I'm really not the number one slacker in Soul Society.

and many more……

Dark Azure Mighty is an experimental product created by the Tsunayashiro family in imitation of an ancient Hollow. Although the result was a rather special Hollow Ghoul, if you insist on saying so, this guy is not entirely unrelated to the ancient Hollow.

Is this a behavior unique to the ancient Void Realms?

Mima, who vaguely felt that she had touched on the truth, fell into hesitation.

The importance of anything related to the ancient Hollows is self-evident.

Now it seems that all that's needed to continue this "legacy" is to fire one more Cero.

The question is... should he do that?

At their level, the ability to sense crises is generally quite advanced, and this is especially true for Mi Zhen, who possesses the ability to sense time. When he doesn't understand the ins and outs of a matter, his guesses are generally about 70% accurate.

His intuition told him that continuing the so-called "tradition" was a good thing.

But rationally, I felt that doing so would definitely cause a huge problem.

Someone near the Second Division barracks clicked their tongue, pulled a coin from their pocket, flicked it into the air, and caught it.

Keep using Cero on the head, and launch a fierce attack without hesitation to kill Dark Azure Mage.

He opened his palm, and the side facing upwards was a human head.

Since fate has decreed it, there's no point in hesitating. Ignoring Soi Fon's curious gaze, Mima casually put the coin into his pocket and began to charge up his Cero in mid-air.

He left the output space to the old man and Unohana, retreated a large distance, and poured half of his spiritual pressure into the Cero's firing circuit in one go.

The time limit for blurring is almost up. If we're going to play, let's go big!

"Both of you."

Mima laughed loudly and shouted to the two captains, "It's time to settle this once and for all—let me go first!"

Seeing the blue light gathering in front of Mi Zhen's eyes, An Cang Yu Shou unleashed more than ten Crescent Moon Slashes in one go, forcing the two captains back a bit, and then suddenly opened his mouth wide.

A strong, pale white light immediately shone from his throat. His relatively fragile body was impacted by this massive energy surge, instantly causing numerous wounds to appear. The blood left behind merged directly with the Cero, adding a touch of crimson to the pale white.

After three seconds of charging, Mima and Akuma simultaneously unleashed their strongest Cero to date.

The Cero, amplified three times by the torrent of fury, turned from blue to black and clashed violently with the white Cero, which was tinged with crimson blood. The pressure of the space itself creaked and spread in all directions, instantly forming a huge explosion that covered hundreds of meters, engulfing the figures of Mima and Azuryuu.

The intense dizziness then reached its peak.

It was much stronger than the previous two times.

Then, a scene slowly unfolded before Mizhen's eyes.

It carries a wild and untamed feel, like something from ancient times.

Chapter 137: An Even More Ancient History, Gods and Nothingness

The world of the past is vastly different from the world of today.

There is no distinction between the real world, Hueco Mundo, and Soul Society; only a desolate, lifeless world exists—and of course, there is also the mysterious Hell.

At that time, only a small number of creatures lived in the world. Although they called themselves human, they had no lifespan limit and were not affected by disease. Because they did not know what life and death were, they did not need to eat, sleep, or reproduce. They existed in the world in a dazed and ignorant manner.

Since there was no need to develop civilization, these ancient people maintained a more loosely connected way of living than primitive tribes for a long time. They had almost no desires and naturally did not have emotions. Compared to life in the modern sense, these ancient "humans" were powerful but could hardly be called to have personality and self-awareness, and were no different from moving plants and rocks.

Then, "fear" was born, which is "nothingness".

The origins of the earliest nothingness are impossible to verify. Our ancestors only knew that it was a group of eerie monsters that wore pale masks and were incredibly tall. They were violent and ferocious, and their sole purpose was to "eat." These monsters did not even have thoughts; they simply kept repeating the behavior of devouring humans and their own kind.

The more they eat, the hungrier they become; the more they eat, the stronger they grow, and they never stop.

Once "devoured" by these monsters, even the healthy, painless, and immortal ancestors would vanish into nothingness, facing a meaningless "death."

In fact, "death" was a word created by our ancestors to describe the result of being swallowed up by "nothingness".

The detached emotions of our ancestors were based on the absence of birth and death, but these monsters can now render them still and dead, and thus "fear" is born.

Every living thing fears death; it's that simple.

The most direct way to overcome fear is to destroy the things that cause it; it's a simpler principle.

But the powerful ancestors were no match for these "nothingnesses".

The most outstanding among the early inhabitants quickly deduced an answer that terrified them: if these monsters were allowed to devour everything in their path, not only life, but even matter and spacetime would fall into a meaningless stillness.

In other words, everyone will die.

Driven by fear, the once-disorganized ancestors developed a sense of crisis for the first time. They united to explore powerful forces that could be used to eliminate monsters, and naturally, they developed civilization, language, and much more.

But all of this is meaningless in the face of the increasingly powerful monsters.

Even if the strong among the early inhabitants could eliminate a few monsters, their efforts were futile in the face of the overwhelming numbers of monsters. No one could stop the world from dying. Even though the early inhabitants fought hard, all they got in return was meaningless sacrifice. Their population declined year by year, eventually even falling below five figures.

The world is about to perish.

Then, God came.

Just as the world itself was resisting death, a being stronger than any human being, any monster, was born.

He led the remaining ancestors from the edge of the world, annihilating all the monsters that blocked their path. The white ash from the monsters' enormous corpses spread with his footsteps, announcing the end of the crisis and tolling the death knell for the monsters.

After the final battle, he stripped the monsters of their ability to devour everything, preventing them from causing the previous crisis. He then created the system of spirit particles and artifacts, dividing the world into three layers, causing life and death to begin to cycle, accelerating civilization, and making everything prosperous.

The word "god" was first used to describe this man!

Spiritual King.

The fleeting glimpses of history flashed before Mi Zhen's eyes, from ancient times to the present, everything was vivid in his mind.

"That's how the history recorded in Soul Society goes."

Then, a voice rang in Mima's ear.

"It's not that it's wrong, but rather that it hasn't been around long enough."

The sound continued, and Mima looked around, then was immediately horrified.

An Cang Yu Shou, whose hands were empty, stood beside him, watching the scenes unfold before them together.

Mima instinctively wanted to swing his sword, but he also had nothing in his hand.

"Should we take action? I don't care; this is just my memory."

Dark Azure Mage said calmly, "If you don't want to watch and want to leave, please do so. I don't have any obsession with finding a successor."

"..."

Mi Zhen frowned.

This Dark Azure Guardian did not show any hostility.

"What exactly does 'inheritance' mean?" he asked, maintaining his vigilance.

“It’s just a way of communication among ‘Ancient Hollows’,” Dark Sora replied. “Ancient Hollows that haven’t been modified by the Soul King can transmit the information they possess to their kind through physical contact. Although I am just a defective product created from fragments of Ancient Hollows, I have retained this ability and have made some progress. I can do this through spiritual pressure contact—but I can only transmit information to Hollows. I can’t do it to Shinigami, humans, or Quincy.”

“Just as I thought…” Mima slowly lowered her hand. “What do you want me to see?”

“History,” he replied. “It’s not about the truth, it’s just older history.”

"Ancient history?"

"Keep watching, and you'll find out."

He drew a line in the air with his finger, and the image that had already progressed to the modern era began to rapidly retreat back to its starting point, before continuing forward.

They arrived in an era where life did not exist at all.

"This is……"

Soon, the flashing image moved to the white light that Mima had seen earlier.

The white light that covered the entire world gradually faded, revealing a dim and cold landscape.

The entire head of the magnificent monster, which the Spirit King called "the primordial nothingness," vanished. Deep furrows spread across its body, which quickly turned into fissures. Like a landslide, the enormous pale body began to slowly collapse, the fragments becoming smaller fragments, then sand, dust, and finally nothingness.

This monster, whose size rivals that of a planet, vanished without a trace, leaving not a single mark.

The Spirit King, who caused all of this, is still floating in mid-air, but his body seems to have become... a little transparent?

“In modern recorded history, the Spirit King is a powerful being born to prevent the world from its own destruction,” said Dark Azure Guardian. “That’s not accurate. Although the birth of the Spirit King was indeed related to a crisis in the world, it wasn’t the crisis they thought it was.”

He pointed to the empty world before him and said, "This is it."

"The 'original nothingness' and the Spirit King were the first life forms to be born in the world. The former was blind and foolish, while the latter was omniscient and omnipotent. In order to prevent the world from being destroyed by nothingness, the Spirit King decided to destroy his only kind."

Dark Azure Guardian's words were devoid of emotion, simply stating the facts: "But even for the Spirit King, it would be impossible to do this without paying any price. He killed the original nothingness, but was also backfired upon, gradually withering away, and only awoke again after a long time—that is the history recorded today."

The explosive revelations filled Mi Zhen's mind. He pondered them while continuing to listen to An Cang Yu Shou's words, paying much more attention than he had when he was in school.

"And the original nothingness did not die—in fact, it had no concept of 'death.' The Spirit King could only 'transform' it, causing it to differentiate from an individual into a population, and then use the Spirit Particle System to suppress the abilities of this population, integrating it into the cycle of life and death, and completely eliminating their ability to destroy the world."

"..."

Mizhen kept her mouth shut and didn't say a word.

Dark Azure Guardian might not know, but he was 100% certain that the Spirit King knew that the two of them were having a long talk here.

He's still floating in the sky, who knows if he'll suddenly say, "I think what you've said isn't quite accurate."

“I don’t know about the situation in Hell, but there should be very few people in the Three Realms who know about this, and there may not even be any besides me,” said An Cangyu. “I am something created by the Gangya Dai family from fragments of the ancient corpse, so I can be considered the ‘reincarnation’ of that ancient corpse, which is why I know about it.”

"This is the only consensus among those brainless ancient beings: the Spirit King transformed them into unrecognizable forms, so they resent the Spirit King and spread the cause of everything within their race in this way, urging each of their kind to destroy the world protected by the Spirit King, pointlessly hoping for revenge that can never come—but ironically, this feeling of hatred was given to them by the Spirit King."

"As you've seen, Gu Xu has completely merged into the cycle of life and death created by the Spirit King, leaving behind only some forgeries like me. The anger and resentment they inherited have also disappeared into history." He looked at the Spirit King, who was gradually becoming completely transparent in mid-air. "I have neither the interest nor the ability to take revenge on the Spirit King, but since I was born with this hatred, I must at least fulfill my responsibility of 'inheriting the truth'—as for who the recipient of that inheritance is, that doesn't matter."

"So... this is my purpose."

An Cang Yu Shou sighed: "That's all."

Then, the scenery in front of Mima gradually blurred.

..........................................

Mima's vision returned to normal.

The long scene just now seemed to have only lasted a moment in the real world. He was still firing Cero and fighting against Dark Azure Mage.

Perhaps due to the excessive exertion during the protracted battle, the pale white spiritual pressure of the Dark Azure Mage gradually showed signs of weakness and was pushed back by the dark torrent shot out by Mima.

After reaching a certain critical point, it completely collapses and flows away in a torrent.