Chapter 883: Ao Zu’s Legacy

Did Ao Zu commit suicide?
Su Che found this strange and asked, “Weren’t his soul’s abilities completely sealed? How could he have the consciousness to commit suicide?”
“I’m not sure.”
Lao Hei’s physical form inside the Immortal Prison also came over. He shrugged and shook his head. “I can only guess that although his soul was sealed, it still retained a trace of instinctive consciousness. After a month of soul slavery, his instinctive consciousness became utterly desperate. This old fellow was quite resolute—he preferred to die by suicide rather than become a slave.”
Su Che nodded silently. “Never mind. After all, he was also one of the top powerhouses in chaos. It’s normal for him to possess some unexpected special abilities. He’s already dead, so it’s too late to say anything. Let’s take another look and see if we can get anything useful from his body.”
“There should be quite a few useful things,” Lao Hei suggested immediately. “Then let the Immortal Prison Pagoda devour his body. Nothing useful will be wasted.”
“Good.”
Su Che agreed. What he hoped for most was that Ao Zu’s extremely powerful time domain skill wouldn’t be wasted…
After Ao Zu’s body was consumed by the Immortal Prison, the useless components disappeared, leaving only the three most valuable parts, which slowly emerged under Lao Hei’s control.
A gray sphere, about the size of an adult man’s fist; a small iron piece in the shape of a hexagram, resembling a button on clothing; and a reddish-brown diamond-shaped crystal, about the size of a thumb.
Lao Hei explained each one: “This sphere is Ao Zu’s personal space. Inside it lies a tiny world inhabited by hundreds of billions of creatures. These creatures are extremely powerful, equivalent to a small immortal realm. Moreover, they are highly aggressive and hostile. It’s not advisable to connect it to the Immortal Prison universe at this stage.”
Su Che nodded silently. Hundreds of billions of creatures might not seem like many, and a hundred planets could easily accommodate them. But as Lao Hei said, these creatures’ cultivation levels far surpassed those of ordinary beings, and they were aggressive and fierce races. If integrated into the current Immortal Prison universe, they would surely cause endless chaos in that world.
By then, he and Lao Hei wouldn’t have to do anything else—just constantly dealing with those ordinary beings would be exhausting.

Thus, this small world containing trillions of powerful beings was placed by Lao Hei somewhere in the Immortal Prison Universe, and it might not be released to merge with it for millions of years. Let it remain in its current form and exist independently. Only when the Immortal Prison World grows into a true cosmic realm, capable of dividing into different levels such as the Immortal Realm, the Spirit Realm, and the Mortal Cultivation Realm, should these matters be addressed.

Lao Hei picked up the second item, a hexagram-shaped metal button, and continued, “This is Ao Zu’s personal storage space, containing all the wealth he accumulated over his life. I took a quick look—there are many treasures we can use, such as high-grade Chaos materials that can enhance the offensive and defensive powers of the Giant Wealth and the Demon-Slaying Gun, bringing them close to the level of ultimate Chaos treasures.”

Su Che asked, “Does Ao Zu have any most powerful magical artifacts, like a life artifact?”

“No,”

Lao Hei shook his head. “At his level, magical artifacts are completely useless to him. What he seeks is an ultimate Chaos treasure with the potential to create universes, such as the Mixed Separation Divine Tree or our Immortal Prison Pagoda.”

“That makes sense,” Su Che agreed. Even for a top-tier powerhouse like Ao Zu, and even for himself now, during battles, the role of Chaos spiritual treasures like the Giant Wealth and the Demon-Slaying Gun is becoming increasingly minimal. Often, they are even less effective than his own fists.

This is what happens when one reaches a certain level of strength—external possessions become useless, and the individual becomes the most powerful weapon of destruction.

Putting the matter of magical artifacts aside for now, let’s talk about Ao Zu’s third item: the crimson rhombus-shaped crystal. Su Che already guessed that this crystal was the most valuable and important.

“This crystal exists inside Ao Zu’s head, serving to store all his divine spells, internal energy, combat skills, etc. It’s somewhat similar to what we understand as an Immortal Infant, yet different.”

Lao Hei explained slowly, “In his universe, the most powerful beings are called deities, not the true immortals as we understand them. These deities all have such a crystal in their heads, known as a Divine Essence. As long as the Divine Essence remains intact, the deity is immortal…”

“A Divine Essence?” Su Che nodded. “Can it be understood as a combination of the Immortal Infant and the Original Spirit within a true immortal?”

“That’s how it can be understood,” laughed Lao Hei. “Moreover, if other deities devour and merge with this divine essence, they will become supreme deities like Ao Zu.”
Hearing this, Su Che immediately remembered something: “Yes, I recall it now. When I killed Haus back then, I seemed to sense something extremely hard in his head—probably this very divine essence.”
At the moment Haus’s head was crushed, due to Ao Zu’s sudden appearance, Su Che didn’t have time to examine those details closely. In any case, the power of chaos erupted, completely shattering Haus’s head and reducing it to nothingness, leaving only a trace of his soul in that headless body.
“It’s something like that,” replied Lao Hei. “In their universe, divine essences are the hardest substances, almost impossible to destroy. But once inside chaos, facing the supreme power of chaos, the hardness of divine essences becomes insignificant. There are countless things even harder than them in chaos.”
Of course, it doesn’t matter what the power systems in Ao Zu and Haus’s universe are like. What’s important now is what benefits Su Che can gain from this divine essence left behind by Ao Zu.
Lao Hei said, “Unfortunately, due to the differences in power systems across universes, you can’t merge all of Ao Zu’s combat skills. After all, you’re a true immortal from the Immortal Universe, not a deity from their universe. So, there’s only one option for what to do with this divine essence: retain its strongest feature and discard everything else.”
Su Che understood immediately and asked, “The strongest feature within this divine essence must be the understanding and mastery of time power, right?”
“Yes,” replied Lao Hei. “Ao Zu and his peers call it the Law of Time, but in chaos, it can only be transformed into a limited time domain.”
“That’s it!”
Without hesitation, Su Che made his decision right away: “As long as I can obtain the power of this Law of Time, this trip can be considered a great success. I get what you mean. Should I give it to the Eighth Layer of the Immortal Prison to merge it?”
“That’s right,” nodded Lao Hei.
The Eighth Layer of the Immortal Prison already possesses the two abilities of predicting the future and traveling through time. In a way, this is also a form of mastering time power. There’s no conflict or contradiction in terms of power attributes between this and the ‘Law of Time’ mastered by Ao Zu. It can indeed be absorbed to strengthen itself.

And this is precisely what Su Che values the most.
Without further ado, this crimson crystal known as a divine essence was immediately sent to the eighth layer of the Immortal Prison. Just a few dozen breaths later, Su Che mastered the powerful divine ability that originally belonged to Ao Zu: the Time Domain.
As for other combat skills, they could only be wasted. After all, Su Che’s form of life was that of a true immortal, and his mind did not contain any such divine essence crystals, so he could not inherit Ao Zu’s abilities by devouring them.
In theory, just as when Su Che merged with the Great Witch’s true blood of Heavenly Sound, he only acquired the transformation ability of the witch race while having to give up other racial traits. Unless Su Che was willing to change his form of life and become a true witch.
The same was true now. To obtain Ao Zu’s abilities, forcing Su Che to change his form and become some so-called deity he barely understood would definitely be unacceptable to him.
Being able to gain Ao Zu’s most powerful ability, the Time Domain, already left Su Che extremely satisfied. He could hardly wait to unleash it and experience its power, but since he was still inside the sealing formation, he couldn’t use any domain. He had to wait until Manzi recovered fully and they left the Rock Formation before trying again.
During this time, Su Che and Lao He selected many top-tier materials from Ao Zu’s storage space. Together with the Giant Wealth and the Demon-Slaying Spear, they were sent to the third layer of the Fire Realm for enhancement, further boosting the offensive and defensive power of these two magical artifacts.
It should be noted that Ao Zu had wandered in the Chaos for countless years, so the Chaos materials he accumulated were, of course, of the highest quality.
After that, many top-tier materials were given to Xiao He for it to devour at will to strengthen its power. Xiao He was like a great white shark in the Chaos—any small fish or shrimp with Chaos attributes could serve as nourishment for it. The more it ate, the faster it grew.
Xiao He had only been in the Chaos for about two thousand years yet had grown to such a level. If it were to devour all of Ao Zu’s vast legacy, it would likely become a top-tier powerhouse on par with Ao Zu.
Of course, this required sufficient time for digestion—it couldn’t become strong all at once.
It took nearly a year for Manzi’s soul to return to normal. The five of them cleaned up the array devices in the Rock Formation and set off on another long journey.
Once outside the Rock Formation, the first thing Su Che wanted to do was test his Time Domain.
Huh!

Another crimson shock wave spread out, instantly covering an area of tens of thousands of feet and forming a spherical time domain. Tianyin, Manzhi, Lao Hei, and Xiao Hei’s movement speeds were drastically reduced, barely faster than snails crawling.

Su Che, as the controller of the time domain, could move about fifty feet in one breath. Although that sounded slow, it was still tens of thousands of times faster than Tianyin and the others. It could be felt that the power of Su Che’s time domain was slightly weaker than that of Ao Zu’s, but this was normal—after all, Ao Zu’s cultivation level was much higher than Su Che’s.

In the future, as Su Che’s cultivation continued to improve, the power of his time domain would naturally increase as well—there was no problem with that.

Another more significant change was that the two functions of predicting the future and traveling through time, which had previously been unusable in chaos, could now be utilized to some extent. After activating the time domain, Su Che could not only slow down or speed up time at will but also predict, to a certain extent, what type of offensive or defensive techniques his opponent would use, allowing him to make accurate predictions in advance.

This kind of prediction was only effective within the time domain and lasted for only three breaths. In intense battles, even a change that occurs in an instant can determine the outcome, so three breaths was more than enough.