The Supreme Soul, Starting with Death

Gu Shi rolled his eyes speechlessly at Urahara Kisuke, who was trying hard to appear serious but was actually still a bit exaggerated. Too lazy to argue any further, he patted the "dead tree" behind him.

"This is it, Luther Ben, nicknamed Little Luther."

"...Mr. Gu Shi, I reiterate, please do not use this damn nickname to address me."

The withered tree shook its branches unhappily, protesting politely but with subtly rude words, before greeting Urahara Kisuke in a soft voice that sounded no older than five.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Disgusting Death. It's truly unpleasant to meet you."

Kisuke Urahara, who can be considered the most cunning person in the Bleach world after Aizen, immediately smiled happily upon hearing this and waved to the withered tree in a seemingly affectionate manner.

"Hello, hello, cute little Lu, I'm so happy to see you!"

"I told you, please don't call me Xiao Lu!"

Having successfully provoked the adorable Koji, Kisuke Urahara ignored her protests with satisfaction and looked at Gu Shi with a mixture of anticipation and confusion.

"So, what's so special about this adorable little Lu?"

Gu Shi didn't hold back and shared his ideas about spiritual energy crops in one go.

After listening attentively to Gu Shi's account, Urahara Kisuke asked a question with a puzzled look on his face.

"That's it? Plants are everywhere in Soul Society. Trees and weeds are everywhere, and there are even people in charge of producing food crops. Don't you know that, Gu Shi?"

Urahara Kisuke was puzzled, but Gu Shi was even more puzzled than him.

"Kisuke, haven't you realized yet? We're in the real world right now."

The conversation between the two seemed to have taken a subtle turn. Kisuke Urahara frowned, pressed his temples, and pondered for a moment before he understood what Gu Shi meant.

"Gu Shi, are you saying that plants from Soul Society cannot be grown in the human world? How do you know that?"

"I was going to ask you why you didn't know that."

Gu Shi rolled his eyes at Urahara Kisuke. Asido, who was leading Urahara Kisuke to see Gu Shi, also stared at Urahara Kisuke in disbelief.

In Asito's memory, Kisuke Urahara, like Shimi, was always a representative of erudition. Whenever the two of them got together, they would start talking about all sorts of things that were incomprehensible to others. Yet, Kisuke Urahara didn't even know such common sense.

"...Kisuke, it seems you're still standing too high."

After a brief moment of thought, Gu Shi finally understood where the cognitive differences between the two came from.

Hundreds of years ago, when the first batch of low-ranking Shinigami were sent to the human world to carry out their stationing missions, some people considered that the missions were too long, often lasting for more than ten or even several decades. They hoped to bring some ornamental plants unique to the Soul Society to the human world so that they could remember the Soul Society through these plants while carrying out their missions there.

However, without exception, all the plants that these people brought to the mortal world began to dissipate the moment they stepped out of the interdimensional gate. Even if some people later refused to believe it and found various hardy plants or directly carried large trees with strong vitality through the interdimensional gate, these plants would all dissipate within a few breaths.

Since then, it has become common knowledge among the lower-ranking Shinigami who might be assigned to guard missions in the human world that plants from Soul Society cannot be brought into the human world.

But Kisuke Urahara is first and foremost a nobleman, and secondly, he is a super genius, on whom the Shihouin family places high hopes.

In Kisuke Urahara's social circle, even the worst "mediocre people" are elites from various races and squads. The task of guarding the human world would never fall to these people, and they would not have much interaction with the lowest-ranking Shinigami.

As a result, due to the lack of communication between the two parties, common sense was lost.

Just as in Kisuke Urahara's understanding, the atmosphere within each squad and the personality and style of each squad leader are the most basic common sense, but these are the important pieces of information that ordinary students need to painstakingly find out when they graduate and choose to join a squad, as they may affect their entire lives.

What is common sense in the eyes of a low-level Shinigami is equally unfamiliar to Kisuke Urahara.

And because these things are "common sense," neither side would treat them as valuable intelligence and provide them to the other, much less record them in writing.

Thus, the cognitive gap between the upper and lower levels arises.

As Gu Shi explained, Urahara Kisuke couldn't help but feel a little irritated.

He had always been disgusted by those corrupt and rigid nobles, believing that they were the ones who hindered the development of Soul Society. Therefore, he considered himself to be on the side of ordinary Shinigami and called himself a member of the commoners.

But the facts proved that he was still one of the nobles he despised. He never really understood those ordinary people. He was just like other nobles, looking down on the world from a high place and naturally imagining what ordinary people should be like and how they should live.

Come to think of it, before he entered Shinigami Academy, he had four small private laboratories. After graduating and joining the Second Division, he directly took charge of a small research institute built specifically for him. How could he be on the same side as those Shinigami who were troubled by being alone in the human world, unable to return to Soul Society for decades, with no one to communicate with, and unable to even feel homesick when they saw things?

This realization made Kisuke Urahara somewhat defensive.

After I get back, I must set aside some time to visit those "seniors".

Oh, and I also need to develop something that can facilitate communication between the human world and the Soul Society, so that the Shinigami stationed in the human world and their friends in the Soul Society can communicate!

Kisuke Urahara slapped his cheeks hard, forcing himself to temporarily forget about this annoying matter and begin to think seriously.

Once he set aside his preconceived notion that "they're all plants, what's the difference?", Kisuke Urahara realized that his mistake this time was indeed somewhat naive.

If plants from Soul Society could truly be planted and grown in the human world, then even if very few plants had been brought to the human world over the past few hundred years, they should now be covering the mountains and fields.

After all, plants made purely of spirit particles are invisible to ordinary people and animals, let alone deliberately destroy or eat them. In other words, they are in an environment with no natural enemies, so their explosive reproduction is only natural.

However, despite his several journeys through the mortal realm, he never once saw a pure spirit plant.

"This is really embarrassing."

Kisuke Urahara covered his face tightly, feeling his ears burning red.

On the other side, Gu Shi had no intention of comforting Urahara Kisuke. In his opinion, Urahara Kisuke did indeed need to feel ashamed.

Among the books that Gu Shi found at the Shin-O Library, there was a foul-mouthed guy who seemed to be Mayuri Kurotsuchi. He had already noticed the phenomenon that spirit plants could not be grown in the real world, and very rudely wrote down his conjectures about this in the blank space of the book.

As a researcher, Kisuke Urahara's talent and intelligence should have been superior to Mayuri Kurotsuchi's. Yet, he failed to think of the things Mayuri thought of. Isn't that negligence?

Chapter 201 A Global Crisis?

That foul-mouthed madman who left a lot of graffiti in the Shinigami Library boldly believes that the underlying rules of Soul Society have been artificially modified, and the evidence he uses to prove his conjecture happens to be the plants that exist in large numbers in Soul Society.

The foul-mouthed man argues that despite the vast variety and quantity of plants in the world, not a single blade of grass or flower can possess a soul. This, to some extent, proves that "plants should not have souls," which may be a fundamental rule of the world, much like "raindrops fall downwards rather than fly upwards."

Therefore, those spirit plants that grow in Soul Society and can be called plant souls must be erroneous products born under the distorted rules of Soul Society. They are "illegal products" that violate the rules of the human world, which is why they are immediately corrected and disappeared by the rules of the human world after entering it.

However, that madman clearly did not know the truth about the birth of Soul Society and mistakenly believed that the Soul King was the one who created Soul Society. So at the end of the graffiti, he made no attempt to hide his sarcastic remarks about the Soul King, as if he was disgusted by this behavior of arbitrarily manipulating the underlying rules of the world.

Urahara Kisuke was, after all, a true genius. Gu Shi had only revealed a little bit of the foul-mouthed maniac's thinking, and he had quickly deduced the rest of the content. As a result, Urahara Kisuke's gaze toward the dead tree path suddenly became scorching.

"I see! What we need is not spirit plants, but a soul that possesses all the characteristics of a plant, but is not a plant in essence!"

True spiritual plants are a calamity in the mortal world. Even if one manages to obtain one, it must be carefully hidden away. Once exposed, it will be "immediately executed" by the rules of the mortal world.

Only those beings that possess plant characteristics, are highly similar to plants in every aspect, yet are not truly plants—the "Plant Form Great Void"—can exist stably by exploiting loopholes in the rules of the world.

Seeing that Kisuke Urahara finally understood the value of the path through the dead tree, Gu Shi nodded in satisfaction and continued to ask questions.

"Kisuke, how much do you know about the characteristics of plants?"

"This……"

Kisuke Urahara thought for a moment, then shook his head helplessly.

"I know almost nothing about it."

Both Gu Shi and Urahara Kisuke are undoubtedly biased towards one area. Gu Shi's knowledge is mostly focused on the real world and material things, while Urahara Kisuke's knowledge and research are entirely based on the Soul Society and souls.

Although spirit plants exist in Soul Society, they are insignificant compared to the Shinigami and Menos Grande, each with their own unique abilities. Kisuke Urahara had never even considered studying this aspect before.

Gu Shi wasn't too surprised by this answer. After all, he had known about Urahara Kisuke's uneven academic performance for five years. So he simply nodded calmly and continued speaking without a care in the world.

"Then listen to me. Theoretically speaking, every living cell of a plant has a high degree of totipotency. That is to say, if I pick a leaf, a branch, a root, or even just a cell from a tree, as long as it is properly cultured, I should be able to grow a new plant."

Kisuke Urahara was no stranger to the concept of cell totipotency. He had heard Gu Shi mention it five years ago, and his current secondary research project, "Creating Complete Souls Through Spiritual Particle Editing," incorporated some of this concept.

The general idea behind Tato is to use spirit editing to first create a "base body" that has all the information of the finished product and the ability to self-reproduce. Then, the base body will spontaneously select information from each part to express according to a pre-set program, eventually forming a complete individual like growth.

Therefore, when he heard Gu Shi say that every living cell of a plant theoretically possesses a high degree of totipotency, he was first somewhat surprised, and then his eyes widened in disbelief as his gaze darted back and forth between Gu Shi and the dead tree path.

"...Gu Shi, he is dangerous."

If this plant-like Hollow is like a real plant, with each cell capable of cultivating a new Hollow, then if it falls into the hands of someone with a purpose, Hueco Mundo and the human world would probably be filled with these Hollows within ten years.

That would be the most terrifying disaster!

Seeing that Kisuke Urahara's hand had already touched his Zanpakuto, and he seemed about to be unable to hold back any longer and "save the world," Gu Shi finally couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Kisuke, calm down. Koji is a phallus, not a real plant. Based on my current test results, he doesn't have that much omnipotence."

Gu Shi's words of comfort did not completely reassure Urahara Kisuke. He still stared warily at the path with withered trees, as if if he were not careful, this plant-like Hollow would explode into countless fragments that would drift across the world, and then in an instant, each fragment would become a new Hollow, filling the entire world.

Seeing that Urahara Kisuke's hand was still gripping his Zanpakuto, and his expression was uncertain, Gu Shi helplessly patted the trunk of the withered tree path.

"Xiao Lu, have some fruit."

“Mr. Gu Shi, your meanness and exploitation are enough to make even the devil blush. If I hadn’t lost my brain after evolving, I definitely wouldn’t have accepted your invitation back then.”

Xiao Lu complained a few times, but still mobilized her spiritual power to make a fruit shaped like a skull grow on her branch. Then, without Gu Shi's help, Xiao Lu took the initiative to cut off the branch with the fruit, causing the fruit and a branch about a meter long to fall down together.

"Kisuke, this is the good stuff I was going to share with you. You can take the branches and fruits back and study them at your own pace, and decide for yourself whether the path is as terrible as you think."

Seriously stuffing the branches and fruit into Urahara Kisuke's bag, Gu Shi looked directly into Urahara Kisuke's eyes and made a promise without any hesitation.

"If after your research you still believe that Koji poses a significant threat, then you can report all the information about Koji and me to the higher-ups of Soul Society. I am just an Adjuchas now. If Soul Society determines that we pose a threat, they can easily send out one or two captains to completely wipe us out. The situation is not as dangerous as you think."

Hearing Gu Shi make such a serious guarantee, his attitude practically swearing on the life of that plant-like Hollow, Urahara Kisuke's attitude finally softened.

“Gu Shi, you…you don’t need to say that. I know you’re not the kind of crazy person who disregards life. Look, you even deliberately chose such a remote meeting place so as not to affect ordinary people. If the road really causes a major crisis, you will definitely…”

Trying to comfort Gu Shi only convinced himself. Urahara Kisuke scratched his hair in frustration, then suddenly stood up and gave Gu Shi a perfect 90-degree bow.

"Feel sorry!"

Gu Shi thought for a moment, swallowed back the polite words "no need to apologize," and accepted Urahara Kisuke's apology with equanimity. Then he pushed the branches and fruits in front of him again.

“I have received your apology. Anyway, take these two things back. After you check them, if there are no problems, please take some time to help me study the modification method. I hope that Xiaolu can eventually bear fruit containing spiritual energy without absorbing external spiritual energy, just by watering and sunbathing it.”

Kisuke Urahara was not surprised by this goal and solemnly agreed.