A world of black—no light at all. This was Muken, Avīci Hell.
Higashino Shuuichi stood on one side, and Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni stood on the other.
They were less than a hundred meters apart.
The exit was right behind Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni, but to reach it, a price would have to be paid.
"Higashino Shuuichi… you are the most unique Shinigami this old man has seen in nearly a thousand years.
Your growth has all but shattered the shackles of what a Shinigami can be.
I'll give you one last chance—"
Before he could finish, a razor-sharp slash came flying in.
Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni raised his Zanpakutō to block. The strike collided with the blade and scattered at once.
"I hope you don't cling to the wrong illusion, Sōtaichō-dono.
You're not my opponent. You haven't been for a long time."
Higashino Shuuichi had no interest in wasting words.
And, as it happened, Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni's question was nothing more than a final courtesy.
He had no intention of letting Higashino Shuuichi go.
If I can kill him, that's the best outcome. Yamamoto thought.
Then, in that pitch-black world, light was born.
It was the glow of flames—space itself seeming to boil in delighted frenzy.
"Bankai, Zanka no Tachi!"
In that instant, the towering inferno that had just filled heaven and earth vanished again.
But this time, it didn't disperse into reishi (spirit particles) to return to Muken. It was absorbed—drawn into the blade of Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni's Zanpakutō, now released in Bankai.
His sword became utterly pure; any trace of grime, any impurity, evaporated under that horrific heat.
"Muken… got hotter."
Deep within Muken, a man murmured as he felt the sudden, violent shift in temperature.
Then he casually removed the shackles that bound him, lifted his foot, and began walking in the direction he had chosen.
Opposite Yamamoto, Higashino Shuuichi was already feeling the moisture in his body evaporating by the moment under that terrifying heat.
Even to manipulate reishi (spirit particles), he had to spend far more reiatsu (spiritual pressure) than usual.
And that was only the pressure of Yamamoto's Bankai—just after release.
Terrifying, beyond words.
A shadow remained as an afterimage—Yamamoto used Shunpo (Flash Step) and appeared right in front of Higashino Shuuichi.
A hundred meters meant almost nothing to him—no different from zero.
Hand to hilt. Draw. Sheathe.
The same standard sequence—Higashino Shuuichi's favored Nadegiri.
Higashino Shuuichi raised his blade to defend while retreating.
With his strength, even a full-power Nadegiri from Yamamoto at his peak should have been easy to stop.
Because in the end, whether it was a slash or Hakuda (hand-to-hand combat), it was still reiatsu against reiatsu.
But this strike was different.
Higashino Shuuichi's Zanpakutō—his counter-swing—was cut clean in two by a single blow.
Split right down the middle.
"Zanka no Tachi: Higashi, Kyokujitsujin (Rising Sun Blade)!"
Higashino Shuuichi knew this technique well.
Its principle was to concentrate all heat within the Zanpakutō into the blade itself—then use that abnormal temperature, nearly reaching the heat of the sun's interior, to annihilate anything it touched.
Before such terrifying heat, Higashino Shuuichi's Zanpakutō could never be spared.
To be cut like soft earth was inevitable—yet that was only one part of what "inevitable" meant.
Afterward, Higashino Shuuichi's broken Zanpakutō rapidly reformed, fusing back together.
For any ordinary Shinigami, that would be unthinkable.
A Zanpakutō, once shattered, was shattered—and unless repaired through scientific means, the reiatsu required to force a restoration was an outrageous burden.
But he was Higashino Shuuichi—bearing within his soul the Soul King's left leg, a special symbol of "support."
That level of consumption was child's play to him—hardly worth mentioning.
"So even Kyokujitsujin won't work?"
Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni watched Higashino Shuuichi's strength, and that eerie regenerative ability, and understood: this was no longer something he could handle with simple sealing and targeted counters.
"Then I'll switch."
He didn't falter. Instead, Yamamoto reversed his grip and drove Zanka no Tachi's edge into the ground.
That heat awakened every Shinigami soul Yamamoto had ever slain.
"Zanka no Tachi: Minami, Kaka Jūman'okushishi Daisōjin (Great Burial Ranks of the Ten Trillion Fire Dead)!"
One… two…
Around Yamamoto, countless black, broken bodies of Shinigami were granted brief rebirth within the flames—
and they had only one purpose:
Seize Higashino Shuuichi!
"A shame. This is utterly meaningless!"
Higashino Shuuichi knew—in the original future timeline, Yamamoto had used this very move to restrain Yhwach, if only temporarily.
Those ash-made bodies could not be finished, could not be killed. It was as if their "end" stood level with Yamamoto himself.
And the scene reminded Higashino Shuuichi of Hell.
Before this, he had only seen power so unfairly blessed inside Hell itself.
The dead pressed in on him from all sides, all of them trying to drag this living man down with them—to suffer eternal torment together.
"Sōtaichō… did you know? I still have two incomplete Bankai abilities I can use. One of them, in my plan, was meant for you.
I thought I wouldn't need it. But now…"
Higashino Shuuichi spoke with a trace of regret.
"Bankai, Shinki Mosoku!"
A monstrous surge of reiatsu burst from Higashino Shuuichi. That pitch-black pressure shot outward like blades, cleaving the newly risen ash-shadows cleanly across the waist.
The visual impact was immense—yet the effect was zero. In less than a second, the ash-shadows restored themselves completely.
This was Zanka no Tachi: Minami, Kaka Jūman'okushishi Daisōjin—an art that had nearly left even Yhwach at a loss.
Higashino Shuuichi stepped forward and gently swung once.
His blade brushed across an ash-shadow.
"Rest now, spirits that died long ago."
He spoke softly.
A requiem—this was the countermeasure granted by Shinki Mosoku.
Blade-light flashed through the air; not a single ash-shadow could draw near to Higashino Shuuichi.
But Higashino Shuuichi still couldn't advance to attack—because along this route, Yamamoto had arranged an overwhelming number of ash-shadows.
Higashino Shuuichi swore that if anyone ever told him again that Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni was just a stubborn old man with no brain, he would rush over immediately and become the loudest "Yamamoto fanboy" in the comments.
"You can put my fallen souls to rest?
I've never heard of your Zanpakutō ability before."
Yamamoto saw it too. He didn't know Shinki Mosoku's true nature—he could only guess.
But at this point, it still looked like the advantage belonged to Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni.
Because even if Higashino Shuuichi could erase many souls with a single swing, Yamamoto had been accumulating them for over a thousand years.
There was no way Higashino Shuuichi could cut through them all with just a few strikes.
And then—
there was no "then."
Yamamoto immediately invoked another facet of his Bankai.
"Zanka no Tachi: Nishi, Zanjitsu Gokui (Sunless Prison Garb)!"
He turned his reiatsu into flames of fifteen million degrees, like donning a blazing sun itself—wrapping his body and blade.
Anything that dared approach him—any object, any attack—would be reduced to nothing the instant it touched that sun-like mantle.
And yet, even so, Yamamoto chose to evade.
Because he was evading Higashino Shuuichi's pursuit.
"Another brand-new power I've never even heard of!
Why would a Shinigami's Zanpakutō awaken so many bizarre abilities?!"
Strangely enough, despite being the Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13, Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni had never once gone to the Great Spirit Book Corridor.
He didn't even have the资格 to go there.
Otherwise, this would be a question he could never have asked.
"Want to know?
Trade your life for it~"
Higashino Shuuichi didn't answer directly. He flashed Yamamoto a brilliant smile—and in his heart, he gave that response.
Then Higashino Shuuichi raised his Zanpakutō to the sky.
In this black world—this world burning beneath them, this boundless Muken—snow fell for the first time.
Pure white snow.
A world of ice and frost.
Ultimate heat and ultimate cold collided head-on.
Higashino Shuuichi knew the true name of the power he had gained this time: Hakka no Togame—Kuchiki Rukia's Bankai.
It also had a simple, common name:
Absolute Zero.
Yamamoto looked up at the white sky, as if this weren't Muken at all, but Soul Society.
He still didn't know what Higashino Shuuichi's true Zanpakutō ability was.
But he understood this much:
Once could be coincidence.
Twice was inevitability.
Higashino Shuuichi's Bankai had to contain some mechanism—one that produced countermeasures to suppress whatever ability Yamamoto used.
"So I have to end this quickly—before that mechanism can respond!"
To be fair, Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni's analysis was very, very close to the truth.
But it was still off by a hair.
"Zanka no Tachi: Kita, Tenchi Kaijin (Heaven and Earth Reduced to Ashes)!"
Yamamoto stood perfectly still, taking advantage of the fact that the blazing armor around him had not yet faded.
In an instant, everything in Muken twisted.
To the eye, it looked as though Yamamoto hadn't moved at all.
In reality, he had already completed his strike.
Speed that surpassed a Shinigami's limits dragged the temperature of the sun's core along with it—carving through all of Muken.
Tearing?
Annihilation?
Collapse?
Higashino Shuuichi could no longer find a word that fit what Muken had become.
Perhaps it was exactly as the move's name implied.
Once that slash was released, heaven and earth would march together to the end of time.
Higashino Shuuichi didn't know who the god of creation in this world truly was—but he was certain of this:
If Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni's power could be freed like his own—if he could fully cast off the reiatsu shackles that bound a Shinigami—
then the one who might return the entire world to chaos…
could very well be Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni.
Because even Higashino Shuuichi's Bankai—Shinki Mosoku, which would inevitably spawn a countermeasure after learning every detail of its opponent—
did not grant him any ability that could directly oppose this strike.
Instead, it simply allowed Higashino Shuuichi's body to be erased by that destructive slash.
And then—
Time reversal!
The whole world—Muken itself—snapped back to how it was before Yamamoto swung that blade.
Everything seemed unchanged.
In truth, it was.
Only Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni had not been affected by the reversal.
He was spent.
He braced himself on his sword so he wouldn't collapse.
Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni left himself his dignity.
"This is… the power of time, isn't it?"
He stared at the utterly unchanged world, certain that he had unleashed that all-out slash.
Because his body's feedback would never lie.
"I still underestimated you… Higashino Shuuichi."
His whole body trembled.
He wanted to force strength into his limbs—yet his body refused to obey.
In the end, time's scars still showed on this aged man.
His body could no longer endure the backlash of such terrifying power.
Higashino Shuuichi faced a choice: kill Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni, or spare him.
Like the branching decisions in so many single-player games from his previous life—
different choices, wildly different futures.
No matter what Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni had once done to him, Higashino Shuuichi still respected the man.
To uphold the duties of the Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13 so completely—regardless of his own strength—to willingly serve the nobles as their spearpoint, to become the final shield before them—
for that alone, Higashino Shuuichi felt Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni was more suited than anyone to be the Grand Blade-Hunting Chief.
"So… yeah. A dead Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni is better."
This was Muken—no audience, no surveillance. Higashino Shuuichi could be a little reckless, without worrying about being exposed afterward.
But just as he stepped before Yamamoto and prepared to deliver the final blow—to send him to Hell—
a slash cut between them, forming a reiatsu barrier.
There were spectators in Muken!
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