In Dragon Ball: A brutal beating of Frieza at the start

Page 107

The alloy plate pressing down on Bardak weighed a hundred tons and was originally part of the Royal Military Academy's defensive armor. As his fingers dug into the metal seams, his knuckles turned white from the force, and the dried scabs peeled off with friction, revealing fresh, red flesh beneath. The moment he pushed the plate aside, it felt as if the air in his chest had been sucked out, and a searing pain, like tendons tearing, shot through the wound on his right shoulder, causing him to let out a muffled groan, like a wild beast. The scene before him swayed; the broken mountain outlines resembled shattered glass, and the distant remnants of the artificial moon were still burning, the orange-red flames burning eerily and silently in the vacuum, casting his shadow long and thin.

"Lord Bardock!" Heavy breathing came from behind. A Saiyan warrior with a broken right horn crawled over, dragging his twisted left leg. His battle suit had been burned open by an energy blast, exposing three broken ribs with dark red flesh and blood clinging to the bone spurs that pierced his skin. More figures emerged from the ruins, some using broken weapons as crutches, others supporting each other as they staggered to their feet. Their armor was embedded in their flesh, and the blood seeping from their wounds congealed into dark red ice crystals in the low temperature.

The breathing of over a hundred people was exceptionally clear in the deathly silence, like the rhythmic pumping of an old bellows. The youngest warrior was only sixteen years old, his left cheek charred black, his exposed teeth trembling. He clutched the energy detector left by his father, the numbers on the screen long since gone to zero—the energy reading from the planet's explosion, high enough to drive any Saiyan to despair.

Bardock's gaze swept past the crowd, landing on the folds of the crimson nebula. The nebula was slowly undulating, its dark red gas at the edges like boiling magma. Occasionally, flashing plasma balls would fall from the clouds, crashing onto the debris and exploding in blue sparks. The simulated full moon created by Frieza hung in the center of the nebula, three times the original in diameter, its surface covered with strange purple patterns—altered Boltz wavelengths, meant to instantly transform all Saiyans into Great Ape form.

"Roar—!!!" He roared, the sound sending rubble flying. The surviving warriors responded immediately, a hundred roars merging into a torrent that crashed against the edge of the crimson nebula. Their tails tensed instinctively, their muscular arms bulged with veins, and their cells craved the moon's energy.

But the crimson moon hung indifferently, and the Saiyan's tail, devoid of all vitality, drooped limply behind him, its tip even trembling slightly. The tail tip of the one-horned warrior was still twitching, as if unwilling to accept this reality, yet it didn't even show the most basic expansion reaction. Bardock stared at his own tail, still bearing the scars from his early battles, now resembling a lifeless piece of withered wood. He suddenly remembered King Vegeta's words: "Our power comes from our blood, but if our blood is tainted by fear, even the most powerful moon cannot illuminate a cowardly soul."

“Giant ape transformation… failed.” As he uttered these words, he felt something shatter inside his chest. Behind him came suppressed sobs, and a blind old warrior suddenly collapsed to his knees, banging his head against the ground frantically until blood seeped from his forehead.

Just then, a low hum echoed from deep space, like the flapping of countless enormous insects. The young soldier was the first to notice the anomaly; pointing into the depths of the nebula, his voice trembled with fear: "What is that…?"

A rift was torn open in the crimson nebula, and a fleet of silver-gray ships surged out like a swarm of sharks. The flagship at the head was even larger than Vegeta's palace, its metal ram adorned with a ferocious dragon head, and countless cannons protruding from both sides of the hull, their muzzles gleaming with eerie blue energy. Most striking were the flying machines suspended beneath the flagship, where Frieza's figure in his purple battle suit was clearly visible. His fingers tapped lightly on the armrests, producing a rhythmic clicking sound, as if counting down to the massacre.

"Hehehe..." The laughter coming from the loudspeaker had a metallic, scraping quality, like sandpaper scraping against a rusty iron plate. "Look at these useless pieces of trash who can't even stand up straight, King Kurd, are you sure they are the legendary Saiyans who can destroy planets?"

King Cold was twice the size of Frieza, his dark green skin glistening in the blood-red light. He glanced at the cryogenic chamber beside him, the blue light illuminating the silhouette of Mecha Cell—coolant still dripping from its joints, its claws gleaming with the cold light characteristic of alloy. "Perhaps their battle records are embellished; after all, space pirates always like to exaggerate their achievements."

Frieza's laughter grew sharper: "If we had brought that baby up, it might have been a decent pet. But as it stands, it doesn't even qualify as a pet."

"Frieza—!!!"

A roar interrupted his taunts as Vegeta burst from behind a pile of rubble fifty meters away. His white cloak was burned away, revealing a deep, bone-revealing wound on his back, with his spine faintly visible. But his speed was astonishing; each step he took created a shallow crater in the ground, and blue flames danced around him, like the last gasp of a dying man.

"Stop him!" Frieza's brow furrowed for the first time, and the escorting ships around the spacecraft immediately turned their cannons. A net of fire woven from energy beams instantly enveloped Vegeta's path, but he moved like a blue lightning bolt, weaving through the gaps in the beams. Two beams grazed his arm, taking away pieces of flesh, but he didn't even blink, only increasing his arrogance.

"For the Saiyans!!!" His roar was laced with blood and foam, and his body suddenly twisted at an incredible angle in the air, dodging the main cannon's bombardment. The energy cannon struck the ruins, blasting a crater a hundred meters in diameter, and sending flying debris flying in all directions like bullets.

As Bardock watched Vegeta crash into the main ship's shield, the pale golden energy membrane trembled violently like a soap bubble before shattering with a deafening roar. The instant Vegeta disappeared inside the main ship, Bardock suddenly understood—this prince, always as arrogant as a defeated rooster, had never intended to return alive from the very beginning.

The alarm on the main ship couldn't travel in the vacuum, but the flashing red light sounded like a silent death knell. The moment Vegeta smashed the nursery glass, he kicked away the technicians' screams. The spherical pod emitting white light was right in front of him. The baby inside was sleeping soundly, its black hair stubbornly sticking up on its forehead, and its tail curled around its waist like a small snake.

“Kakarot…” he gritted his teeth as he uttered the name, the sound of his teeth grinding together. Suddenly, the wound on his right shoulder burst open, spraying blood onto the hatch, forming a small red stream on the transparent glass. He remembered the scene from his childhood when his father held him as he watched battle videos. On the screen, Saiyan warriors transformed into Great Apes, crushing enemy warships like ants. His father had said then, “The mission to conquer the universe flows in our blood.”

"Then—!!!" The instant he flung the incubator pod out, he pressed the self-destruct button on the energy core. A red countdown ticked on his retina as he took one last look at the blue planet—the place the probe indicated the baby was about to arrive at.

The intense light from the explosion pierced the main ship's alloy hull, shining like a second star in a blood-red nebula. The shockwave unleashed a torrent of energy that swept away the surrounding escort ships like leaves. Bardock instinctively shielded the warriors behind him, the scorching heat scorching his remaining hair.

Within that white light, he saw Vegeta's mangled body slowly rise, his right hand holding up half of an energy detector, which was still intermittently emitting signals. The voice resounded directly in the minds of every Saiyan, carrying the scent of blood and foam: "The glory of the Saiyans...is passed down by me, Vegeta—!!!"

The moment the word "inheritance" was uttered, Bardock's tail suddenly throbbed with excruciating pain, as if branded with a hot iron. He looked down and saw silvery-white flames spreading from his tailbone. The flames had no heat, yet possessed a metallic sheen, illuminating his wounds. Gasps of astonishment rose and fell around him. Every Saiyan's tail was ablaze with the same silver flames, a hundred flames merging into one across the ruins, casting an eerie purple hue over the crimson nebula.

"This is... the ancestral fire?" The blind old warrior suddenly knelt down, stroking the flames on his tail, tears streaming from his cloudy eyes. "The ancient texts record... the awakening of the battle spirit..."

The earth began to shake violently, a tremor even stronger than the previous explosion emanating from the earth's core. Bardock saw the plains not far away rising up, dark blue rocks emerging from the ground, the dust covering them falling away to reveal the rough textures etched on their surfaces. The statue was at least thirty meters tall—its muscular arms gripped a stone axe, and the eyes peeking out from beneath its shattered helmet were hollow yet majestic. It was none other than the first Saiyan chieftain recorded in ancient texts, who was said to have torn a comet apart with his bare hands.

The runes on the statue's base glowed red in the silver flames, and Bardock suddenly understood those twisted lines. They weren't words, but a diagram of genetic sequences, the battle spirit mark etched by the first patriarch with his own blood. "Bloodlines may slumber... but the battle spirit never dies—!" These words were directly imprinted on his soul, reminding him of the ancient roar that always echoed in his ears whenever he fought to his limit.

"Never Die!!!" His roar shattered the surrounding rubble, and silver flames coalesced into a towering pillar of fire behind him. The warrior with the broken horn tore off his tattered combat uniform, revealing his burning chest; the blind old warrior stood up, a sharp stone shard appearing in his hand; the youngest warrior tucked his father's detector into his robes and gripped his broken spear tightly.

Frieza's smile vanished completely. His crimson pupils narrowed to pinpoints, and for the first time, fear flickered in his eyes as he stared at the silver sea of ​​fire. "Fire! Blow them all into atoms!" His voice was shrill and distorted, his fingers turning white from the force of his blows.

The fleet's cannons lit up simultaneously, and eerie blue energy spheres spun inside the barrels, emitting a whistling sound that tore through the air. Bardock looked at those lights of destruction and suddenly remembered his first mission, when his father patted him on the shoulder and said, "Remember, Saiyans can die, but they can't kneel."

On the edge of the ruins, in that cracked nursery pod, Kakarot opened his eyes. His pupils were like the deepest universe, able to see swirling nebulae and twinkling stars. In that clear light, a point of golden light was slowly rising, like the first spark born at the Big Bang.

Bardock raised his remaining left arm, silver flames spreading from his arm to his palm. A hundred flames behind him converged simultaneously, condensing into a gigantic spear of light within the crimson nebula. Frieza's energy cannon had already fired, charging forward with the force of annihilation.

"The fighting spirit will never die—!!!"

At the critical moment, the light spear pierced out fiercely, meeting the energy cannon head-on.

Chapter 260 The Prisoner of the Time Wormhole

In absolute nothingness surged a viscous, asphalt-like substance, devoid of any sense of direction, without the markings of sunrise and sunset, only a faint, eerie blue light floating and sinking in the chaos. Twisted bands of light, like crushed neon tubes, slowly crawled and intertwined in the void, bursting forth with blinding blue sparks upon contact before silently annihilating. Shattered fragments of time hung all around; some reflected a burning kindergarten, children's smiling faces behind glass windows overlapping with the towering flames; others revealed the wreckage of an exploded starship, flying metal fragments brushing past the tearful eyes of lovers parting; still others froze a wedding banquet, a crystal chandelier suddenly shattering, the hem of a wedding dress instantly soaked in blood. This was the orphanage of the laws of spacetime, an eternal prison called the Rift.

Ugh!

A roar ripped through the thick silence, the stench of blood spreading through the chaos. Mirror Lin Ye's fist was unrecognizable; where his knuckles pierced his skin, purplish-black scabs of blood had formed. Each time it struck the invisible barrier, tiny droplets of blood splattered. The barrier, like frozen honey, gleamed with an oily sheen. Ripples would appear the moment his fist sank in, but as he withdrew his arm, the barrier would instantly return to its smooth state, as if it had never been touched.

His dark combat suit was now just tattered rags, and a tear in his right shoulder, ripped open by the turbulent flow of time, revealed bone beneath. Blue-black ice crystals clung to the edges of the wound—marks of frostbite inflicted by time-space energy. The iris of his left eye was bloodshot and dark red, its pupil pulsating with a raging, all-consuming fury; his right prosthetic eye, however, glowed with an ominous red light, the bio-gel connecting the metal shell to the eye socket cracked and dry, revealing tangled nerve bundles beneath. Each breath carried a metallic, sweet stench, and the creaking of his ribs echoed in his chest, like a rat gnawing at bones.

Suddenly, a soft click as the latch came loose rang out in the dead silence.

Click——

Without warning, the super-alloy protective frame around his right eye snapped open, the bio-neural interface was ripped off, and several strands of blue-purple electrical arcs surged along the nerve bundle, dripping dark red blood onto the ground. Mirror Lin Ye groaned, his vision suddenly tilting, a sharp pain shooting through his right eye socket as if someone were tearing his nerves, as if someone were stirring his eyeball with a red-hot wire.

The prosthetic eye clattered onto the light strip at his feet. The red light extinguished the instant it touched, revealing fine scratches on the metal shell—scratches he had etched with his fingernails over countless days and nights, like a prisoner marking his sentence on a wall. Warm liquid welled up from his right eye socket. He trembled as he raised his hand to touch it, but his fingertips didn't touch the cold metal; instead, they felt the moist eyelid, the throbbing veins, and the subtle, life-like tremors as his eyeball moved.

This… His finger hovered above his eye socket, afraid to touch it. Through the hazy blood mist, he saw his reflection on the barrier—a bloodshot human eyeball embedded in his right eye socket, violently contracting in shock. Fragments of forcibly implanted memories surged through his mind: the installation of the mechanical prosthetic eye, the excruciating pain of the nerve connections, Kronos's cold tone when he said, "You're just a vessel for consciousness…"

A sudden, excruciating pain exploded in his heart, like countless steel needles piercing his nerve endings. He ripped open his tattered shirt; the skin above his heart had turned purplish-black, and the thorny mark was writhing. The skin around its edges visibly withered and carbonized, turning to ash that fluttered down. He could clearly feel his life force being frantically drained away, flowing towards the constantly rotating black dot at the center of the mark, like water being sucked dry by a funnel.

Kronos—!!! His roar shook the surrounding fragments of time, his left eye spewing raging flames, while warm tears streamed from his right. "You promised me a new world! Not this drained prison—!!"

A low, guttural laugh echoed from all directions, like countless ice needles piercing eardrums. The chaos outside the barrier began to swirl, countless tiny points of light converging into a deep purple mist. From within the mist, dozens of eyes slowly opened—eyes without pupils, only pure, dark energy flowing within. Several translucent tentacles emerged from the mist, their surfaces flowing with a viscous, starlight-like liquid. With each movement, fragments of time around them would accelerate or rewind.

The phantom of Cronus, the god of time, coalesced outside the barrier. His indifferent will, like the pressure of deep-sea water, crushed Mirror Lin Ye's chest, causing him excruciating pain, almost vomiting his insides. A new world? The voice resounded directly in his mind, carrying a metallic, abrasive quality: "When the contract is complete, when you drain the traces of your original existence, when the anchor point completely disappears... it will naturally be yours."

The thickest tentacle suddenly pierced through the barrier, its tip rippling like water, revealing a clear image: on the burning ruins of the city, Lin Ye's true form was kneeling, supporting a golden shield, the cracks on which were denser than spiderwebs. The burning spaceship crashed down with a piercing whistle, and the children behind the shield huddled together, the youngest still clutching a charred doll, his cries already hoarse.

Look how magnificent your true form is. Cronus's voice carried the mockery of a cat playing with a mouse, a truly pathetic realization that one must burn oneself to protect ants.

Lin Ye stared intently at the face in the mirror image that was exactly like his own, watching him grit his teeth until blood seeped from his gums, watching the cracks on his protective shield widen, watching the pure fear in the eyes of the child behind him. The belief that replacing him would bring him freedom—this belief that sustained him through the excruciating torture—now felt like a red-hot iron, searing his heart.

Mr. Lin Ye, don't move!

A clear female voice suddenly exploded in his mind, like a scalpel slicing through chaos. A blinding white light flashed before Lin Ye's eyes: in a brightly lit laboratory, Bulma, wearing goggles, was approaching his right eye with a precision instrument at her fingertips. Sweat beaded on her forehead, oil smeared on her nose. After completing the procedure, she removed her goggles, revealing a radiant smile: Success! This was a neural connection technology comparable to a natural eyeball!

That smile was like sunlight piercing through ice, shining into his consciousness, which had never known warmth. Mirror Lin Ye suddenly clutched his head, letting out a trapped beast's wail—the electronic buzzing of the mechanical eye, the cries of children, Bulma's laughter, and Kronos's whispers clashed in his mind, as if trying to shatter his skull. Tears mixed with blood rolled down his right eye, dripping onto the mechanical eye on the ground, spreading a small patch of dark red.

"I'm not a program..." He suddenly looked up, his newly formed right eye flashing with a resolute light, "Not your pawn—!!"

He picked up the mechanical prosthetic eye from the ground; its metal shell still retained his body heat. In that instant, he saw clearly the engravings on the inside of the prosthetic eye—not left by him, but some extremely subtle biological code, perfectly matching Lin Ye's original genetic sequence. So, from the very beginning, he wasn't a copy.

Like throwing a javelin, Lin Ye pierced the mechanical prosthetic eye toward Kronos's tentacles!

Zila——! ! !

A blue-purple arc of electricity erupted at the point of contact, instantly melting the alloy shell of the mechanical eye and revealing the nerve bundles coiled within. These nerve bundles, like living things, burrowed into the tentacles, frantically sucking up spacetime energy. Kronos's tentacles convulsed violently, spiderweb-like cracks exploding on their surface, and a purplish-black energy sap gushed out, corroding the surrounding chaos.

"Insignificant ant!" Kronos's voice was tinged with rage for the first time. Deep purple smoke churned violently, and countless eyes simultaneously lit up with red light. "How dare you desecrate the laws of time—!!"

The barrier imprisoning Mirror Lin Ye began to crack, blinding white light seeping from the fissures. The spacetime rift trembled violently, and the suspended fragments of time began to collide and explode, the resulting turbulent energy currents cutting his skin like countless tiny knives, leaving bloody gashes. He was thrown back by a turbulent current, his back slamming against the broken barrier, the spray of blood condensing into red ice crystals in the void.

But as he watched the crack widen, he suddenly laughed. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, freezing into beads on his chin: Let's go to hell together—!!

Just as the crack was about to completely collapse, the chaos behind the phantom of Cronus suddenly caved in, as if gripped by an invisible hand. A figure shrouded in a black robe slowly emerged, the shadow of the hood unfathomable, revealing only a withered hand pressed against Cronus's back—the skin of that hand was like dried tree bark, with metallic luster showing at the knuckles.

Lin Ye's pupils suddenly contracted—even the God of Time was a puppet?

In the real world, Lin Ye's golden shield finally shattered. The burning spaceship crashed down with destructive force, and Trunks' figure transformed into a blue lightning bolt, rushing forward and catching the bulge at the bottom of the spaceship with both hands. The alloy floor collapsed beneath his feet, forming spiderweb-like cracks, and his arm muscles bulged to their limit, the veins throbbing like blue snakes under his skin.

"Lin Ye! Take the child away—!!" Trunks' roar shattered the surrounding glass shards.

Lin Ye's figure left a golden afterimage in place, and the next second he appeared behind the ruins a hundred meters away, tightly protecting the three children in his arms. The youngest was still trembling, his little hands clutching his clothes tightly. The space capsule crashed onto the open ground with a bang, and the shockwave sent debris flying in all directions like bullets. Trunks was thrown by the blast wave, crashing into a half-concrete wall and coughing up blood.

He leaned on his longsword, barely managing to stand, his blue eyes scanning his surroundings warily. Suddenly, a distorted, buzzing sound came from within the smoke, the chill making his spine stiffen, like a frog being stalked by a venomous snake.

Trunks whirled around, his longsword tracing a full moon arc, the blue sword energy instantly locking onto the source of the sound. The space rippled like a lake tossed with a pebble, and a figure in black robes slowly emerged, the edge of his hood dotted with tiny ice crystals.

The wind lifted the hem of the black robe, revealing a section of dark silver mechanical arm. The metal surface was covered in clumsy welding marks, and the gears at the joints were exposed, gleaming with a worn sheen in the sunlight. Near the shoulder, small laser-etched lettering was clearly visible—BULMA_001.

Trunks's blood froze instantly. It was his mother's creation when she was twenty, the first neural-connected robotic arm she had designed herself, one he had seen countless times in old photographs in the family archives. That robotic arm, named Origin One, was said to have been completely destroyed in an energy experiment, even its core chip melted into a lump of iron.

Mother... Mother?! His voice trembled, and for the first time, his hand holding the sword wavered.

The man in black paused, then slowly turned his hood toward him. A withered hand emerged from his sleeve, clutching a brass pocket watch, its gears etched with tiny specks of stardust. Beneath the skin of that hand, the outline of metallic bones was faintly visible.

The flawed timeline must be corrected. A cold voice came from deep within the hood, devoid of any human warmth, including that of...you who shouldn't even exist.

Press the button on the top of the pocket watch with your fingertip.

Click.

A crisp sound echoed across the ruins, like the chime of an old clock. The sunlight suddenly became viscous, the floating dust solidified in the air, Trunks's tears hung suspended in mid-air, and even the howling wind stopped.

Time didn't stop flowing; instead, it began to dissolve. Like a sugar cube thrown into hot water, it blurred and became transparent from the edges, eventually turning into an unrecognizable pool of viscous liquid. Trunks watched his wrist gradually become transparent, able to see the energy flowing within his bones, yet he couldn't utter a sound—his vocal cords, too, were melting into the chaos along with time.

Chapter 216: The Awakening of the Daughter of the End

The cold metal countertop stung Bulma's cheek. The piercing alarm sounded like a drill churning in her brain. She jolted open her eyes, her vision blurred, and the rotating red emergency light on the ceiling left a burning afterimage on her retina.

"Ugh...cough cough..." A metallic taste filled her throat. She propped herself up, the dizziness almost causing her to collapse again. Sweat soaked through her lab coat, clinging to her back, icy cold. Her last memory was of adjusting a time anchor stabilizer, trying to locate a source of anomalous spacetime fluctuations...and then, darkness and excruciating pain.

"System...restart..." she said hoarsely, instinctively reaching for the control panel.

Just then, on the virtual control screen floating in front of her, the previously stagnant data streams seemed to be driven by an invisible force, wildly twisting and rearranging. Strings of symbols and equations so complex they were terrifying wrote and jumped on their own as if they had a life of their own. They shimmered with a ghostly blue light, carrying a cold, precise sense that did not belong to this era.

Bulma's heart skipped a beat, then pounded wildly, almost shattering her chest. She held her breath, her eyes fixed on the coordinate marker in the center of the screen, which refreshed and finally stabilized—

Spacetime coordinates Q37, critical point: T-15:23:11…

“Q37…the future…my…” Bulma’s voice trembled uncontrollably. She understood instantly. This wasn’t a system error, nor was it a hallucination. This was her future self, traversing the torrent of time, sending back information with the last vestige of clarity before her consciousness was annihilated or plunged into eternal chaos! A chilling fear gripped her, but even stronger was the ecstatic joy of grasping at a straw in a desperate situation.

"A vulnerability! So that's where the vulnerability is! No wonder all the models crashed... the underlying paradox of the core logic chain..." She practically lunged at the control panel, her fingers flying across the virtual keyboard like afterimages. She frantically recorded the fragments of technological blueprints that kept appearing on the screen, technologies far beyond the comprehension of the present era—from molecular-level space compression technology (the ultimate form of capsule technology) to the design blueprints for a warped spacetime continuum jump engine, and finally to the ultimate equation that was as chilling as the abyss of the universe itself, exuding an aura of destruction—the black hole singularity equation (directed annihilation type).

Every blueprint, every formula, was like a hammer blow to her brain, bringing excruciating pain and an explosive torrent of information. Her technological tree grew wildly, branched, and merged at an unprecedented speed deep within her consciousness, constructing a bridge to destruction and redemption.

"Bulma!" The heavy alloy door of the laboratory was blasted open with brute force, and Lin Ye burst in like a cannonball. His face was ashen, his eyes filled with anxiety and disbelief. He had just received the highest-level alarm from the laboratory's vital signs monitoring system.

The sight before him caused his pupils to shrink sharply. Bulma was facing away from him, her spine exposed, her skin covered in sensory electrodes. Even more terrifying, she was precisely and without hesitation thrusting a nerve cable, as thick as a little finger and gleaming with a ghostly blue electric arc, into a specific interface in the back of her cervical spine!

"What the hell are you doing?!" Lin Ye roared, his body moving faster than his thoughts. He transformed into a blur, instantly appearing behind Bulma. Just as the fatal connecting wire was about to be completed, his arm lashed out like an iron clamp!

"Zi la——!"

A blinding spark exploded. The incredibly strong neural connection was forcefully severed by Lin Ye, the broken ends hanging helplessly in the air, emitting a hissing sound.

"Cough...Pfft!" Bulma's body trembled violently, and she suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood, which splattered onto the cold operating table, a shocking sight. As if all her strength had been drained, she slumped backward, only to be caught by Lin Ye.

"Bulma! Look at me! Answer me!" Lin Ye's voice was filled with unprecedented panic. He saw bright red blood slowly seeping from her pale face, her eyes, nose, ears... like a demon bleeding from all seven orifices. "What the hell is this? Are you trying to commit suicide?!"

Bulma's gaze wavered for a moment, then erupted with an astonishing will to survive and an almost insane determination. She gripped Lin Ye's arm tightly, her nails almost digging into his flesh, her voice weak yet unusually clear and urgent, each word seeming to be squeezed out from between her teeth:

"There's no...time...Lin Ye! Listen! The future me...that 'old Bulma'...she's gone mad...or been controlled! She created a...time bomb...anchored...on...Trunks...Q37 coordinates...about to detonate!"

"What?!" Lin Ye was struck dumb. Trunks? That stubborn yet reliable kid? A time bomb?

“Only… brainwave frequencies of the same origin… can interfere… with the bomb’s lock… delay its detonation…” Bulma coughed violently, more blood and foam gushing from the corner of her mouth. “My consciousness… my data stream… is the only… key… that must… connect to… interfere with her!”