A dark shadow swept across the grass of the Sacred Land, followed by a heavy thud as another stone pillar slammed into the earth.
Tao Pai Pai stepped off it, dusting off his brand-new outfit.
"Finally back, now to collect the last ball and finish this contract."
"Get out of here!"
A small figure leaped from behind a teepee.
Upa, his eyes red from days of crying but burning with hatred, hurled a heavy stone axe with all his might.
Tao Pai Pai didn't even blink.
He simply tilted his head a fraction of an inch, letting the axe whistle past his ear.
Before Upa could run, Tao's hand shot out, his fingers clamping around the boy's small neck like a steel trap.
He lifted Upa off the ground, effortlessly holding him suspended in the air.
"Where is the Four-Star Ball?" Tao demanded, his voice devoid of patience.
"I know the boy had it."
Upa kicked and clawed at the assassin's arm, choking, but he refused to speak. He glared at Tao with defiant silence.
"Still playing the hero? You realize your silence is pointless, don't you? We have a Dragon Radar. Whether you tell me or not, I will find it. All you are doing is choosing a painful death over a quick one."
Upa spat at him.
"Very well, If you wish to join your father so badly, I won't stop you."
With a flick of his wrist, he hurled Upa toward the base of the Korin Tower.
He threw Upa with the velocity of a cannonball—an impact that would instantly shatter every bone in his small body against the unyielding stone.
"UPA!"
Just as the boy was about to strike the tower, a golden streak tore through the sky.
SWOOSH!
The Flying Nimbus swooped down at breakneck speed.
Goku, leaning off the side of the cloud, caught Upa mid-air, absorbing the lethal momentum instantly. The cloud banked sharply and hovered just inches above the grass.
A split second later, another figure dropped from the sky.
Chi-Chi landed silently beside the Nimbus.
Tao Pai Pai's eyes went wide.
For the first time, his composure cracked.
"What?" Tao stepped back, staring at the two children he was certain he had killed days ago.
"You... you're alive? Impossible! I stopped your heart! And the girl—I broke her neck!"
Goku gently set Upa down.
He stood up on the Nimbus and hopped off, standing next to Chi-Chi. There was no fear in his eyes anymore. No desperation. Just a calm, terrifying stillness.
"We're not the same kids you fought three days ago."
"And this time." Chi-Chi added, cracking her knuckles.
"We're not the ones who are going to break."
Chi-Chi stepped forward, placing herself squarely between Goku and the assassin.
She didn't take a fighting stance immediately; she just stood there, her arms loose at her sides, radiating a strange, calm intensity.
"Goku, I want to handle him myself."
Goku looked at her, blinking.
He sensed the shift in her energy—it wasn't the frantic, emotional power she had before. It was solid, like a mountain. He grinned, hopping back onto the grass near Upa.
"Okay. He's all yours."
Tao Pai Pai watched this exchange with a look of utter incredulity.
His thin mustache twitched as a sneer curled his lip.
He smoothed the front of his tunic, looking at them as if they were insects discussing which one would fly into the bug zapper first.
"Taking turns?" Tao scoffed, a cold, dry laugh escaping his throat.
"Do you truly have a death wish, little girl? Or did the lack of oxygen up on that tower make you even stupider than before?"
He pointed a single finger at her.
"I crushed you like a twig three days ago. Do you really think a little nap will make a difference? I'll send you to the grave before the boy can even blink."
Chi-Chi finally raised her hands, shifting into her fighting stance.
"If that's what you believe, then step forward and try again."
Tao Pai Pai smoothed his mustache one last time, his eyes cold and dead as shark's.
"Three seconds."
He held up three fingers.
"That is exactly how long you have left to live. I have a schedule to keep, and I am already behind."
He didn't wait for a response.
One.
The ground beneath Tao's feet exploded into dust. He didn't run; he vanished. To the naked eye of an ordinary human, he was simply gone—moving at a velocity that had killed experienced martial artists before they even knew the fight had started.
"HAAAAA!"
He reappeared instantly right in front of Chi-Chi, the wind screaming from the sheer speed of his movement.
Two.
His leg whipped around in a lethal, high-velocity arc, the kick screaming toward her temple.
It was a strike delivered with flawless, textbook execution, channeled with enough raw power.
"DIE!" he hissed, driving his shin into the side of her head.
Three.
The deadly shin shattered nothing but the sound barrier.
Tao Pai Pai's eyes widened in genuine shock.
His leg had passed right through Chi-Chi's afterimage.
She hadn't just dodged; she had moved so fast that his brain hadn't even registered her displacement.
Before Tao could retract his leg, Chi-Chi drove her fist upward in a vicious, spiraling uppercut.
CRACK!
The blow connected squarely with Tao's jaw.
The assassin's head snapped back, and his feet left the ground. He was launched vertically into the air like a rocket.
As Tao reached the apex of his flight, trying to regain his balance mid-air, he heard a boom beneath him.
Chi-Chi had kicked off the empty air, using the Skywalk to ascend instantly.
Tao opened his eyes to see Chi-Chi hovering right in front of his face, upside down, gravity seemingly having no hold on her.
She spun her body upright and drew both hands back, her palms glowing with a faint, white aura. She took a deep breath, compressing the air in her lungs and focusing her Ki into a single point.
Banshee Blast!
She drove her palms forward, a sharp, piercing kiai erupting from her lungs.
She made no physical contact; instead, she struck the air itself. The atmospheric pressure between them buckled and detonated, birthing a massive, invisible sphere of compressed vacuum.
It roared forward like a kinetic cannonball, a shockwave of pure force designed to shatter anything in its path.
BOOM!
The shockwave hit Tao Pai Pai point-blank in the chest.
It was like being hit by a train made of air.
The assassin gasped as the wind knocked the breath out of him and sent him plummeting back down to earth at terminal velocity.
Tao Pai Pai crashed into the earth, burying himself waist-deep in a cloud of dust and debris.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then, the ground shifted, and the assassin pulled himself out of the crater, brushing the dirt off his clothes with a scowl of pure irritation.
This is absurd. Three days ago, she was nothing to me. No human improves this much in so little time.
Chi-Chi descended from the sky, her feet touching the grass without making a sound.
She stood tall, looking down at the legendary hitman with a pitying gaze.
"Your vanity was your downfall. If you had come back immediately, we would have been dead. But you just had to wait three days for a tailor to finish your suit. While you were worrying about your fashion, we climbed the tower."
Tao Pai Pai froze. His gaze flicked up to the impossible height of the stone pillar behind them.
The tower... The legend of the hermit Korin. It is said that whoever climbs it receives the Sacred Water that grants immense power. I thought it was a fairy tale for fools, but...
He looked at the aura of confidence radiating from the girl. ...there is no other explanation.
They must have drunk the water. That is how they bridged the gap.
A slow, calculating grin spread across his face. If the water existed, then this power wasn't their own skill—it was magic. And magic could be overcome with superior technique.
Tao tilted his head sharply to the left, popping his neck.
He interlocked his fingers and stretched his arms forward, letting his knuckles crack loudly in the silence of the Sacred Land.
"I see." Tao said, his tone regaining its icy composure.
"So you relied on a magic potion to save your skins. How quaint."
He fell into his fighting stance, one hand raised high, the other low.
"Very well. I suppose a little vigorous exercise in the morning is good for the circulation. Come, girl. Let's see how long that borrowed power lasts against a true master."
Tao Pai Pai moved with the terrifying economy of a grandmaster, his limbs flowing into a seamless sequence of high-precision strikes that sought out every vulnerability on Chi-Chi's frame.
He chambered a lead-hand strike—a lightning-quick punch that whistled through the air, missing her by a mere hair's breadth with a sharp whoosh.
Before she could reset, he pivoted, whipping a low kick that cut the wind with a heavy swish.
He immediately followed through with a second, vertical kick, his boot snapping upward like a whip. The fabric of his trousers let out a violent snap as the blow threatened to shatter her guard.
But Chi-Chi stood her ground, her hands moving in tight, efficient circles, parrying every single blow.
Every time Tao's muscle twitched to throw a punch, Chi-Chi was already moving to deflect it.
Frustrated, Tao planted his foot and executed a high-speed backflip, launching himself ten feet into the air to break the rhythm.
He kicked off a stone pillar, using the momentum to rocket back toward her, his heel driving down like a guillotine.
"Die!"
His heel smashed right through Chi-Chi's skull.
But there was no impact. No crunch of bone. His leg passed effortlessly through her body, and she flickered out of existence like a ghost.
"This again?!" Tao hissed, his momentum carrying him forward until he landed in a crouch.
He spun around instantly, sweat beading on his forehead, his eyes darting wildly to find her.
Tao's head snapped to the left. There, just a few yards away, stood Chi-Chi. She wasn't panting. She wasn't in a fighting stance.
She was standing casually with her arms crossed over her chest, watching him with a look of mild disappointment.
Tao Pai Pai felt a vein throb dangerously in his temple.
She... she is mocking me! It's not just the water. She is actually reading my movements!
"Is that the best the world's greatest assassin can do?" Chi-Chi asked, uncrossing her arms and stepping forward.
"Because if it is... then it's my turn."
She vanished.
This time, she didn't wait for him to react. She closed the distance instantly, appearing right inside his guard with a speed that made Tao's heart skip a beat
She stepped inside his guard and drove her fist deep into his midsection.
THWACK!
Tao Pai Pai's eyes bulged from their sockets, his face turning a sickly shade of purple, leaving him completely paralyzed by the pain.
Before he could even double over,
Chi-Chi struck again.
Bam!
Bam!
She dropped low, crouching beneath his swaying form, and exploded upward, planting both feet squarely under his chin in a devastating rising kick.
The impact sent the assassin rocketing into the sky, his limbs flailing as he fought to regain control.
Tao Pai Pai twisted his body against the wind, managing to stabilize himself hundreds of feet in the air.
He looked down, his vision swimming, and saw Chi-Chi hurtling toward him like a heat-seeking missile, her leg cocked for a finishing strike.
I have you now!
Tao thought, desperation sharpening his reflexes.
He waited until the very last micro-second, then jerked his body to the right.
Chi-Chi's kick whooshed past him, missing by inches. A smirk of relief touched Tao's bloodied lips—he had bought himself a fraction of a second to counterattack while her momentum carried her away.
But Chi-Chi didn't fly past him.
BOOM!
A shockwave erupted from empty air as Chi-Chi kicked the atmosphere itself. Using the Skywalk to create a platform of compressed air, she stopped her forward momentum instantly and pivoted mid-flight.
Tao's smirk vanished. Before he could turn his head, Chi-Chi's heel came crashing down like a meteor, slamming into the back of his neck.
KABOOM!
Tao Pai Pai was blasted straight down at supersonic speed.
He hit the ground with the force of an artillery shell, kicking up a massive mushroom cloud of dust and debris.
When the dust finally settled, Goku and Upa leaned forward, blinking.
Tao Pai Pai had been driven head-first into the solid rock so hard that he was buried up to his waist. Only his legs were sticking out of the ground, twitching feebly in the air like a pulled weed.