Looking at the old man with the white beard bound by a purple ribbon, Lu Li felt a surge of excitement, mingled with a hint of surprise.
He was excited because he was standing face-to-face with one of the absolute strongest entities in this universe. He was surprised because he felt the Captain-Commander was... honestly, kind of short.
Maybe he hadn't paid enough attention when reading the manga back in the day, or perhaps the artist's stylized proportions made everyone look exceptionally tall and slender. He had always pictured the Captain-Commander as a towering giant. Seeing him in person, the man looked to be under 1.7 meters.
I guess people really do shrink as they get older, Lu Li mused.
Meanwhile, every other student in the dojo was buzzing with frantic adrenaline. Standing before them was a living legend, the absolute apex of the Soul Reapers, the Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13, and the founder of the Shin'o Academy itself.
No one could have ever predicted that the Captain-Commander would personally step in to substitute a standard first-year Hakuda class.
At this moment, it wasn't just the students assigned to the class inside the dojo; the doorway was completely jam-packed with onlookers. Every single window had at least ten pairs of eyes peering through, all desperate to catch a glimpse of the strongest Soul Reaper in the history of the Soul Society.
Just as the crowd was eagerly preparing to listen to the Captain-Commander's profound teachings and show off their best moves, Yamamoto raised a hand and pointed directly at a specific spot.
"Brat. I hear your Hakuda scores are quite exceptional. Instructor Sunagawa claims he has nothing left to teach you. How about this old man spars with you for a bit?"
Stares.
Gazes shot over from absolutely every direction, carrying a complex cocktail of emotions.
Some were shocked. Some were deeply envious. A few were sympathetic. But the vast majority were gloating with pure schadenfreude.
As the undisputed number one celebrity of the Shin'o Academy over the past two months, Lu Li's name was completely inescapable.
He had beaten Yoruichi Shihouin at Hakuda and slashed Instructor Fujimoto in Kendo. His talent was like a bottomless abyss—there was seemingly nothing he couldn't do, prompting instructor after instructor to throw in the towel.
And now, karma had finally arrived. Everyone was ecstatic to watch Lu Li hit a brick wall.
With the Captain-Commander personally stepping in, you're about to get beaten into a bloody pulp!
The students standing near Lu Li practically scrambled backward to clear a wide circle. That included Yoruichi, who was openly gloating, and Aizen, who was carefully hiding his dark amusement.
Under the intense scrutiny of the entire crowd, Lu Li didn't show an ounce of fear. He flashed a feral grin.
"To receive the Captain-Commander's personal guidance... I couldn't ask for anything better."
He stepped forward. He tightened the sash around his waist, then completely shrugged off the upper half of his dojo uniform, letting the sleeves hang loosely at his hips.
The Academy's standard uniforms were too baggy. To Lu Li, they restricted his kinetic flow. He was about to face the absolute pinnacle of Soul Reapers; he needed to be totally unburdened and fight with everything he had.
For the first time in a long while, Lu Li felt the blood in his veins truly begin to boil, urging him to scale the impossibly high mountain standing before him.
"Wow... Lu Li's body is incredible..."
"Looking closely, he's incredibly masculine... so rugged and handsome."
"Those abs... those back muscles... I want to touch them..."
A flurry of hushed, flushed whispers broke out among the female students. Lu Li was the textbook definition of "lean with clothes on, shredded with them off."
From the front, his heavily defined, chiseled musculature looked like a flawless Greek sculpture forged by the gods. But the students standing behind him were even more terrified and mesmerized.
The muscle groups on his back were grotesquely overdeveloped. Through perfect, terrifying symmetry, the bulging muscles almost seemed to form the visage of a weeping demon. It was a masterpiece of pure, violent aesthetic.
Lu Li tuned out the buzzing whispers. His eyes were locked solely on the old man in front of him.
"Hmph. You have tempered your body well," Yamamoto acknowledged, giving a rare nod of approval.
In the next moment, the Captain-Commander's oversized haori billowed upward and was tossed aside, revealing his own bare torso.
As the old man stripped away his robe, the young students collectively gasped, a cold realization washing over them. Where the hell is the frail, kind-looking old man?!
Every single square inch of his torso was packed with dense, iron-forged muscle. Crisscrossing his flesh was a chaotic tapestry of horrific, jagged scars—a brutal testament to the countless deathmatches this ancient warrior had survived. He radiated an aura of pure, suffocating savagery.
As the haori drifted to the floor, Yamamoto took a single step forward.
In that microsecond, Lu Li felt his entire body lock up in pure, instinctual terror.
In Lu Li's vision, Yamamoto's figure seemed to infinitely expand. The old man hadn't released a single drop of Spiritual Pressure, yet his sheer, invisible presence felt like it was crushing the air out of Lu Li's lungs.
This wasn't a mountain he had to climb. This was an apocalyptic tsunami crashing down to eradicate him!
"Focus your mind, brat..." The old man's eyes locked onto Lu Li like a prowling tiger. "...and clench your teeth."
Following the brief wave of paralyzing stiffness, Lu Li felt the violent rhythm of his own heart.
Thump—Thump—Thump-Thump-Thump-Thump...
It beat like a war drum, and his battle lust surged to match it.
The overwhelming, euphoric thrill of facing a true apex predator utterly shattered his suffocating fear. In a microscopic detail that no one could see, Lu Li's pitch-black eyes shimmered with a faint, abyssal purple hue.
BOOM—!
It was a straight punch that felt like it could shatter the heavens. The wooden floorboards beneath Lu Li's feet violently detonated into splinters as he desperately tried to redirect the kinetic force. His body was launched backward like a cannonball, violently slamming into the reinforced wall of the dojo.
"Oh? Fast reflexes," Yamamoto remarked smoothly, slowly retracting his ancient, scarred fist. He was currently standing in the exact spot Lu Li had occupied a fraction of a second ago.
Slumped against the heavily cracked wall, Lu Li slowly lowered his crossed arms. His right forearm had a terrifying, concave indentation shaped exactly like a glowing red fist.
The agonizing pain didn't trigger an ounce of fear. Instead, it made his battle-blood burn even hotter. He stepped out of the rubble, rolling his shoulders and shaking out his limbs. His neck popped loudly as he stared back with manic, fanatical excitement.
He didn't even need to ask. He knew Yamamoto had strictly suppressed his Reiatsu. If the Captain-Commander had used his true power, that single punch would have vaporized him into subatomic dust.
Meaning, Yamamoto had restricted his output to roughly Class 16. Yet, even with a successful, braced block, that single strike had nearly snapped Lu Li's arm in half.
His arm wasn't broken, but its combat functionality was severely compromised. As Lu Li walked forward, his left hand flared with the pale green light of Kaido. He pressed it over the crater in his right arm. A few seconds later, the concave flesh popped back into place, leaving only the angry red bruise.
"Kaido? A restoration speed that slow is completely useless in a real battle," Yamamoto critiqued, choosing not to press the attack immediately.
He didn't say Kaido itself was useless in combat—he knew perfectly well that Unohana weaponized it flawlessly. It was just that this brat's proficiency was still far too green.
Lu Li flashed a bloody, feral grin.
"I was just making sure I'm in peak condition to properly challenge you, Sir."
He lowered his center of gravity.
In the next microsecond, he completely vanished from the eyes of the ordinary students.
BANG—!
The explosive crack of flesh against flesh echoed through the hall. When Lu Li's figure rematerialized, he was completely suspended in mid-air, his right leg whipping down in a devastating axe-kick directly onto Yamamoto's wrist.
The violent shockwave blew the old man's long white beard backward, yet Yamamoto's posture didn't shift by a single millimeter.
In that microscopic window, the Captain-Commander didn't even bother to look up at Lu Li. With a casual, almost lazy flick of his wrist, he completely absorbed the kinetic energy, clamped his iron fingers around Lu Li's ankle, and swung the boy downward like a battleaxe.
The spectating students didn't dare to even breathe. They were utterly shell-shocked. The undisputed king of Hakuda among the first-years was being handled like a helpless infant. They were equally terrified by how completely ruthless the Captain-Commander's counterattack was.
With an impact that heavy, did he just crush Lu Li to death?!
But in the very next instant, from the violently churning cloud of pulverized wood and dust, an arm shot out like a venomous viper—striking from an angle that actually forced a flicker of genuine surprise into the Captain-Commander's ancient eyes.
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