Chapter 863: The Ultimate Masterpiece
Lin Qinfu felt an unnatural chill prickling across his skin. Burma was a stifling, sweltering country, yet the flesh along his spine involuntarily seized and tightened, wrapping him in a suffocating constriction that refused to ease.
He tried clawing at his back, but his fingernails couldn't graze the root of that deep, phantom itch. The sensation left his chest churning with foul restlessness.
The wound on his wrist had long since healed. Several months had slipped by since that Boss Bai oversaw the total reconstruction of the Paradise. By now, Lin Qinfu had pieced together the truth: the man who had marched into his industrial park alone from the Eastland and stripped him of everything he owned was an ability user.
And among ability users, he was the absolute most terrifying breed.
Whispers circulating through both the underworld and state intelligence claimed that Boss Bai, who governed the Paradise with an iron fist, was an apocalyptic titan holding the power to dictate the fate of nations—the walking calamity behind the sudden vanishing of Neon from the face of the earth.
Such rumors sounded absurdly sensationalized, yet Lin Qinfu believed every single word without hesitation.
Only those who had stood in the physical presence of that man could ever fathom what that pressure felt like.
Grotesque, warped, predatory, exuding an aura that provoked visceral nausea, yet carrying an unshakeable inevitability that guaranteed triumph in everything he pursued.
Lacking supernatural traits, Lin Qinfu and the rest of the original staff had long been purged from the core grounds of the Paradise. In the weeks immediately following the facility's erection, strange plagues continually broke out across the surrounding jungle; legions of mortals perished, while others mutated into grotesque beasts.
Most of those abominations were purged by the arriving ability users, while a scattered few scurried into the deep wilderness.
Lin Qinfu counted himself exceptionally lucky on that front: someone under Boss Bai's command had stopped by to purge an insidious curse coiled in his marrow, paving the way for him to secure a comfortable post as the local sheriff in a settlement not far from the perimeter.
Yet today, watching the cataclysms erupting across the globe on the television broadcast, a creeping terror seized his gut.
"Hey! Someone get in here!"
Primal fear commanded his lungs, prompting him to shout for his subordinates, yet no acknowledgment came.
The dissonance grew deafening. Lin Qinfu pushed open his bedroom door and froze: his three personal bodyguards were standing rigid in the parlor, locked in complete, unnatural stillness.
He choked back his voice, the room drowning in a stifling, curdled atmosphere.
Trembling fingers reached into his pocket, dialing Miss Jin's private line in the faint hope that she might still recall his existence.
Beep... Beep...
The sweltering afternoon heat hung heavy, yet the mechanical busy tone drilled into his eardrums like freezing iron needles.
Damn it all... they really did forget about me. Of course they did... why would ability users care about an ant like me...
He cursed silently, his eyes glued to the three men standing in the center of the parlor. Those dark-skinned, heavily muscled mercenaries stood ramrod straight, held together by a grotesque, rigid tension.
Then, they began to turn their heads.
Creak... crack... crunch...
The sound of muscle fibers snapping and cervical vertebrae grinding against bone echoed through the quiet house. Lin Qinfu stood paralyzed as the sickening cadence dragged on: the three bodyguards had twisted their heads clean around a full one hundred and eighty degrees, their upside-down gazes locking onto him.
Thick streams of black blood wept from their eyes in unison.
Lin Qinfu felt his scalp split with absolute terror. The next microsecond, a clammy, freezing sensation coiled around his neck. He jerked his head around to find cascades of stringy black hair framing a face of bleached, lifeless bone.
It's over... It's one of those things...
Lin Qinfu knew his life was forfeit. The horrors flashing across the global news networks had caught up with him.
A pair of bruised, grayish-white hands reached through his bangs, steadily crawling over his face. Peering through the trembling gaps between his fingers, he watched twin specters draped in black tresses clinging like leeches to the backs of his three dead bodyguards.
Beyond the window, a colossal, distorted human visage drifted lazily past the tree line.
What in the hell happened to this world...? A parade of a hundred demons in broad daylight...?!
The receiver slipped from his numb fingers, clattering against the floorboards. Autonomic control deserted his limbs; his pulse and shallow breaths rapidly decayed into static as his vision dipped toward the dark.
Fwoosh!
A concussive gale violently tore through the open window frames. The gargantuan human face floating outside shrieked, sucked upward into the firmament like a vanishing wisp of smoke.
Then, the weeping specters clinging to the mercenaries tore free, violently ripped toward the ceiling. The wraith coiled around his throat shrieked in primal dread, driving its rotting nails into his flesh to anchor itself.
Lin Qinfu lay paralyzed. He felt no overt shockwave, yet the foul entity draped across his shoulders was being peeled away by an irresistible, invisible tractor beam.
With a final, strangled wail, the specter was torn from his flesh, phasing straight through the ceiling and vanishing into the clouds.
Thud.
Lin Qinfu collapsed against the floor, every muscle across his frame seized in frigid agony. Ignoring the burning ache, he scrambled across the floorboards on all fours, crawling past the mangled corpses of his guards to stumble out onto the wooden veranda.
Lifting his eyes, he saw streams of dark, writhing shadows peeling away from every alley and rooftop in the settlement, hurtling skyward like smoke in a chimney.
Shielding his eyes, he found a solitary silhouette suspended in the open sky. Every foul specter, cursed wraith, and wandering horror across the municipality converged upon that lone figure, dissolving into nothingness the microsecond they grazed his frame.
Like an incandescent sun scouring the shadows clean.
Having clawed his way back from the gates of death, Lin Qinfu felt his hammering heart swell with boundless, trembling reverence toward the hovering silhouette.
Like an authentic... savior.
Similar epiphanies rippled through the populace below. Folk superstitions ran deep across the Burmese countryside; within minutes, hundreds of terrified villagers spilled from their homes, dropping to their knees to kowtow into the dust.
When Lin Qinfu stumbled down to street level, the dusty plaza was already carpeted with kneeling families murmuring frantic prayers. He placed no stock in divine grace, merely squinting into the blinding glare, burning to discern the identity of their savior.
Yet the figure paid not the slightest heed to the kneeling masses below, remaining cross-legged in the sky as he drifted steadily into the distance.
Along his flight path, every spiritual aberration and lingering evil across the horizon was forcibly subjugated and dissolved into his vessel.
Hands tucked deep into her pockets, Dead of Night strolled unhurriedly through the kneeling crowd. The villagers were babbling frantic incantations to various gods and Buddhas; not a single soul registered her passing footsteps.
She skirted past the sheriff, who stared blankly through her silhouette. Dead of Night clicked her tongue in silent awe: Mercenary Tao's mechanics were growing increasingly unhinged by the day.
She had initially planned to capitalize on the Spiritual Calamity drifting into the region, intending to harvest a few decent Cursed Spirits to replenish her depleted reserves. She hadn't anticipated that Mercenary Tao would simply float through the upper air and vacuum up every spectral entity across the entire district in a single breath.
The local anomalies hadn't merely been culled—they had been systematically siphoned dry.
Witnessing that effortless dominion, Dead of Night was forced to concede that the rumors classifying Mercenary Tao as a soul-type specialist held undeniable weight.
What kind of martial artist commanded soul-binding mastery of this scale?
The developmental ceiling of her [Cursed Spirit Manipulation] was immense. Though she had found little opportunity to flex its utility in the One-Punch Man world, returning to reality flooded her senses with an endless wellspring of cursed energy.
Her growth velocity was remarkably intoxicating.
A direct byproduct of the high concentration of Cursed Spirits woven into this planetary outbreak.
As cursed spirits flourished, sorcerers experienced a proportional elevation in systemic power, and she was reaping the dividends from both ends.
"My, my... this sensation truly is marvelous~ Merely because the cursed spirits have scaled in power, my cursed energy expands in kind~"
Concealing his signature, Gojo trailed beside his host. He felt that familiar, nostalgic equilibrium once more: back in the Jujutsu world, his birth had shattered the historical balance between sorcerers and spirits, forcibly accelerating the emergence of stronger, deadlier curses.
Now, spurred by the planetary spiritual disaster engineered by that entity known as Sosuke Aizen, the sudden surge in cursed energy had broken the global scales, rewarding him with compounding returns.
It was an ironic paradox: within this vessel, he was far more accurately categorized as a Cursed Spirit than an orthodox sorcerer.
Gojo brushed his fingertips against the flesh reconstituted from All the World's Evil; he had evolved into an entity walking the line between curse and sorcerer.
Kaito Shirogane's expression remained entirely flat. While siphoning a colossal sea of lesser spirits granted marginal bumps to his base energy reserves, it offered zero immediate qualitative leaps to his current threshold.
Yet he had grown accustomed to viewing systemic architecture from a far higher vantage point.
During his clash against Saitama, the strike he had thrown while mimicking Yoko's Heart's Radiance—the absolute sensation of millions of souls driving their fists forward in unison—had shattered his power ceilings, surpassing the combined output of his Sixteen-Fold Kaio-Ken and Serious Punch.
The path toward operationalizing that mechanic lay in mass-harvesting spectral entities like this, systematically domesticating them within the divine kingdom left behind by Shigeo Kageyama, integrating them into permanent denizens of his inner realm.
If Yoko's Heart's Radiance was the ignition of the "Fire of Humanity"—wielding the conceptual authority of "Humanity" itself to wage war...
Then Kaito's trajectory leaned squarely toward the divine: countless spirits stood not as his equals, but as subjects bound to revere him. He threw a fist; therefore, every soul anchored within his divine kingdom threw the exact same fist in synchronized resonance.
Kaito could not determine whether Aizen had intentionally staged this planetary outbreak to herd his growth along that specific developmental vector.
From his current vantage point, he had drifted far from Aizen's original blueprint.
The strange authorities within his foundation—that essence closely mirroring the Soul King—suggested Aizen had originally mapped his ascension along the soul branch.
Yet Kaito's current combat framework was deeply rooted in the martial arts, rarely relying on soul-type techniques to resolve direct engagements.
As these thoughts turned over in his mind, a specialized artifact materialized within his palm.
A fractured jewel radiating an eerie, cerulean luminescence.
[Hokyoku Fragment]
[Quality: World's Rarity]
[Description: A prototype artifact forged by Sosuke Aizen within the Bleach cosmology, serving as the foundational precursor to the Complete Hokyoku.]
[Effect 1: Can be utilized as a core synthesis catalyst to forge the Complete Hokyoku.]
[Effect 2: Stimulates the latent evolutionary potential of spiritual bodies, triggering rank advancement, mutation, evolution, or uncataloged metaphysical reactions.]
[Effect 3: Can be utilized as a raw material for Divine Stairway smelting. Upon initiating this effect, the artifact is permanently consumed.]
This was the asset Aizen had traded to him back then to prevent Ryo from rapidly securing the key required to unseal the Little Garden.
Kaito had burned a B-Rank Singularity Point at the Goddess's Sanctuary to appraise its properties, but had held off on using it.
At the time, he had judged it to be an acceptable bargain, yet the item had lingered untouched in his inventory.
Its optimal utility naturally lay in synthesizing the Complete Hokyoku—an artifact capable of guiding the soul through continuous, infinite evolution beyond mortal boundaries.
Yet with the Bleach cosmology virtually inaccessible in the current meta, assembling the full relic was borderline impossible.
Furthermore, now that the truth was bare—that Sosuke Aizen was one of the Supreme Three Kings—how many apex Reincarnators would dare plunge into that universe?
Before an entity of that archetype, treading into his domain without the raw mass to check him meant willingly walking into his kennel as a plaything.
The insidious absolute hypnosis of Kyoka Suigetsu could ensnare a target without them ever perceiving the illusion.
Kaito had even suspected this very fragment might harbor an encrypted contingency left behind by the King of Souls.
Suddenly, Kaito lifted his gaze, settling upon Gojo, whose cursed energy had dipped considerably following the shattering of his self-proclaimed absolute supremacy throughout heaven and earth. Kaito held the cerulean fragment aloft.
"Do you have the guts to take a roll of the dice?"
"Satoru."
For once, Kaito refrained from mocking him as "Two-Point-Five Gojo." Gojo blinked, realizing that it had been ages since his host had addressed him with this tone.
He could scarcely recall the exact hour his own output had fallen so far behind Kaito's violent ascent.
Both had been born as peerless anomalies within their native domains, yet he had long ceased to understand the inner workings of this host.
Before an adversary standing hopelessly beyond comprehension, this man carried zero trace of fear or existential despair; where other arrogant prodigies crumbled into ruin, he metabolized defeat into compounding evolution.
In this single heartbeat, Gojo finally grasped the silent torment Suguru Geto had weathered during their youth.
That unbridgeable gulf could twist any proud soul into knots.
"Tch. Still leaning on crude reverse psychology? What an insufferable host you are."
Even as he mocked the delivery, Gojo extended his hand, his fingers grazing the fragment pulsating with astronomical soul density.
He hungered for power—more desperately than he ever had in his entire life.
A sharp, unyielding smirk carved across Gojo's lips.
Deep within Kaito's vessel, an immense ocean of soul energy churned. Concentrated spiritual pressure detonated from his fingertips, causing the Hokyoku fragment to flare with blinding, crystalline radiance.
Kaito possessed the natural, innate authority to awaken this relic.
He drove the shifting Hokyoku fragment directly between Gojo's brows.
The Infinity failed to manifest; Kaito had parsed and engraved that technique long ago, and spiritual bodies dwelling within his vessel were steadily assimilated into his systemic frequency.
Gojo's Six Eyes snapped wide. His entire frame seized in mid-air, his flesh instantly buckling under the load.
The physical vessel reconstituted from All the World's Evil commanded vast reserves of magical energy, yet that raw mana proved wholly incapable of containing the violent, exponential expansion tearing through the soul coiled within.
BANG!
Gojo's physical body detonated into fine mist.
All that lingered in the empty air was his naked soul. Gojo's astral form twisted and ballooned wildly, his cranium warping past all anatomical recognition.
His limbs fluttered and bent like fragile parchment caught in a gale.
Looking as though he might detonate into nonexistence in the next fraction of a second.
Confirming that Gojo had not suffered absolute soul erasure, Kaito calmly triggered the passive trait of [Spiritual Ingestion].
The exact mechanic he had weaponized earlier to siphon every wandering wraith across the territory into his consciousness.
Whoosh!
Gojo was dragged back into the turbulent depths of the yellow springs. Kaito spared him no further thought.
If he couldn't endure the crucible, he could dissolve into the river as an anonymous shade.
With a flick of his will, Kaito vanished from the mortal skies, returning directly to the Infinite Dimensional Space.
The second he crossed into the public plaza, the chaotic, bustling crowds fell dead silent beneath the shifting heavenly phenomenon of the [Archetype of Terminus and Genesis] hovering above.
Kaito understood the quiet: shrouded in Aizen's secrecy, the vast majority of operatives had laid the blame for the global Spiritual Calamity squarely at his feet.
Even among bloodthirsty Reincarnators, unleashing an atrocity of that planetary scale upon their home world was chillingly unprecedented.
An unreadable smile touched Kaito's lips as he strode toward the Step Appraisal Pavilion. He had the mythic spoils harvested from Tiamat to smelt along the Divine Stairway.
Deep within the Void Throne, Aizen looked upon the pulsating mass of white soul-matter before him, registering that the Hokyoku fragment was absent from the weave, yet had indeed been expended.
"Lord Aizen, Mercenary Tao harbors absolute distrust toward you. That fragment was squandered on an irrelevant pawn," The Tyrant reported with flat composure, his reverence toward Aizen's foresight deepening. His master had anticipated that he would be intercepted.
Just as a mortal clash against Qiqi had been imminent, Kurushi had transmitted Aizen's standing directive: break off engagement the moment the Paradise intervened.
Aizen's tranquil smile remained unruffled.
"It merely proves that the yield of that lone fragment was insufficient to tempt his appetite."
"A Complete Hokyoku, however... he will find impossible to ignore."
A quiet, eager light danced within Aizen's eyes, burning to witness how magnificent Kaito Shirogane would become once he reached his absolute, complete form.
The ultimate masterpiece of a Creator.