Take Up the Brush, Tsuzurimono Bansho

Yan Si stopped what he was doing, turned his head, and looked at him coldly, waiting for an explanation.

Urahara Kisuke rubbed his hands together and forced himself to explain:

"This device can only work in conjunction with the 'auxiliary Spirit Particle Circuit' buried beneath my room. If you forcibly move it to the Ninth Division and it loses the circuit's support, it'll just be a pile of scrap metal..."

Yan Si understood at once.

Heh, so this was where he'd been waiting for me.

In other words, if I want to use it, I have to ask him to come install it, and as for that "installation fee"...

He asked directly, "Cut the crap. How much will it cost to set up the same auxiliary circuit in my room at the Ninth Division?"

Urahara Kisuke's eyes instantly lit up. He bent over, rubbing his hands even faster, his face plastered with a fawning smile:

"Hehe, Brother Yan Si, you really are a man who understands! This... the price is quite fair. A complete setup will only cost three hundred thousand kan!"

"What?!" Yan Si's image as a "melancholy young master" instantly crumbled.

He pointed at Urahara Kisuke's nose, his voice shooting up several octaves. "This lousy machine only costs forty thousand kan! You want three hundred thousand for the auxiliary equipment?! Urahara Kisuke, have you gone mad for money?!"

Three hundred thousand kan! He was practically treating him like some top Seireitei noble to be fleeced!

After all, while every division subscribed to Soul Society Communication at public expense, each division usually only ordered one copy.

Only individual readers who could not bear waiting in line and paid extra for their own copies would send a portion of the royalties to Yan Si.

He had written for so long and painstakingly saved every bit of his royalties, yet all of it combined amounted to barely over one hundred thousand kan!

And he still owed the tavern fifty thousand kan! This guy had opened his mouth and demanded three hundred thousand?!

Seeing this, Urahara Kisuke hurriedly leaned closer and explained in an extremely low voice:

"Brother Yan Si, listen to me! The auxiliary circuit in my room is... secretly connected to the 'spirit vein node' beneath the Second Division, allowing it to draw enough spiritual power to run the isolation device.

"To make that connection work, I used quite a few precious materials and put a lot of thought into it..."

He wore an expression that said, "You know what I mean." "If I set one up again at the Ninth Division, I'll have to redesign the circuit from scratch and find a way to solve the energy issue. These three hundred thousand kan are really just the cost price. I'm not making much off you!"

Yan Si narrowed his eyes.

A spirit spring was, plainly put, liquid spiritual power. Every division received an allocation for the members' daily training, cooking, and starting fires.

He had not expected this brat to be secretly siphoning it off. Sure enough, just like Lao Lan and Hirako, he was rotten to the core!

Still, after hearing him out, Yan Si understood that this money probably could not be saved.

Without a stable source of high-concentration Reishi, this machine truly was nothing but decoration.

"I don't have three hundred thousand kan right now," Yan Si said irritably.

"Huh?" The light in Urahara Kisuke's face instantly went out, and his whole body wilted.

"But," Yan Si said, changing the subject as he pointed at the machine, "turn it on now!"

Urahara Kisuke froze. "T-turn it on for what?"

Yan Si gritted his teeth and said:

"To write novels and make money, obviously! Otherwise, where am I supposed to get three hundred thousand kan to give you?!"

The moment he heard the words "make money," Urahara Kisuke immediately became full of energy.

He dashed forward in a single stride and deftly pressed the activation button.

"Bzzzz—"

A low vibration sounded. The seemingly random rust patterns on the machine's surface now faintly flowed with a weak Reishi glow.

An invisible Reishi barrier, isolating the inside from the outside, instantly enveloped the cluttered room.

Then, from some unknown corner, Urahara Kisuke brought over a wobbly wooden table and a stool that looked reasonably intact with astonishing speed. He carefully placed them beside the machine, right within the barrier's range.

"Brother Yan Si, keep an eye on the time!"

Urahara Kisuke lowered his voice and pointed at the ceiling.

"In about three hours, the division will collectively draw from the spirit spring to cook! The spiritual power fluctuations might become abnormal then, so you must come out before that."

He did not want Yan Si's "secret writing" to leave the Second Division eating half-cooked meals tonight. If that happened, his little secret would be impossible to hide.

"I won't disturb your flood of inspiration! Take your time writing, take your time!"

With a smile that said, "I understand, I understand everything," Urahara Kisuke quickly backed to the door and shut it tightly with a bang.

Yan Si could even hear the faint sound of him sitting cross-legged outside, his back against the door, voluntarily acting as a temporary guard.

Naturally, Yan Si noticed Urahara Kisuke's thoughtful "service."

The brat might have been a little greedy, but his mind was indeed sharp.

He had probably already guessed that Yan Si needed an absolutely confidential environment for "closed-door writing."

He drew a deep breath and expelled all distractions from his mind.

Now, he had to decide whose story to write.

The story had to resonate with the broad masses of Shinigami and have wide appeal, so that it could gather enough spiritual power in terms of "quantity."

But more importantly, it had to stir the hearts of captain-class powerhouses and produce deep emotional fluctuations. Only then could it achieve a leap in "quality" and condense a "spiritual power seed" capable of breaking through the Spiritual Pressure barrier.

One figure after another flashed through his mind, only to be rejected.

At last, his gaze turned resolute as the most suitable target emerged before him.

Her deeds were legendary enough, her true nature enough to shake the heart of any powerful person, and she herself was in the Seireitei, close at hand!

It would be her!

Determination flashed through Siwei Yan's eyes.

He hesitated no longer and steadily gripped the hilt of the sword at his waist with his right hand.

"Take up the brush—"

He chanted softly, his voice echoing within the isolated barrier.

"Tsuzurimono Bansho."

In an instant, the Zanpakuto in his hand transformed into dazzling motes of Reishi, flowing like a river of stars before finally gathering in his palm.

It was no longer the tragically beautiful Ice-Snow War Fan, but an ancient calligraphy brush with a warm, jade-like shaft, its tip flickering with ever-changing Reishi radiance like starlight!

This was the true form of his Zanpakuto: a brush that interfered with narrative and weaved all things!

Holding Tsuzurimono Bansho, Siwei Yan's entire bearing abruptly changed. All laziness and melancholy faded away, replaced by an incomparably focused, sharp gaze as spiritual light burst from his pupils.

He spread out a blank sheet of manuscript paper, using Reiatsu as ink and his mind as a guide. With the weight of a thousand jun in his brush tip, he brought it down without hesitation!

Black ink spread across the paper, outlining words steeped in the aura of bloodshed and slaughter:

The Killer of Meteor City

Part One · Blood Blossom

At the end of a river paved with bones

I heard

The sound of the first flower bud blooming

It was the soft crack of a throat bone shattering

—Shu Hua.

As the final two words settled, the writing on the manuscript paper seemed to come alive, and a scarlet spiritual glow flashed faintly before vanishing.

An "artistic conception" combining utter purity and utter brutality spread through the isolated space from those brief opening lines.

Siwei Yan slowly lowered his brush, sensing the slight drain on his Reiatsu from writing the opening of this "true legend," as well as the faintly transmitted bloody echo from deep within the river of history through Tsuzurimono Bansho.

At that moment, in another corner of the Fourth Division barracks.

Unohana Retsu, who was seated in the captain's office elegantly arranging flowers, paused slightly as she trimmed a stem.

She raised those gentle, water-like eyes, unfathomably deep beneath their warmth, and looked toward a certain direction in confusion.

In that instant just now, it seemed as though the strings of her heart had...

Been touched ever so slightly by something distant and familiar.

It was as if a flower, long forgotten amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood, nourished by blood, had quietly trembled a petal in some unknown darkness.