Chapter 118 - CHAPTER 118:The Lion Sings, Troubles the Wind!

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"Now… it's your turn to answer!"

"Su Li!!"

But Yamamoto Genryūsai's thunderous voice—so often a commandment carved into the bones of Soul Society—never reached its intended mark.

Perched atop the broken remnants of the Sōkyoku scaffold, Su Li balanced with unsettling ease among the fractured stones, both hands resting gently on the hilt of his Zanpakutō. His eyes, unfocused yet glinting with lucidity, gazed past the wreckage and toward something only he could see. His lips moved with quiet deliberation, murmuring soft words into a silence so private it seemed to pulse with dreamlike fragility.

"What? You're full? Sleepy already? Then go to bed," he said with a half-smile, his tone light and teasing, but beneath the playful cadence, there pulsed a heavier, more intimate ache—an undercurrent of sorrow that no amount of bravado could hide. "What do you mean I can't touch you? I'm your father," he added with a lilt that wavered between defiance and gentle pleading.

And then that teasing edge softened, dulled by a tenderness that left the words half-apology, half-bargain, like a man speaking not to a child, but to the memory of one. "Alright, alright… don't pout. I was wrong. I wasn't scolding you, I swear…" His breath snagged, trembling on the verge of something unspeakable, and when he continued, the words were reverent and slow, as if each syllable had been carved from devotion. "Will you at least let Dad look cool just once before you sleep? Just a moment... just one."

There was something strange in his voice, a liturgy veiled in warmth, each word not simply spoken but offered—half-ritual, half-requiem. His expression, touched by wonder, held a glow that was childlike yet filled with gravity. And then, from the heart of his Zanpakutō, something answered—not with words, not with assent, but with a quiet, almost begrudging hnn, reluctant and feminine and deeply hers. Not quite permission. But not refusal, either. Just a weary little noise that said: fine.

And for Su Li, that was enough.

His pulse surged. Of all the techniques he had forged over four long decades—of every theory he had constructed, tested, discarded, buried—one had always remained just beyond his grasp. It had stalked the edges of his consciousness like a predator, whispering seduction through the silences between breaths. And now, as if summoned by a promise made long ago, that elusive chance finally arrived.

He turned from the crumbled scaffold, blade still sheathed but hanging loose in his grip, posture deceptively casual, yet every line of his body thrummed with precise, intentional stillness. The air around him grew taut, like a bowstring about to snap.

Down below, Rukia stared in a daze, frozen mid-breath, her parted lips trembling as the shape of his intent began to eclipse her understanding. She didn't know what he was doing—not yet—but instinct told her she would.

"Boy!! What do you think you're doing now?!"

Yamamoto Genryūsai's roar burst through the air like a conflagration, ancient fury and divine law braided into one seismic voice. He had allowed Su Li's earlier impudence only because curiosity had stayed his hand, but to draw a Zanpakutō in front of a condemned soul, atop the very altar of punishment—this wasn't mere transgression. It was heresy.

Yet just as the order to strike began to rise in his throat, his breath faltered. His eyes narrowed.

Something had changed.

Su Li's stance, imperceptibly but unmistakably, had shifted. His spine straightened; his aura condensed. And then he drew a single breath—a slow inhale drawn not from lungs but from the soul—and let it slip outward like a whisper cast across a battlefield.

The wind responded.

It began as a whisper of movement, a playful brush that tousled hair and barely stirred fabric. Then it turned colder, sharpened, coiled tighter around the scaffold, gathering in spirals like a storm waiting for permission to descend. And in that wind was no mere breeze, but the sensation of a blade being drawn—not with sound, but with skin, with soul, with marrow.

Unohana Retsu leaned forward, eyes narrowing, her expression unreadable.

"…That stance…"

Beside her, Kotetsu Isane stiffened, while Ise Nanao's lips parted, though no breath emerged. The pressure now crowding the air wasn't just spiritual—it was scalpel-fine, surgical, terrifyingly specific.

"Shunsui, are you seeing this?" Ukitake Jūshirō's voice dropped to a reverent murmur, a whisper reserved only for shrines and graveyards. He didn't take his eyes off the swordsman now standing at the heart of the storm. "That aura…"

Kyoraku, for once devoid of mischief, tilted his hat low as his gaze honed in. "Of course I'm seeing it," he muttered, all humor stripped from his tone. "But this isn't like that 'Ultra Instinct' stunt he pulled before."

Ukitake's voice grew quieter still. "That was grace... it moved like flowing water. But this—"

"—This is finality. Cold. Absolute. Steel that ends all pretense."

And they weren't the only ones who felt it. Across the hilltop, seasoned warriors who had survived centuries of war stood breathless, not in fear, but in recognition. The air itself had changed. Denser now. Heavy with edge and clarity. The world seemed to narrow to a single moment of potential.

Kyoraku gave a low, almost respectful whistle. "Forty years in hiding… didn't waste a day, did he?"

Beside him, Kuchiki Byakuya remained utterly motionless, his usual elegance frozen into something statuesque. But there was tension now in that stillness, a strain that betrayed the composure. From the moment Su Li had dispatched the Sōkyoku's guardian, something deep within Byakuya had twisted, and now, as the very air began to tremble beneath the weight of unseen blades, understanding cut through him.

It wasn't the form. Not the footwork. Not the style.

It was the sensation.

It reminded him of Senbonzakura—of that same perfect, elegant sharpness.

But this… this was purer. Without artifice. Without flourish. Not a crafted technique but a phenomenon, a raw principle born from swordsmanship itself—one that didn't merely cut bodies or break defenses, but carved through intention, through purpose, and left nothing behind.

This was sword intent. Unfiltered. Undeniable. Supreme.

Even Yamamoto Genryūsai, battle-hardened and revered as the Gotei's greatest swordsman, found his instincts halted. He had meant to strike—to interrupt whatever madness Su Li was invoking—but now, every thread of instinct screamed: it was already too late. Only those who had walked through the valley of true swordsmanship and returned could understand the thing taking shape before them.

So he did nothing.

And watched.

Sui-Feng, in contrast, had no interest in philosophical revelations or spiritual pressure dynamics. Her golden gaze stayed fixed on Su Li, unblinking, her lips parting in something far more human.

"A-Li…" she whispered, cheeks flushed crimson as her expression fluttered between awe and something dangerously close to a schoolgirl's swoon. "He looks… so cool holding that sword…"

She coughed, turned away quickly as if the heat in her face could be outmaneuvered by posture alone, but a heartbeat later, she glanced back anyway.

The hilltop stilled. Breath caught in a dozen throats.

At its center stood Su Li—quiet, unmoving, his focus narrowed into the singular, knife-edge moment that came before the unsheathing of something final. Eggy had given him one chance. One. After this, she would sleep, maybe for years. The technique would vanish with her slumber.

He had trained for this, shaped every beat of muscle and spirit for this instant.

He drew another breath.

His thumb slid gently across the tsuba, nudging the blade a fraction loose from its sheath. A sliver of reflected light danced across the steel, caught on the breeze.

And then he spoke.

"The lion sings…"

The world exploded.

Wind screamed into a spiraling fury—not gusts, but blades, not motion, but momentum so sharp it tore at the seams of space itself. The sky heaved under the weight of his reiatsu, a tide not of violence but of precision, each droplet of pressure honed to a fatal point. And then, within that storm, came silence. Complete. Deafening.

"…Troubles the wind."

He whispered it, and it shattered everything.

No swing. No blur. No step. Not even a flicker of motion.

Only the soft, final click of a blade returning home to its scabbard.

"…That's it?" Kyoraku blinked, stunned by the absence.

The crowd rippled with disbelief. Had something happened? Was this a bluff?

Then—BOOM.

But it wasn't the sound they expected.

The Sōkyoku platform didn't break.

It vanished.

One moment it stood—ancient, divine, eternal. The next, it simply wasn't there. Not crumbled. Not cracked. Gone. Reduced to dust finer than breath, scattered on a wind now too gentle to carry it.

Byakuya stood frozen. Dust clung to his shoulders, lashes, hair. He didn't move to brush it away. He couldn't.

What kind of sword could do that?

Unohana, silent for longer than memory could recall, finally spoke—barely.

"…What kind of sword… move… is this…"

In her lifetime, only one man had ever made her feel so utterly exposed with a single technique.

Now, there were two.

Su Li.

Kyoraku exhaled slowly, hand dragging across his face before he chuckled, the sound dry and awed. "'The Lion Sings, Troubles the Wind,' huh?" A faint smirk touched his lips. "Ridiculous name."

But admiration softened every word.

"…Still. Damn if it isn't stylish."

Yamamoto said nothing. But in his silence, something shifted behind those ancient, storm-fed eyes. It wasn't fear. Nor anger.

It was pride.

Buried beneath a lifetime of command and discipline, it flickered—brief, unexpected, impossible to hide.

That presence. That edge. That boy.

He had inherited more than just teachings.

He had inherited him.

"…He reminds me of myself," Yamamoto murmured, voice lost to all but the wind. "Back then…"

And in that moment, for the first time in centuries, his mouth twitched.

He smiled.

At the eye of it all, Su Li lowered his gaze to the blade now resting in his palm. Eggy had vanished into the quiet of sleep, her warmth fading into a silence so deep it felt like grief. What she'd given him was gone now—left behind only steel and breath and the shape of an echo.

"…That's it?" he murmured, blinking up at the sky with a sigh. "Man, that wasn't fun at all…"

He stretched, lazily, as if the heavens hadn't just reeled from the force of his will.

And then—

She collapsed into him.

Rukia, unconscious, folded forward like a falling feather, her slight form easing into his arms. He caught her without effort, one motion, one instinct—as though the place she belonged had always been right there.

Looking down, a smile broke across his face—crooked, soft, boyish in the way only something deeply genuine can be.

The storm had passed.

And he whispered, brushing her hair gently aside.

"Told you you'd be okay."

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