Chapter 562 - 338: Quasi-Divine Skill
Su Ze continued to speculate as his Spiritual Power explored the black sphere. There were too many spaces inside; it would take some time to check them all.
When his Spiritual Power reached the deeper spaces, he made a sudden discovery!
Flickering, residual images of scenes appeared within.
A man...
A butterfly...
He frequently saw fragmented images. The only figures in them were a man and a butterfly.
He recognized both the man and the butterfly.
’This sphere is yet another thing they left behind.’
One could say that this powerful member of the Human Race and this butterfly changed the fate of Blue Star.
The Era of Evolution began because of them. The mysterious inheritance was their doing. And now, it seemed even Blue Star’s first divine-level beast was influenced by something they had left behind.
The man and butterfly in the images seemed to be experiencing time in reverse. The deeper Su Ze’s Spiritual Power probed, the younger the two of them appeared.
In truth, the appearances of the man and the butterfly didn’t change, but one could tell they were younger from their overall disposition and the look in their eyes.
The images, which started out fragmented, gradually became clearer.
Until... other people started appearing in the scenes!
He saw scenes of the man and the butterfly fighting in space. He saw bizarrely shaped aliens—more than one, and of more than one species.
From these scenes, he could roughly deduce that the man and the butterfly were caught in a protracted, relentless pursuit.
Along the way, they endured one brutal battle after another, breaking through encirclements time and again.
Su Ze suddenly froze. He stared at the butterfly in the image, his gaze fixed on its eyes.
The black eyes were irregularly spherical. Gazing into them was like peering into a bottomless abyss, one that seemed to hold a million worlds within.
He had a sudden realization. The black sphere—wasn’t it the butterfly’s eye?!
’So the scenes I’m seeing now are just residual images of time, preserved in the butterfly’s eye?’
Su Ze’s Spiritual Power continued to probe the depths of the butterfly’s eye. Each layer of space held a layer of residual images, but the deeper he went, the more he could feel the mental strain.
Until he saw a single frame—
The man was seated at a dining table laden with a sumptuous feast, surrounded by a group of people.
Everyone was raising their glasses, their faces wreathed in smiles. The scene was exceptionally warm and heartfelt.
And everyone at the table... was human!
’So, there are other humans in the universe after all.’
’Of course, this scene is from at least several thousand years ago. There were humans then, but that doesn’t mean there are any now.’
Just as Su Ze tried to look further, a sharp pain shot through his brain, and his Spiritual Power was forced to withdraw.
His Spiritual Power was completely drained!
With his level of Spiritual Power, this was as far as he could get.
’So this is one of the butterfly’s eyes, containing residual images of time and countless spaces. But where did the Sands of Time come from?’
Su Ze’s Perception Tentacles enveloped the entire eyeball as he observed it in silence.
After a long while, he discovered something...
It turned out that the residual images within the eyeball were dissipating at an extremely slow rate. As they vanished, a faint golden energy would leak from the eye.
The Sands of Time were clearly formed from the rocks and silt of the seabed fusing with this golden energy.
This golden energy carried a power related to "time," and it was likely the main component forming the residual images of the past.
Now that he understood the principle, Su Ze knew he couldn’t stop the residual images from dissipating or the golden energy from leaking out. All he could do was find some sand and dirt to bury the eyeball, ensuring the leaking energy wouldn’t go to waste. Perhaps this way, new Sands of Time could form.
Once he had done all that, he began to absorb the golden energy from the Sands of Time.
The Tier 6 S-rank extract in his body was proving difficult to digest. It took several large chunks of the Sands of Time for him to fully process it.
Su Ze relaxed for a moment to compose himself, then took out the Golden Falcon extract.
Gazing at the Tier 6 extract in his hand, which held a trace of purple light, he decided to ask Mu Wang about it.
That old codger Mu Wang might not be the most erudite person, but when it came to questions of evolution below the divine level, there was little that could stump him.
Sure enough, Mu Wang immediately gave a reasonable explanation. "The extract has a purple tint? Did this beast have a powerful skill? Usually, that’s a sign that a beast has the potential to achieve divinity. For a beast like that, completing its seventh evolution is only a matter of time."
"It did have a pretty good skill..." Su Ze gave Mu Wang a brief description of the skill "Weak Point Attack."
"You’re in luck. That’s a pretty good skill. If you can’t get your hands on a divine skill, this might be your best option." Mu Wang paused, then continued, "For a beast to ascend to divinity, it must master a divine skill, just like the Intelligent Races. However, they can’t acquire one through Pillage Evolution."
Su Ze understood. "So they take a different path? Fusing a divine skill on their own?"
"Something like that. But it’s not just fusion; it’s also constant evolution and upgrading. They have to keep honing their abilities until they produce a divine skill. Only then can they undergo the seventh evolution. The purple in the extract indicates that this beast had already more or less mastered a Quasi-Divine Skill. The rest was just a matter of time and refinement. You could say it was guaranteed to reach the divine level in the future."
"A Quasi-Divine Skill?" This was the first time Su Ze had ever heard the term.
"That’s right. The ’Weak Point Attack’ skill was clearly the Golden Falcon’s ’ladder’ to divinity. It was just that, limited by its own strength, the skill had yet to display the power of a true divine skill. Once its foundation was deep enough, the skill’s upgrade into a divine skill would have been a natural progression."
Hearing this, Su Ze more or less understood.
Although the Golden Falcon was only a Tier 6 beast, it had already mastered a Quasi-Divine Skill.
The level of a Quasi-Divine Skill should be higher than that of a Divine Skill Prototype from a Bloodline Crystal—an ordinary Bloodline Crystal, that is, not a golden Divine Blood Crystal.
’Of course, it’s hard to say which has more potential.’
’A Divine Skill Prototype is a weakened, stripped-down version of a divine skill, but it has the potential to evolve into the complete version.’
’A Quasi-Divine Skill, on the other hand, holds many possibilities, but one has to figure out its future upgrade path on their own.’
Su Ze thought of the Golden Falcon. ’Who would’ve thought that damned bird actually had what it takes to become a god.’
’If the Beast King Sponge hadn’t gotten lucky and stumbled upon the butterfly’s eye and the Sands of Time, using them to cheat its way to the top, the first divine beast on Blue Star would have probably been the Golden Falcon.’
’Of course, it doesn’t matter who became a god. The end result would have been the same.’
’Both of them were destined to die anyway. Even if the Golden Falcon had reached divinity, it would have just died at the hands of the Nian Race.’
Su Ze hesitated no longer. He picked up the Golden Falcon extract and downed it in one gulp.
His mouth immediately filled with the taste of a feathered beast.
It was like swallowing a raw, fertilized egg.
URK...
’From fucking Tier 1 extracts all the way to Tier 6, and not a single one has tasted good!’
Damn it!