Watch a Fight, Gain Experience

Moonlight spilled quietly into the dim corridor.

"Where is this?!"

Lin Nan abruptly opened his eyes, warily surveying the dark surroundings. He remembered that he had just been filling a water jug by the river. Then, the next second, he had ended up here.

In the faint mist, golden moonlight streamed through several windows along the inner curve of the corridor, falling onto the floor of the long hallway, whose color was impossible to make out. The weak glimmer made the corridor just barely visible.

All around him was silent. Lin Nan moved slowly and cautiously along the curved corridor, the faint sound of his footsteps echoing through the narrow passage.

Outside the windows, there was nothing but a full moon in the sky and a dim, hazy screen of light. Shifting patches of color flickered across it, without revealing any details.

Opposite the windows stood several closed doors. Their deep, natural wood color gave them an old-fashioned look.

Lin Nan cautiously approached the first door. He didn't dare call out to see if anyone was nearby. Ever since he had crossed into this world, both Hollows and Soul Reapers had been dangerous to deal with.

In this strange place, it would actually be better if he were alone.

He crept up to the first door and quietly pressed his ear against it. After listening for a while without hearing anything, he placed his hand on the doorknob and slowly opened the door, alert to every sound. The dim moonlight from the doorway revealed the room's furnishings...

A wide silver workbench held a broad keyboard covered in unfamiliar characters, a mouse-like device, and a notebook with a pen clipped to it. Above the workbench hung a huge monitor, which lit up the instant Lin Nan approached.

A ghostly blue glow filled the room.

"I..." Lin Nan instinctively covered his mouth, stifling the profanity that nearly escaped him.

For the brief moment when the screen had lit up, he had felt as if something had suddenly opened its eyes and looked straight at him.

The sensation lasted only an instant before vanishing without a trace.

"These symbols look a lot like the ones used by the people in the Shinigami Research and Development Institute in the anime..." Lin Nan gently ran his fingers over the keyboard covered in strange characters.

He quietly returned to the corridor, repeatedly looking both ways and carefully listening for any movement, making sure no one else was around. Then he tried pushing on the other doors, but none of them budged. It seemed they were all locked.

Only after confirming there was no one else in this eerie space did Lin Nan return to the first room and look at the glowing monitor.

In the menu on the left, a highlighted file was slowly pulsing:

"Battle Replay: Duel with Unohana Retsu."

"That murderous woman doesn't play fair."

Lin Nan muttered to himself, then glanced at the screen. His eyes were immediately drawn to the text on it:

Shell damage detected...

Repair function initiated...

Rei-Pressure Concealment temporarily disabled...

Battle footage recorded...

Friendly reminder: Damage to the Rei-Pressure Shell may slightly increase the extent to which your reiatsu is exposed. Please proceed with caution and do not panic...

"What... does this mean? Did Unohana break my cheat? Let's see what happened."

After a moment's hesitation, Lin Nan moved the mouse and opened the replay of his fight with Unohana Retsu.

The image flickered slightly. The screen clearly showed everything from the moment he entered the 11th Division's temporary barracks to the moment he collapsed after taking three of Unohana's strikes. The footage was crystal clear, and even the sounds at the scene played back in full.

Lin Nan quickly got the hang of operating the replay system. He carefully manipulated the footage, observing his fight with Unohana from different angles.

Kenpachi really was Kenpachi. It was only when he watched from a third-person perspective that he noticed Unohana's first slash had formed an almost imperceptible shockwave on the ground.

"She went straight for the kill. This woman really doesn't look like a good person! That terrifying strike, and I actually blocked it?!"

He kept rotating the camera, examining Unohana's stance, the angle of her strikes, and her body position frame by frame. As the footage changed, he repeatedly worked out how she had attacked.

"...If I'd put a little more force into my right hand on the first strike, or leaned a few centimeters farther forward and kept my back pressed against the blade, then my shoulder probably wouldn't have been hurt..."

Lin Nan repeatedly acted out the movements from the video, searching for flaws in his own technique. With the footage as a guide and the ability to switch between different angles, he gained a much more precise understanding of both their movements.

Time passed, and the fight replayed again and again. As he watched those three strikes over and over, Lin Nan gradually noticed their effects on the battlefield.

His clothes, sliced open by the sword tip; the strands of hair that had fallen; and the flagpole, as thick as a bowl, cut through by the blade... He hadn't noticed any of it during the fight.

"So I almost hurt Unohana too... This body's reflexes are that good?"

Lin Nan stared at his bloodied right arm on the screen, then looked at his own uninjured body, deep in thought.

"Considering how much damage was done to those objects, I should've had my arms and legs broken ages ago. So my body got tougher after I crossed over, too?"

He opened the replay of his fight with the Kusajishi Group to confirm his theory.

"So that's why the fat guy's giant spiked hammer couldn't hurt me. My body's just too tough... Hey, why does that big, dark-skinned fatty look so familiar...?"

With his notes to refer to, Lin Nan had finally gotten a fairly good grasp of his situation. He went through the video recordings one by one, analyzing every clue. After confirming he hadn't found anything else new, he opened the footage of his fight with Unohana and analyzed it again.

In the real world, somewhere in a hospital bed, Lin Nan's wounds had been carefully bandaged. Dense reiatsu began to gather around his body, within a radius of a meter. As time passed, it gradually formed an extremely thin, almost imperceptible shell of reiatsu.

Lin Nan remained completely unaware of the changes in the outside world. His attention was focused on a line of text on the screen:

"Proficiency increased. Check the relevant page."

Puzzled, Lin Nan clicked the menu button at the top of the screen, marked with a katana and a diamond-shaped icon. A new page appeared before him:

Hakuda: Beginner; Hakuda proficiency: +1; Total Hakuda points: 1;

Zanjutsu: Beginner; Zanjutsu proficiency: +1; Total Zanjutsu points: 1.

Lin Nan was looking at the two lines of text and about to consider what they meant when he suddenly heard a distant, muffled conversation behind him. He jolted, every hair on his body standing on end, and immediately turned to look outside.

The voices seemed to come from outside, their faint echoes carrying through the silent, dim corridor. Carefully controlling his footsteps, Lin Nan slowly approached the doorway and peered out.

No one appeared, but the conversation continued. He could tell there were both male and female voices, but they sounded as if they were coming through a wall, and he couldn't make out what they were saying.

Puzzled, Lin Nan looked around until he finally found the source of the voices: the old-fashioned double doors.

Mustering his courage, he slowly walked up to the doors and quietly pressed his ear against one of the wooden panels.