Teacher Aizen's Personal Instruction
The students looked at one another. Most of them were like Renji Abarai and had learned nothing from the Kidō their teacher had just used.
Momo Hinamori stepped forward and stopped twenty meters from the first target.
She tentatively extended a finger and recited aloud:
"O silent fang that rends the heavens, O raging breath that coils around the atmosphere, gather at my fingertip and pierce all things."
"Hadō #1: Shō."
But nothing happened.
Seemingly unwilling to give up, she called out again, "Hadō #1: Shō."
Still, there was no effect.
Renji Abarai stood beside her with his hands on his hips. "See? That teacher didn't teach us anything."
Izuru Kira stood nearby too, frowning with his head slightly lowered. It was unclear what he was thinking about.
Rukia walked up beside Momo Hinamori and stopped, facing the second target.
She raised a finger on her right hand and closed her eyes. After a long wait, she slowly spoke:
"O silent fang that rends the heavens, O raging breath that coils around the atmosphere, gather at my fingertip and pierce all things."
"Hadō #1: Shō."
With a faint pop, a ring of air burst from her fingertip.
It wasn't large enough to do more than stir Momo Hinamori's long black hair a few times, much less strike the target twenty meters away.
Even so, Rukia was different from Momo Hinamori. Momo had gotten no reaction at all, while something had definitely begun to take shape at Rukia's fingertip.
"Rukia, you're amazing! How did you do that?"
Renji Abarai shouted as he rushed over to her. "Teach me!" he said excitedly.
Rukia didn't keep it to herself. She turned to address all her classmates.
"Didn't the teacher say so? Kidō is a way of using Spiritual Power, so I tried concentrating my Spiritual Power at my fingertip."
Then she looked down at her index finger, frowning deeply.
"But the way I just did it definitely wasn't right. I don't know what went wrong."
Tokoyo Misao came over and stopped beside Rukia.
He calmly raised a finger and spoke quickly:
"O silent fang that rends the heavens, O raging breath that coils around the atmosphere, gather at my fingertip and pierce all things."
"Hadō #1: Shō."
A pop rang out, much like the one Rukia had made, but a moment later came a smack.
Everyone looked over in surprise and saw a faint mark on the target.
Tokoyo Misao had clearly succeeded in using Kidō.
Perhaps because of his Spiritual Power, however, it hadn't done the same damage as the teacher's.
But he had succeeded.
Chapter 7: Teacher Aizen's Personal Instruction
Rukia looked at the target, then turned and raised her head to look at Misao's face.
An eager light flashed in her eyes. "How did you do it?" she asked at once.
Misao held out his finger, then reached up with his left hand and tapped the center of his chest.
"Generally speaking, most of our Reishi gathers at the Saketsu."
Then he moved his left hand over his upper arm, forearm, the back of his hand, and his fingertip, in that order.
"So we need to control the Reishi in our bodies, starting at the Saketsu and moving down from the shoulder all the way to the fingertip."
"I know that too. That's what I just did," Rukia said.
"We already learned the basics of using Reishi just now. The problem is that I didn't succeed in using Kidō."
Tokoyo lowered his head slightly and met Rukia's gaze. He didn't know why, but Onion was being a little impatient.
He pressed his left hand downward toward the ground, telling Onion not to rush, then spoke calmly.
"Didn't you notice? Rather than Reishi, Hadō #1: Shō is more like wind."
Everyone went blank at those words.
They thought back carefully to when Teacher Ōu had used Hadō.
And to what it had looked like when Rukia and Misao used it.
Renji Abarai shouted in confusion:
"That's not right. How can Reishi turn into wind? It should be..."
As all the students understood it, and as their teacher had stated clearly in their classroom lesson a few days ago,
Reishi was Reishi, the basic particle that made up their bodies and everything else. It was completely different from wind, fire, water, electricity, and the like.
Wind, fire, water, electricity, earth, and stone were all made of Reishi.
"Misao, do you mean changing the properties of Reishi into wind?" Izuru Kira stepped forward a couple of paces and raised his head as he spoke.
He too was frowning deeply. He had been wondering what Kidō really was ever since earlier.
Then he had heard Misao say that Hadō #1: Shō was wind, not Reishi.
He felt as though he had grasped something.
Misao nodded at him and smiled.
"You're right, Lemon.
Put simply, Kidō is a way of using Reishi, and Hadō #1: Shō gives Reishi the properties of wind, making it manifest as wind.
As for the incantation we just practiced, it's a medium that helps us understand and use it quickly."
Misao said no more. Instead, he turned back to the distant target.
Once again, he held out his right arm and extended a finger, then touched the fingertips of his left hand to the Saketsu in his chest.
His fingers moved as he spoke:
"O silent fang that rends the heavens, O raging breath that coils around the atmosphere, gather at my fingertip and pierce all things."
"Hadō #1:"
By this point, his fingers had reached the back of his hand.
As he opened his mouth to say "Shō," the fingers of his left hand reached the extended fingertip of his right. "Shō."
As the word left his mouth, another vortex burst from his fingertip and reached the target twenty meters away a moment later.
"Do you understand?" He smiled at the classmates around him.
"I don't understand at all!" Renji Abarai roared.
He really didn't understand what had just happened.
Rukia, meanwhile, nodded and once again pointed a finger at the distant target.
This time, she recited more slowly, controlling the Reishi in her body. "Hadō #1: Shō!"
A wave of air burst out again, but it formed no forward-directed force.
Her expression grew somewhat happier, though, and she quickly turned to Misao and spoke loudly.
"When I was chanting just now, I felt the Reishi pause and gather at the corresponding places. Is that right?"
Misao smiled and nodded. "That's right. The chant actually tells us how to control the Reishi:
how to gather it, how to make it flow, how to change its properties in the end, and then release it.
So what we should do now is carefully feel the changes in the Reishi in our bodies as we chant.
Even the slightest change—you have to catch it."
Rukia nodded rapidly a few times, then extended a finger with some excitement.
While chanting just now, she had clearly felt a corresponding part of her body grow slightly warm with each passage of the incantation.
That was probably a change brought about by the flow of Reishi mapped out by the incantation.
This time, she chanted more slowly. "Hadō #1: Shō!"
Her eyes flew wide as she spoke the word.
With a tremendous bang, a violent blast of air erupted from her fingertip and struck the target twenty meters away.
With a clatter, the wooden target was smashed apart by her Hadō.
She stood there stunned. A moment later, she said a little sheepishly, "I think I used too much Reishi at the end."
"Wow, Rukia, you're amazing!" Momo Hinamori praised her happily from the side. Then she too pointed a finger at the target and recited, "Hadō #1: Shō!"
With a pop, she successfully released it too. "Wow, I can do it too!"
Rukia smiled and nodded. "That's right. You just have to follow the feeling of the chant."
As she spoke, she turned, a bright light shining in her eyes. "You really are amazing, Misao."
Tokoyo Misao calmly waved a hand.
"That's how it's done. Get back to practicing, Momo, Kira."
As he spoke, his eyes fell on Renji Abarai.
"Now you know why I gave you the nickname Red-Haired Baboon, right?"
Renji Abarai was still thoroughly unconvinced.
He stepped forward, clenched his right hand into a fist, and roared, "You—"
Before he could finish, he heard someone say, "Hadō #1: Shō."
With a pop, Renji Abarai's body went rigid. He slowly turned his head.
Izuru Kira had succeeded too.
"Damn it!" he roared, unwilling to accept it. Then he ran to one side, raised a finger, and began shouting over and over.
"Hadō #1: Shō!"
"Shō! Shō!"
"Come on, Shō!"
"Why won't it come out? Damn it!"
Tokoyo Misao had already walked off to one side to rest.
A glimmer of silver light passed through his eyes as he calmly watched the spot where his friends were practicing.
The Eternal Eyes allowed him to see and understand the essence of things directly, which was why he could learn so quickly.
And in the corner of his eye, at the place where Teacher Ōu should have been hiding by the corner of the corridor,
a Spirit Ribbon appeared that shouldn't have been there.
That Spirit Ribbon was completely different from an ordinary Soul Reaper's. An ordinary Soul Reaper's was bright red, while this one was so red it verged on black and purple.
That aura, that aura formed by Reishi, was simply beyond what other Soul Reapers could compare to.
And who was the owner of that peculiar Reiatsu?
As luck would have it, Misao had already seen him at the opening ceremony some time ago.
In other words, the person who had been teaching the students at the front of the training ground and was now secretly hiding in the corridor wasn't Teacher Ōu at all.
It was the Fifth Division Captain of the Gotei 13, whom Misao had already seen at the opening ceremony—Sōsuke Aizen.