Chapter 5 – The Fires of Refinement
Vegeta had survived, barely.
For weeks, he had lain in the gravity chamber, every cell screaming, his body resisting the imposed flow of ki, every meridian burned, every muscle fiber strained beyond human comprehension. His veins were maps of pain, his bones ringing like fractured steel. Yet he had not died.
Not because he was strong.
Because the pressure itself had chosen to teach, not end him.
When he finally sat upright, trembling, sweat streaked with blood, he looked at the empty sky and whispered to himself:
"I am not Kakarot… I will surpass him."
He began again.
Not blindly this time.
He did not mimic Zhou Fan.
He analyzed.
He studied.
He refined his own body in stages, using the agony of failure as a guide.
Pain became power.
Pain became awareness.
Vegeta learned what Zhou Fan had done, without his guidance:
Compress ki into internal lattices, turning scattered energy into dense law-like threads.
Force damaged tissues to regrow stronger, embedding ki into bones, tendons, and blood.
Align body, mind, and soul with every contraction, every pulse, until instinct and will moved as one.
It nearly killed him each day.
And yet, each night, he awoke stronger.
By the fourth week, Vegeta could sustain base-level ki pressure that rivaled Super Saiyan God energy, without transformation.
I am not finished, he thought.
I will carve myself into a weapon Zhou Fan cannot ignore.