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

Page 164

"Did he succeed?" Lin Che asked.

"He sent the bell fragments back to the Gap of the End." The father brought up the star map, and the green route meandered on the screen. "He said he wanted to show Senior Lin Wang that the path he protected is one that his descendants are still walking."

The moment the jump ended, an alarm shattered the tranquility of the cockpit.

Xiaoya suddenly grabbed Lin Che's arm, the detector screaming almost to pierce her eardrums: "The energy field intensity has suddenly doubled! It's... it's mimicking our heartbeat frequency!"

Lin Che looked out the porthole.

The massive wreckage of a starship lay before them, black energy churning like a living thing. Though broken, the bell on the bow jingled faintly in the green light. The figure in the cockpit seemed to sense them, slowly raising its head. In a blurry moment, Wen Wan's wrinkles, Lin Yanzhou's eyebrows and eyes, Lin An's dimples, and Lin Wang's stubbornness flashed across its face simultaneously.

"Another one who memorizes things." The voices and shadows sounded like countless people speaking at once, and amidst the overlapping waves of sound, one could distinguish sobs and sighs. "How long are you going to keep memorizing? In the end, won't you just end up like us, dragged into monsters by your memories?"

Lin Che didn't answer, but took out a fragment of the bell and stuck it to the sensor area of ​​the control panel.

A stream of green energy surged from the debris, spreading along the lines throughout the cockpit. The bell emblem on the starship wreckage suddenly trembled violently, and the black energy stream receded as if burned, revealing the corroded patterns beneath. Those patterns were glowing, perfectly aligning with the patterns on the debris, like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

“We are different from you.” Lin Che’s voice was steady as he inserted the main chip into the console slot. “We remember, not to hold on to it. To know where we should go.”

Suddenly, the light and shadow emitted a piercing scream, and the face within the black energy stream began to distort: ​​"Liar! You have no idea what loss feels like! I just wanted to hear my daughter's voice again, is that wrong?"

“That’s right.” Lin Che’s gaze fell on the face in the energy stream that looked just like Lin An. “But you can’t use other people’s memories as nourishment. Senior Wen Wan wrote on the back of the contract, ‘True memory is to live well with their share.’”

As he spoke, he initiated the "bloodline resonance" program.

The cockpit screen suddenly lit up, displaying images of the four generations of guardians: Wen Wan signing the contract, Lin Yanzhou adjusting the mecha, Lin An writing a letter to his brother, and Lin Wang waving goodbye in the Gap of the End. Their heartbeats sounded simultaneously, from chaotic to overlapping, finally merging into a "thump-thump" sound of the same frequency, perfectly synchronized with Lin Che's heartbeat at that moment.

"Listen," Lin Che said into the communicator, "they've always been there."

The black energy flow suddenly quieted down.

The overlapping contours of the light and shadow slowly separated, revealing an unfamiliar face. The young woman's eyes were bright, as if they held stars. She looked at the birthmark on Lin Che's chest and suddenly smiled: "So... the bell pattern really is etched in the blood."

The faces within the energy stream began to become transparent, like melting ice and snow. The figure with long tentacles bowed, the blue-skinned figure waved, and finally only the woman remained. She blinked and turned into a speck of light, merging into the bell symbol on the starship wreckage.

"Tell those who come after us not to follow our example." Her voice trailed off. "Living well is the best way to remember."

As the green energy flow completely enveloped the starship wreckage, Lin Che discovered that where the black energy flow had receded, the original bronze patterns were revealed. These patterns swirled in the green light, like an awakened river, stretching from the bow to the stern, and finally merging with the light of the "Heart of the Universe."

"It's... becoming a lighthouse?" Xiaoya pointed at the screen, where the light from the starship wreckage was spreading at an astonishing speed, illuminating the surrounding nebula. "The energy field frequency has stabilized, and it's completely synchronized with the 'Heart of the Universe'!"

Lin Che touched the broken bell on his chest.

The fragmented patterns had faded considerably, like a birthmark about to disappear. But he could sense something was amiss; during the resonance, he seemed to hear many voices: Wen Wan's words of advice, Lin Wang's laughter, and those remembered by the "resonators" whispering "thank you."

"Grandpa Li, have you received the new data?" Lin Che asked into the communicator.

Xiao Li's voice came through, slightly distorted: "Received. The energy field of the starship wreckage is spreading to the surrounding star systems, as if marking safe routes. By the way, your father asked me to tell you that there's a new display case in the archives, numbered 'LY-103'."

Lin Che smiled. He knew what it was; it was a new log he had recorded using bio-electric waves during the resonance, which read: "The contract is not a burden, but a compass left to us by our predecessors. As long as the heartbeat continues to resonate, the path will not be broken."

As the shuttle ship sailed away, Lin Che glanced back.

The starship wreckage has been transformed into a green lighthouse, its light spreading across the sea of ​​stars like a new flight path. The bell emblem on the bow sways gently in the light, and a faint tinkling sound can be heard... very soft, yet as clear as if it were right next to your ear.

He looked down at his palm, where the warmth of the bell fragments still lingered. Suddenly, a notification popped up on his portable device; it was a star map sent by his father. A new red dot was flashing at the end of the lighthouse, with the caption: "Suspected new bell signal."

Lin Che gripped the terminal tightly, his fingertip hovering over the "return" and "forward" buttons.

Finally, he pressed the latter.

In the cockpit, Xiaoya suddenly pointed at the screen and exclaimed, "Brother Lin Che, look! The flight path on the star map... is automatically extending!"

The green lines started from the lighthouse and spread towards the unknown galaxy as if they were alive, their edges patterning exactly the same as the ones on the bronze bell. Lin Che knew this was not the end.

Just as Wen Wan wrote at the end of the contract: "The road is made by walking, and the contract is renewed. As long as there are people who dare to move forward with their hearts beating, the will in the stardust will never expire."

He touched the birthmark on his chest; it was still warm, like a star that would never go out.

Chapter 367: The End of the Contract

A purple nebula churned outside the porthole, its silken light carrying fine stardust that stung Lin Che's face slightly. He tapped his fingertips lightly on the edge of the control panel, the red markings on the holographic star map like a red-hot iron, making that desolate star field exceptionally glaring.

“There are still 3 million kilometers to go to reach the Void Ruins.” Xiaoya’s voice was strained, her knuckles turning white from pressing hard on the control stick. “Captain, the radiation level of the energy field is still rising, and it’s already 55 times that of the ‘Gap of the End’.”

Lin Che didn't turn around, his gaze fixed on the supplementary data next to the star map. The curves representing the life cycle of stars were all distorted peaks, like an electrocardiogram that had been forcibly torn apart. "Play the last images sent back by the advance team again."

Xiao Li's optical lens rotated halfway, and a holographic projection immediately lit up on the bulkhead. The silver-gray exploration ship, like a thin sheet of paper crashing into an invisible wall, disintegrated into countless points of light in the blinding white light. Metallic vapor twisted into spirals in the energy field, eerily condensing into a string of bronze bells, but before the patterns could be clearly seen, they were swallowed whole by the black energy stream surging from the void, leaving not even a trace of echo.

"The trajectory of this energy flow is wrong." Xiao Li's robotic arm brought up a 3D model. The black fluid in the model sometimes transformed into a snake, and sometimes cracked into a spider web. "The energy trajectory of the energy devourer is convergent, like a funnel, but this is divergent, more like..." It paused, the optical lens flickering, "...like a sugar cube dissolving."

Xiaoya shivered suddenly and instinctively pulled her uniform tighter around herself: "Dissolving? What is it dissolving?"

Lin Che pulled a fragment from his pocket. Its bronze surface was covered with green patterns; it was the one he had found at the "Watchers" ruins. He ran his fingertips along the patterns, and the green light suddenly seemed to come alive, darting around and projecting a shimmering image into his palm. Blue-skinned Watchers knelt before an altar, the array of bronze bells behind them falling one by one. The hands reaching out from the black energy stream didn't grab them, but instead wrapped around their ankles like seaweed, slowly dragging them into the abyss.

“They’re crying,” Xiaoya suddenly said, her voice barely a thread. “Look at the one in the front, his shoulders are shaking.”

Lin Che closed his eyes. The legend of the Watchers had been preserved in the Alliance archives for nearly a thousand years, saying that they were the guardians of the cosmic covenant. But in the images before him, these blue-skinned aliens had no trace of guardian majesty on their faces, only a dense layer of despair.

With a soft "ding," the bronze fragment slipped from his palm and was caught steadily by Xiao Li's mechanical claw. "The comparison results are in." Xiao Li projected the data onto the central screen. On the left was the energy frequency spectrum of the Void Ruins, and on the right was the baseline of the "Heart of the Universe" in the Alliance's core database. The two curves were like reflections in a mirror, perfectly symmetrical, yet completely opposite.

“Not an enemy, but the opposite.” Lin Che’s fingertips were numb from the heat of the green patterns as he picked up the fragment. “The Heart of the Universe connects the energy fields of different civilizations through contracts, and this thing… it’s dismantling the connection.”

Xiaoya suddenly exclaimed "Ah!" and pointed to the corner of the screen: "What's that?"

In the holographic projection, the black energy flow did not disappear after devouring the bell, but instead drew a strange arc in the void. Countless tiny symbols appeared on the arc—like the contract runes carved on the walls of the Alliance Council Hall, or the ancient text on the Watcher's Stone Tablet. But before they could be seen clearly, they were all wiped away by the black tide.

"It's wiping something." Lin Che's Adam's apple bobbed. "Wiping away all traces related to the contract."

The shuttle jolted violently, and the alarm sounded briefly for half a second before being silenced by Xiao Li. "The energy field is starting to interfere with the ship's structure," Xiao Li's voice unusually trembled. "Captain, if we go another 300,000 kilometers, the outer armor will begin to disintegrate."

Lin Che looked at the metal box below the control panel, where the main chip of "Eternal Heartbeat" was located. The silver casing was engraved with delicate handwriting, written by Wen Wanwan in her hospital bed years ago with a laser pointer. Back then, he was still young and had asked the old lady by the bedside what the words meant. She smiled and patted his head, saying, "When you ever feel like you've reached a dead end, just think about what you were thinking when you first signed the contract."

“The first time I signed…” Lin Che murmured to himself, his fingertips clicking softly on the chip. “I was twelve years old that year, at the entrance ceremony of the Alliance Junior Military Academy.”

Xiaoya turned her head curiously: "What did you say back then?"

"I read my brother's name." Lin Che smiled, but his eyes darkened. "Lin Wang said that everyone who signs a contract has to have something in their heart, otherwise the contract is just a piece of waste paper."

Xiao Li suddenly emitted a "beep beep" notification sound: "High-intensity energy reaction detected. Coordinates coincide with the core of the Void Ruins."

The purple nebula outside the porthole suddenly dispersed, like a curtain being pulled back by a giant hand. The sight that Lin Che saw made him clench the bronze fragment in his hand and crush it. A black hole slowly rotated in the center of the ruins, and countless broken stone pillars floated at the edge of the event horizon. Each pillar was engraved with different symbols, some like birds with outstretched wings, some like coiled snakes, but all of them had been eaten away by the black energy flow, leaving only remnants.

The most striking feature is the stone pillar in the very center, where the bronze bell emblem of the Human Alliance is gradually fading, its edges blurring into a grayish-black color, like ink stains soaked in water.

"It's eating our symbols!" Xiaoya's voice trembled with tears. She suddenly remembered the words in the training manual: when a civilization's contract symbol disappeared from the void ruins, it meant that the civilization had been completely forgotten by the universe. "If the bell is gone, the purification network of the Heart of the Universe will collapse, and then those sealed dark energies..."

"Don't panic." Lin Che pressed down on her trembling shoulders, but his gaze never left the stone pillar. "Lin Wang wrote in his log that the Void Ruins are the universe's 'eraser,' but it only erases useless things."

"Useless?" Xiaoya was stunned. "You mean... our contract is useless now?"

The sharp edge of the bronze fragment dug into his palm, but Lin Che felt no pain. He suddenly remembered how Wen Wan had signed her name. The old lady's hand trembled so much that she could barely hold the pen; the nib hovered over the paper for three minutes before finally making a sharp stroke, the ink penetrating the paper and carving a shallow groove on the mahogany table. At the time, he had asked why she had used so much force, and the old lady had said, "I was afraid that if I wrote too lightly, it wouldn't be able to support the path your generation will have to walk."

“It’s not that it’s useless.” Lin Che suddenly stood up, the green lines on his palm climbing up his arm and forming a loop on his wrist. “It’s that the person who wrote the contract forgot why they wrote it in the first place.”

Xiao Li's optical lens flashed like a supercharged light: "Captain, your bio-electric waves are abnormally enhanced!"

“Direct all energy to the external megaphone.” Lin Che pulled open his collar, revealing the bronze bell tattoo on his collarbone, which he had branded when he became the successor of the Watchers, and it was still burning hot. “Xiaoya, help me locate the coordinates of the human symbol.”

"But..." Xiaoya looked at his translucent palm, and tears suddenly fell from her eyes, "Your cells are decomposing!"

"Hurry up and do it." Lin Che's voice was steady, just like when he taught her to disassemble a gun when she was a child. "Do you remember Mrs. Wen Wan's signature? It's the one she wrote on the discharge report, the one with a checkmark at the end."

Xiaoya gritted her teeth and nodded, her fingers flying across the control panel. The energy readings skyrocketed, and spiderweb-like cracks began to appear on the shuttle's hull. Black energy streams, like sharks attracted by blood, gathered more and more outside the portholes.

Lin Che pressed his bleeding palm against the center of the control panel. The green patterns on the bronze fragment suddenly exploded, spreading along the wiring throughout the entire cabin. He closed his eyes, and countless images flashed through his mind—the bell sketch Lin Wang had drawn in the logbook, the energy core Lin Yanzhou had destroyed during the defense battle, the encrypted message Lin An sent back with the words "Don't let the contract be tarnished," and Wen Wan's words from her hospital bed, "Every era needs someone to rewrite the rules."

“They’re all here.” Lin Che smiled, and green patterns flowed from his fingertips into the void, drawing a huge symbol around the black hole—Wen Wan’s signature with a hook. “Xiao Li, tell Xiao Ya that this is not a rewriting of the contract.”

The moment the black energy flow collided with the signature, it emitted a piercing shriek, like a wild beast being branded with a red-hot iron. On the central stone pillar, the bronze bell symbol of humanity suddenly lit up, and green light climbed up along the corroded lines, like grass sprouting from frozen soil in early spring.

“It’s a continuation.” Lin Che’s body became increasingly transparent, but his voice pierced through the roar of the energy field. “A contract is never dead; someone has to keep adding new stories to it.”

Xiaoya suddenly noticed that there were countless tiny specks of light mixed in with the green light, and there was a human figure in each speck. Some were wearing the early uniforms of the Alliance, some were wearing the bronze headdress of the Watchers, and there was a little girl holding a crayon and drawing a crooked bell in the void.

“That’s…” She covered her mouth, then suddenly recognized one of the figures in a white coat, “It’s Dr. Lin An!”

“Everyone who left their name on the contract has never truly left.” Lin Che’s voice began to sway, and he felt as if he were melting into warm water. “Their beliefs are all in this energy flow, waiting for those who come after them to continue writing…”

Xiao Li suddenly turned on the full-channel communication, and Lin Che heard the voices of four generations echoing in the starry sky: Wen Wan's gentleness, Lin Yanzhou's composure, Lin An's lightness, and Lin Wang's cheerfulness. Finally, they overlapped and became a clear sentence: "It's your turn, the new storyteller."

The black energy flow gradually dissipated within the green light, and the broken stone pillar began to reassemble. Symbols from different civilizations lit up one after another in the light, like a string of pearls being re-strung. Lin Che took one last look at the central stone pillar. Next to the human bronze bell, a new line of symbols had appeared, written with his bio-electric waves, with traces of blood mixed in the strokes.

"Contracts exist because of beliefs, and are eternal because of inheritance."

When the shuttle's alarm finally stopped, Xiaoya realized her uniform was soaked. She reached for the control panel, touched a warm liquid, and looked up to see the red marker on the star map had turned green, with a new annotation popping up next to it: Contract update complete.

In the distant sea of ​​stars, the reconstructed ruins shone brighter than the stars themselves. The pieced-together stone pillars slowly rotated in the light, like a bridge that would never end. Xiaoya suddenly remembered Lin Che's last words, took out her notebook, and wrote on the first page:

"Today, I saw someone at the end of the universe write a new sentence."

She didn't know if Lin Che was still alive, but when the green light swept across the shuttle, a faint mark suddenly appeared on her collarbone—a signature with a hook, exactly the same as Wen Wan's.

Chapter 367: The End of the Contract

A purple nebula churned outside the porthole, its silken light carrying fine stardust that stung Lin Che's face slightly. He tapped his fingertips lightly on the edge of the control panel, the red markings on the holographic star map like a red-hot iron, making that desolate star field exceptionally glaring.

“There are still 3 million kilometers to go to reach the Void Ruins.” Xiaoya’s voice was strained, her knuckles turning white from pressing hard on the control stick. “Captain, the radiation level of the energy field is still rising, and it’s already 55 times that of the ‘Gap of the End’.”

Lin Che didn't turn around, his gaze fixed on the supplementary data next to the star map. The curves representing the life cycle of stars were all distorted peaks, like an electrocardiogram that had been forcibly torn apart. "Play the last images sent back by the advance team again."

Xiao Li's optical lens rotated halfway, and a holographic projection immediately lit up on the bulkhead. The silver-gray exploration ship, like a thin sheet of paper crashing into an invisible wall, disintegrated into countless points of light in the blinding white light. Metallic vapor twisted into spirals in the energy field, eerily condensing into a string of bronze bells, but before the patterns could be clearly seen, they were swallowed whole by the black energy stream surging from the void, leaving not even a trace of echo.

"The trajectory of this energy flow is wrong." Xiao Li's robotic arm brought up a 3D model. The black fluid within the model sometimes writhed like a snake, sometimes split into a spiderweb. "The energy trajectory of the energy-devouring entity is convergent, like a funnel, but this is divergent, more like…" It paused, the optical lens flickering, "like a dissolving sugar cube."

Xiaoya shivered suddenly and instinctively pulled her uniform tighter around herself: "Dissolving? What is it dissolving?"

Lin Che pulled a fragment from his pocket. Its bronze surface was covered with green patterns; it was the one he had found at the "Watchers" ruins. He ran his fingertips along the patterns, and the green light suddenly seemed to come alive, darting around and projecting a shimmering image into his palm. Blue-skinned Watchers knelt before an altar, the array of bronze bells behind them falling one by one. The hands reaching out from the black energy stream didn't grab them, but instead wrapped around their ankles like seaweed, slowly dragging them into the abyss.

“They’re crying,” Xiaoya suddenly said, her voice barely a thread. “Look at the one in the front, his shoulders are shaking.”

Lin Che closed his eyes. The legend of the Watchers had been preserved in the Alliance archives for nearly a thousand years, saying that they were the guardians of the cosmic covenant. But in the images before him, these blue-skinned aliens had no trace of guardian majesty on their faces, only a dense layer of despair.

With a soft "ding," the bronze fragment slipped from his palm and was caught steadily by Xiao Li's mechanical claw. "The comparison results are in." Xiao Li projected the data onto the central screen. On the left was the energy frequency spectrum of the Void Ruins, and on the right was the baseline of the "Heart of the Universe" in the Alliance's core database. The two curves were like reflections in a mirror, perfectly symmetrical, yet completely opposite.

“Not an enemy, but the opposite.” Lin Che’s fingertips were numb from the heat of the green patterns as he picked up the fragment. “The Heart of the Universe connects the energy fields of different civilizations through contracts, and this thing… it’s dismantling the connection.”

Xiaoya suddenly exclaimed "Ah!" and pointed to the corner of the screen: "What's that?"

In the holographic projection, the black energy flow did not disappear after devouring the bell, but instead drew a strange arc in the void. Countless tiny symbols appeared on the arc—like the contract runes carved on the walls of the Alliance Council Hall, or the ancient text on the Watcher's Stone Tablet. But before they could be seen clearly, they were all wiped away by the black tide.

"It's wiping something." Lin Che's Adam's apple bobbed. "Wiping away all traces related to the contract."

The shuttle jolted violently, and the alarm sounded briefly for half a second before being silenced by Xiao Li. "The energy field is starting to interfere with the ship's structure," Xiao Li's voice unusually trembled. "Captain, if we go another 300,000 kilometers, the outer armor will begin to disintegrate."