Chapter 24

Karakura Town is a small prefecture located in Western Tokyo on the island nation of Japan, primarily under the jurisdiction of the Jusanban-tai of the Goteijusantai, and has the largest concentration of spiritually aware beings in the entire world. These are just two of the reasons why a certain Hermit had decided to hide himself away here in the spiritually rich environment after a strange yet fortuitous opportunity was presented to him all those years ago.

While he was quite adept at hiding his own reiatsu through a combination of powerful seals and his own skill, the spiritually rich landscape of Karakura provided him far more secrecy than he could have secured for himself. Karakura Town was incredibly difficult to survey for anomalies since the entire town seemed to be bathed in reiatsu, or to be more specific, as of recently it was covered almost entirely by the reiatsu of the most powerful spiritually aware human Naruto had ever heard of in all his two hundred plus years.

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When he'd first arrived close to one hundred and twenty years ago, it had seemed like a decent place for him to lay low. He'd changed his name, deciding to use his mother's maiden name like he had in life, and bought a large plot of land near the center of the city, utilizing the denser population in that location to hide himself and his newest companions in this crazy ride he called life.

Or after life as it were, since Naruto had discovered that life as a soul in Soul Society actually had very few differences in comparison to the life of a normal human living in the Human World. After you factored out the much longer lifespan of a soul, and the incredible strength many of these souls had gained over such a long period of time.

Both had hearts that beat in their chests, both felt joy and sadness, heartbreak and pain; and both could fall in love. He'd even learned that when two souls copulated, pregnancy was still a very real occurrence.

Who knew?

How else did noble families in the Seireitei produce heirs? A magical stork? Would you be surprised to hear that he had actually been convinced that a magical stork really was responsible for delivering the natural born heirs of noble families? Of course not, that would be silly; and completely true. Mind you, considering that he was in essence dead, and he had no idea how it was that new souls came into existence, he'd been forced to draw his own conclusions on the subject.

That was until Yoruichi had quite literally laughed him out of the barracks one day, before explaining to him that yes, though rare, it was entirely possible. More so in those Clans where families possessed an abundance of reiryoku.

Back on track, after spending the equivalent of millions of U. S dollars on the construction of a new house on his purchased plot of land, and then shaping the land to suit his tastes, he ended up with a house designed very much like the one he'd built himself in Hokutan.

When the carpenters had cleared out, the more mundane tasks having been completed, Naruto had immediately set to work upon it's completion himself. Lining the outer walls and supports with a similar array of seals as he had in his old compound, and adding a few other seals so that his house wouldn't show up as a suspicious dark spot devoid of reiatsu on any of the Juniban-tai's scanning devices.

Effectively using the ambient energy as something like a blanket. They wouldn't be able to see who or what was inside, but it wouldn't seem empty either.

For over one hundred years it had worked as he'd hoped it would, and since he had very little to do and four very willing volunteers, Naruto had set about a little side-project that wouldn't normally fit into his repertoire; studying the Hollow Condition.

Ever since he'd first started learning seals in his youth under the tutelage of Jiraiya, puzzles had become almost laughably simple; and as far as he was concerned, a Hollow was simply one large puzzle with a rather obvious piece missing. It was finding out what that missing piece represented and attempting to replicate it that was proving difficult.

He spent close to sixty years on this research, often sitting on his deck with his pipe and sake, simply thinking about what he could be missing. He developed what must have been hundreds of different seals, all performing some set purpose geared towards restoring a Hollow's missing heart.

Of course, he quickly learned that it wasn't so simple. A plus became a Hollow because of spiritual decay, or in layman's terms, because they had remained in the world of the living for far too long or they were devoured by another Hollow.

It could take years for a plus to turn into a Hollow if simply left alone to its' own devices, especially in the case of those souls known as Demi-Hollows. Souls that had remained in the place they had died due to some form of strong emotional attachment, causing their broken chains of fate to literally bind them to that location until their eventual transformation into a Hollow.

He had observed these phenomena with great scrutiny, making sure to konso them well before their transformation had reached completion, before moving on to the next subject for observation. He'd kept this up for over six decades, and after sixty plus years of doing nothing but research upon research, which Naruto had decided he hated with a fiery passion, he'd finally been struck by an epiphany.

The transformation itself wasn't going to lead him to an answer; but the Hollow's memories very well might. That was of course if they could remember anything about their lives at all; but as it had been for him, perhaps he just needed to find someone with a significant amount of reiryoku.

Something that had protected them from losing their memories of their lives.

His newest companion was not only an extremely powerful Hollow before her transformation into an Arrancar, but was also willing to offer him that information, though Naruto was sure the woman was in a considerable amount of

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