crook of his arm. He could feel Master Roshi's concern, but the Saiyan instinct in his body screamed with unwillingness in every cell.

The night deepened.

Inside an abandoned cold storage warehouse in Kapok City's western outskirts.

Chen He sat cross-legged on a cold, rust-covered steel plate. Above him, an exhaust fan creaked monotonously in the wind. He tore off the outer layer of his black martial arts uniform, revealing the gravity vest beneath, its dark luster faintly flowing in the darkness.

Click.

He reached for the dial on the side of the vest and turned it back three notches from "50x" with extreme slowness.

"Twenty times... Hah."

As the gravity suddenly lessened, Chen He felt as though he had abruptly surfaced from the deep sea. The capillaries throughout his body expanded wildly in that instant, and an immense force instantly flooded his previously drained body. He had intended to trigger the Saiyan passive, but for some reason, it had failed.

He exhaled a murky breath tinged with blood and placed the Dragon Radar and the Four-Star Dragon Ball side by side before his knees.

As long as he got the radar tonight, he would begin searching for the Dragon Balls scattered all over Earth, one by one, tomorrow morning.

"Whoever you are... if you want to use me as nourishment, then let's see if your teeth are hard enough."

Chen He coldly watched the faintly flashing green dots on the radar, then slowly closed his eyes in the pitch-black depths of the cold storage warehouse.