"Is this… the Soul King Palace…!?"
Rukia stood on the grass, head tilted back, staring up at the sky in stunned disbelief.
The grassland stretched out endlessly in a sea of green. The scenery was pleasant, the view serene, giving her the illusion that she was strolling through an endless prairie.
But the moment she looked up—
What she saw was like something straight out of a fairyland.
Pure white structures, like floating islands, stood silently in the sky, resembling the heavenly palaces of human dreams.
Those with sharper eyesight could even see the white corridors connecting the buildings, and row upon row of towering pillars.
Exquisite. Breathtaking.
It hardly seemed like a real, physical scene at all.
Surrounding the massive, pure white central structure were several enormous cities, each floating in midair like its own island.
These colossal constructions hovered in the sky like eternal stars that had always been there.
Together, they formed the Soul King Palace.
What shocked Rukia the most, however, wasn't the size, number, or beauty of the buildings.
It was the fact that she couldn't sense any spiritual pressure at all.
It was as if this space held no life.
As if it had been sculpted entirely by heaven and earth.
"Where are the Soul King and the royal family?"
Rukia couldn't help looking anxiously in every direction.
Cole knew exactly what she was wondering.
Because in the power structure of Soul Society, the hierarchy had always been clear: the Soul King was supreme, the royal family untouchable.
Even if the anime made things look relatively free and equal on the surface…
The power structure of Soul Society could easily be mapped onto an old-world monarchy.
This was like some commoner from ancient times mustering all his courage to defy the world and charge into the royal palace—
Only to discover that he couldn't see the emperor.
Couldn't even see a single court eunuch.
"Cole, your spirit sense is sharper than mine. Try and see if you can find where everyone is."
Rukia turned her gaze toward him.
Cole stared at the Soul King Palace with a strange expression.
He remembered clearly that, despite how huge the Soul King Palace was, the total number of people living inside it didn't even reach double digits. It was unbelievably desolate and silent.
That alone had always puzzled him.
This was the Soul King Palace.
The dwelling place of the supreme ruler of Soul Society.
Even if the Soul King had ended up in that sorry state and didn't need attendants, the Zero Division should at least have people serving them.
After all, no one could endure total solitude.
If just a handful of people were trapped together in a single space for thousands or tens of thousands of years…
Even if they didn't kill themselves, they'd go insane.
"Don't tell me those guys sneak out to play sometimes…"
Cole rubbed his chin. Though he felt curious and doubtful, he didn't obsess over the question.
The secrets of the Bleach world were simply too many: the Soul King, Hueco Mundo, hollows, Quincy, Hell, the primordial chaos…
Compared to all that, this question barely ranked.
So instead, he turned to Rukia with a smile.
"Rukia, rather than worrying about that, why don't you try sensing the spiritual power around us?"
She blinked, then finally realized something was wrong with the reiryoku in this space.
"This amount of spiritual power… what's going on?"
Rukia widened her eyes, staring at the landscape in disbelief. She grabbed Cole's sleeve and stammered:
"How can there be this much spiritual power? I feel… I feel like I'm soaking in an ocean of reiryoku right now…"
If the spiritual power in Seireitei was a value of one hundred…
Then the spiritual power in the Soul King Palace was one million.
In fact, the reiryoku here was so dense that it formed a kind of high-pressure field, like a gravity domain.
Rukia even felt that if she hadn't already mastered bankai, she wouldn't be able to withstand the spiritual pressure of this space at all—she'd be crushed by it directly.
"Well, that's just your Soul Society's old tradition: plunder the world's wealth and hoard it for yourselves."
Cole wasn't particularly surprised.
In truth, Seireitei itself had been built by siphoning off the reiryoku of the whole of Soul Society, which was why the spiritual power there was so dense.
But now that he saw it, it was obvious that Seireitei's model had been copied from the Soul King Palace. The latter was the root of the problem.
Without Seireitei and the Soul King Palace, Soul Society would probably look more like Hueco Mundo—
With reiryoku evenly distributed everywhere.
Not like it was now, a great circular structure where the closer you got to the center, the denser the spiritual power became.
Rukia coughed awkwardly twice. She also felt that Seireitei had gone too far, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"So what do we do now? Are we going to protect the Soul King, or look for the Zero Division members?"
Hearing her question, Cole couldn't help laughing. He licked his lips and gazed up at the buildings in the sky.
"Am I really that noble in your eyes?"
Rukia: "…"
The scene shifted.
Cole and Rukia had arrived within one of the pure white buildings in the sky. Massive, solemn structures stretched out before them.
The complex was vast, beautiful, and sacred—yet everywhere they looked, it was empty.
Even so, Rukia was still frightened out of her wits. She clutched Cole's sleeve with all her strength and said nervously:
"Cole, this is the Soul King Palace, we can't just do whatever we want here… What if the Soul King sees and gets angry?"
The Soul King was the existence every shinigami swore allegiance to, the highest being in all of Soul Society.
Even though Rukia had never seen the Soul King, she still held a deep reverence for him in her heart.
Cole pressed his palm against the wall of the pure white building and chuckled.
"Rukia, you're just looking at him through too much of a filter. If you really saw the Soul King, you'd actually be disappointed."
"No way, I've always respected the Soul King."
Rukia refused to believe him.
"Loving the dragon in name only, huh."
Cole shook his head and didn't bother arguing further. Instead, he happily began absorbing the Soul King Palace's structures.
He had to admit, the Soul King Palace was the Soul King Palace—the most exalted place in the world.
The amount of spiritual power poured into a single building here was a million times that of a building in Seireitei. It was the same as compressing a million tons of steel into one ton; you could imagine how tough it was.
If Komamura came here, even with his bankai Kokujo Tengen Myo'o (Black Rope Heaven Subjugation King of Darkness), he'd find it hard to wreak any large-scale destruction.
But for Cole, this was one luxurious all-you-can-eat buffet.
It was like a gift straight from nature.
It made his appetite surge.
He feasted to his heart's content.
Best of all, no matter how much he devoured this "meal," no one came to stop him.
"I'm so blessed… Is this place heaven or what?"
Cole pressed his palms together in mock prayer, then continued to ravenously devour the Soul King Palace's buildings, as if he really intended to eat the entire city clean.
Rukia could only find it both funny and exasperating.
She didn't have the heart to disturb him at a time like this, so she simply skulked around sneakily, standing guard for him.
...
...
"Cole, hurry up and absorb more. I'll keep watch over here—if someone comes, we'll run right away."
Rukia warned him tensely.
She remembered only ever being this cautious back in the Rukongai districts, when she had to steal from others just to survive.
Now, for the sake of this rotten man…
She ground her silver teeth, shot Cole a fierce glare, and snapped:
"Can't you eat any faster!?"
Cole was already working hard to siphon reiryoku. Hearing that, he could only reply, "Give me a little more time. The buildings in the Soul King Palace are just a little bit… hard…"
Just as the two of them were doing their best—
On another floating island, a lazy-sounding voice drifted over.
"Rukia."
"Cole."
"You two are brazenly tearing down my house. Don't you think that's a bit much?"
Rukia and Cole turned toward the sound.
"…"
Back at the edge of the spatial rift—
Following in Aizen's wake, Shunsui and the others stepped into the Soul King Palace as well.
The moment they arrived, they were dumbstruck by the spectacle before their eyes.
The so-called Soul King Palace not only held an immense expanse of space, but also countless floating islands of palatial buildings that looked like true heaven.
What stunned them even more, though, was the unbelievably dense spiritual power filling the entire area.
It felt like they weren't breathing oxygen at all—
But thick, concentrated reiryoku.
Even Byakuya had a hint of shock in his eyes.
"How can the spiritual power of the Soul King Palace be this overwhelmingly dense?"
Starrk exclaimed, "The reiryoku of this entire space is this insane everywhere?"
He himself had lived for nearly a thousand years, wandering all over Hueco Mundo, and yet had never encountered a place that could compare to the Soul King Palace.
Shunsui sighed in amazement.
"If they've been living in an environment like this for countless years, how could they not be ridiculously strong?"
He felt that even if they left a dog here for a thousand years, it would come out with at least lieutenant-level combat strength.
"Captain, stop saying useless stuff and help me…"
Nanao's face had gone pale.
She had followed Shunsui into the Soul King Palace, and before she could even take a proper look around, she'd been crushed by the pressure of the reiryoku.
No matter how hard she tried, she could barely stand. Even her brain was spinning with dizziness.
Shunsui hurriedly helped his little niece up, afraid that she'd survived everything outside only to be killed here by spiritual pressure.
After everything was sorted, the gathered shinigami and Arrancar all looked solemnly up at the floating islands in the sky.
"Where's Aizen?"
"Why can't we see that bastard? He only came in a little bit before us."
"Cole's nowhere to be seen either."
"And the Zero Division shinigami… If they're the royal guards, they should be here, right?"
"Don't tell me they all went to the Soul King's chambers?"
...
While everyone was whispering and speculating—
From one of the massive, imposing floating island structures—the Zero Division Palace—there came a deafening explosion.
A single invisible wave of sword pressure…
Almost sliced the entire Zero Division Palace in half.
(End of Chapter)
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