Within the inner sanctum of the Spirit King Palace.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni and Hyosube Ichibei sat facing each other. The entire empty hall was enveloped in a silence so profound that a pin dropping could be heard.
Yamamoto frowned deeply, facing an incredibly difficult decision.
The High Priest simply watched him quietly.
"No!"
"This isn't right."
It was impossible to say how much time had passed.
Yamamoto finally let out a long breath and denied with a grim tone.
He calmly raised his head and stared directly at Hyosube: "Even if there have been rebellions like ours, or even more intense ones, in the long history of the Soul Society... what does that prove?"
"Just because someone has done this before and failed, does that mean we, as their successors, shouldn't do it?"
"What kind of logic is that?"
"Since they failed, then I'll just step over their corpses and use their experience to create a better Soul Society."
"And if we fail..."
"Then our corpses will surely become the path for those who follow."
"As long as the nobles exist, resistance will never cease."
Yamamoto's voice was even and devoid of any inflection.
But in his eyes, one could clearly see the countless people and events he had experienced, witnessed, and felt over thousands of years.
As he himself said.
He was just an ordinary deceased soul, not a noble born in the Seireitei.
In these thousands of years of life,
He had been a starving, wandering soul, and worked as a shop assistant in the merchant district of Junrinan.
He had felt the power when he first held a zanpakuto and had the arrogant narrow-mindedness of youth.
He had failed before, whether against the powerful Shinigami of the Seireitei or against Ikomikidomoe, who invaded the Soul Society.
His life had been full of ups and downs, and for thousands of years, he had realized the profound negative effects of the nobility's control over this world, the isolation and everything else.
Until now.
Until the day he was called the strongest Shinigami in the Soul Society for a thousand years, Yamamoto finally grabbed his sword and slashed at these souls who occupied the highest level of this world.
In fact, it had been a full thousand years since he set his goal, established the Gotei Academy, until now.
No one had ever known the inner struggle and hesitation he felt after learning what an enormous entity the Five Great Noble Houses were.
No one had ever understood the intense unease in his heart when he heard that there were even higher-level powerhouses above the sky.
Yamamoto Shigekuni.
In addition to being the founder of his sword-style, the strongest Shinigami in the Soul Society, the wielder of the oldest and most powerful flame-type Zanpakuto, and other titles.
He was also just an ordinary old man who liked to drink tea, trim his beard in his spare time, and occasionally deliberately let it grow for hundreds of years to see how long it would get.
He wasn't that special.
But...
As the 'strongest Shinigami' of this era who was born in the streets, the others placed upon his shoulders the expectation that 'only Yamamoto Shigekuni could do it'.
This was the thing that only he could do in this era!
At the same time, it was also the only thing that the current Yamamoto Shigekuni could do!
Time passed too quickly.
Yamamoto knew that he had reached the limit of a Shinigami.
He also knew that even if another thousand years passed, he probably wouldn't make any progress, and might even turn gray and bald, or his hair and beard might fall out.
At the same time, his physical strength would inevitably decline to a near-weak state, like the old age that all Shinigami experience.
As he once said to Fujimiya Makoto.
There wasn't any time left.
Could he really shoulder the responsibility of this era at that time?
Could he be weak?
Could he avoid responsibility?
Could he deceive himself?
Could he rely on others like everyone else?
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni had asked himself this countless times.
Until finally, he calmly stood up.
Hyosube Ichibei still sat quietly in place.
Looking at Yamamoto's determined eyes, the High Priest still asked as easily as before:
"Must you go this far?"
"Even in the million-year history of the Soul Society, there are not many powerful figures like you."
"If you wish, I can, in the name of the Spirit King Palace, make you one of the highest-ranking nobles."
"Your family, your descendants, your comrades, all your legacy will weave into a behemoth entrenched in the center of the Soul Society, lasting for thousands or even tens of thousands of years."
"All this, only requires you to say yes."
Hyosube Ichibei stared into his eyes.
Genryusai chuckled and slowly drew the katana from his waist.
"I do not wish to be a watchdog; I only seek perfection."
Hyosube raised his voice slightly and questioned loudly: "Even if your stubborn killing of countless nobles causes violent turbulence in the three realms, and leads to even greater deaths and shocks..."
"Useless words!"
Yamamoto abruptly interrupted him, turned around, and slowly walked towards the exit of the inner sanctum.
"Our wills are incompatible."
"Then, we must use swords to speak."
"Defeat me."
"Whatever the strong say... is correct."
Despite saying that.
However, after experiencing Hyosube Ichibei's strength before, Yamamoto Genryusai's eyes were already full of determination and a will to die.
"You should have said so earlier!"
The High Priest clapped his hands and stood up from the ground, "If I win, your life is mine!"
"And... remember to honor your bet!"
Hearing him say this, Yamamoto stopped, turned back to look at him.
This balding middle-aged uncle with his ridiculous haircut, his eyes as sharp as an eagle, replied in a calm voice:
"My name is,"
"—Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni."
"You better remember it well, baldy."
...
In that battle, inside a gigantic space unique to the Spirit King Palace, flames filled the sky, and the scarlet glow scorched the sun.
The escalating heat engulfed the entire palace district and two detached palaces, burning the high-density spiritual particles in the entire independent space to a boiling, churning state, like seawater.
The unlucky Nimaiya Oetsu was left without a place to eat for three whole days because his detached palace was destroyed.
...
At the same time, in the Seireitei.
Soft footsteps came from outside the doors, three or five Genryu Shinigami each formed a team to search and hunt down nobles in the Seireitei, but they could also vaguely see many nobles forming scattered teams, launching counterattacks in the streets and alleys in the most primitive ways.
Occasionally, the glow of kido and secret techniques bloomed from various districts, indicating that higher-level Shinigami had joined the battlefield.
However, the Genryu Shinigami, who should have had the advantage at the high-end combat level, were inexplicably missing many fresh troops.
In a few scattered battlefields, they were actually being beaten back steadily.
Clearly.
The number of Genryu Shinigami sent to hunt down nobles had been greatly reduced.
As for these missing Genryu Shinigami, they were all concentrated in the underground conference hall in the very center of the entire Seireitei.
The half-collapsed wall remained unrepaired. The instructors, all wearing pure white haori, stood in place, listening to the injured Chojiro and Fujimiya Makoto, who had just arrived, tell them about the events that had occurred earlier.