The Pursuit of the Soul King

Inside the dojo, Ailin patiently taught Haruko how to arrange spiritual power, how to chant incantations, and finally how to release Kidō.

After Haruko had completely memorized all of this, only then did she begin practicing Kidō under Ailin's supervision.

During the process of Haruko depleting and recovering her spiritual power, Ailin would sink his mind into his inner world, starting to forge new weapons.

With the foundation of several thousand Zanpakutō abilities, forging weapons from other worlds was not too difficult for Ailin.

After all, the "Unlimited Blade Works" originally contained the elements of all "swords". Ailin had templates for thousands of abilities and the "prototypes" from his memories of anime in his previous life. Wanting to forge these weapons was a very simple matter for Ailin.

However, the most important thing for Ailin in forging these weapons was to absorb the combat experience of the weapons' masters to improve himself. Therefore, "sympathetic growth from experience, reconstructing accumulated years" was the greatest difficulty Ailin faced in producing weapons.

If it was the weapons of protagonists or important supporting characters, it was fairly simple for Ailin. He only needed to extract memories of the anime from his mind, then add a bit of his own supplementation to complete them.

The most difficult to forge were instead the weapons of those with less screen time, but very outstanding weapon abilities.

If Ailin wanted to "sympathize with growth experiences" for the weapons of these people, he had to construct a "fanfiction anime" in his mind with that character as the protagonist. Furthermore, he had to sincerely approve of that "fanfiction anime" before he could instill the character's growth experiences into the weapon.

After all, if the weapons produced by Ailin lacked the combat memories of their masters, even if Ailin used Muramasa's ability to have them materialize, their strength would still be far from comparing to the Zanpakutō who originally possessed memories.

Moreover, to Ailin, the combat experience from other worlds was much more important than the pure weapon abilities.

If one could say that the combat memories from thousands of Shinigami allowed Ailin to truly cultivate the four Shinigami disciplines to the pinnacle of Shinigami, then the combat skills contained within the weapons of these other worlds served as the staircase allowing Ailin to break through the limits of "Shinigami" and advance to an even higher level of technique.

With the conclusion of yet another "fanfiction anime", Ailin closed his eyes. Chaos stirred within Unlimited Blade Works as countless "swords" resonated. Countless elements of "swords", under the control of Ailin's spiritual pressure, gathered in his palm and fused into this Zanpakutō.

Boom!

When this Zanpakutō finished forging, the Zanpakutō stabbed into the Sword Hill, within Ailin also vibrated slightly.

Very quickly, with the ability of innate boundary fields, Ailin obtained feedback on this weapon's spiritual pressure, allowing Ailin's spiritual pressure to breakthrough once more.

"I can see the limit of a Shinigami's spiritual pressure..."

…

"So this is what you pursue, Soul King."

The human world, Ailin slowly opened his eyes.

With the breakthrough in spiritual pressure, even in the human world Ailin could vaguely perceive the mutilated man sealed within the yellow crystal through the connections between spiritrons.

That was the strongest, greatest, and most selfless creator of the Shinigami world - the Soul King.

Upon seeing the Soul King, Ailin naturally also sensed a strand of the "Soul King's will".

With the memories in his mind, after connecting with this strand of will, Ailin finally understood just what the Soul King pursued.

Over two million years ago when the Five Great Noble Families betrayed the Soul King, through his ability to see into the future, he knew of the world that would come after his betrayal by the Five Great Noble Families.

Thus, the Soul King did not resist the betrayal of the Five Great Noble Families and allowed himself to be sealed by them.

He even bestowed his will upon Ichibē Hyōsube of the Royal Guard, granting him the name "Soul King" along with the ability to name all things in the world. The Soul King had Ichibē name him "Soul King" and designated himself as the "lynchpin" stabilizing the three realms.

For the sake of the world's stability, the Soul King did not mete out any punishment even as he was dismembered, had his eyes gouged out, and his heart, lungs, and intestines excavated by the Five Great Noble Families. But over the passage of two million years, even the Soul King grew tired.

He did not know how much longer he could maintain his current state.

He even wondered that if the day came when his heart of "great love" was worn away by time, whether he would recall his power and destroy this world that denied him freedom and allowed him to suffer such torment. Thus, divergences began occurring in this world under the influence of the Soul King's will.

The Soul King sought death, sought his own deliverance. Therefore, Yhwach was born.

However, if the Soul King died and obtained deliverance, this world would collapse.

Thus, the Quincy Empire Yhwach established was destroyed. Even Yhwach himself suffered grave injuries under Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto, forcing him into a nine hundred ninety-nine year slumber.

Afterwards, all who made contact with the Soul King after reaching a certain level of spiritual pressure would make their own choices.

Sōya Azashiro came into contact with the Soul King's will and thought of completely modifying the souls of all Rukongai residents into his personal undefeatable army, then purifying all Hollows in Hueco Mundo to alleviate the Soul King's burden.

Kisuke Urahara came into contact with the Soul King's will and created the Soul King candidates Ururu and Jinta.

Sōsuke Aizen came into contact with this strand of the Soul King's will and desired to create his own Soul King Key to become "Soul King" himself. Therefore, from the very beginning, Sōsuke Aizen's vision had already surpassed almost everyone else's.

It was only when he officially betrayed Soul Society and was told he would "fall" by Jūshirō Ukitake that Aizen called Ukitake "too arrogant".

As the host of the Soul King's Right Arm, there was no way Jūshirō Ukitake did not know of the Soul King's will. But what did Ukitake do?

Relying on his Shikai's divine revelations, he chose Ginjō Kūgo as the Soul King's replacement and gave him a Substitute Shinigami Badge to monitor him. He stated that if Ginjō ever showed any intention to rebel against Soul Society, he would be killed.

It was likely because of Ginjō's negative example that when selecting Ichigo Kurosaki as the next Soul King replacement, his attitude showed great change as he made Ichigo believe in him.

The great curtain of the Shinigami world all occurred under the "will" of the Soul King.

Everyone was unwilling to see the world's destruction. But at the same time, they were also unwilling to stop the Soul King's deliverance.

Under such circumstances, all they could do was observe the progression of the world and make preparations to respond to any variables that might occur in the future.

The death of the Soul King could not be changed under his own will. This was the world the Soul King created. All things within it advanced towards the future the Soul King wished for under his will. But they still needed to protect this world.

After realizing all of this, Ailin shook his head. Previously, he still harbored some thoughts of stopping Yhwach. But now, faced with the Soul King's will, Ailin no longer had any intentions of participating in the battle between Yhwach and Ichibē.

The Soul King had dedicated over two million years to this world. Ailin was also unwilling to stop the deliverance he sought.

"Forget it, I should just properly enjoy my own peaceful days. As long as Aizen and Yhwach don't provoke me, I'm too lazy to interfere in matters between them."

After all, if everything accorded to the Soul King's will, then in the future Ichigo would influence Yhwach to deliver salvation to the Soul King under Yhwach's influence.

Then, after Yhwach absorbed the Soul King, he would be defeated by the protagonists. In the end, Ichibē would turn him into the new "Soul King" to become the new "lynchpin" stabilizing the three realms after defeating him.

***

"Ah, I'm going crazy..."

Within the 2nd Division, Yoruichi Shihōin laid sprawled on the office desk like a pile of mud, the sight of her made her wish she could kill Kisuke Urahara.

Some time ago, Ailin fell out for some reason with the Kuchiki Family. Yoruichi sought Byakuya Kuchiki several times for information regarding this matter but failed to learn anything from Byakuya's mouth.

Thus, Kisuke Urahara felt that if Ailin truly now opposed the Kuchiki Family, it was likely he would attack them. When that time came, they would become enemies with Ailin.

To raise her strength, Kisuke Urahara had been bringing her to a secret base to cultivate every day recently, urging her to work on evolving Shunkō.

After all, if they truly fought Ailin, with Yoruichi's current level of Shunkō, she basically had almost no ability to resist Ailin. Regarding this point, even Kisuke Urahara felt extremely helpless.

Yoruichi possessed extremely high innate talent in Shunpo and Hakuda. Since youth, she followed her father in campaigns all over Soul Society, a true genius rising from seas of blood and mountains of corpses.

Not even a hundred years old, Yoruichi already took over as head of the Shihōin Family from her father's hands and became the new 2nd Division Captain, obtaining her own Zanpakutō.

Naturally, with strength at the Captain-level, it did not take long at all for Yoruichi to complete gestation and release of her Zanpakutō.

The pity was that in Yoruichi's opinion, even her Zanpakutō's Bankai did not provide much assistance towards raising her strength. Afterwards, she focused singlemindedly on researching how to integrate Hadō with Hakuda, completely giving up on her Zanpakutō.

Now, because Yoruichi had not called upon it for so long, her Zanpakutō had also chosen to reject Yoruichi's call. Helpless, Kisuke Urahara could only place all hopes of raising Yoruichi's strength on Shunkō.

All to help this childhood friend of his, Kisuke Urahara had also racked his brains...

Suddenly—

Dang dang dang dang...

In less than a year after Byakuya Kuchiki became 6th Division Captain, the emergency assembly alarm for Captains rang out once more within the Seireitei.

"Hmm?"

Hearing this alarm, Yoruichi instantly rose from the table, her expression solemn.

Every Captains' meeting was only held when major events occurred. For the alarm to ring so urgently this time, could Ailin be attacking the Kuchiki Family?

"Soi Fon, prepare yourself and follow me to the Captains' meeting."

"Yes, Lady Yoruichi!"