Memories of his childhood flashed vividly across his mind. These were the scenes that haunted him through countless sleepless nights. He deeply despised the men who had slaughtered his master and senior sister, and he harbored an even deeper hatred for his own powerlessness on that day.
Self-hatred? Lu Li pondered the question seriously.
It was true that he had been agonizingly tormented by guilt for a very long time. But he had already walked out of that darkness. He knew that his master and his senior sister wouldn't want to see him broken and stagnant. He would drown their killers in blood to avenge them, and more importantly, he would forge ahead to reach the absolute zenith of martial arts.
But if it wasn't self-hatred, and he was undeniably human... then why did the depths of his soul look like that?
By the time class ended, Lu Li still hadn't made any progress with his Zanpakuto resonance. He decided he would attempt a massive, deep-dive meditation tonight.
The classroom was too crowded, and there were too many prying eyes. Aizen clearly had a massive arsenal of secrets he couldn't casually divulge. Even though Aizen had confessed to mastering his Shikai in the privacy of their dorm, the man had never once drawn his blade or demonstrated it in front of the instructors or the rest of the student body.
...
That evening, dragging his slightly exhausted body back to the dorm, Lu Li immediately climbed onto his bed.
He had absolutely no intention of sleeping. Today's "tutoring" session with Instructor Unohana had been relatively brief; he still possessed a significant reserve of stamina.
He was determined to dissect the mystery of his Zanpakuto tonight—or more accurately, the terrifying mystery of his own soul.
Before diving into the void, he quickly pulled up his system interface to check his current core attributes.
[Explorer 404040404, your base unequipped attributes are as follows:]
Constitution: 17 Points (+2)
Strength: 16 Points (+1)
Agility: 17 Points (+2)
Spirit: 22 Points (+2)
Charm: 6 Points
Luck: 1 Point
His attributes had undergone a significant, incredibly balanced evolution.
His Constitution had naturally risen due to the constant, brutal dismemberment and reconstruction he suffered under Unohana's blade over the last two months. His physical biology was actively rapidly adapting to the severe trauma, building a massive resistance.
His Agility had spiked thanks to his obsessive development and refinement of his customized Shunpo. Adapting his body to hyper-speed kinetic movement had permanently drastically enhanced his neural reflex velocity.
His Strength had seen the smallest increase, primarily because he hadn't focused on pure weight training or raw physical power-lifting.
As for his Spirit, despite "slacking off" on his meditation compared to Aizen, the official Shin'o Academy Reiatsu cultivation method was an exceptional tool for raising both his Spiritual Class and his base Spirit stat. Unlike his physical attributes—which required combat to temper—cultivating Reiatsu was purely a numbers-grinding process, which naturally reflected much more prominently on his character sheet.
It was crucial to note that all of his physical attribute increases were directly intrinsically linked to his rising Spiritual Class. It was just that his Spirit attribute possessed the most direct, 1-to-1 correlation with Reiatsu.
Officially, the Academy still classified him as a Class 16. But Lu Li's intuition told him he had only just barely scraped the absolute bottom threshold of that rank.
Aizen claimed he had successfully communed with his Zanpakuto's true name and unlocked Shikai when he was at Class 17. That was almost certainly a bold-faced lie to maintain his harmless persona. But judging by the subtle arrogance hidden deep behind Aizen's words, Lu Li wagered that if a true prodigy was handed an Asauchi while possessing a Class 17 Spiritual Pressure, achieving Shikai was completely viable.
If Aizen's hypothetical prodigy could do it, there was absolutely no reason Lu Li couldn't.
Calming his erratic thoughts, Lu Li centered himself. Utilizing the Academy's resonance technique, he forcefully submerged his consciousness into the absolute pitch-black abyss of his soul.
Noticing Lu Li had entered a state of deep meditation, Aizen quietly blew out the lantern and began his own relentless, nightly Reiatsu grind.
Within his mindscape, Lu Li felt as if he were wandering blindly beneath an endlessly suffocating, pitch-black sky. There was no path forward, and the way back was completely swallowed by the dark.
He didn't know if his Spirit increase had triggered a breakthrough, but this resonance attempt felt fundamentally different from all the others.
He took a single step forward, and the world gave way.
A violent, terrifying sensation of weightlessness consumed him. It felt like the entire universe was trembling. The horrifying, unintelligible whispers echoed in his ears once more, accompanied by the bone-chilling wails of the damned.
He was falling. Plummeting down, endlessly down. He had never fallen this deep into the abyss before.
Every primal survival instinct screamed at him to abort the resonance, to wake up before he hit the bottom. But his burning, obsessive curiosity regarding the secrets of his own soul forced him to endure the descent.
Suddenly, as if violently crashing through an invisible barrier, his vision blurred momentarily. When it cleared, he found himself staring at... Purgatory.
It was an apocalyptic wasteland. Endless waves of purple-black hellfire boiled and rolled across a torrential river of magma. The flames writhed and twisted like living, malevolent entities, aggressively devouring the surrounding oxygen and generating a deafening, continuous roar.
The sky was choked by an oppressive, suffocating blanket of ash. Occasional arcs of dark crimson lightning violently tore through the heavy clouds, momentarily illuminating the agonizing, shrieking faces of tortured souls trapped within the storm.
Standing amidst this boundless inferno of heat and suffering was a colossal structure. It was an impossibly massive cage, forged entirely from solidified, jagged magma, completely wrapped in pulsing, purple-black demonic runes that looked like parasitic vines.
At the very base of the colossal cage, a massive, dark crimson door slowly ground open. Behind the door lay an absolute, impenetrable darkness. From within that darkness echoed the heavy, metallic clatter of shifting chains.
The moment the door opened, the chaotic wails of the tortured souls vanished entirely. For a brief second, the apocalyptic world fell deathly silent, leaving only the sound of crashing magma and rolling hellfire.
The open door possessed an irresistible, magnetic pull, drawing Lu Li forward. Strangely, with a single, casual step, he miraculously phased directly through the rivers of magma and walls of fire, appearing instantly before the entrance.
A cage? Lu Li thought, his brow furrowing in deep confusion. Why do I instinctively know this is a cage?
Visually, the colossal structure just looked like an irregular, jagged mountain of cooled volcanic rock. Yet, long before the door had even opened, his instincts had definitively labeled it a prison.
He stepped up to the threshold and peered into the dark crimson doorway. He was met with an abyss of absolute, suffocating blackness.
Right at that exact microsecond, a colossal tidal wave of magma erupted behind him, spewing a towering pillar of hellfire into the sky. The sudden, violent crimson light from the eruption pierced into the pitch-black prison.
In that brief flash of illumination, Lu Li finally saw what lay inside.
A gargantuan, pitch-black silhouette was bound tightly by thousands of impossibly thick, ancient chains. The chains looked as if they were forged from divine iron, radiating a cold, oppressive, ghostly light.
The chained entity was like a living black hole, absorbing all light and sound. Sensing Lu Li's gaze, the colossal figure slowly raised its head.
Through the faint, flickering crimson light, Lu Li saw its eyes. They were deeply sunken, radiating an aura of absolute apathy and apocalyptic cruelty. It was a gaze that suggested an eternity of agonizing imprisonment hadn't managed to extinguish even a fraction of its boundless, festering hatred.
Right on cue, the wind picked up. The gale of Purgatory carried the scorching heat and the choking stench of sulfur. It swept up endless clouds of ash and scorched earth, blowing directly through Lu Li's ethereal body and rushing into the open door of the cage. The ash rained down on the chained entity, yet it did absolutely nothing to mask the suffocating, tyrannical majesty of the imprisoned god.
Is this... my Zanpakuto?
Lu Li felt a bizarre mix of sudden clarity and profound confusion. Unable to stop himself, he asked aloud, "What is your name?"
The colossal silhouette chained in the absolute depths of the cage locked eyes with Lu Li.
He did not receive an answer.
Instead, he was met with a roar.
ROAR—!
It was a catastrophic bellow that felt like it could shatter the heavens and pulverize reality itself. It carried the accumulated, agonizing hatred and unyielding defiance of countless eternities.
It was a roar of pure tyranny. Of absolute madness.
And of... profound loneliness.
As the imprisoned Demon God roared, the entirety of Purgatory began to violently convulse.
The sky shattered, the earth tore itself apart. The magma river erupted into a world-ending tsunami, and the purple-black hellfire rained down like a meteor shower.
Standing before the open door of the cage, dwarfed by a towering, impossible tsunami of magma rising directly behind him, Lu Li didn't move a single muscle. The purple-black hellfire danced and swirled around his body like playful fairies.
In the face of an absolute, apocalyptic cataclysm, Lu Li's expression remained perfectly calm as he continued to stare deeply into the eyes of the chained entity.
Just as he was about to open his mouth to ask again, a violent, hurricane-force gale erupted from beneath his feet, instantly blasting him into the sky.
His vision violently spun.
He violently snapped his eyes open, sitting straight up in his bed in the dorm. He had literally been "kicked out" of his own soul by the imprisoned Demon God.
He looked toward the window.
The sky outside was already beginning to lighten.
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