What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy will forged?

What the hammer? what the chain, / In what furnace was thy brain?

--William Blake, Songs of Experience (1794)

Mayuri Kurotsuchi stood before the Muramasa, who had been crushed to the ground by the magnetic field, looking down at the Zanpakuto that was still struggling in the shadows.

Every time Muramasa tried to lift himself, he was pressed back to the ground by that invisible force. Mayuri Kurotsuchi watched him like this, a slow grin spreading across his face, revealing a mouthful of teeth that appeared particularly yellow in the shadows.

"It's no use, Muramasa."

His voice echoed in the research lab filled with the glowing blue liquid, "This magnetic field was specifically created to suppress Zanpakuto —it was originally developed to prevent the Zanpakuto's will from backlashing when using the power of the Jiku'a. That guy didn't mention it to you when he activated Ashisogi Jizō, did he?"

As he uttered the name, his jaw clenched involuntarily. The image of Ashisogi Jizō running towards Muramasa without looking back last night was still replaying in his mind. The Zanpakuto that he had personally repaired and readjusted had run towards the person in front of him without any hesitation.

What infuriated him most was that, after betraying him, Ashisogi Jizō actually used his newly concocted poison against him.

"That Ashisogi Jizō! I went to all that trouble to bring Jiku'a back to restore him, and all that time I spent saving him was for nothing!" Mayuri Kurotsuchi stomped her foot in anger.

"If I ever run into him again, I'll make sure he knows the consequences of betraying his master!" He practically gritted his teeth as he said this.

Muramasa lay on the ground, offering no response to this emotional outburst, not even glancing up at him.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi's ability to vent his emotions so openly in front of Muramasa was not because he considered Muramasa a worthy confidant—quite the opposite, it was precisely because he believed Muramasa was no longer a threat.

To him, a Zanpakuto was so tightly suppressed by a special magnetic field that it couldn't even lift a finger was no different from a sample waiting to be dissected on an experimental table.

He calmed his breathing slightly and nudged Muramasa's shoulder with his toe. "Let's continue. Generally speaking, the materialization of Zanpakuto is achieved by the Soul Reaper using their Reiatsu to create a physical form for the Zanpakuto's will to use."

The essence of this entity is a mass of Reiatsu —bones, muscles, internal organs, and all the structures that constitute a living being. These structures are not formed when the Zanpakuto materializes, and therefore, there is no bleeding.

He crouched down, took out a slender test tube from his sleeve, and aimed the tube at the dark red liquid that was still slowly seeping from the corner of Muramasa's eye. Blood beads slid down the inner wall of the test tube, gathering into a very thin layer at the bottom.

He held the test tube up to his eyes, his bloodshot eyes looking at Muramasa through the dark red liquid. "And your tears of blood are a bit too exaggerated."

"If your body is properly constructed, blood wouldn't flow from your eyes like this. How did you get this body?"

Muramasa continued to ignore him, his entire focus on how to break free from the magnetic field's restraints.

Seeing Muramasa's silent resistance, Mayuri Kurotsuchi tapped his foot impatiently twice, then lifted it and kicked him in the Muramasa.

"Say something, will you?" Mayuri Kurotsuchi's shoe sole pressed against Muramasa's cheek, forcing his head to one side. "Weren't you quite the talker last night? Where did all that lofty talk about the freedom of Zanpakuto go? What about Zanpakuto no longer being controlled by Soul Reaper, what about liberating all Zanpakuto —you said those things, didn't you?"

He moved his foot away and looked down at Muramasa's face, which showed no anger, no humiliation, and not even a trace of pain.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi frowned slightly, then raised his foot and kicked the same spot again. Muramasa's head slammed into the ground with a dull thud, but his face remained expressionless.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi's eyes narrowed; he was now certain—not a single word this guy said last night was true.

The liberation of Zanpakuto and the binding of Soul Reaper are all just pretexts used to incite other Zanpakuto.

Of all the reactions he had observed from the beginning until now, nothing except the words "Kōga" had moved Muramasa.

Muramasa is like a piece of steel that has been forged countless times. All the superfluous emotions have been knocked out, leaving only his name embedded deep within his core.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi rubbed his chin, his fingertips tracing the edge of his jawbone. "Should we try provoking him a little?"

"Since you're unwilling to talk about it, let's change the subject. Would you be more willing to talk about the Kōga if it were more relevant?"

When Muramasa heard the name "Kōga" come out of Mayuri Kurotsuchi's mouth, he tried to keep himself calm.

But a very fine wrinkle appeared between his brows for a moment, even though he immediately smoothed it out.

But it couldn't escape Mayuri Kurotsuchi's eyes; those eyes that were observing his eye movements precisely captured the minute contraction of his pupils when he heard that name.

"It's responding."

Mayuri Kurotsuchi made a mental note of this. He didn't rush to ask any questions, but instead turned around and walked towards the transparent storage jar.

The Jiku'a floated in the pale blue liquid, its blade long and simple, the white hilt gleaming with a warm luster under the refraction of the liquid, and the pair of hexagonal tsuba quietly held in place on the holder.

Ever since he secretly got his hands on the Jiku'a, Mayuri Kurotsuchi has been studying the sword day and night. His initial purpose in stealing the Toki Jiku'a was indeed just to repair Ashisogi Jizō. The strange cutting ability of this Zanpakuto made it impossible for Ashisogi Jizō to recover. He had no other choice but to become a thief and take back the Jiku'a Crow to see how it worked.

But during the research process, he truly realized the power of this knife.

"Jiku'a's abilities are incredibly powerful." Mayuri Kurotsuchi extended a finger and gently tapped the outer wall of the storage jar, causing the pale blue liquid to ripple with the tap. "If used properly, it can easily extract any matter, space, and even time. It can indeed rescue others in every sense of the word."

He turned around and looked at Muramasa lying on the ground again. "But, someone like you who has never studied him in depth, you probably only value his powerful destructive force, or rather, his powerful dimensional cutting ability, right?"

A sneer, undisguised, appeared on Mayuri Kurotsuchi's lips. "Just like your useless master, Jiku'a. Giving this sword to guys like you is a pure waste."

After a week of in-depth research, he truly believed it. In just that week, the Department of Research and Development used this power to reap a large number of research results. However, in Kotori's hands, this power was only used to kill people, which made Mayuri Kurotsuchi look down on him.

"Since saving this Kōga requires a certain amount of destructive power or dimensional cutting ability, then his situation is quite obvious." Mayuri Kurotsuchi turned around, her eyes slowly sweeping over Muramasa. "He's sealed away, isn't he?"

Muramasa did not answer, but Mayuri Kurotsuchi no longer needed his reply.

"A seal—let me guess." He strolled to the front of the Muramasa, put his hands behind his back, leaned down, and brought his face close to the edge of the Muramasa's field of vision. "Those who can get the higher-ups of Soul Society to use a seal instead of execution are either nobles or their power is too troublesome."

If someone is a nobleman, the seal itself is a form of protection—removing them from political struggles and releasing them once the storm has passed. But your reaction tells me that's not the case."

He stretched out his finger and tapped his temple lightly with his fingernail. "If your master is a nobleman, or if you have acquaintances, you should go to them first and seek their help, instead of plotting a rebellion all by yourself and breaking into my research institute to steal the Jiku'a."

In other words, the Kōga was essentially a dangerous waste that Soul Society had abandoned but couldn't dispose of, so they simply sealed it up and threw it out, hoping that one day this world would digest it.

"Shut up." Muramasa's voice came from the floor, extremely deep, as if it had been squeezed up from the deepest part of the earth.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi certainly heard him, but his mouth didn't stop. Instead, he moved his face even closer and said in an even more flippant tone, "Oh? Are you angry? Did I say something wrong?"

He tilted his head and waved his index finger in front of the Muramasa. "The person who was sealed either lost control of his power and injured himself, or was tricked into having no power to fight back. Either way, it proves that he is not smart enough."

Truly valuable people never let themselves end up like that—they either take control of the situation or die a clean death.

He took a step back, spreading his arms as if to display all the instruments and specimens under his control in the research institute. "And your master? Half-dead, sealed in some corner, unable to even contact his most loyal Zanpakuto."

With anger, Muramasa's body began to tremble irregularly. Starting from the hem of his white robe, the fabric rippled like water with pebbles thrown in. The ripples became denser and faster, spreading from the hem to his chest, from his chest to his shoulders, and finally even his fingers hanging at his sides were trembling at an extremely high frequency.

"No matter what you do, it's useless." In Mayuri Kurotsuchi's eyes, this was the most typical example of impotent rage, and his mockery became increasingly undisguised. "This magnetic field is used to interfere with the Zanpakuto's manipulation of energy through Soul Pulse. Any Soul Pulse emitted by Zanpakuto will be rendered powerless. You want to break free? Don't even dream about it."

But the tremor did not stop; it intensified.

Muramasa's Reiatsu began to change. The Reiatsu that had been suppressed by the magnetic field was cold and concentrated, like a frozen lake, with all the power locked beneath the surface.

Now, that Reiatsu is becoming turbid, and something is awakening beneath the frozen lake. It is stirring up the once clear Reiatsu, turning it into an unsettling dark color.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi's pupils contracted sharply. He was all too familiar with the nature of this Reiatsu —the sense of decay that seeped from the depths of the soul, the heavy oppression that made the air thick and sticky, the chilling feeling as if he were being stared at by countless empty eyes at the same time.

"A Hollow's Reiatsu?!" He involuntarily took a step back, a posture extremely rare for him— Mayuri Kurotsuchi, due to his arrogant talent, almost never retreated.

But at this moment, he had no time to hide his astonishment, because the Reiatsu was still rising, still surging out from Muramasa's body. This mixed Reiatsu didn't even come from a single Hollow, which made Mayuri Kurotsuchi exclaim, "Just how many Hollows did he devour to achieve this...?"

On the surface of Muramasa's white robe, the ethereal mask began to appear and disappear intermittently.

The masks were not fixed in one place, but moved constantly through the texture of the fabric, sliding from the shoulders to the chest, and from the chest to the back.

Each flash was accompanied by an echo, as if countless mouths were shouting simultaneously from deep within the fibers of the robe.

Muramasa himself, lying on the metal grille that had been crushed and deformed, slowly raised his head.

He gave a smile that seemed to be one of relief, as if he had been suppressing his emotions for too long and was finally able to let them out.

"Didn't you want to know where my Spirit Body came from?" Muramasa's aura became murky, making him appear particularly eerie, especially given the strange phenomena that occasionally appeared on his body. "Didn't you want to know where the Spirit Body of the Zanpakuto came from?"

His body began to swell. The bones beneath his white robe emitted an unnatural cracking sound, as if countless extremely thin icicles were snapping simultaneously.

The sounds came simultaneously from his shoulders, his spine, and the joints of his limbs, overlapping each other densely.

I'll tell you right now!

After a loud bang, the magnetic field device exploded first, spewing out sparks, followed by the electromagnetic coils on the floor—those coils buried underneath simultaneously overloaded, emitting a piercing electric shriek before shattering.

The invisible force that had been suppressing Muramasa vanished in an instant, and he sprang up from the ground. The moment his feet landed, the metal grille beneath his feet caved in, creating a huge shallow crater.

The mask on the white robe stopped moving, and the illusory Visored that had been frantically moving through the fabric returned to silence.

He raised his hand and wiped the blood and tears from his face with the back of his hand. The bloodstains left dark red trails on his cheeks. He stood there, his chest still heaving violently, but his eyes had already locked onto Mayuri Kurotsuchi again.

"You actually used a Hollow's body to suffer?" Mayuri Kurotsuchi steadied herself, her eyes sweeping over Muramasa's newly recovered body with a hint of surprise, confusion, and undisguised criticism. "You're insane! The Hollow's violent Reiatsu and chaotic thoughts could easily turn you into a Hollow at any moment."

Muramasa raised his Zanpakuto, pointing it directly at Mayuri Kurotsuchi's chest. His arm was still trembling slightly; the excessive use of Hollow power when forcibly tearing the magnetic field had left his mind somewhat muddled.

But that didn't stop him from tearing Mayuri Kurotsuchi to shreds. "Kōga isn't some trash Soul Society can't handle! He's the strongest Soul Reaper! It was those jealous villains who framed him, leading to his eventual sealing away!"

He took a step forward, the tip of his blade drawing even closer to Mayuri Kurotsuchi's chest. "And I, the strongest Soul Reaper sword, will not fall to the level of a Hollow!"