Everyone knows that in the world of Shinigami…
If, in the middle of a fight, you suddenly can't sense the other side's reiatsu, there are only three possibilities.
One: they're dead. Dead means no reiatsu.
Two: they're alive, but they've blocked your perception—something Higashino Shuuichi didn't have that special ability to do.
And three: their reiatsu suddenly skyrockets to a level so far beyond you that you can't even grasp it anymore—so you can't sense it at all.
That last case… in the original future, complete-form Hōgyoku Aizen was fortunate enough to experience once, on Kurosaki Ichigo.
And now Shawlong Koufang was even luckier—he got almost the exact same sensation as Aizen did back then.
If you round it up, Shawlong Koufang had basically gotten himself a limited-time "Aizen experience card."
Even if that "experience card" was probably missing a few pounds' worth of content.
"Looks like you still don't understand. The chance I gave you—to sit with me and watch the show—was mercy.
If you don't even want that mercy…
Then I'll grant your wish~"
Higashino Shuuichi's figure revealed itself once more within the Shadow Domain.
Shawlong Koufang stared at him—reappearing as if not even a speck of dust clung to his clothing—and his heart sank straight into the abyss.
So Higashino Shuuichi really had come here to represent Aizen-sama… to punish their king.
To decide to kill him after just one frontal Sero (Cero)… that meant Higashino Shuuichi must have received Aizen-sama's permission before coming.
Otherwise, even when the former Espada No. 2, Baraggan, had nearly killed him several times, Higashino Shuuichi had never truly gone for the kill.
(Higashino Shuuichi: "Are you being polite? You think I didn't want to kill him? I just couldn't beat him back then!")
Shawlong Koufang didn't think he'd done anything wrong. He believed he'd already guessed the whole truth.
So for the king he truly served—Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez—Shawlong Koufang resolutely chose to sacrifice himself here.
"My king—I'll do everything I can to stop Higashino Shuuichi here!
Please notice the disappearance of me and Edrad Liones!
Return to Hueco Mundo and find Ilfort Grantz. With his relationship to Szayelaporro Grantz, he can definitely provide you a safe space!"
Shawlong Koufang didn't know whether those words could reach Grimmjow's ears.
But he hoped Grimmjow could hear them.
Because in this situation, it was Grimmjow's best option.
As the leader among Grimmjow's Fracción, Shawlong Koufang was certain—
This would be the last time he ever offered counsel to Grimmjow.
May the sacrifices of him and Edrad Liones buy their king, Grimmjow, enough time…!
A flash of tragic resolve crossed Shawlong's face, and what filled his eyes afterward was an ironclad determination.
"Sever him—Tijereta (Earwig)!"
An insect-like exoskeletal armor instantly covered Shawlong Koufang's upper body. The scissor-bug tail manifested along his braided hair, and the mask on his face expanded from the left half down toward his chin.
Both arms and hands transformed into skeletal blades—long, sharp, and lethal.
A piercing sonic boom rang out in the dim Shadow Domain.
Shawlong didn't use Sonīdo (Sonído).
Instead, he used the most primitive method—charging head-on.
Pure explosive power launched him forward, and in the blink of an eye he was right in front of Higashino Shuuichi.
A claw strike!
A straight thrust!
A sweeping slash!
Shawlong Koufang unleashed a continuous barrage with those terrifying blades.
As long as Higashino Shuuichi made a single mistake—just once—and gave those blades a chance to carve him, Shawlong was confident he could leave him with wounds so deep they'd be a nightmare.
But Higashino Shuuichi didn't.
He didn't give Shawlong even the slightest unrealistic hope.
Every swing of Higashino Shuuichi's blade—every thread of reiatsu spilling from it—blocked Shawlong's attacks perfectly.
And from beginning to end, Higashino Shuuichi didn't take a single step back.
Sonīdo (Sonído)!
At last, Shawlong caught what looked like a "mistake" and used Sonīdo (Sonído), instantly adjusting his position to Higashino Shuuichi's back.
Both arm-blades stabbed hard toward Higashino Shuuichi's spine.
Higashino Shuuichi's arrogance—his refusal to use a Shinigami's Shikai or Bankai—meant this was Shawlong's one and only chance to flip the table!
At least, that was what Shawlong Koufang believed.
But his attack stabbed into empty air.
What Higashino Shuuichi left behind was only an afterimage.
"Sorry. Sonīdo (Sonído)…
…I can use it too~"
The real Higashino Shuuichi had already Hollowfied, a skull-like mask on his face, appearing behind Shawlong Koufang.
And with a single light thrust, he easily pierced straight through the armor on Shawlong's body.
That was armor thick enough to withstand several hits—even ten or more—from an average captain-class Shinigami.
In front of Higashino Shuuichi, it was like paper.
"...The gap is still too huge."
A bitter smile tugged at Shawlong Koufang's mouth.
The distance between him and Higashino Shuuichi now… was the kind you couldn't even see the end of.
But even so, he didn't give up.
As long as there was even a shred of possibility, he would buy time for his king.
The moment Higashino Shuuichi's Zanpakutō ran him through—
Shawlong forced his reiatsu to gather violently toward the center of his body under his control.
It looked like a Sero (Cero) being formed.
But it was even more vicious—more chaotic, more disordered, more unstable.
Higashino Shuuichi understood immediately: this move had a name, and a tragically fitting one.
Self-destruction.
In all the long years Higashino Shuuichi had lived in the Shinigami world, very few Hollows had ever gone that far.
Self-destruction meant that even though the Hollow still had strength left to resist, it chose to abandon all struggle, seeking only to inflict maximum damage on its enemy.
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted across the Shadow Domain.
Shawlong's decision had been so decisive that Higashino Shuuichi didn't even have time to restrain him.
Blood sprayed everywhere.
Shawlong Koufang succeeded—he truly did injure Higashino Shuuichi. The skin on Higashino Shuuichi's sword-hand was ripped away in a layer…
…and the entire front of his body suffered many wounds from the blast.
But Shawlong Koufang also failed—because in less than ten seconds, Higashino Shuuichi used Kaidō (Healing Arts), which he had trained under Kirinji Tenjirō, and healed himself completely.
Injured?
As good as injured.
Still, that didn't stop Shawlong Koufang from becoming an opponent Higashino Shuuichi felt deserved respect.
At the very least, his loyalty to Grimmjow was beyond question.
"What a waste…"
Higashino Shuuichi shook his head.
A pity Grimmjow wasn't the true protagonist—otherwise a loyal subordinate like Shawlong Koufang would have had his moment to shine.
He raised a hand and swept away the dust and smoke in the Shadow Domain, then casually glanced at the other Shadow Domain he'd split off.
Inside, Nemu and the Arrancar Edrad Liones were still fighting fiercely.
And Nemu was faintly on the losing side.
Even though she had inherited many of Higashino Shuuichi's abilities—giving her a wide arsenal of combat methods by nature—one core problem still hadn't been solved.
Nemu's reiatsu still hadn't reached captain-class.
So if she wanted to defeat an Arrancar like Edrad Liones—one who, in the original story, forced Madarame Ikkaku to use Bankai, and even then required Ikkaku to pay the price of his Zanpakutō being completely destroyed in order to win—Nemu still needed time.
As for whether she might lose?
That wasn't happening.
Because Higashino Shuuichi had quietly "opened a small cheat" for Nemu—borrowing her a portion of the Soul King's left leg, that endless reiatsu power representing "support."
Even if she couldn't overpower him, Nemu could grind Edrad Liones down until he died.
Meanwhile, outside in the World of the Living—Ginbu Town—
Because the battle inside the Shadow Domain had been completely one-sided, because Higashino Shuuichi didn't particularly enjoy tormenting people, and because Shawlong Koufang had acted so decisively…
Not much time had actually passed.
All told, it hadn't even been ten minutes.
Yet the situation had shifted from back-and-forth…
…into Tier's one-sided pressure.
The reason was simple: Tier had pulled out a Quincy-killing trump card Higashino Shuuichi had never seen before—
Shinkyōtate (Divine Mirror Shield).
It was several freely moving reishi shields condensed around her body by Hollow power.
Its effect was brutally simple.
It "searched" specifically for Shinsei Metsushi (Sacred Extinction Arrow), then performed precise targeted interception.
Pure bullying—because Quincy output methods were painfully limited. No matter how you dressed it up, it was still just Shinsei Metsushi changing shapes.
"So this is what Aizen said he'd gotten from 'special research' aimed at Quincy…"
Higashino Shuuichi was surprised—but more than that, it felt inevitable.
After all, because of Higashino Shuuichi's influence back then, Aizen had indeed paid some attention to Quincy and even researched them for a time.
With Aizen's intelligence and talent, plus Szayelaporro's genius designs, creating a brand-new skill like this for Hollows wasn't strange at all.
It even made Higashino Shuuichi silently apologize to Aizen in his heart—
Back at the Soul King Palace, he'd misunderstood him.
He'd thought Aizen had been so rattled by the Soul King's will that he'd completely forgotten about the Quincy issue.
Now it seemed Aizen had, at the very least, kept the Quincy threat somewhere in his mind.
How much… was another question.
"Ikusa Shizuku (War Droplets)!"
In the sky, Tier looked down at Kurosaki Masaki—standing exposed on the open ground—and fired a barrage of water cannons from her Zanpakutō.
Each water shot carried terrifying heat. Even getting splashed by stray droplets would make the human body of Kurosaki Masaki suffer badly.
On the ground, Kurosaki Masaki grit her teeth, dodging as best she could while thinking desperately of a solution.
She hadn't expected things to deteriorate so fast.
The two of them had been trading blows evenly—until that Hollow called Harribel pulled out those special reishi shields orbiting her.
After that, everything turned sharply downhill.
No matter how Kurosaki Masaki fired Shinsei Metsushi at Tier, every shot was blocked by those reishi shields.
Tier didn't even need to split her focus.
So even Musō Metsushi (Untraceable Extinction Arrow) couldn't produce its intended effect anymore.
Was she really going to flee in disgrace?
Kurosaki Masaki glanced at the young Shinigami lying on the ground not far away, unsure if he was even still breathing.
No.
If she left now, that young Shinigami would definitely die here.
Her conscience wouldn't allow it.
"...Do I have to use that technique?"
Kurosaki Masaki frowned.
It was a method she had discovered among her grandparents' belongings—named by her grandmother, Kurosaki Mai, as "Saigo no Yobigoe (Final Summons)."
According to her grandmother's vague description, using it should allow one to receive an extremely powerful aid—once.
And because it was likely only once, her grandparents had never used it, even up until the day they died.
The technique itself wasn't hard to learn. Kurosaki Masaki believed her parents should have been able to master it too.
Yet strangely, until the accident that took their lives, her parents didn't seem to have used it either.
So had they used it—and it still couldn't stop the accident? Or had they never used it at all?
Or… was this "Saigo no Yobigoe (Final Summons)" simply not as effective as her grandmother claimed?
Kurosaki Masaki had always been skeptical.
But now, facing Tier—whose abilities completely countered hers—being driven back step by step with no hope of victory…
She had no choice but to try.
"South's heart, north's twin eyes, west's fingertips, east's toes—gather with the wind, scatter with the rain.
In the name of Kurosaki Masaki, I call your name—please help me!"
Kurosaki Masaki chanted.
If there were Shinigami nearby, they would immediately recognize that what she'd recited was the original incantation for Kidō—specifically Bakudō 58: Kakushitsuijaku (Summoning of the Tracking Sparrows).
Only, at the end of it, she added a special "postscript"—a modified continuation.
Its purpose was singular: by altering the chant this way, it could ignore distance and transmit precisely from the World of the Living to every corner—crossing space itself, even reaching Soul Society.
It didn't need any additional information. As long as it reached the target, it was a success.
And it truly worked.
Within the Shadow Domain, the moment Kurosaki Masaki finished chanting, Higashino Shuuichi received that blurred distress signal from her.
"Isn't this… the 'gift' I had my Quincy clone, Kabuno Takuya, leave for Kurosaki Mai's family?"
Higashino Shuuichi felt utterly speechless.
Back then, after Aizen had unexpectedly found Kurosaki Mai's family and tried to use them as research material…
Higashino Shuuichi had feared Aizen would keep harassing them, so he'd prepared this specifically for Kurosaki Mai's family—
so they wouldn't suffer disaster because of him.
In the end, Kurosaki Mai's family never got to use it…
…but Kurosaki Masaki used it instead.
Alright, then.
Now the question was simple.
Was he going to help… or not?
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