Chapter 253: Beyond Grudges and Debts (Part 2)
The Soul King's interest was simple.
A safer world, and a world with a higher ceiling.
In truth, the first goal had already become impossible the instant Aizen arrived. As the ruler of this world, the Soul King realized immediately that the universe had been tagged by Chakra, and there was nothing he could do about it. As an anchor, Chakra was stubborn beyond reason, like gum that refused to come off no matter how much you scraped.
It blended the soul, the body's strength, spiritual energy, and even the world's own traits and signals into a single hybrid that was brutally effective. Once it took root, ordinary means could not erase it. Even if you somehow removed the mark, the residue left behind would still testify that it had existed. Aizen had not forgotten to scatter Chakra beacons as he advanced.
These void lanes were exactly how the Naruto world tracked its way here, bit by bit corroding and swallowing neighboring worlds and universes. Treasures inside abandoned universes were delightful, but the price was facing truly self aware cosmos, and their mighty denizens.
In this regard, Aizen was a thorough social Darwinist. Since it had already happened, there was no point brooding over right or wrong. The only meaningful question was how to turn it into an advantage.
The Soul King thought the same.
He could sense clearly that Aizen Sōsuke was not lying. Aizen disdained lying. He had simply flown straight in, and the Soul King understood that perfectly.
Since Chakra's infection would catch up sooner or later, then it was better to clean house early, remove hidden dangers, and speak with Aizen directly. Confirm the internal environment first, then open the gates and face the Chakra fleet together. If the matter could not be reversed, then complaining was useless. Make it a weapon.
So the Soul King held no hatred toward Aizen, nor did he view his uninvited arrival as a crime. In a way, Aizen was a wanderer returning home with a new solution in hand. The Soul King had neither reason nor right to kill him outright. Leaving a marker behind had always been meant for later redress, not for detaining him on the spot.
Thus, after a brief alignment of interests, the two set the course of the day.
Let the Shinigami and Quincy who had been hiding in the shadows settle everything, once and for all.
To what extent?
Everyone would know Soul Society was burning, yet without letting people die, every grudge would be settled. That would be the best ending. Under Aizen's direction, events moved toward that outcome with terrifying precision.
Instead of storming Soul Society to vent bloodlust, the Quincy struck first at the Soul King Palace.
Those who might have rampaged through Soul Society were delayed. Heavenly Obstruction Quaking Stars were summoned. Kurosaki Ichigo's divine arts were put on display. The radicals were kept busy dodging within the Wandenreich, forced to spend their fury surviving instead of slaughtering.
Then the most innocent were taken, those who truly believed Yhwach was their savior.
Aizen Sōsuke seized them, had Auswählen performed, and delivered them to the Soul King Palace.
Their souls were carefully preserved by the Soul King, resculpted, cultivated within his body into new living flesh and soul. Their memories remained intact. Their powers had been stripped away by Auswählen, yet for the world the Soul King desired, that was no great loss.
So long as people lived and minds remained, strength could be grasped again. It deserved no fear. Divinity was natural to the Soul King. From start to finish, he did not care for such things. Aizen said this arrangement allowed the world to continue running. The Soul King calculated, agreed, and accepted these mostly drained people as part of their shared design.
Ichibe Hyosube, however, truly believed the Soul King had been tainted, or betrayed. Bound by ancient conviction, he could not accept the shift.
But he was not the Soul King.
He did not know that this world had already been polluted by Chakra long ago, nor that the Chakra fleet would inevitably arrive. Thinking the signal could simply be cut away, he burst in intending to remake the Soul King, then seek Urahara Kisuke and the others to fashion a new one.
In the past, the Soul King might have indulged him.
Now, the Soul King had to maintain control.
He could not seriously assume Aizen Sōsuke would sit idle. Against an existence from beyond this world, even the Soul King's calculations and faint sense of what lay ahead could not account for everything. Thus, his own survival, and the certainty of his power, became a warning and a message to Aizen.
If Aizen wished, he could certainly strong arm cooperation. Objective conditions were already chaining the Soul King in place, and Aizen was more than capable of pressing on those chains until the world moved the way he wanted.
Yet the Soul King was no machine. He possessed will, and he possessed ability.
Moreover, his trust in Aizen Sōsuke was far from absolute. It was not faith. It was simply that after verifying every condition, both had chosen the same road. So they observed the barest courtesies, and kept their eyes open.
They were allies, even with an abyss between them.
Quietly, the Soul King adjusted destiny so that everyone followed the same fixed track. Now all would converge before the Soul King Palace and meet, at last, the foe or friend fate had chosen for them.
As for Hollows and the Espada, they had always been Aizen's playthings.
Destiny never truly counted them.
Even if they were dragged here for spectacle, they could never mark the end of any fate. Hollows were beasts. They worshipped power, and nothing else. Show true might, and every Hollow would obey, exactly as Aizen Sōsuke had done in Hueco Mundo.
So on this battlefield of destinies, the Hollows, once the world's central problem and theme, were no longer significant. They lacked both the power and the space to stand on this stage.
They were mere backdrop.
Backdrop that pinned down a great host of Shinigami and Quincy, pushing them toward Hueco Mundo. Partly to mask what was unfolding at the Soul King Palace, partly to march against the God Tree and bury those Chakra signal towers for good.
Two battlefields opened at once, both parts of Aizen Sōsuke's design.
Tug lightly at fate's threads, and every actor would step willingly into position.
Of course, the factions could have gathered and debated whether Hueco Mundo or the Soul King Palace posed the greater threat.
They would still have had to confront the objective reality before them.
With a single thought, destiny's choice was made.
What Aizen and the Soul King did was tip that choice again and again toward the outcome they wanted.
Now, within that narrowing corridor of fate, the Zero Division and their attendant Quincy and Shinigami, once scattered across four separate palaces, were finally converging.
The strongest Shinigami, Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni, was not among them. He had gone ahead to the Soul King Palace to investigate, and his sense of time had been disrupted.
Yhwach himself had not arrived either. An absent sovereign stirred no upheaval.
Outside, the clashing reiatsu belonged to Quincy and Shinigami finally setting eyes upon one another, linked by fate, and instinctively attacking the enemy destiny had placed before them. There was no need to leave the Soul King Palace. Everyone could feel the sky above, laced with countless colliding reiatsu and evolving powers.
Zanpakutō.
The Schrift system.
Shinigami.
Quincy.
Outside the Soul King Palace, they intersected, and torrents of reiatsu and spiritual power spilled in every direction.
If this had been Seireitei, only a handful of clashes would have been enough for that leaking pressure to raze it to the ground.
But here, within the Soul King Palace, the buildings and even the heavens possessed unimaginable resilience.
In mere tens of minutes, those expanding waves of reiatsu and ability subsided, fading into nothing.
Everything had been calculated.
These people had been deliberately placed here, paired off under fate's hand, and driven to slaughter one another until their strength was spent. They fell like dumplings outside the palace gates.
Then, in the blink of an eye, those broken, lifeless forms reappeared, as if time itself had reversed.
They stood once more along the approach to the Soul King Palace, frozen in the final poses of their struggle.
These preselected specimens of the Soul King's collection captured perfectly the will to live they had once carried.
All of it sat neatly within the Soul King's design.
Yet two figures still moved.
Two figures that drew every eye.
"As expected, it's you two."
At the sight of those familiar silhouettes, Urahara Kisuke and Shunsui Kyōraku could only offer wry smiles.
.....
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