Twelfth Division's underground Reishi Research Institute, although on the surface it is the team building and Shinigami Research and Development Institute, the underground is completely Senjumaru Shutara's original Reishi Research Institute, which has never been touched, oh, not including decoration and equipment.
Kisuke Urahara was in a daze over a stack of unfinished records. It was not unusual for him not to go home in the middle of the night.
What's strange is the burst of footsteps outside the door: light and chaotic, stopping and walking, walking and stopping, like a person who has exhausted all his courage before knocking on the door.
The door was opened a crack.
"...Urahara Captain?"
The visitor paused first and changed his words: "I... I am Ge Kuang"
Urahara actually didn't know her. He had heard of Ge Kuang's name, but at this moment and with this look, he appeared at the door of Shinigami Research and Development Institute and made his name very clear.
He looked up at her.
In my impression, Uta Tsunayashiro should be gentle and cheerful, the kind of person who would reach out first when seeing someone else carrying a burden on their shoulders. However, standing under the lamp, she seemed to have been hollowed out by something. When she spoke, her voice floated, almost weak, and almost shy. It was the feeling of a person who suddenly didn't know how to hand over herself.
"I... I need to ask you something."
Urahara looked at her and then at the empty corridor
"Say it."
He immediately showed his dead eyes and said with an impatient tone, "Let me hear what's important. Come to me in the middle of the night."
Ge Kuang did not say anything immediately. She sat down on the chair, and the light from the culture tank danced on the side of her face. When she spoke, the first thing she said was not a request, but an experiment that should not be awakened.
She should have been asleep.
The person at the Tsunayashiro Clan told her that it was just an ordinary Reiatsu measurement, and she could go back after the measurement. She did faint when the needle fell, but she woke up midway.
That kind of drowsiness, with consciousness floating in a white mist, the eyelids are too heavy to lift, but the ears are frighteningly clear.
She heard someone talking very close to her, talking about her body, talking about the thing in her body that should not be called her, talking about the carrier, talking about stability, saying that if it was taken out, the host might not be able to maintain its current spiritual body.
Soul King Fragment.
She didn't know what it was, and she didn't have much contact with ancient documents. There was no record of this in Shin'ō Library, but she knew that it was not a good thing, at least for her. It wasn't until the measurement was over, and someone patted her on the shoulder and smiled and said that she had worked hard, that she realized that her palms were covered in cold sweat.
"I want to take it out."
When she said this, she finally raised her eyes, her eyes full of unwillingness to back down. "I don't want to be a... container anymore. Please, besides you, I don't know who else to turn to. Twelfth Division can do things that others can't do. I also know that if this matter gets out, it will hurt you."
Kisuke Urahara After listening, the laziness on his face froze little by little.
Soul King's Fragment.
This is not the first time he has thought of this direction. He discovered Hōgyoku not long ago. It is said that it can realize any wish, but it requires Soul King's Fragment to truly activate it.
No! I see, Hōgyoku, is this the first wish you fulfilled for me? Then Hōgyoku, I want to see what you look like!
Kisuke Urahara's face suddenly became serious. "Have you thought clearly? Taking it out is not as simple as untying a rope. Your spirit body may be unstable, and your family will not pretend it didn't happen. And once I do it, I will not be doing a favor to a friend. The old guy Tsunayashiro Clan is not easy to deal with."
Ge Kuang stood up and bowed: "I'm sorry"
Urahara stood up. "Ms. Ge Kuang, I will help you with this."
"Huh?"
That night, in the deepest operating room of Shinigami Research and Development Institute, the lights were on for a long time.
No one else.
The records were extracted from the daily archives by his own hands.
When the shimmering, rice-grain-sized fragment was slowly peeled out of her body, the operating room was suddenly so quiet that one could hear the water flowing in Reishi Conduit. Ge Kuang's breathing was erratic for a moment, then slowly calmed down. Her Reiatsu was obviously empty.
Urahara looked at the thing in his palm and was silent for a long time.
Hōgyoku...
Within a few days, Tsunayashiro Clan discovered it.
Ge Kuang On the third day after Reiatsu returned home, the routine Reiatsu inspection went wrong. The light in her body that they regarded as an old thing at home was gone. They asked her, and she said she didn't know. She said it so poorly that they almost didn't have to ask it a second time.
So when she left my home, I found out his trip to visit Twelfth Division. Kisuke Urahara's name was quietly added to the Tsunayashiro Clan's list.
No summons
No questioning
There wasn't even any public movement, it was like nothing happened
At the same time, Great Spirit Library is outside.
Sosuke Aizen just came out of the depths of the spiral, with a faint blue coldness still on his collar, Shendu Wuming, Resurrección, Arrancar, these words were still on the tip of his tongue. He should have returned to Fifth Division and pushed what he saw tonight under the water, but in the wind at the entrance of the corridor, another sentence floated in that should not have spread so quickly.
Ge Kuang Tsunayashiro? Soul King Fragment?
He heard these discussions when he passed by the Tsunayashiro Clan side house
He took a detour to Twelfth Division
The Reiatsu of the experiment, the reverberation of failure, and the scrawled footsteps of Squad Member when changing shifts, all mixed together, suitable for hiding a person who shouldn't be there, Kyōka Suigetsu spread out silently, guarding The eyes on the outside passed through him. Reishi Research Institute was not locked at all. When he walked into the deepest part, Kisuke Urahara was facing the door, looking at a Isolation Case.
The box is open.
The light, the size of a grain of rice, was slowly rotating in the dish.
Aizen stood three steps behind him and looked at it for a long time, long enough to confirm: this was not an imitation, not a fake concocted by Reishi, not another beautiful failure of Twelfth Division. It was the same hunger, the same possibility, and the same quietness that could call the boundary optional as the thing in his body.
But... another Hōgyoku?
But the light in the research room suddenly brightened up, as if responding to something, Urahara felt an annoying feeling, and there was a chill behind him.
He turned back sharply.
"Who!"
There was no one around, so he stopped drawing his sword.
"Who's there!"
Aizen adjusts the angle, and there is a blind spot in the field of view with Kisuke Urahara
Unexpected, not just fragments.
There is another person who has already walked on the same road.
Kyōka Suigetsu did not retreat immediately, Aizen quietly left here, and put the unfinished stare into the water first. Urahara's blade swept across the place where he had just stood, cutting away only the shadow of the lamp.