An eerie, deathly silence enveloped a nameless village. Hundreds of plainly dressed villagers lay motionless on the ground. If not for the steady rise and fall of their chests, anyone would have thought they were dead.
An invisible barrier of spiritual power enclosed the village. Hundreds of particles of light streamed out of the Hōgyoku and entered the villagers' bodies, transforming their fragile flesh and even their souls.
The foreign power invaded and reshaped every part of their bodies. The unconscious villagers groaned involuntarily, their faces contorted with pain.
After watching Aizen bestow power upon every civilian in the village, Hiraga Ichirō asked in confusion, "Lord Aizen, why would you share your power with such feeble civilians?"
During his time at Aizen's side, Hiraga Ichirō had witnessed demons and members of the Demon Slayer Corps being transformed into Hollows or Shinigami. He did not understand the deeper purpose behind Aizen's actions. He only knew that Aizen always selected people before granting them power-people with a particularly intense longing for something, whether strength, revenge, or something else.
In Hiraga Ichirō's eyes, Aizen's power was so precious that it should be bestowed upon exceptional individuals, rather than casually handed out to these ordinary villagers with nothing to distinguish them.
Aizen adjusted his glasses and smiled graciously. "Did you know? Long before humans came into existence, in the ancient age when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, they were generally larger than any modern beast. Even the gentlest herbivorous dinosaur might have possessed the strength to kill a lion or a tiger, and the longest-lived among them could survive for hundreds of years."
"Why was that? It was simply the influence of their environment. It shaped the variations and limitations of creatures' forms and sizes in each era. These are laws established by the