The Second Half of the Course

The next day, Shin'ō Academy welcomed the second round of captain-led courses.

After the first day's trial by fire, the students thought they had figured out each captain's style.

Yan Yuan was a strict teacher, Shigyo was a rogue, Shihōin was the Grim Reaper, Shijima was a Buddha, Kumenoi was a gang boss, and Katori was a gentle older sister.

They thought there would be nothing left to fear on the second day.

They were wrong.

Shiba Ichisegawa's Reiatsu course.

He stood there with a calm expression, an even pace, and solid material. Starting with the nature of Reiatsu, he covered sensing, releasing, restraining, and compressing it step by step, with clear logic and apt examples.

He was neither fierce, roguish, cold, nor smiling. He was not intimidating, nor was he so gentle that it distracted them. He simply taught normally.

Afterward, the students remembered that "Reiatsu is the foundation of a Soul Reaper."

Some thought Captain Shiba taught wonderfully, far easier to understand than Captain Yan Yuan from yesterday, the one who kept pushing up his glasses. Others felt there was nothing remarkable about it. It was simply a normal lesson.

Danjiro Obana's Kidō course had a completely different teaching style from Yan Yuan's.

Yan Yuan "looked down on you and told you the right answer," while Obana "squatted down beside you and worked out where the answer came from."

He would pause to ask, "Is there anything here you don't understand?" He would take the initiative to walk among the students and check their notes. When someone stumbled over a chant, he would say, "It's all right. Try again."

His attitude was gentle, his explanations meticulous, and he even cracked a joke now and then. The students thought Captain Obana was a wonderful person, and Kidō no longer seemed quite so frightening.

The Reiatsu course was normal, and the Kidō course was friendly. No one was beaten flat in class, no one was scared stiff, and no one needed to lean against the wall just to leave the classroom. They thought that was all there would be today.

But those assigned to Furoufushi Saito's Shunpo course were out of luck.

There was something deeply unpleasant in her eyes.

Contempt.

The kind of contempt that said, "This is all you people amount to."

"Shunpo."

Saito's voice was neither loud nor soft, but her tone made their teeth itch. "If you can't even take two steps, then I'll teach you today. If you can't learn it, keep practicing until you can."

The sixty students stood on the blue-brick ground in the formation they had used yesterday. Some were nervous, some unconvinced, and some expressionless. Saito gave them little time to prepare.

"I'll be your sparring partner." Saito drew a wooden sword from her waist, its blade flashing beneath the sunlight.

"I'll use Shunpo suppressed to one-tenth of my strength to chase you. Your task is simple: use Shunpo to evade my attacks."

The students froze. One-tenth? Evade?

"Begin."

Saito vanished from where she stood.

In the next instant, she was already before a student. Her sword's flat swept sideways and struck the student's shoulder. The blow was not heavy, but it was enough to send the student staggering back several steps, nearly falling.

"Too slow."

Saito did not stop.

Her figure flickered constantly across the training ground. Every time she appeared, she was before a student. Every swing of her sword landed precisely with its flat on some part of the body: shoulder, arm, thigh, waist.

She controlled the strength perfectly. It would not injure them, but it hurt. It made them unsteady, and it created an overwhelming urge to dodge her next attack.

"You, your legs are too stiff."

"You, where are you looking?"

"You, send your Reiatsu to the soles of your feet, not your toes."

"You, you dodged once and then stopped moving? Did you think I'd only swing once?"

"You call that Shunpo? That's an old lady crossing the street."

Of the sixty students, not one escaped being called out by her.

Not one person's Shunpo could evade her attacks. Even Shunpo suppressed to one-tenth of her strength vastly exceeded their current reaction speed.

Every strike of the sword's flat came with a taunt, and every taunt was like a needle stabbing into the students' pride.

Some clenched their teeth, some had reddened eyes, some clenched their fists and then released them. Some began practicing Shunpo desperately—not to master it, but to make that hateful Sixth Division captain shut up.

Today was Swordsmanship class. It was very different.

Because of the previous batch of students' complaints, this group had entered the swordsmanship hall prepared to face Nobutsuna Shigyo's roguish face.

But the one seated cross-legged at the front of the hall was not Shigyo.

It was a man with a shaved pate and a drooping mustache, seated on the floor with his sword beside him, resting with his eyes closed.

"I am Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto. I will teach today's swordsmanship course." Though he did not open his eyes, he had still sensed the students' approach.

None of the sixty students knew what that name meant. They exchanged glances. Some shrugged, while others shook their heads. Shin'ō Academy had only been open for eight days, and no one had told them what the Commander-General of the Gotei 13 looked like. They only knew that the man before them was one of the captains, wearing a white haori—the same white haori as Captain Shigyo, the roguish captain from yesterday.

That was all.

Yamamoto said nothing more.

He began teaching swordsmanship, the most basic fundamentals.

How to grip a sword, draw it, sheath it, perform a Straight Cut, and make an angled cut.

There were no flashy moves, no shocking demonstration of "one slash, seven blades severed," and no unnecessary words. He simply taught them one movement at a time and corrected them one movement at a time. If their grip angle was wrong, he walked over and adjusted their hands. If their drawing trajectory was off, he stood behind them, held their hands, and drew the blade again. If their shoulders rose during a Straight Cut, he pressed those shoulders down with his palm for an entire lesson.

The students found it boring.

It was not disrespect. They genuinely found it boring.

They had heard that Captain Shigyo began by fighting seven people alone and severed six swords with one strike. That immediate pressure and drama had made every student remember Nobutsuna Shigyo's name.

But this man, Yamamoto something-or-other, had a name too long to remember. He just stood there teaching them how to grip a sword, draw it, and perform a Straight Cut. It was no different from what their basic-course instructors taught—if anything, it was even more boring. At least those instructors told a few jokes to liven up the atmosphere. This old man never smiled, never joked, and his tone never changed from beginning to end.

"Grip the sword."

"Draw the sword."

"Cut."

"Sheathe the sword."

"Again."

"Again."

"Again."

Some students thought, This captain is so dull.

Some students thought, Captain Shigyo is far stronger than him.

Some students thought, Could he just be an ordinary captain?

No one knew that this "ordinary captain" was the Commander-General of the Gotei 13.

No one knew that this "dull" old man was the strongest Soul Reaper in the Soul Society for the past thousand years. No one knew that this "boring" white-bearded old man could set the entire Seireitei ablaze merely by releasing his Reiatsu.

They only found it boring—so boring that some began yawning in secret, so boring that some counted how many times Yamamoto said "again." By the final repetition, they had counted forty-seven times, then gave up.

Of course Yamamoto knew what they were thinking. He did not expose them, release his Reiatsu to prove himself, or smash the floor with one palm to intimidate these children who knew neither heaven nor earth. He simply continued teaching: grip the sword, draw the sword, Straight Cut, again and again. He would teach them until they graduated, until they understood why those forty-seven repetitions of "again" mattered more than any flashy demonstration.

Arts class.

When the students entered the arts classroom, they were already prepared to see Bakuzan Katori's gentle smile.

But standing at the front was not Katori. It was Yachiru Unohana. She wore a white captain's haori, her hair hanging loose behind her, and her face was dark.

Not figuratively.

It was truly dark—gloomy, oppressive, the sort of darkness that made it seem as if storm clouds were pressing down upon the city. Her lips were pressed downward, the space between her brows much narrower than usual, and there was no light in her eyes.

The students did not know why Captain Unohana's expression was so terrible. They only knew that today's arts instructor had been replaced by a woman who seemed to be in an extremely bad mood. What they did not know was that Unohana had only one thought in her mind at that moment.

Yamamoto had made her teach an arts class.

"You need to calm down," Yamamoto had told her yesterday.

Calm down.

Yachiru Unohana, the most vicious murderer in Soul Society history, captain of the Eleventh Division, the ender of eighty thousand schools of swordsmanship—Yamamoto had made her teach flower arrangement so she could calm down. Standing behind the lectern, she held today's flower material: a white camellia. Sunlight streamed through the window and fell across her face, making it even darker.

What↗ do↘ you→ mean↘ by→ "calm↗ down"~?! she screamed inwardly, while her expression did not move at all.

But class still had to proceed.

Unohana took a deep breath, picked up the flower shears, and began demonstrating.

Her hands were steady. Naturally, the hands of a killer were steady. Her branch-cutting movements were precise to the millimeter, every cut as smooth as though measured with a ruler. Her explanations were concise and efficient, with no nonsense, no smile, and not the slightest trace of "gentle consideration."

She was not skilled at flower arrangement, but she was not completely incapable of it.

Every word seemed squeezed from between her teeth. "The main branch should be one and a half times the height of the vase."

"The secondary branch should angle thirty degrees to the left."

"This branch is too long."

The students trembled as they followed along. No one dared ask questions, whisper to a classmate, or make any unnecessary sound. The entire classroom was as silent as a grave. Occasionally, flower shears fell to the floor. When the student picked them up, their hands shook—not because the shears were heavy, but because they were afraid.

Unohana watched the trembling students clumsily arrange their flower branches, and the irritation in her heart surged in wave after wave. She remembered Yamamoto saying, "You need to calm down." Her grip tightened around the flower shears.

Calm down.

Calm down.

Calm down.

Meanwhile, Shuichi went to teach the Hakuda he had rarely used.

"Hakuda is the technique of fighting with your body. You don't need a sword, Kidō, or any tools. Your hands and feet are your weapons."

Shuichi was basically repeating the lesson materials the instructors used. Well, Shuichi had gotten those lesson materials from them too.

He began teaching.

Straight punch.

Hook punch.

Uppercut.

Front kick.

Side kick.

Sweep kick.

He demonstrated one movement at a time, then had the students follow one movement at a time.

His teaching was formulaic, standardized, and systematic, like an open Hakuda textbook.

People were discussing today's classes on the training ground.

"Captain Saito's Shunpo class made me so mad I was grinding my teeth!"

"Don't even mention it. My legs are still shaking."

"Did you see Captain Unohana in arts class? Her face was completely dark."

"I thought Captain Katori would be teaching it, but they switched her out. It scared me to death."

"Who was that old man in swordsmanship class? Yamamoto something-or-other? So boring."

"No idea. Anyway, it was pretty dull."

"Captain Shuichi's Hakuda class was fairly normal, though."

"Yeah. Normal is nice."

Besides that, there was one special course.

It was taught by Senjumaru Shutara.

The first half might as well have been a heavenly book.

Reishi laws.

Reishi composition.

Sixty students, sixty blank faces.

No one raised a hand to ask questions. It was not that they did not want to ask—they did not know where to begin. They could not even formulate a question. Some tried writing a few symbols in their notebooks, only to find they could not recognize what they had written afterward.

Some gave up taking notes and tried to use sheer willpower to understand the relationship between those curves and symbols.

Some secretly glanced at the student beside them and found that their notebook was blank as well, which made them feel slightly better. Shutara did not stop to explain. She continued, neither fast nor slow, her tone completely flat, as if reading from a technical document she had memorized backward and forward. Reishi fluctuation frequencies, conversion rates between Reiatsu and Reishi, stability thresholds for spiritual construction materials—every term could be understood separately, but when linked together, they became another language.

The second half switched to a different topic, but the difficulty did not decrease.

Reishi material composition.

As the students listened, some began nodding. Not because they understood, but because it seemed to make some sense. When building a house, the foundation needed to be solid, the pillars needed to be straight, and adhesive needed to be applied promptly. Though these were Reishi materials, the principles carried over.

Someone tried writing down, "Reishi adhesive must be applied immediately after the material is cut." When he reached the word "immediately," he paused, because he did not know what Reishi adhesive was. Still, he felt that sentence sounded important. A student sitting in the corner raised his hand.

Shutara glanced at him.

"Teacher, why do we need to learn how to build houses?"

Shutara looked at him expressionlessly.

"Our captain comes once a month."

Shutara said, "For my classes, those who understand may listen. Those who don't understand aren't forced to."