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

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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 368: The Coordinates of a Heartbeat

The cheers from the square nearly overturned the protective shield. Lin Che raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glaring sunlight, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the bronze patterns on the cuff of his tuxedo. The white tuxedo made his face appear somewhat pale, and the star emblem on his chest reflected light so brightly it was dazzling—but no one noticed. All the cameras were fixed on him, like a group of sharks that had smelled blood.

"Mr. Lin Che! What is your explanation for the energy surge in the Orion Galaxy last night?" A red-haired female reporter broke through the security guards' obstruction, holding a recording pen and shouting hoarsely, "Has the contract of the Void Ruins broken?"

Lin Che's gaze swept past the throng of people and landed on the edge of the square. Robot Xiao Li was pushing a stroller behind the fountain, its metal casing dampened by the mist, reflecting shimmering light. The little one inside, probably disturbed by the noise, was waving its chubby little hands and patting the miniature bronze bell model, the green mark on its forehead glowing slightly with each movement.

"Explanation?" Lin Che suddenly laughed, raising his chin towards the microphone in front of him. "Why don't you ask my daughter if the bell in her hand might lie?"

The crowd burst into laughter, easing the tense atmosphere somewhat. But the red-haired reporter persisted: "The people need the truth! The energy fluctuations you brought back from the void ruins six months ago have already caused the collapse of the ecosystems of three colonies..."

"So you think we should weld all the interstellar spacecraft to the ground?" Lin Che took a step forward, his shadow falling precisely on the female reporter's face. "Or are we going to retreat back into the caves and relearn how to make fire by friction?"

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly through the loudspeakers throughout the entire area. The square fell silent instantly, with only the wind whipping the flags in the breeze. Lin Che raised his hand and pointed to the "Heart of the Universe" monument behind him; the giant tower made of green energy was slowly rotating, and Wen Wan and the others' images flickered on its surface.

"Fifty years ago, when Academician Wen Wan led a team of fewer than ten people out of the solar system, some people said she was crazy." Lin Che's gaze swept across countless faces below the stage. "Forty years ago, when General Lin Yanzhou signed the first contract with an alien civilization outside Pluto, even more people said he would destroy humanity. But now—"

He suddenly turned around and waved towards the fountain. The little one in the stroller seemed to sense something, giggling and putting the bell model in its mouth. Robot Xiao Li quickly snatched the bell away, clumsily wiping the drool off its metal fingers.

"Do you see that?" Lin Che's voice rose again, tinged with laughter. "The future is there, in every life that is willing to grow up and move forward."

Amidst thunderous applause, Xiao Li's communication suddenly popped up in Lin Che's earpiece: "The secret passage has been opened, come quickly."

Lin Che used the act of adjusting his suit collar to turn off the microphone, whispered a few words to his adjutant beside him, and turned to walk towards the side of the monument. The invisible force field closed behind him, completely shutting out the noise.

"This thing suddenly activated on the thirty-seventh day after you left." Xiao Li's optical lens flashed red as he pointed to the chip floating in the center of the secret room. Pale green patterns flowed across the chip's surface, resembling human blood vessels.

Lin Che reached out and touched the chip; the icy touch made his fingertips tremble. Countless fragments of star maps suddenly flooded his mind, eventually settling into a string of coordinates he had never seen before. He abruptly took half a step back, bumping into the control panel behind him: "This is..."

“An exploration command automatically generated by the Heart of the Universe.” Xiao Li brought up a three-dimensional star map and pointed his finger at a pitch-black area. “The energy field frequency here is very strange. It contains all the known characteristics of civilization contracts, but also has completely new fluctuations. We will temporarily call it ‘Perfect Chaos’.”

The chip suddenly buzzed, and in the projected holographic image, young Wen Wan was standing in the laboratory. She was wearing a white lab coat, her hair was casually tied back, and she was holding a bronze bell in her hand, examining it repeatedly.

"Yanzhou, do you think if we merge our bio-electromagnetic waves, we can pinpoint the origin coordinates of the universe?" Wen Wan's voice was filled with laughter as she pressed the bell against Lin Yanzhou's chest. "Listen, your heartbeat and the bell's resonance frequency are almost synchronized."

In the video, Lin Yanzhou reached out and put his arm around her waist, the crisp sound of the bells jingling clearly audible: "Once our contract takes effect, we might be able to see the future."

The holographic image suddenly shattered, turning into green specks of light that merged into the chip. Lin Che clutched his forehead, panting, cold sweat trickling down his temples: "My great-grandmother knew all along... she knew this day would come."

“On page 378 of Academician Wen’s diary, it says: ‘When humanity no longer treats contracts as shackles, but as keys, that set of coordinates will light up.’” Xiao Li pulled up the electronic document, the handwriting on the page was a bit blurry due to its age. “She also drew a bell pattern, exactly the same as the model in your daughter’s hand.”

Lin Che suddenly remembered something and quickly walked to the control panel to input commands. Immediately, a live video of his daughter appeared on the screen—the little one was lying in her crib, chewing on a bell model with her gums, and the green mark on her forehead resonated strangely with the model.

“Her mark…” Lin Che’s voice trembled slightly, “is a perfect match for the pattern of the Eternal Heartbeat chip.”

Xiao Li's robotic arm gently tapped the chip: "According to gene sequencing, the young lady inherited Academician Wen's recessive gene chain. Perhaps..."

“Perhaps she is the last guardian.” Lin Che continued, his fingertips rapidly swiping across the control panel. “Prepare a shuttle for me, set the coordinates to…”

"Are you sure you want to go?" Xiao Li's red light flashed even faster. "The energy field there is unstable; it might—"

“When my great-grandmother set off, no one knew what she would encounter.” Lin Che turned to look at the door of the secret room, where celebratory music could be faintly heard. “Tell the adjutant to proceed with the follow-up activities as originally planned.”

The moment the shuttle leaped out of the solar system, Lin Che received a communication from his wife. On the screen, his daughter was waving a bell model, green energy flowing into the shape of a small snake in her palm.

“Ache, look, the baby can control energy!” The wife’s voice was trembling with tears as she brought the camera close to her daughter’s face. “She just said ‘Daddy’ to the star map.”

Lin Che smiled and rubbed his eyes, then gently tapped his daughter's forehead on the screen with his fingertip: "Tell her that Daddy is going to find her a bigger bell."

"Dad—" the little guy suddenly mumbled out two words, sticking the bell model on the screen as if he wanted to hand it to him.

The communication was disrupted by the jump fluctuations, and the picture turned into static. Lin Che leaned back in the driver's seat, watching the stars rushing past the window, and suddenly remembered the story his great-grandmother had told him when he was a child.

"The universe is like a giant bell, and the heartbeat of each civilization is a different note." Wen Wan's voice still seemed to echo in my ears. "Only when all the notes resonate can the most beautiful melody be played."

"Captain, a supernova explosion has been detected ahead!" The first officer's exclamation interrupted his recollection. "The energy readings are increasing exponentially!"

Lin Che sat bolt upright, the scene on the screen making him gasp. Countless bronze bells floated in golden flames, each bell imprisoning a ball of black energy. That energy struggled in the flames, yet slowly turned green.

"It's the crucible of contracts." Xiao Li's holographic image suddenly appeared in the cockpit, this time projecting Wen Wan's figure. "All civilization contracts that have reached their end will be attracted here to complete their transformation."

Lin Che's palm touched the bronze fragment on the control panel, and green energy spread along his arm, creating a strange resonance with the supernova. He could suddenly "hear" the roars of the black energy, not anger, but despair.

“They’ve simply lost their faith,” Lin Che murmured to himself, recalling the words in Wen Wan’s diary, “They need new courage to awaken them.”

As the green energy enveloped all the bells, countless fragments of memories flooded his mind: the tragic self-destruction of alien civilizations in war, the desolation of highly intelligent races falling into a collective slumber due to the loss of their goals, and the lingering shadows of civilizations that gradually faded away because they forgot their original intentions.

"We want to believe one more time." Countless voices intertwined in his mind, eventually merging into the same sentence.

The supernova's blaze intensified suddenly, engulfing all the bells. Lin Che felt his body becoming transparent, yet he remained strangely calm. He saw his daughter's image waving bell models above the new planet, with streams of green energy cascading down like a waterfall.

“Tell the baby,” Lin Che chuckled into the communicator, feeling his consciousness merging into the warm light, “Daddy has become a star to play with her. Also, her heartbeat is the coordinate of the new contract, so take good care of it.”

When the shuttle crew arrived, they only saw a giant bronze bell hovering above the new planet. Lin Che's bio-electric waves flowed slowly within the patterns, as if telling an unfinished story. Suddenly, the adjutant pointed to the ground, where countless green shoots were sprouting from the soil, forming the shape of the bell on the earth.

"Look there!" Xiaoya, the intern, suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the horizon, "What's that?"

Everyone looked up and saw a green band of light stretching from the new planet into the depths of space, as if inviting all civilizations to a new covenant. Meanwhile, in the distant solar system, a baby in a crib was giggling, putting a toy bell in its mouth, the green mark on its forehead shining like a small sun.

Chapter 369: The Prologue to Eternity

Outside the dome of the Mars base, the orange-red twilight was slowly swallowing the star trails. Inside the eco-pod, the children surrounded the robot Xiao Li, the "Heart of the Universe" projected above their heads pulsating gently, green energy flowing like vines around the distant star map coordinates.

"Little Li, Little Li, quickly tell me the story of that supernova explosion!" The girl with pigtails held up her tablet, the screen still displaying a screenshot of Lin Che's last image.

Robot Xiao Li's optical lens rotated halfway, and the holographic image it displayed suddenly rippled. Lin Che's figure, hovering at the edge of the supernova, overlapped with the image of Wen Wan pressing her handprint on the contract. Green energy flowed from their fingertips, converging into a winding river in the void.

"So, does the 'eternal heartbeat' eventually come to an end?"

A clear, childlike voice broke the silence. A little boy wearing a bronze bell necklace stood on tiptoe; the pendant refracted tiny green lights under the holographic projection. It was made from the bio-electric wave crystals left by Lin Che on the new planet; every child in the base had a similar keepsake.

Xiao Li's robotic arm gently tapped the projection interface, and the image instantly switched to real-time transmission mode. On the green plains of the new planet, two figures were running hand in hand through the grass. Suddenly, the bronze bell fragments pressed against their palms lit up, and energy streams climbed up their arms into the sky, resonating with the "Heart of the Universe" at the Mars base.

“Those are Lin Che’s daughter and granddaughter,” Xiao Li’s electronic voice mimicked a gentle tone. “Fifty years ago, when they found the first fragment of the bell, they were chasing the energy flow just like you.”

The little girl in the holographic image suddenly turned around and raised her hand, covered in grass, to the camera. The pale green mark on her forehead overlapped one by one with the images of Wen Wan, Lin Yanzhou, Lin An, Lin Wang, and Lin Che in the corner of the image, like a seal that transcends time.

"The end is where the beginning begins." Xiao Li zoomed in on the screen, and countless twinkling star coordinates suddenly lit up, each point of light accompanied by a name. "These are guardians who inherited the heartbeat; their bio-waves have woven a protective net throughout the universe."

The girl in the blue uniform suddenly burst open the hatch, her personal terminal still beeping urgently: "Xiao Li! An abnormal energy reaction detected at the edge of the universe!"

The holographic projection was instantly split into small windows, showing a supernova explosion spewing forth golden flames. Astoundingly, those flames condensed in mid-air into countless bronze bell shapes, rippled outwards with the energy waves, like hearts beginning to form.

"A new guardian has been born." Xiao Li's camera panned to the window, where a young figure pressed her palm against a newly formed bronze bell. As the green mark on her forehead lit up, the children at the Mars base suddenly gasped in unison; the mark was exactly the same as the pattern on the inside of their necklaces.

"I know her!" the boy with pigtails suddenly jumped up. "She's the trainee who came from Titan Space Station three months ago! During our last video call, she said she'd take us to see the nebulae!"

The little boy wearing the bell necklace suddenly pulled a silver chip from his pocket; the star coordinates on its surface shimmered green in the sunlight. This was a replica of the navigation chip left behind by Lin Che's daughter; each child's chip recorded their own unique star trails.

"I want to be like her someday!" He rushed towards the projection, holding the chip. The pendant resonated with the bronze bell on the screen, emitting a soft hum. "Once I've accumulated enough credits, I'll apply to go to the new planet!"

Sunlight suddenly streamed through the prism device in the dome, casting flowing spots of light on the children's faces. Xiao Li watched them pull out their chips for comparison, a simulated smile flashing in the optical lens. Thirty years ago, when Lin Che's daughter visited the base, she had also held up her chip and sworn an oath before the "Heart of the Universe."

A new window suddenly popped up in the corner of the holographic projection, displaying Lin Che's holographic image. He stood in the final image before the supernova explosion, waving the bronze bell in his hand at the camera: "Remember, the stars will remember all the brave."

"Is he talking to us?" The little girl, who had just lost a front tooth, tugged at Xiao Li's robotic arm; the chip peeking out from between her fingers was still hot.

“They are fragments of memory left over from bio-electric waves.” Xiao Li pulled up the energy graph; Lin Che’s electrical frequency was resonating with each child’s chip. “He said the guardians are never alone, because their heartbeats will continue to travel through the sea of ​​stars.”

The girl in the blue uniform suddenly laughed, raising her wrist to show off her chip: "During my first mission, this thing suddenly got hot at the edge of the black hole. Later I found out it was Senior Lin An's radio waves guiding me."

The children's gasps rose and fell; the new guardian in the holographic projection had already boarded the spaceship. As her ship warped out of the supernova's range, the trajectory of its exhaust on the star map perfectly aligned with Lin Che's original flight path.