Rukia glanced at the target, then turned and tilted her head up to look at Moriyasu’s face.
A flash of eagerness crossed her eyes.
“How did you do that?” Moriyasu held up his finger, then tapped the center of his own chest with his left hand.
“Normally, most of our Reishi gathers right here, at Saketsu.” Then he traced his left hand down along his upper arm, forearm, the back of his hand, and finally to his fingertip, one after another.
“So what we need to do is control the Reishi in our body, guiding it from Saketsu, down across the shoulder, all the way to the fingertip.” “I know that part already.
That’s exactly what I just did.” Rukia said.
“The basic movement of Reishi, I already picked that up just now.
The problem is I still couldn’t get the Kidō to actually go off.” Moriyasu tilted his head down slightly, meeting Rukia’s eyes.
He wasn’t quite sure why, but Onion here seemed a little on edge.
He pressed his left hand toward the ground, a gesture telling Onion not to rush, then spoke in an even tone.
“Didn’t any of you notice?
Hadō #1: Shō isn’t really Reishi, not so much as it’s wind.” The moment he said it, every student froze.
They ran back through Ounahara’s earlier demonstration of the spell in their minds.
And Rukia and Moriyasu’s attempts too.
Renji shouted, not quite following.
“Wait, that can’t be right.
How could Reishi turn into wind?
Shouldn’t it be—” As far as any of the students understood it, and this had been stated plainly in class over the past few days, Reishi was Reishi, the basic particle that made up bodies and everything else in existence, entirely separate from things like wind, fire, water, or lightning.
Wind, fire, water, lightning, earth, stone, all of it was made of Reishi.
“Moriyasu, are you saying you can change Reishi’s nature into wind?” Kira Izuru stepped forward and looked up.
His brow was furrowed deep.
He’d been turning over what Kidō actually was ever since the exercise began.
Not until he heard Moriyasu say that Hadō #1: Shō was wind, not Reishi, did he feel like he’d finally grabbed hold of something.
Moriyasu nodded at him and smiled.
“That’s exactly it, Lemon.
Put simply, Kidō is just a method for using Reishi.
And Hadō #1: Shō is about giving Reishi the properties of wind, letting it manifest as wind.
As for the incantation we’ve been practicing, that’s just a medium to help us understand and use it faster.” This time, Moriyasu didn’t keep explaining.
He simply turned back to face the target in the distance.
He raised his hand level again, extending his finger, then touched his left fingertip to Saketsu on his chest.
His finger moved in time with the words leaving his mouth.
“Silent fangs that tear the sky asunder, the raging breath that coils through the air, gather now at my fingertip, and pierce all things.” “Hadō #1—” By the time he’d said that much, his finger had already reached the back of his hand.
And just as he opened his mouth to say “Shō,” his left finger had reached the tip of his outstretched right finger.
“Shō.” The moment the word left him, a small vortex of air burst from his fingertip, and a moment later, it struck the target twenty meters away.
“Understand now?” He smiled at the classmates around him.
“Not even a little!” Renji bellowed.
He genuinely had no idea what had just happened.
Rukia, on the other hand, nodded and pointed her finger at the distant target again.
This time she recited more slowly, focusing on guiding the Reishi through her body.
“Hadō #1: Shō!” A burst of pressure erupted from her fingertip again, but it didn’t form any forward momentum this time.
Even so, her face lit up.
She turned to Moriyasu at once and called out.
“Just now, while I was reciting, I felt the Reishi pause and gather at each spot.
That’s it, right?” Moriyasu nodded with a smile.
“Exactly right.
The incantation is really just telling us how to control the Reishi.
How to condense it, how to move it, and finally, how to change its nature before releasing it.
So what we need to do right now is pay close attention to how the Reishi in our bodies shifts as we recite.
Even the smallest changes, we need to catch every one of them.” Rukia nodded quickly a few times, then held out her finger again, a little excited now.
While reciting just now, she’d clearly felt a matching part of her body warm slightly with every phrase of the incantation.
That, she figured, must be the change brought on by the flow of Reishi that the incantation mapped out.
This time she recited slowly.
“Hadō #1: Shō!” The instant she said it, her eyes flew wide.
A tremendous crack rang out as a violent gust tore from her fingertip and slammed straight into the target twenty meters away.
The wooden target shattered outright under the force of the spell, splinters clattering everywhere.
She stood there stunned for a moment, then said, a little embarrassed, “I guess I put out a bit too much Reishi at the end there.” “Wow, Rukia, that’s amazing!” Momo praised happily beside her, then held out her own finger toward the target and recited in turn.
“Hadō #1: Shō!” A crack sounded, and she managed to release it too.
“Wow, I got it too!” Rukia grinned and nodded.
“Right, just follow the feel of the incantation.” Then she turned her head, eyes shining bright.
“You really are something else, Moriyasu.” Moriyasu Tokoyo waved a hand calmly.
“That’s just skill.
Now go practice, you two, Peach, Lemon.” His eyes landed on Renji as he spoke.
“Now you understand why I named you Red Baboon, right?” Renji was still nowhere near ready to concede.
He stepped forward, fist clenched, and roared, “You bastard—” Before he could finish, a voice cut in with “Hadō #1: Shō.” At the crack that followed, Renji’s whole body went rigid, and he slowly turned his head.
There stood Kira Izuru, who’d successfully pulled it off too.
“Damn it!” Renji roared, unwilling to accept it, then dashed off to plant himself nearby, raising his finger and shouting over and over.
“Hadō #1: Shō!” “Shō!
I’ll Shō!” “Let me Shō, dammit!” “Why won’t it come out?!
Damn it all!” By this point, Moriyasu had already stepped aside and settled in to rest.
A thread of silver flickered across his pupils, and he calmly watched his friends practicing.
Eternal Eyes let him see straight through to the essence of a thing and understand it directly, which was exactly why he could pick things up so fast.
And in the corner of his eye, at the spot where Ounahara should have been hiding around the corner of the corridor, there was a spiritual pathway that had no business being there.
That pathway looked nothing like an ordinary Shinigami’s.
A normal Shinigami’s ran bright red, but this one was so deep a red it edged into black, into violet.
That presence, that Reishi-woven presence, was on a completely different scale from any other Shinigami’s.
So who did this strange reiatsu belong to?
As it happened, Moriyasu had already met the owner, not long ago, at the opening ceremony.
Which meant that the person who’d been standing at the front of the training grounds teaching the class just now, and the one now hiding around the corner of the corridor, was never Ounahara at all.
It was the man Moriyasu had already met on the very first day: Captain of the Gotei 13’s Fifth Division, Sosuke Aizen.