Dragon Ball Roshi

Time passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye, thirty-four years had gone by.

 It was now the year 517.

 On this day, light rain began to fall in the city of Sayuan, starting from dawn and continuing into the late morning, showing no signs of stopping.

 On the second floor of a small tavern, a table by the window was set with several plates of snacks and a pot of ordinary wine. A yellow-orange four-star ball was placed on the table, while three colorful little birds played with the ball, pecking at it and squabbling amongst themselves.

 "What pretty birds!" A little girl at a nearby table kept glancing at the table, her eyes filled with curiosity and affection for the birds. She couldn't help but mutter quietly.

 However, the three birds paid no attention to the onlookers as they fought over the ball on the table.

 A rough hand picked up the wine glass from the table, brought it to his lips, and tilted his head back, swallowing the spicy liquor.

 The man drinking appeared to be a middle-aged man in his forties. His long, thick black hair was loosely flowing back, giving him an air of carefree nonchalance. Perhaps due to good maintenance, there were only faint, shallow wrinkles on his face, which, when contrasted with his mature aura, made it difficult to determine his true age. He wore a beard—stiff and thick, though not very long. It seemed like he only trimmed it when it became too troublesome.

 The middle-aged man wore loose gray clothing, and parts of the sleeves, buttons, and the cuffs of his trousers had faded from years of washing. From a distance, he looked like a Sayuan city elder who had gone out for morning exercise. Over the years, as the Muten school grew stronger and more famous, the people of Sayuan city, both old and young, had become fond of exercising—not for martial prowess, but to keep their bodies strong and healthy.

 As he silently drank, he gazed out the window at the falling rain, his expression calm and silent. His eyes, filled with the weariness of time, revealed no emotion. Yet, in those plain eyes, there seemed to be a profound tenderness.

 His gaze remained fixed outside, but the passersby outside the window seemed not to catch his attention. It was as if his focus was not on them but rather somewhere far beyond, lost in a trance. After a while, his eyes appeared to drift like the rain outside, floating, drifting, until they seemed to wander toward the distant mountains, slipping into an unknown time.

 Perhaps noticing the attention the three birds were attracting, the middle-aged man withdrew his gaze and waved his hand next to the birds. His fingers lightly tapped the table twice, and he spoke in a low voice with a hint of magnetism:

 "Go play outside for a while."

 Strangely enough, the three birds seemed to understand his words. After he spoke, they tilted their heads, chirped a few times, and hopped over to peck at his rough hand or fingers, as if reminding him not to forget to take them along later. Then, they flapped their wings and flew out the window.

 "Oh! They flew away!" The little girl at the neighboring table lamented in a low voice.

 The middle-aged man smiled slightly, then reached over to pocket the four-star ball, placed a banknote on the table, and grabbed an oil-paper umbrella from the side before heading downstairs.

---

 In these thirty-four years, for the first two years, Taro had repeatedly taken the only four-star Dragon Ball he had to find the fortune-teller sister, hoping her divination skills could lead him to the locations of the other six Dragon Balls. But... perhaps it was fate, or maybe the time wasn't right, but Taro could never find the fortune-teller. It was as if she had vanished from the world, completely out of sight.

 "Perhaps she truly had disappeared—after all, as a witch capable of traversing both the realms of life and death in the original story, the fortune-teller couldn't have stayed in the mortal world forever. She would need to travel to the afterlife, either for cultivation or to manage connections, among other reasons."

 Once Taro came to this realization, he temporarily set aside his search for the Dragon Balls.

 There was no need to force what wasn't meant to be. At least... it hadn't come to the point where it needed to be forced.

 For the next two decades, Taro immersed himself in the pursuit of his martial arts. He repeatedly reflected on the teachings of the Martial Arts Master from his time, even going so far as to follow the paths described by many novelists, frequently venturing into deep mountains and forests for cultivation, to feel nature and cleanse his mind.

The results were obvious and immense. What he once thought was impossible to improve upon had miraculously advanced again. The internal Ki seemed to have developed a life of its own, becoming a part of him rather than just a simple source of energy.

 At the same time, Taro noticed that his progress in martial arts also had a certain feedback and enhancement on his mental cultivation.

 Previously, due to his frequent overuse of the Mangekyou Sharingan, the intense mental strain from repeated usage had caused him to develop headaches. To address this, Taro greatly reduced his use of the Sharingan and began to explore mental cultivation on his own. This type of training was not uncommon in the Dragon Ball world, with the most typical example being the mental battles that Krillin and Gohan engaged in aboard the spaceship in the original series.

 In fact, similar mental cultivation existed even in Taro's previous life on Earth.

 When one's physical cultivation reaches a certain extreme, the natural progression is to seek mental transcendence.

 Taro eventually stumbled upon a relatively basic method similar to meditation. He completely emptied his mind, thinking of nothing, stopping all subjective mental activities, as if his consciousness wandered in a void where nothing existed, and everything in the world faded away.

 After meditating in this way, his headaches often diminished significantly.

 Another reason Taro had to explore mental cultivation was because of the Muken. After advancing it to the tenth punch, or the tenfold Muken, Taro discovered the first limitation of the technique.

 Once he reached the level of the tenfold Muken, using it effectively in battle required significantly more mental strength than what he could muster with his current normal level of mental energy.

 This limitation was easy to understand.

 When using the Muken, the user must concentrate a certain amount of attention on the Ki within their body in order to unleash several times the normal explosive power in battle. But one's mental focus is ultimately limited. The tenfold Muken had become so powerful that the user could no longer fully manage the fight.

 If the Muken were a book that gradually delved deeper, then before reaching tenfold, using it in battle was like holding a light read, reading while conversing with someone; but once it reached the tenfold Muken, it became a difficult, incomprehensible tome, with each line requiring immense focus, leaving no room for anything else.

 Thus, one of the reasons Taro had to explore mental cultivation was to alleviate his headaches, and another reason was to better develop and use the Muken.

 This continued for twenty-four years.

 That year, Fanfan... Taro's wife, asked him for a separation.

 Taro would never forget the look in Fanfan's eyes at that moment, a look full of pain and complexity.

 "Taro... I'm already so old, and you're still so young... Please... let me be alone..." Taro clearly remembered that for a long time before that moment, his wife had increasingly avoided looking directly at his face.

 This face... younger even than his disciple Aragon, and his daughter, Fanfan.

 At the time, Taro could only silently sigh. What else could he do? Back then, he had only thought that his lifespan might be a bit longer than others, never imagining his appearance would also be so different. If he had known, would he have married Fanfan? Taro didn't know, perhaps not.

 So, he left the martial arts dojo with a Dragon Ball in hand, accompanied by the young bird from years ago, leaving alone. His disciple Aragon and Yumeko, now his wife, wanted to keep him, but they couldn't bring themselves to face the sorrowful and melancholic look on Fanfan's face. They could only watch helplessly as Taro's figure disappeared into the distance, unsure of where he was going or whether he would ever return.

 It wasn't until recently that Taro sensed Fanfan's presence, flickering like a candle in the wind, that he reappeared in Sayuan City. It had been ten years since he last left.

---

 In the fine drizzle, Taro walked along the busy street, holding an oil-paper umbrella.

 Workshops, shops, street vendors with large umbrellas, hurried passersby... Taro brushed past them one by one, heading towards the city gates.

 "Have you heard? The Muten school dojo in the city is closed today! Do you know why?"

 "You don't know? The wife of the Muten school founder passed away. Today's the funeral! Disciples from dojos inside and outside the city must all go to pay their respects!"

 This conversation drifted from somewhere, mingling with the soft rain, reaching Taro's ears. A slight wistfulness appeared on his usually calm face as he continued walking with his oil-paper umbrella.

 Strangely, although he seemed to be walking slowly, in the blink of an eye, he had already covered a large distance, passing by many people without any of them noticing anything unusual about him.

 Soon, he had left the city gates.

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