Chapter 29: The Distant Past
As the reel began to turn, the film started to play.
First came the images of forges and fire.
Countless metals melted together under extreme heat, flowing into a mold as if guided by unseen hands.
Hammering, quenching—under the command of a pair of thick, powerful hands, the separate pieces of a chain gradually took form. Then, after cooling, it became exactly the shape Mizuma had seen.
The view pulled back.
The owner of those hands—a burly monk with a broad beard—slung the finished chain across his back and stepped out of the forge.
That was Ichibē Hyōsube, the "Monk Who Calls the Real Name," the one who named all things in Soul Society.
Damn… just how old is this chain's history!?
The chain was placed on a weapon rack. Ichibē turned to leave.
Time sped forward. The scene outside shifted rapidly—sunrise, sunset, sunrise again—until the motion of days became a single streak of light. It was unclear how much time had passed, until one evening, Ichibē visited the place again, this time followed by five figures clad in long robes.
Wait—could it be…?
One was a cold, green-haired man who looked suspiciously like Tokinada.
Beside him stood a dark-skinned, purple-haired brute.
A third was a refined young man with long black hair and a serene face.
The fourth, a bald-headed giant whose honest, boisterous air was reminiscent of Shiba Isshin.
And finally—a quiet, silver-haired girl, graceful yet distant.
The moment Mizuma saw them, he instantly recalled the ancient portraits that hung in Shin'ō Academy's entrance hall back in his student days.
He drew in a sharp breath.
No way—these were the ancestors of the Five Great Noble Houses.
"Everyone, take your weapons."
Ichibē slung his enormous brush over his shoulder like a rifle, and gestured toward the armory wall.
"These are reiryoku-forged weapons I crafted myself. His Majesty, the Soul King, intends to march into Hueco Mundo to destroy the insurgents there. We cannot allow him to go alone."
The ancestors of the noble clans each nodded, stepping forward to select a weapon of their choice.
The chain, however, was taken by the white-haired girl.
Mizuma hissed between his teeth.
Counting with his fingers, he recalled the dates from his academy textbooks. He could roughly place the event.
After the Soul King forged the three realms, the ancient beings of Hueco Mundo rebelled, unwilling to submit to order. Their uprising nearly collapsed the unstable structure of reality itself. Thus, the Soul King led the five noble houses to war and annihilated them utterly.
When Mizuma had first read about this in the archives, he had laughed at the line "Hueco Mundo's landscape was paved with ash."
Now, seeing it with his own eyes, the thought chilled him.
So it was literal.
Listening to Ichibē, it seemed the Soul King had originally planned to go alone—into Hueco Mundo by himself—while his followers chose to disobey and follow after.
Perhaps such was the calm confidence of a true creator god.
The film continued to fast-forward. Ichibē and the five nobles traversed a savage, untamed world.
According to history, a million years ago, when the three realms first separated from chaos, all existence was still incomplete. The world's very structure was strange and unstable—filled with vast, perilous wonders.
In his school days, Mizuma had never truly understood what that meant. But now, he saw it with his own eyes:
Mountains of frost, skies filled with dragons, seas of flame, colossal trees reaching to the heavens—
A world unlike anything that exists today, grand and alien enough to take one's breath away.
Had he not been rushing, even with the playback fast-forwarded, he could have watched this like an epic film all day long.
As time passed, Ichibē's group grew in number—joined by dozens of other figures, some with distinctly Western features that reminded Mizuma of the London-based West Branch Bureau.
At last, they reached their destination.
On a cliff overlooking a molten plain stood a man in white robes, serene and noble, gazing at the solitary moon hanging over a scorched world of lava.
Sensing their presence, he turned.
His eyes—four pupils in total—swept across them with calm warmth.
The Soul King.
"I told you," he said gently, "there was no need for you to follow."
His voice was soft—so gentle that, if not for those impossible eyes, he would have seemed no different from a human.
There was no weight of authority in his tone, only serenity.
Yet all five knelt behind him, waiting in silent reverence for his command.
And then—the war began.
Countless masked abominations became their enemies.
They were immense, monstrous, and their howls shook the world—towering so high they seemed to blot out the moon itself.
Those must be the ancient beings of Hueco Mundo—the ones described in the oldest scrolls.
Even through the "film," he couldn't feel their reiatsu, yet he could see the sheer terror of their power.
Each one looked far stronger than any Vasto Lorde known in the present day.
But the Soul King and his followers did not falter.
They charged forward. They tore those titans apart with bare hands, reshaping the very land in their wake.
Some fell. Some were wounded.
But the advantage always lay with the Soul King's side.
Mizuma stared, dumbfounded.
Just what kind of power is this?
Even Yhwach himself might not have reached this scale.
So Bleach's universe, too, followed the oldest law of power:
the farther back in time, the stronger they were.
Unlike his subordinates, who fought tooth and nail, the Soul King did almost nothing.
He simply walked.
Step by step, across molten earth.
The ancient hollows shrieked and lunged toward him—but they couldn't even touch him.
Anything that neared him disintegrated into drifting ash.
It was power beyond comprehension, beyond even admiration—something the human mind could barely process.
And so, the war ended in one-sided annihilation.
The ancients' bodies were crushed into dust by the Soul King's hand, spreading across the burning land, cooling it into solid ground.
Then, the Soul King and Ichibē raised a palace in the sky—the Soul King's Palace.
The remaining followers were each given a divine duty:
The Tsunayashiro clan to govern History,
The Shihōin clan to guard Weapons,
The Kuchiki clan to maintain Order.
The Shiba clan got into a conflict with others and left on their own,
while the silver-haired girl's family became the Keepers of Hell.
The three realms were separated completely.
Each noble line took its post, and on the land of Soul Society, they built Seireitei.
In the West, others founded the London Branch.
Hueco Mundo no longer posed a threat to the Living World.
Thus, the great cycle of souls was complete.
The film fast-forwarded once more—centuries, perhaps millennia, in an instant.
Until one day, the white-haired girl stood before the Soul King's throne, summoned alone.
She knelt, her voice void of emotion, reporting on the state of Hell.
As always, the Soul King listened in serene silence.
But then—Mizuma froze.
Wait… where is he looking?
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TL: Isn't Oetsu Nimaiya the one who forges Zanpakuto then why did Ichibe say that 'I forged...' even I'm confused by this. If u guys know lmk.
〔TL〕
It is resolved later.
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