Sacred World of the Kai.
Tien and Gohan's fight was blazing hot. Their close combat was practically flawless.
Every sliver of power was pushed to its absolute limit.
The longer they fought, the more shocked Gohan became. He had never imagined that in such a short time, Tien could grow to such a terrifying level.
More importantly, he could clearly sense that even now, Tien was still not using his full strength.
Yet even like this, Tien was already able to match his base form.
Bang.
Their fists collided again and both of them slid back.
"Gohan, still not going to transform?" Tien asked with calm confidence.
"Hehe, fine then. Let me see just how many forms you can force me through. Haaaah!"
Gohan let out a shout and transformed into Super Saiyan.
A base power level of fifty billion, multiplied by 160.
His battle power shot straight to eight trillion.
"What a freak. That is only Super Saiyan One," Vegeta blurted in shock.
"Gohan really is incredible," Goku said, both gratified and excited.
Piccolo did not say anything, but his fists were clenched tight.
Tien felt Gohan's ki and his own fighting spirit surged to the heavens.
"I will not fall behind!"
His third eye flared with golden light. His aura exploded upward.
The Crane School gi on his body was swallowed by his ki. In its place, a blue and white ancient-looking suit of armor slowly formed over his skin.
It was armor, yet it looked extremely thin, clinging closely to his body.
It was like a second skin of inner armor. At the same time, it gave Gohan a feeling of something ancient and incredibly heavy.
"Tien, is this the ability you gained after unsealing your bloodline?" Gohan asked in surprise.
"This is a combat armor granted by the third eye of the Three-Eyed God Clan. It combines offense and defense. It has decent defensive power and it slightly boosts my combat strength. You could say it is one of the stronger techniques of the Three-Eyed God Clan," Tien explained.
Turning ki into armor sounded simple.
In practice, it was unbelievably difficult.
Gohan had never seen or even heard of anyone in the Dragon Ball world using a technique like this.
On top of that, this armor's function was far from as simple as Tien made it sound.
"A slight boost to combat power?" That was pure nonsense.
Right now, Tien's battle power was comparable to Gohan's dark-gold Super Saiyan.
Their base forms were roughly the same. After flaring up, they were still equal. That alone showed how terrifying Tien's true strength was.
The eternal number two, Vegeta, had just been forced several levels down.
At this moment, in the main cast, Gohan was first. Tien was second. Dog-like Goku was a bit weaker in raw battle power yet could still beat Piccolo, so putting him at third was not an exaggeration. Piccolo was fourth. Old Vegeta had fallen straight to fifth.
Of course, that ranking was only temporary. In terms of explosive power and potential, Vegeta would soon catch up.
"Tien, after your unsealing, just how many abilities does that third eye of yours have?" Gohan could not help feeling jealous.
"Seeing through deception, spotting weaknesses. Turning ki into armor, where the third eye precisely controls my ki and condenses it into battle armor. And then a bunch of less important abilities. Laser beams and such. Big and small, there are more than a dozen. I still have not fully mastered them," Tien said casually.
"Hehe. Come on then, fight. It has been a long time since I felt my battle spirit boiling like this."
Gohan could hear perfectly well that Tien was still hiding quite a few cards.
After all, Tien had just said that turning ki into armor only counted as a "decent" skill.
"All right. Then we fight."
Tien took the initiative.
Gohan's straight punch hammered directly toward Tien's chest. Tien did not dodge or avoid it. He took the hit head-on, completely unharmed, and swung his arm in a hook toward Gohan's right cheek.
Gohan drew back his right arm and raised his left to block.
Bang.
"What incredible defense," Gohan's eyes narrowed.
He had not used full power with that punch, but there had been at least seventy percent of his strength behind it. Under normal circumstances, there was no way Tien could have taken it so easily.
This proved that Tien's battle armor really possessed tremendous defensive capability.
Gohan felt like his fist had struck some kind of tough leather. His punch should have pierced through a single point, yet the armor dispersed the force across Tien's entire body, weakening the damage.
"Turning ki into armor, huh. Now I am really interested."
Gohan's lips curled up. His heart was buzzing with excitement.
Since he was born, he had never faced such a bizarre and powerful opponent as Tien.
"Gohan, be careful," Tien answered Gohan's fighting spirit with his own and charged forward again.
With ki turned to armor, Tien's movements became bigger and more ferocious, like a wild beast that did not care about his own body at all.
As a born member of a fighting race, Gohan was not lacking in physique either.
Bang bang bang bang.
You punch me once, I kick you once.
Two monstrous bodies traded heavy blows without a thought for defense, and everyone watching felt their blood boil.
Gohan gradually shifted his focus to Tien's lower body, since there was no armor covering Tien's legs.
However, as a Crane School martial artist, Tien's skills in physical combat were in no way inferior to Gohan's.
Whenever Gohan swept low with a kick, Tien would always predict it in advance, then beat him to the move with his own kick, slamming his shin toward Gohan's lower leg.
Seeing through deception, spotting weaknesses, predicting movements in advance.
This was exactly the "seeing through lies" ability Tien had mentioned.
The faster they fought, the less precisely Tien could control his energy. Shockwaves began sweeping across the battlefield.
Massive trees were bent low by the pressure. Smaller trees and flowers were uprooted wholesale. The grass of the Sacred World of the Kai was flattened.
In pure close combat, Gohan was slowly falling behind.
However, he did not trigger another transformation. He stayed in dark-gold Super Saiyan.
Because he could feel the godly power in his body rapidly catalyzing his lifeform to evolve.
He was also beginning to absorb Tien's strengths.
His primordial qi was running wild. The eerie qi in his tail was starting to stir.
Gohan's eyes began to change. The green faded, turning into one black pupil and one golden.
In his vision, the armor on Tien's body dissolved into flowing streams of ki.
His mutated eyes seemed to be dissecting the essence of the armor and the way it functioned.
Bang.
A look of shock suddenly flashed across Tien's face.
With this last exchange, he clearly felt something different about Gohan.
Before, Gohan had been taking his blows purely with his raw physical toughness.
But that last punch felt completely different. Tien could tell that Gohan had not moved his body at all. It did not feel like a simple brute-force block.
He was right.
Gohan's mutated eyes had already dissected the working principle of the armor.
His wildly circulating primordial qi, combined with the eerie qi in his tail, had given his eyes a skill similar to Tien's ability to see through deception.
Gohan began altering the ki on the surface of his own body. He still could not fully turn ki into armor, but he could already reinforce his outer defense.
"Gohan, you…?" Tien stared at him in disbelief.
"Yeah. I figured out a little. Keep going," Gohan said, completely delighted.
He charged in.
Bang bang bang.
A flurry of ordinary punches slammed into Tien.
"Urgh… ngh…!" Tien coughed up sour fluid.
"How is that possible?" he muttered, unable to believe it.
If Gohan could see the essence of the armor, then he could also devise a way to counter it.
Every one of Gohan's punches made Tien's muscles vibrate. At the moment of impact, a hidden shock force slipped past the armor and drilled straight into Tien's body.
"Gohan, in my inherited memories, even in that erased Thirteenth Universe, there was never a monster like you. You actually came up with a way to counter my armor in such a short time?" Tien's eyes were wide.
He could use hidden shock force himself.
But the ancient techniques of the Three-Eyed God Clan were not something that could be neutralized by simple trickery like that.
On top of the hidden force, you had to be able to see the ki layers of the armor itself and spot the weak points.
That alone was enough to stump countless people.
"Well, geniuses are always hard to understand. Come on, come on, keep going. I am just getting warmed up."
Gohan launched his counterattack in high spirits.
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