Mount Paozu.
Time flew like a galloping horse, and before anyone knew it, a year and a half had passed.
Son Gohan had already celebrated his second birthday.
Da-da-da-da-da!
On a vast plain, two blurs flashed in and out of sight.
Every so often, the ground erupted with a crater.
"Kamehameha!"
"Heaven-Piercing Cannon!"
One blue, one yellow two energy beams of identical thickness collided head-on, exploding in a blinding flash.
The shockwave swept the surroundings like a typhoon.
"Gohan, give me everything you've got!" Goku roared.
"Dad, if I went all out, you'd be done for!" Gohan said helplessly.
"You brat, looking down on me?! Yahhh!"
Goku flared his aura, white energy blazing around him as his hair lifted slightly.
"I'll join in too!"
Gohan released only a thousandth of his full power, yet in the glow around his body, a faint trace of golden light flickered.
…
When the fight ended, Goku's expression turned oddly downcast.
"Dad? What's wrong?" Gohan asked, walking over.
"Gohan, I'm fine. It's just… I didn't expect that in only a year and a half, you'd surpass me by so much. Sure, I've improved a lot too, but I can tell your true power is far greater than what you just showed. Even though you're my son, I can't help feeling unwilling to accept it." Goku's voice carried real frustration.
"Can't help it, Dad. I've got both talent and hard work on my side!" Gohan smirked.
It was true, his growth over the past year and a half had been absurd.
In the very first month of training, the giant tree he once struggled to lift had already become useless for improvement.
So he upped his own load, running with heavier weights, pushing himself to the brink, savoring the endless power that surged after hitting his limits.
He knew that was his hidden potential erupting.
Weighted frog jumps, push-ups he took every simple drill to the extreme, until nothing in Mount Paozu could help him improve further.
Unless he carried the entire mountain.
And by the third month, he had actually managed it.
After that, Goku took him to the ocean.
Mount Paozu training only worked the outside of the body, but the deeper you dove underwater, the greater the pressure, pressing in from every direction.
That crushing weight hardened his internal organs until they were like steel. His heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys became engines driving him forward.
From the moment he was born, Gohan had been searching for his "cheat ability."
Every other transmigrator seemed to get something an old master living in their mind, a system, at worst a powerful martial art or artifact.
But him? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Just day after day of grinding through training.
He even pushed himself to dive so deep he blacked out from the pressure, hoping that desperate brink would trigger some cheat.
If Goku hadn't been there to pull him up, he would have drowned for sure.
After that, he let it go.
Fine. If I don't have one, I don't have one. Even without a cheat, with my effort and this body's potential, I'm almost at Super Saiyan already.
That faint flash of gold in his aura earlier had been the sign.
By the fifth month at sea, Goku couldn't even match Gohan's diving depth anymore.
"Dad! I can feel it, I'm close to breaking into a new realm!" Gohan clenched his fists.
"A new realm?" Goku tilted his head.
"Yeah. If I break through, my power will skyrocket beyond imagination."Of course, he knew exactly what it was Super Saiyan but he couldn't say so yet. After all, the Saiyans hadn't even arrived on Earth.
"So… how far am I from this realm of yours?" Goku asked eagerly.
"Uh… kinda far."
"Speak up."
"Well… about… three hundred times your current strength." Gohan muttered.
"What?! Three hundred?! You're telling me you're three hundred times stronger than me?" Goku was dumbfounded.
"Pretty much. If we put it in numbers, your power level's around fifteen thousand. Mine's pushing three million. Once I break that limit, I should be able to transform. And I think, thanks to Mom, it'll be easier for me than for you."
"Three hundred times… unreal." Goku gave a bitter laugh.
"Don't be discouraged, Dad. I'm sure your big leap will come after you reach that realm."
"Don't worry! I'm not losing heart. You being strong makes me happy and I'll catch up!" Goku's frustration vanished as quickly as it came.
"That's the spirit." Gohan smiled.
Maybe Goku's true strength really did come from that pure, unshakable martial artist's heart.
"Come on, let's go home for dinner! Flying Nimbus!"
An orange cloud dropped from the sky. Goku hopped onto it.
Even though he had long since mastered flight, he still loved the feeling of being carried by the Nimbus.
As for Gohan? Forget it. The soul that had replaced the original was far from "pure of heart." The Nimbus wouldn't even let him stand on it.
Instead, he rose upright into the air, soaring toward Mount Paozu.
Why upright instead of prone? Goku had asked him that before. After all, lying down in flight reduced air resistance.
Gohan's answer? "Flying upright looks cooler."
Different aesthetics. He preferred the style from myths and legends. If he knew how to ride a sword, he would have forged one already.
Any man who didn't want to try sword-riding clearly wasn't normal.
Still… a child barely over a meter tall, standing in the air as he flew it looked a little ridiculous.
Two figures cut through the sky, vanishing into the distance.
…
Far away, in the Arctic ice fields, a green figure clenched his teeth.
"Why? Why has Son Goku's ki become so powerful so impossible to read?" Piccolo seethed.
As for Gohan, Piccolo hadn't even mentioned him. The gap was so vast, he couldn't sense Gohan's power at all.
Right now, Piccolo's power level barely brushed one thousand.
At first, Goku trained Gohan. But later, it was Gohan leading Goku, especially after suggesting deep-sea training in the first place.
Gohan himself had never noticed anything "special" about his condition.
While he trained under heavy pressure, he never had the space to really examine his own ki.
Whenever he couldn't consciously sense it, his energy would automatically cycle through his body, returning to rest in his dantian once he stopped.
All he knew was that it kept growing stronger.
When he asked Goku about it, he chalked it up to training plus mixed blood.
After all, Gohan's potential was famous in the original story born from the union of a Saiyan and a human.
Human cells tempered the ferocity of Saiyan blood, making it easier to awaken their terrifying latent power and to break through to Super Saiyan.
Three million was the threshold. Pure-blood Saiyans had to hit it to transform.
Hybrids like Gohan, Goten, and Trunks didn't need to.
If Gohan wanted to, he could force the transformation right now.
But he didn't want to rush it he wanted the water to overflow naturally. He believed that breaking through before reaching his base form's true limit wouldn't be ideal.
Any transformation's power was built on your base strength.
Look at Goten he transformed young, sure, but even in Super Saiyan, his power level probably never broke ten million.
Goten was born after Goku had already achieved Super Saiyan, so of course transforming came easily.