"AHHHHHHH!"
Along with a heart-rending roar, Shihoin Yoruichi, like someone possessed, threw a punch that slammed heavily against the blade of Senbonzakura that Kuchiki Byakuya had raised to block in front of him.
BOOM!
A terrifying shockwave exploded instantly, the ground beneath their feet cracking and caving in.
The violent captain-level spiritual pressure turned into a tangible storm, surging wildly in every direction.
The coffins that had originally been lined up neatly to give the dead their final dignity looked unbearably fragile under this indiscriminate destructive force. In an instant, they were overturned and shattered.
One corpse after another, dressed in blood-stained formal robes, rolled out of the broken coffins like rag dolls, mixing with dirt and splintered wood, no trace of dignity left.
Such a shocking burst of spiritual pressure naturally drew the attention of many powerful figures deep within the Seireitei.
But when they sensed that the source of the explosion was the Shihoin estate, everyone silently withdrew their probing senses.
Today, that place was destined to be a battlefield of slaughter.
Since Kuchiki Byakuya and Shiba Kukaku, two heads of the Five Great Noble Clans, were both present, there was no need for anyone else to interfere in this already decided ending.
"Shihoin Yoruichi!"
As the dust settled, Byakuya's figure stood completely unmoved. Even the folds of his clothing had not increased in the slightest.
He took half a step back. His cold gaze swept over the devastated battlefield, the disdain in his eyes almost spilling over.
"Look at this mess. Who exactly are you putting on this display of anger for? Is it to cover up your incompetence, or to satisfy your own selfish need to vent?"
Senbonzakura lowered in his hand, the tip of the blade pointing at the corpses that Yoruichi herself had overturned.
"If you want to fight, I can accompany you to the end. But if two captains go all out here, what do you think this land that buries your clansmen will turn into? I believe I don't need to say more."
These words were like a basin of ice water poured over Yoruichi's head as she spiraled in madness.
Her fist, which had been about to swing again, froze stiffly in midair.
Byakuya was right. The last bit of dignity that remained had already been destroyed by her own hands.
Like a rusted puppet, Yoruichi slowly turned her head at that moment.
What entered her sight was a scene like hell itself.
Most of the coffins had been overturned. The dead were denied peace. Bodies lay scattered in the mud.
And among that pile of tangled corpses, that small, familiar figure stabbed painfully into her eyes.
It was Yushiro, thrown out of his coffin, lying face down among the rubble.
At that instant, all her anger was replaced by overwhelming panic.
"Yu… Yushiro…"
In the next moment, Yoruichi's figure vanished. When she appeared again, she was already kneeling beside Yushiro's body.
Her hands trembled as she carefully turned her little brother's already cold body over and pulled him into her arms.
However, when her hands touched the two fatal penetrating wounds in Yushiro's chest, her keen perception as a top-tier powerhouse made her feel as if she had been struck by lightning.
The spiritual pressure lingering on those wounds was far too familiar.
So familiar that she had come into contact with it just this morning.
That was definitely not the spiritual pressure of an ordinary member of the Sixth Division or even a lieutenant. It was spiritual pressure deliberately left behind by a Zanpakuto strike, carrying a strong personal imprint.
Yoruichi suddenly raised her head. At that moment, grief and fury twisted together on her face into an expression of disbelief.
She stared fixedly at the woman standing not far away with arms folded, watching coldly.
"It was... you?"
"You did it yourself?"
Even though reason told her this was the truth, emotionally she still could not accept it.
Shiba Kukaku, the close friend who once drank with her and was as dear as a sister, not only had she watched coldly as the Shihoin clan was slaughtered, she had personally killed her little brother?
"I remember Yushiro used to like following you around too. He even called you Kukaku-nee, didn't he?"
Yoruichi's voice trembled, her eyes red, filled with broken questions.
"How could you bring yourself to do it?"
"He did call me sister."
Facing Yoruichi's devouring gaze, Kukaku did not avoid it in the slightest. Instead, she nodded calmly, her tone as cold as if she were discussing tonight's sky.
"Precisely because he called me sister, I personally made the move and gave him a quick end, letting him be completely freed."
"Freed?"
Yoruichi repeated the word in disbelief.
"Do you think being alive in this world is something joyful?"
The corner of Kukaku's mouth lifted in a mocking curve, her eyes showing a lifelessness that seemed to see through everything.
Whether born in Soul Society, the World of the Living, or Hueco Mundo. If people could foresee their own future in advance, perhaps more than half would regret ever being born.
"You're insane!"
Yoruichi screamed hysterically, tears finally bursting from her eyes.
"You're completely insane! Shiba Kukaku, how did you become this cold-blooded?"
"How did I become like this?"
Hearing that, Kukaku seemed to hear something extremely absurd and actually let out a low laugh. The laughter grew louder and louder, until in the end it carried a bone-chilling coldness.
She abruptly stopped laughing and stepped forward, her eyes sharp as blades as she stared at Yoruichi.
"Shihoin Yoruichi, you've never lived my life. You've never struggled in a swamp of despair. So what right do you have to think I wouldn't become like this?"
"The reason you're this naive is because your life was too smooth, and too selfish."
Shiba Kukaku pointed at Yoruichi, each word striking straight at the heart.
"Back then, you left Soul Society entirely because you brought it on yourself. No one forced you. No one took the initiative to trouble you. You just wanted to protect Urahara Kisuke and that group, so on a hotheaded impulse you stormed Central 46 alone and left with them."
"Given the Shihoin family's status and your position at the time, if you had been willing to lower your head and negotiate, to lobby for them, Urahara Kisuke and the others would not have died. Even if someone was manipulating things behind the scenes, would he have cared about a bunch of failed test subjects? The one who forced you away was your damned, uncompromising arrogance!"
"You left so freely, but you dumped the entire mess onto your family. Even so, you were only sidelined and looked at coldly."
At this point, Kukaku's voice turned low and hoarse, as if every word had been soaked in blood.
"But what about me? What about the Shiba family?"
"I never wanted to cause trouble. I just stayed quietly at home, wanting to be an ordinary Shinigami. But disaster fell from the sky like that!"
"First, my big brother was incited by some hypocrite to provoke Sui Feng, causing the Shiba family to inexplicably form a grudge with the Feng clan. Then someone threw his experimental subject right in front of my big brother and sister-in-law."
"Heh!"
Kukaku let out a cold laugh.
"According to my later investigation, when my sister-in-law was possessed by a Hollow, Captain Jushiro was right there at the scene! If he had been willing to act, instead of standing aside pretending while my brother insisted on a one-on-one fight for his pride, my brother wouldn't have had to die at all!"
"On the night after my brother and sister-in-law died, the Shiba family was slaughtered in secret."
"In a single night, the entire Shiba family was reduced to just me and Ganju, guarding a ground full of corpses and an empty estate."
Shiba Kukaku stared fixedly at Yoruichi, endless coldness in her eyes.
"At that time, what had I done wrong? What had the Shiba family done wrong? We did nothing. We were ten thousand times more innocent than the Shihoin family today! But we were still wiped out, without even a place to argue our case!"
"This world is like this. Rotten to the core."
That was Kukaku's final conclusion.
So when she learned that Rosse's real goal was to completely destroy everything, she was the first to raise her hand in agreement.
To make that day come sooner, she spent several years digging out all the dark history left behind by her ancestors about the Spirit King being dismembered and handed it all over to Rosse.
Since the moment the world began to operate on the dismemberment of the Spirit King, it was destined to be built upon sin and tragedy.
Then let all these sins draw their final full stop with the Spirit King's complete death.
This world should never have existed in the first place.
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