"Black Coffin again?"
"The last time he used it was on the battlefield at Karakura Town, but it had just formed when Ichigo Kurosaki smashed it apart with his bare hands!"
"So this time, there shouldn't be any accidents like that… right?"
At this moment,
even the captains,
shocked as they were, still held their breath and stared, dazzled, at the screen.
They put aside all prejudice and hostility,
and waited to see whether the Black Coffin that Aizen unleashed during the Thousand-Year Blood War
would surpass the one from back then—
and whether it could stand against the surging power of the Soul King!
The answer
was revealed very quickly—
"Boom!!!"
Space itself shook.
The air roared, clouds shattered and were visibly blown away.
Threads of violet lightning
danced and flickered around Aizen and the chair beneath him,
jumping and flashing again and again!
A wave of purple spiritual pressure so intense it defied description
burst upward from below like a colossal pillar of light!
As it blasted its way skyward,
every strand of air it touched, every reishi particle within that air, was crushed to dust!
And that wave
carried a tremendous impact.
Right there, in front of everyone watching, it erupted upward over an enormous area!
With a spiritual-pressure intensity on par with the Soul King's torrent,
it actually…
forced those falling rivers of black spiritual pressure to a dead stop!
Even more outrageous,
at the point where the two forces collided,
the pressure was so overwhelming it created an absolute vacuum!
Cracks began to show faintly in the surrounding space—
it simply couldn't withstand a clash of spiritual pressure on the Soul King's level!
That one shot,
of course, delivered a brutal visual impact.
All over the world, viewers were once again shaken to their core!
"Holy crap!"
"He stopped it that easily?"
"Over all of Seireitei, that black torrent of spiritual pressure really has stopped! It can't sink even a little farther!"
"Aizen is insane! No wonder the Head Captain handpicked him as the Gotei 13's top-class hired gun!"
"This substitute… I'm giving him a perfect score!!!"
Shock.
Stunned silence.
Viewers stared, slack-jawed, at the frozen image on their screens, gasping one after another.
Too damn strong…
He was still just sitting in that chair, with the spiritual pressure conduits in both his arms sealed this whole time!
In other words…
even just the "prelude" of him releasing a kidō,
just the momentum alone, had been enough to easily halt the Soul King's torrent.
And even that was nowhere near Aizen's full power!
No one had any idea
how high his true upper limit really went.
That was the truly terrifying part!!!
"Hmph…"
"Which idiot thought up that stupid chair and insisted on limiting Lord Aizen's power like this?"
"Otherwise he wouldn't just stop it. He'd crush it without even trying!"
Inside Las Noches,
Yammy folded his arms and snorted in irritation.
They had begged Lord Aizen to get online and carry them—
and then still insisted on holding him back, walking on eggshells.
Those captains of the Gotei 13
were really petty to the core!!!
"Not just that…"
Nnoitra shook his head, laying it on even thicker as he flattered him. "It wouldn't be strange if he could break through the barrier and pierce the Soul King Palace too."
"Pierce the Soul King Palace? Now that's going too far!"
"Not far at all. 'Use spiritual pressure to knock down the Soul King Palace!' That sentence… Lord Aizen could absolutely make it come true!"
Just like that,
the Arrancar in Las Noches all started talking over one another, each of them hyping Aizen harder than the last.
Thanks to Aizen's overwhelming performance,
they were indirectly reclaiming the confidence they'd lost in the earlier rounds of the countdown.
They were no longer timid,
no longer looking at the Soul Society through rose-colored glasses,
no longer afraid of the captains, thinking their Zanpakutō could never be beaten.
——
Meanwhile,
on the screen,
within that blinding violet glow, his solidified spiritual pressure kept stacking higher and higher, crushing countless eyeball monsters around him—
and in just a few breaths,
a colossal Black Coffin barrier rose up, towering so high it nearly burst through the Soul Shield over Seireitei!
From a distance,
it looked like an enormous black tombstone.
It suppressed the rushing darkness, slamming straight into the heavens,
as if it really were about to reach the Soul King Palace's domain!
Such an absurd scale
naturally created another massive visual shock, and in an instant set off another uproar as viewers were completely blown away:
"This is insane!!!"
"And that's without a chant! The power's only a fraction of the full version, but it's still overflowing past the Soul Shield…"
"In just two years, Aizen's spiritual pressure must have grown several times stronger than it was in the Karakura Town showdown!"
A wave of exclamations rolled out,
spreading from every corner of the Bleach world.
At this point,
the audience was in total disbelief.
Everyone stared wide-eyed, filled with nothing but shock!
It was outrageous…
Whether height or scale, this Black Coffin
was several times larger than the last one!
Most importantly,
just while it was forming,
countless eyeball monsters were crushed to pieces,
their bodies turning into sheets of blood-red rain that poured from the sky!
And standing in the middle of it all,
sheathed in a barrier formed by his spiritual pressure,
Aizen and his chair remained spotless, untouched by so much as a single drop of blood mist.
Just like that,
he sat there arrogantly,
his cold features not shifting in the slightest.
As if…
this massive Black Coffin that had shocked the entire world
was nothing more than a little toy
he'd casually made with his spiritual pressure.
Not nearly enough to stir even the smallest ripple in his heart.
That kind of casual, unruffled attitude
only made it even more shocking!!!
"It's just too much…"
"Good thing Ichigo isn't Aizen's opponent this time!"
"Otherwise… unless he went back into that Final Getsuga Tenshō state, there's no way he could stand up to this coffin…"
Inside the convenience store,
Isshin Kurosaki felt like his brain had been hard-stunned for several minutes.
Only after that did he shake off the shock and speak, relieved on his son's behalf.
"Yeah…"
Tessai nodded, also a little spooked. "But that means, once this Black Coffin detonates, all that Soul King torrent should be wiped out in an instant, right?"
Sure enough,
the moment he finished speaking,
the Black Coffin on screen sealed shut at the top.
Then, under the viewers' horrified gazes, the entire structure shattered!
"With a bang!!!"
Huge black fragments
burst apart like mirror shards, pouring down from high in the sky.
At the same time…
a world-ending force rippled outward over a vast area.
Over the next
minute or so,
the viewers watched in stunned amazement as the scene that had been nothing but darkness—
a screen completely filled with the Soul King's black torrent—
was purified for a second time along with the air itself,
turning into white motes that dissolved completely, leaving not a trace behind.
Very quickly,
as the blackness vanished,
the footage grew bright again.
Through the clouds you could even see shafts of sunlight, streaming down through the cracks in the shattered Soul Shield
and raining continuously onto the ground of Seireitei below.
When the sunlight
fell across Aizen,
most viewers had a strange illusion—
that it was the radiance of a savior shining from within his body.
Holy, majestic, untouchable…
Exactly like what he had just done:
relying on his own strength alone to stand against the dark torrent,
and saving the entire Soul Society!!!
——
"Th-this…"
"Aizen! He really did exactly what he said!"
"He actually, single-handedly, resolved the crisis threatening the Soul Society!"
"That infuriating man…"
Right now,
inside Squad One's barracks,
the old man snapped his eyes wide open, pupils burning like torches as they reflected Aizen's invincible silhouette from the screen.
In the Head Captain's heart,
a flood of mixed feelings surged up.
There was shock and gratitude,
but even more helplessness.
He was a sinner of the highest order—
and yet in the future, he was the only reliable one left!
What made it worse,
in the present, Aizen had only just defected not long ago. The aftershocks and negative impact of that betrayal
hadn't even settled yet!
And now…
with this scene revealed to the world,
Aizen had immediately transformed into everyone's savior,
the great hero who prevented Seireitei and the Soul Society from being destroyed.
That was what made the Head Captain cough blood.
Because,
as everyone knew,
you can't "edit" video.
Every frame was of events that truly happened, witnessed with the naked eyes of the entire world.
So now,
the Head Captain was stuck.
From here on out, whenever Aizen's name came up,
was he supposed to call him a criminal, a hero, or a savior?
Ugh… just thinking about it
made the old man feel like half his beard was going to fall out!!!
"Heh…"
Mayuri Kurotsuchi let out a cold chuckle. "How about we just say Aizen never defected…"
With his usual twisted humor he sneered, "I mean, we all just saw it—there's going to be a brand-new Central 46 in the future anyway."
"So we can just say Aizen never slaughtered them in the first place…"
"Then he never committed a crime, never defected… and he's still one of us!!!"
Of course,
that kind of joke
only earned him a glare from the Head Captain and the rejection of the other captains.
And yet…
that footage they'd just watched
forced them to start wondering whether their judgment of Aizen had been too one-sided and extreme.
Some even began to question
whether Aizen might keep getting "washed clean" in the scenes to come.
That thought left the captains more than a little unnerved!!!
——
Meanwhile.
The video continued to play—
"Aizen…"
"You really are a monster."
"Even locked up in Muken, your spiritual pressure just keeps multiplying. It's terrifying."
The future captains,
who'd already left the research lab and regrouped elsewhere on screen,
were all clearly shaken, their expressions full of shock.
Every one of them looked at Aizen in his chair
as if they were staring at some sort of monster.
At that moment,
Soi Fon—always one to act fast—
cut in first. A huge golden missile rested on her shoulder
as she aimed it upward and shouted, "While we've got the chance,
we have to hurry and blow open the sky. Only then can we create a path to the Soul King Palace!"
However,
she'd barely finished
before Aizen interrupted her from the chair: "There's no need for that."
The corner of his mouth tilted up.
His tone was as flat and emotionless as ever,
but beneath it was that instinctive, absolute sense of command:
"The gravity of that last Black Coffin has already cracked the Soul Shield."
"From here, all I need to do is hit it with spiritual pressure again, and the whole dome will shatter on its own."
Aizen said it as casually as if he were discussing the weather—
and what he said next caused an even bigger uproar!
"Besides…"
"You want to go to the Soul King Palace, don't you?"
"If the original method is so roundabout and troublesome, there's no reason to bother… I'll just knock it down with spiritual pressure."
Those words,
carried by the countdown video to the World of the Living,
immediately set off a shockwave on the level of a nuclear blast.
The viewers were floored!!!
"What?"
"Did I hear that right… knock the Soul King Palace down with spiritual pressure?!"
"What kind of insane nonsense is that supposed to be?"
"How could something like that even happen? That's way too over the top!"
People were stunned.
The Soul King Palace wasn't some bird in the sky, or random floating object.
It was a vast, hidden realm
segmented and shielded behind seventy-two barriers.
No matter how strong Aizen's spiritual pressure was,
there had to be a limit. You couldn't just exaggerate it without restraint and casually claim you'd 'knock down the Soul King Palace.'
What kind of god-tier lunatic was this guy?!
Among all the viewers,
the most annoyed
were of course the five members of Squad Zero, currently gathered in the Soul King Palace to watch the video.
"Hm?"
"Ever since he was released from Muken, that Aizen's gotten more and more arrogant!"
"Knock down the Soul King Palace… heh! Even you, Monk of the Eye, might not be able to pull that off, right?"
Tenjirō Kirinji spat out the grass stem in his mouth and sneered.
"Aizen's just showing off. We're used to it by now—just ignore him…" Kirio Hikifune said cheerfully.
"Exactly…"
"I, for one, refuse to believe that just two years in confinement would let his spiritual pressure surpass the combined might of all five of us," Senjumaru Shutara added coldly, metal arms at her back pulling out gleaming golden needles.
If she ever got the chance to fight Aizen,
she would absolutely pick up her threads and stitch his mouth shut,
so he'd have no way to keep running it nonstop and putting on a show!!!
However,
in the very next moment,
what the video showed
made every member of Squad Zero change color.
The Zero Division halls around them, and even the distant sections of the Soul King Palace,
actually…
started to shake violently,
all because of that supreme spiritual pressure pouring out of the Aizen on screen!
"Boom!!!"
A violent, surging
wave of violet spiritual pressure
burst straight through the transparent barrier, erupting in a column that shook the heavens. It blasted the nearby captains away
and shot straight up into the sky, firing toward the hidden Soul King Palace!
The sight was so overwhelming
that it really looked like…
in the next few moments,
Aizen would casually chat and joke
while knocking the entire Soul King Palace out of the sky!!!
That ridiculous possibility
left the Shinigami of the Gotei 13 completely speechless.
"Holy—"
"That bastard Aizen! What the hell is he doing?!"
"He'd just become the savior, and people were only starting to see him a little differently—and now he's planning a new crime!"
"If he knocks down the Soul King Palace, won't Seireitei be destroyed underneath it?"
"He's deliberately going all out with his spiritual pressure just to show off! Showing off at this level is ridiculous!"
At that instant,
the Shinigami were fully panicking. With Aizen's monstrous spiritual pressure,
he really might be able to knock the Soul King Palace down!
If that happened,
wouldn't the entire Gotei 13
be buried with it?
It was a straight-up nightmare!!!
Without even noticing,
every last Shinigami had once again been dragged into disaster by Aizen!!!
(End of Chapter)
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