Dragon Ball Roshi

"What do you mean by that?" Tsuru frowned, not quite following.

Taro smiled and turned to Hathaway. "You've already informed Fabeli, right?"

Hathaway nodded. "Jarvis already gave him the message."

Tsuru still frowned in confusion.

Taro placed a hand on Tsuru's shoulder and said, "Come with me for a bit. You'll understand once we get there."

"You—" Tsuru hadn't even finished speaking when the world around him suddenly shifted. In the blink of an eye, an intense chill swept over him. Shocked, he gasped as a fierce wind—howling and laced with snow and ice shards—lashed against his body like a flurry of blades!

In that split second of weightlessness, Tsuru instinctively used the Flight Technique.

He stared in disbelief behind Taro and Hathaway. Where was the private room of the restaurant? What lay before him now was clearly a snow-covered expanse! In the blink of an eye, they were now floating over a wintry mountain range!

"This is the northern mountain range," Hathaway explained as she floated beside Taro, protected from the snow and cold by the thin ki barrier he had formed around them.

"The northern mountain range?!" Tsuru was stunned.

Sayuan City was thousands of li south of these bitter-cold mountains north of North Capital. And yet in the span of a mere blink—they had crossed that immense distance? And more than that...

As a martial arts grandmaster, Tsuru could clearly tell: during that transition, there had been no movement whatsoever!

"How did you do that? That's not something simple speed can achieve, right?" Tsuru asked, furrowing his brow at Taro.

Taro nodded. "It's Instant Transmission—a spatial ability. Isn't your disciple, the one named Chiaotzu, also capable of various psychic powers? It's similar to those."

Tsuru thought to himself: Not even close!

"Alright, let's go. Fabeli should be ready," Taro said, drifting down through the snowstorm with Hathaway toward a mountain valley.

What kind of trick is this old ghost playing…? Tsuru, full of suspicion, followed from the air. Though he could track the direction Taro and Hathaway were flying, he couldn't sense any other ki presence at all. What were they up to? After a moment's thought, he descended as well.

---

"Though we've made some progress, we're still far from a breakthrough! Damn it, who would've thought that this whole genetics and biotech path would be so slow? It's like the way forward is shrouded in fog…" As soon as they entered the lab, Fabeli started ranting nonstop.

Hathaway smiled. "I read the latest research report. True, it's still far from ideal results, but… if the target is a specific individual, it might already be effective."

"Specific individual?" Fabeli raised his mechanical brow. His cybernetic feet tapped loudly on the floor as his gaze passed over Hathaway and Taro… and landed on Tsuru, who had followed behind them. He'd never seen this man before.

And...

"Hey, who the hell is this guy? Since the moment he walked in, he's had this 'Who am I? Where am I? What's going on?' look on his face," Fabeli said irritably, noting how Tsuru had been wearing an expression of stunned disbelief ever since they arrived.

Embarrassed, Tsuru's gray-white brow twitched in irritation.

"This research facility is surrounded by a special force field," Hathaway explained, having picked up on what had shocked Tsuru. "So from the outside, you can't sense the ki of anyone inside. In other words, all 'ki signals' are blocked. That's why, as a martial artist, you couldn't detect anything."

Tch. This wife of the guy actually knows what I'm thinking. What is she, a monster? Tsuru snorted, but he accepted Hathaway's explanation.

Taro glanced at him and smiled. "Junior brother, arrogance will get you nowhere… Even we martial artists have things we simply can't do. For example… the one standing before you—his energy level far surpasses yours. So, what do you think? Can you sense it?"

Of course, when he said "you and I," it wasn't entirely truthful; even with artificial beings, Taro could sense their ki.

Natural ki, to ordinary people, is just part of the environment—like the sky, the sea, or the earth. Normal martial artists can't perceive it. Even in the original story, Goku could only sense natural ki when he was forming the Spirit Bomb. Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan could only judge its power by the size of the Spirit Bomb itself.

But Taro, having cultivated divine natural ki for over a hundred years, could of course sense it. Because of that, his ki had begun to shift from "human" toward "nature" or even "divine." That's why, when other martial artists tried to sense his energy, they felt like they were peering into a fog—elusive, and all too easy to misinterpret.

"This man's ki is stronger than mine—what did you just say?!" Tsuru's face was twisted with disbelief as he focused all his attention on sensing the strange figure in the white lab coat before him. But… there was still nothing. Not a trace. And the more he focused, the stranger this person seemed.

He didn't even have the most basic "ki" that a human should possess! It was simply impossible—completely outside the bounds of common sense.

Anyone who was alive should naturally have "ki"!

"Could you not look at me with those ignorant and clueless eyes? The pressure's unbearable…" Fabeli mocked Tsuru mercilessly, then turned away. "Whatever, if you're going to use it, then use it. Don't come crying to me if it blows up in your face…"

"Let's go." Taro led Hathaway after him. Seeing Tsuru standing there with a deep frown, he said blandly, "Back then, you only drank the Water of Immortality because of me. Your potential, like mine, was completely consumed by it—converted into lifespan…"

Tsuru narrowed his eyes, and his breathing quickened slightly. He asked in a low voice, "Are you saying…"

"Come on…"

---

Although the ideal genetic breakthrough—a serum that could perfect the genetic potential of Earthlings—was still a long way off, Tsuru's genes were a special case. The sample Taro had provided to Fabeli was his own blood, meaning cells from his Divine Tree constitution. And that sample… was from a body already repaired of the damage done by the Water of Immortality!

"Here, this is it. I'm not guaranteeing it'll work though!" Fabeli wasn't aware of all this, so he held little hope for Tsuru's results with this stage-prototype serum. As he spoke, he pulled out a test tube and handed it to Hathaway.

Hathaway said, "According to your own data reports, Jarivs has already run over a hundred billion simulations. The predicted success rate is above 93.94%." As she spoke, she glanced at the light green liquid in the tube and passed it to Tsuru.

"If that's the case, then I suppose it's fine." Fabeli nodded, guessing that Jarivs must have factored in some variables unknown to him to arrive at that success rate.

Tsuru took a deep breath… and accepted the test tube from Hathaway.

"How… do you use this?" he asked. Even after hundreds of years, there was a slight tremble in his voice.

"Drink it straight!" Fabeli snapped. "If you don't like the taste, you could always inject it!"

This time Tsuru ignored him and turned to Taro instead, his voice low and serious: "Taro, are you sure… this stuff… will actually work?"

Just like Taro all those years ago, Tsuru had long since touched the limits of his own power. After pushing his ki to a combat level of several hundred, he had made no further progress. For nearly two centuries, his "ki" hadn't improved even the slightest bit.

And as a martial artist—how could he accept that?

Taro didn't say whether it would work or not. He simply said, "Drink it."

Tilting his head back, Tsuru poured the entire tube of pale green liquid into his stomach.