Chapter 223: Audience
Even now, Kurosaki Ichigo still had the absurd feeling that he was sitting at home, controller in hand, playing a game.
Because everything up to this point, every turn, every reaction, had never stepped outside Aizen Sosuke's calculations.
It gave Ichigo a strange impulse, almost a delusion, as if he were inside a live action simulation. No matter what the enemy said or did, he could predict it. He could choose the correct response before the question even finished forming.
After reading the future, Aizen seemed invincible. Hell, the Wandenreich, the Soul Society, none of it escaped his grasp. Everything fell into controllable plans. Even Bambietta's crude attempt at seduction had been on Aizen's list, filed neatly under predictable annoyances.
Aizen had described Bambietta in simple terms. Her power was Explosion. Her personality was arrogant, manic, self centered.
And because she was a woman, she liked using sexual oppression as a weapon. Seduce first, kill immediately after, that was her preferred way to vent stress. Ichigo's appearance, whether Yhwach admitted it or not, would squeeze the Sternritter until pressure leaked from every crack.
The truth was, there was no real value in recruiting Quincy unless the Quincy and Shinigami were headed toward a truly brutal clash.
In front of Yhwach, recruiting Shinigami and recruiting Quincy were fundamentally different concepts. The Quincy were destined for Auswählen. Their bodies carried Yhwach's soul. Their abilities, their souls, everything they were, were outflows of his power. When he needed strength, he would simply reclaim everything he had distributed.
That was Yhwach.
That was the true meaning of Quincy power.
The Quincy legacy was, at its core, the spread of Yhwach's reishi. Quincy could completely erase Hollows, which was one of Yhwach's key reasons for craving a return to a chaotic world, neither living nor dead. Hollows that devoured reality were something Yhwach could truly eliminate, unlike the Shinigami, who merely maintained endless reincarnation.
Yet for all its elegance on paper, the system was rotten in practice.
Yhwach never truly accounted for how much dissatisfaction brewed inside the Sternritter. He was a tyrant living in a sorrowful fantasy, convinced that obedience was the same thing as loyalty.
But none of that mattered.
Because the benevolent Aizen Sosuke would save even his life.
Aizen was not a god, but he could temporarily act with the benevolence of one.
Whether gods existed or not was irrelevant. Aizen existed. He could drag everyone back toward a world that functioned, a world where people could live like people. At least, that was what both Ichigo and Aizen believed.
So when facing Shinigami and Quincy alike, Ichigo and Aizen carried a subtle arrogance, the kind that could not be fully hidden. They knew it was arrogant, and yet the smile still rose anyway. They had already done everything they could.
Even the long road ahead, the path beneath Ichigo's feet, was nothing more than reishi forged into shape.
In their eyes, the world was already transparent. All that remained was persuading the people within it, then welcoming the descending guest star, and ushering in a completely different new world.
It did not even matter if that guest star became corrupted and turned hostile.
Everyone possessed chakra. They also held the native blessing of the World Will and the Soul King. A war between worlds was cruel, terrifying, and if it ever pushed past the limit, then they could simply pull out the anchor and let everything die together.
Ichigo and Aizen had thought about it for a very long time inside that infinite June. They had finalized plans, measured every faction, and judged every possible reaction before making this choice. It only looked like a sudden whim from the outside.
In truth, countless versions of Kurosaki Ichigo and Aizen Sosuke had lived through countless Junes in a single instant. In sheer time spent, they were second to none.
Well, it is a good thing everyone assumes there must be conflict between me and Aizen. At least nobody has figured it out.
Ichigo's thoughts drifted as he followed behind two Quincy, still weak, still stumbling under the lingering effect of Death Dealing.
Along the way, he saw very few Quincy in white uniforms.
Compared to the Quincy forces from a thousand years ago, modern Quincy had made real progress at the high end. Yhwach had absorbed many of the Soul King's organs, turning them into Quincy for training and for life itself. But the population was still limited.
Even after a millennium of intermarriage and constant childbirth, treating women like breeding machines, the number of pure blood Quincy remained small. The Wandenreich, hidden behind Seireitei, could not nurture its people the way Seireitei nurtured Shinigami. The Quincy might have wanted to.
Objectively, they could not.
And that told Ichigo something important.
The Quincy strength was likely a facade.
In the Thousand Year Blood War that Aizen once presented, Seireitei had been worn down by catastrophe after catastrophe. The Aizen rebellion. The expedition to Hueco Mundo. The Fullbringer disturbance. More and more. Captains had been replaced by new generations. The truly powerful were dead or crippled, and others could not even use Bankai. Under those conditions, the Quincy still relied on sneak attacks and sudden strikes to ensure they could erase Seireitei in an instant.
Back then, the Quincy looked overwhelming. In reality, the truth was questionable.
Aside from Captain Commander Yamamoto, who died early to a surprise attack, the veteran captains did not suffer catastrophic losses even after their Bankai were stolen. When the Shadow Stealing Pill was developed, they reclaimed their Bankai and inflicted massive damage in return.
Meaning the Quincy probably could not fight the Shinigami head on from start to finish.
Even if their elites carried Soul King organs, captains in their prime were not harmless prey. If Seireitei still held Aizen Sosuke, Gin Ichimaru, and Tosen Kaname within its ranks, then Suzumushi Nishiki: Enma Koroogi alone would likely render a group of Sternritter helpless.
Yhwach had hidden and accumulated strength, waiting for the day he could reappear and strike Seireitei and the Soul King Palace with a fatal blow.
Unfortunately for him, Aizen and Ichigo had awakened too early.
His patience was doomed to break.
But is he really trying to use me as a weakness? That is strange. Aizen would not change anything because of me. Right?
Still unsteady, Ichigo was guided into a long, pure white corridor. His vision remained slightly blurred, and the path ahead was more suggestion than certainty.
His mind continued turning.
The Quincy had always been conditioned by Yhwach. Many embraced Auswahlen as if it were a blessing. The Sternritter had over twenty members, and among their Schrift, some were frightening, some were mediocre. Since Uryu Ishida had not joined, the terrifying ability Yhwach feared most had not yet appeared.
Could Yhwach really be trying to persuade me?
What future did he see, to make him choose persuasion?
I do not get it.
Then the corridor ended.
A vast chamber opened before him, its whiteness deeper, heavier, like silence given shape.
Bambietta's voice, usually frivolous, turned respectful.
"Your Majesty, Kurosaki Ichigo has been brought."
Through Ichigo's hazy gaze, Bambietta and the deathlike As Nodt knelt without hesitation. Their posture held devotion so absolute it looked like instinct.
Before anyone needed to explain, Ichigo understood what the vague shadow ahead represented.
Even so, disbelief flickered in him, not because of who it was, but because of how easily the moment had arrived.
He raised his head.
He looked at the face he should have known intimately, but was seeing truly, for the first time.
In another history, after Rukia left, he would have trained. He would have gained Shikai, gone to Seireitei, mastered what slept inside him, and eventually met the Quincy ancestor embedded in his soul, the figure of Yhwach.
That inner Yhwach, fused with his spirit, was a fragment. Another part of Yhwach had been almost benevolent, like an old man watching quietly.
But that was not Ichigo's path anymore.
He had retrained chakra. He had stepped off the known trajectory. He had no Zangetsu, and he knew nothing of the old man named Zangetsu. Behind him floated Truth Seeking Orbs condensed from chakra.
So when he looked at the man on the throne, he felt no intimate pull.
Only unfamiliarity.
Only cold curiosity.
The bearded man across from him smiled.
"Welcome to my Wandenreich, Kurosaki Ichigo," Yhwach said gently, voice low and steady. "My unknown son, born in the darkness."
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