"Again?"
"One hit and you die!"
"This is practically the same style as Shinsō's Bankai!"
Right now, with the Head-Captain personally explaining it,
and with that pitch-black little blade in his hand,
the audience couldn't help recalling the previous round—
Shinsō's Bankai and its hidden, cell-dissolving poison.
As expected,
standing above Shinsō makes sense.
This is only the first form after Bankai, and it's already terrifying.
Ryūjin Jakka—
no wonder it's recognized as the most offensively powerful Zanpakutō.
"Even the Quincy King—if he takes a single cut, he'll die on the spot."
Inside the shop, Urahara Kisuke sighed.
Even with a mind like his,
back when he served as the Twelfth Division Captain,
he had gone in and out of the Great Spirit Library Corridor many times,
reading what records existed about Ryūjin Jakka's Bankai.
But after that last clip,
Kisuke instinctively felt that compared to a thousand years ago
Ryūjin Jakka's Bankai had grown even stronger.
So, as a viewer,
even taking a neutral stance,
Kisuke did not believe Yhwach could withstand it easily.
Obviously,
the flow of battle would keep tilting—
until, before that black blade, Yhwach had nothing left to say.
Sure enough, what happened next
matched Kisuke's expectations.
"Shunpo—!"
A leap.
A cut.
Before the audience could react,
the Head-Captain's black-wreathed figure flashed to the fore.
The black edge
came straight down in a brutal chop.
In that instant
the camera slammed to slow motion.
"Here it comes?"
"The Head-Captain's first swing after Bankai!"
"Will it really be like he said—one hit and nothing remains?"
All at once the Shinigami world fell silent,
as if everything else had faded out.
In the audience's eyes
there was only the black-flash figure on the screen.
Every gaze in the world
fixed on that black blade.
Then—
"Rumble—!!!"
One strike fell.
Yhwach, horrified, twisted away—
but that wide blood-red cloak of his
split down the middle and the cut-line beneath turned to nothing.
More frightening—
the black edge so much as touched the ground,
and in an instant a titanic fault ripped across several barracks at once—
an absurd, super-wide chasm that tore sky and earth and even spilled out of frame—
as if the Seireitei itself were punched through.
The destruction
was no less than a planetfall blast.
And this was only one casual swing.
A plain, ordinary chop.
Already this outrageous.
The reveal was too shocking, the visual impact beyond words.
The uproar reignited.
Viewers trembled all over again.
"Brutal…"
"As expected, our imagination still undershot Ryūjin Jakka's Bankai."
Inside the First Division,
Kyōraku Shunsui wiped cold sweat.
Vice-Captain Sasakibe's features quivered; he couldn't steady his heart.
He was the Head-Captain's direct disciple,
and one of the strongest captains of the last century.
Even so,
that single slash from the great fire blade
made even Shunsui feel a stab of fear.
"Yeah…" Komamura Sajin nodded, awed. "At this level you could call it the strongest slash alive."
"Even Nozarashi's Bankai swings don't look like they can match it."
For once, Zaraki Kenpachi didn't argue.
The kindness in his eyes burned hot; battle-lust boiled over.
He was completely captivated by Zanka no Tachi's strike.
Yet—
what the captains hadn't expected:
though Zanka no Tachi already looked invincible,
the Head-Captain had no intention of holding back.
Under their stunned gazes he unleashed yet another overwhelming technique.
"Yhwach…
there are things in this world—!!"
One hand on the sword,
the Head-Captain growled low,
tangible murder flooding his eyes.
From the aged frame
a sun-bright blaze of reiryoku surged skyward all at once.
"Look!"
"The flames that had recoiled and vanished—
they just exploded back out, many times stronger!"
Cries rolled on and on.
Faces split wide with shock.
Because—
from head to foot—limbs, back, every part—
the Head-Captain was wreathed in flame,
like a phoenix reborn and bathing in crimson fire.
More shocking still was the heat.
In an instant the temperature spiked past fifteen million degrees.
The battlefield around him
became a vast refining furnace that covered the entire Seireitei.
"Listen well.
A thousand years ago you Quincy should already have lost your lives—"
His voice dropped—
and the screen itself warped under the heat,
as if the flood of flame from the Head-Captain scorched it through the void.
"Too scary…"
"It's like he's wearing a cloak of fire. He's become a second sun!"
That wasn't a joke.
Nor any exaggeration.
At fifteen million degrees,
space in the Soul Society visibly buckled with searing seams.
Even through the screen,
anyone who leaned closer to the transparent light-screen
felt hair and clothing flare at once—
blink and it was ash.
Right now and in the future,
everything that exists faced the most perilous crisis yet—
ruin by solar breath.
In that moment
the strong of the Shinigami world fully realized:
"Ryūjin Jakka's Bankai can destroy the world."
Not a figure of speech.
It was happening under their eyelids.
Too terrifying.
On the feed,
as the enemy, Yhwach was under pressure and searing pain
hundreds of times greater than any viewer's.
Even though he instantly wrapped himself in Blut Vene,
it was like an egg striking stone.
The burning did not abate—
and the blood-red veins across his skin visibly ebbed and paled.
His emblematic blood-red cloak
caught fire in a rain of sparks floating in the air,
as if foreshadowing that
even the King of the pure-blood Quincy
would soon end like that cloak—
devoured by the sun and reduced to ash.
"Feel it?
This heat is fifteen million degrees. You cannot touch me."
Geta clacking, sword in hand—
even though the camera tried to give the Head-Captain a tight close-up,
the solar corona's distortion blurred him from sight.
More than a few viewers
felt a chill illusion—the Head-Captain didn't even exist.
It was as if the real opponent for Yhwach
was the star itself out in space.
"Fifteen million…?
That number is insane.
I thought I misheard!"
Inside Las Noches,
Ichimaru Gin's voice came, shocked yet delighted.
Shocked because the number felt unreal, beyond imagination.
Delighted because—
crack—!
The ceaseless outflow of scorching heat from the screen
softened, then melted,
then completely disintegrated the chain-bound kidō
Aizen had placed on him—
powder, nothing left.
Which meant—
while the Head-Captain was unleashing a super-move in the video,
he had, without meaning to,
freed Gin from his bonds.
"Gin…
looks like this Zanka no Tachi, West: Cloak of the Setting Sun just saved your life."
On the throne, Aizen lowered his eyes,
watching it all.
He saw Gin free himself,
but made no move.
There was no need.
Gin was still badly injured,
and still trapped under the hypnosis of Kyōka Suigetsu.
Besides—
Aizen had no attention to spare.
Under a fifteen-million-degree inferno,
even he could not afford to split his focus…
(End of Chapter)
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