Back to the video screen,
The dialogue continued.
"Aizen…"
"Let's change locations. I don't want to fight here…"
Just as Aizen was still droning on,
declaring that Kurosaki Ichigo's evolution had failed
and that Ichigo had disappointed his expectations—
He never expected…
Ichigo would be the one to提出条件—to make a request first!
Those calm words, without joy or anger,
completely ignored everything Aizen had just said.
"Eh?"
"Why do I feel like, compared to the Gotei Captains,
Kurosaki Ichigo is even more decisive and unyielding?"
"He's showing a composure totally out of step with his age and status!"
"Could Lord Aizen's intuition actually be wrong?"
"At this point, Ichigo is clearly standing on the same level as him—
that's the only reason he can act this relaxed, right?"
Inside Las Noches,
The Hollows and Arrancar all frowned,
deeply shaken by Ichigo's expression.
He was too calm—
So calm it was almost unnerving!!!
They all knew very well:
Hōgyoku-Aizen was a transcendent—
One of the three beings standing at the absolute ceiling of power in the Bleach world!!!
Before him,
Forget ordinary humans—
Even those with captain-level strength
had no right to speak.
Once they encountered him, there was only one outcome:
Instant death from a single strike.
That was a guaranteed result!!!
So then…
On what basis
could Kurosaki Ichigo talk to Hōgyoku-Aizen like this,
so steady and unmoved?
The most likely explanation
could only be one thing—
Their strength was equal.
Or perhaps… Ichigo had even surpassed him!
Only then could someone face a transcendent
with a heart as still as a mirror,
and such an utterly detached mindset.
At this time,
On the throne in the present.
Aizen's face did not change.
He still maintained that cold, sharp expression.
But inside,
waves were crashing violently through his heart.
"Kurosaki Ichigo…"
"Could you really… have taken that step ahead of me,
and risen beyond the future me?"
Those pitch-black eyes
flickered faintly.
It wasn't jealousy
that made his emotions stir again and again.
It was pure shock—
shock at Ichigo's rate of growth,
and the height he'd reached.
He had actually…
Exceeded expectations and skipped entire tiers in his ascent.
Without relying on any external force,
within a short span of time,
he had grown into one of three genuine transcendents.
This outcome
left Aizen with strangely mixed feelings.
On the one hand,
there was the instinctive wariness and hostility
of having encountered a once-in-a-lifetime rival.
On the other hand,
there was a subtle joy—
For hundreds of years,
he had stood alone at the peak of the Shinigami world,
enduring a loneliness hidden beneath his mask.
Now that another of his kind had appeared,
that isolation was beginning to dissolve.
In short,
This segment on the screen
caused a subtle shift in Aizen's inner world.
Both outwardly—in the faint changes in his facial expressions—
and inwardly—in the fluctuations of his emotions—
he was no longer watching the video with cold detachment.
He was completely drawn in,
eager to see how the inventory would continue to reveal the truth!!!
As expected,
With Hōgyoku-Aizen's arrogance,
He naturally rejected Ichigo's request without giving it any thought.
"Kurosaki Ichigo…"
"Your proposal is meaningless."
Hōgyoku-Aizen,
his back to the camera,
stood with those huge butterfly-like wings behind him.
They filled most of the screen,
dominating the scene with sheer presence.
He rejected Ichigo flatly:
"Only someone whose strength can match mine
has the right to say such things."
"There's no need to worry.
This city, Karakura Town, won't be destroyed before—"
However,
Before Hōgyoku-Aizen could even finish,
What happened next shook the entire cosmos,
completely beyond anyone's imagination!!!
"BANG!!!"
The sound of a palm slamming into a face
rang out as loudly as an explosion in the void.
In that instant—
Before any viewer in the world,
or even the video camera itself,
could react or track what was happening—
Kurosaki Ichigo's body
suddenly dipped and shot forward.
A black blur flashed across the screen,
and that massive power in his hand clenched down hard.
He actually…
Grabbed Aizen's entire face with one hand!!!
Then, with a casual swing,
as if he were picking up a trash bag—
Right in front of everyone,
He smashed Hōgyoku-Aizen's entire body
into the air itself!
The whole sequence
happened in the blink of an eye.
By the time the viewers reacted,
the screams bursting out of their throats
were already echoing across every corner of the Bleach world.
"Holy—!!!"
"That was way too brutal!!!"
"One-handed head grab into a midair slam—
is Ichigo performing a dunk?!"
"But the thing in his hand isn't a basketball—
it's Hōgyoku-Aizen!!!"
"This is insane.
Even the camera can't keep up with Ichigo's movements—
that's the scariest part!!!"
In that moment, the world erupted.
Soul Society was utterly terrified.
Amazement, shock, horror…
No matter who they were,
no matter what race or faction they belonged to—
every powerful being was stunned.
They all knew:
Even someone as powerful as Ichimaru Gin,
with his Zanpakutō Shinso,
one of the elite captains,
and ranked fifth in this very Zanpakutō inventory—
Even he,
in front of Hōgyoku-Aizen,
couldn't land a decisive blow.
After his sneak attack failed,
he was cut down in a single strike,
barely escaping complete annihilation.
Just Gin alone
was enough to show how overwhelming Aizen truly was.
Yet what they were seeing now—
Was Aizen himself
being dunked one-handed by Kurosaki Ichigo!
His fused Hōgyoku body
looked as if it had lost all control,
limp and unable to struggle,
dangling helplessly in midair,
completely at the mercy of Ichigo's single hand!!!
A sight like this,
the combined visual and psychological impact,
was beyond any language's ability to describe.
The shock it brought
was enough to erase all the suffocating pressure
that Hōgyoku-Aizen had been exerting
throughout this entire inventory.
In an instant,
everyone's focus
shifted entirely onto Kurosaki Ichigo!!!
"So strong!!!"
"Just what did Ichigo do to reach this level?!"
"I remember even the Head Captain himself
didn't dare recklessly approach Aizen
back when Aizen was still only in his Shinigami form!"
"But now, after multiple evolutions,
Hōgyoku-Aizen is the one being tossed around?!"
"Kurosaki Ichigo…
is terrifyingly strong!!!"
In Silbern,
inside the Ice Crystal Palace,
the pure-blooded Quincy were just as shocked,
cursing in disbelief.
Even before this,
none of them liked Kurosaki Ichigo.
Deep down, they already rejected this human highschooler
whose veins carried pure-blood Quincy power.
They had always assumed
he and the Wandenreich were destined to be enemies,
that they would never walk the same path.
But in the next second—
Reality slapped them in the face.
Their worldview shattered.
This Kurosaki Ichigo…
He was too outrageous!!!
To suppress Hōgyoku-Aizen with one hand.
In the entire Bleach world,
who else could possibly pull something like that off?
And that wasn't all.
Just as the entire world's audience
was still reeling from the shock,
their emotions surging—
What happened next
set off another chain of explosions
and visual fireworks.
"SWISH—!!!"
Up in the air,
Ichigo's figure
moved like a hypersonic missile,
accelerating at insane speed.
The video camera
was constantly being left behind,
to the point where the viewers
could barely see anything more
than the corner of his black coat.
"This speed is ridiculous…"
"Kurosaki Ichigo's movement speed
is at least a hundred times faster
than my top-level shunpo!"
Inside Urahara's shop,
Yoruichi's eyes were wide with disbelief.
As the "Goddess of Flash",
her shunpo was acknowledged throughout Seireitei—
no, throughout the entire Bleach world—
as one of the absolute fastest.
When it came to raw speed,
she had always been confident
she could rank in the top three.
But now—
Seeing this comparison,
Yoruichi was dumbstruck.
Her once-relaxed sitting posture vanished,
her body flipping upright in shock.
She leaned closer to the screen,
golden eyes flashing wildly.
She simply could not comprehend
how strong someone would have to be
to move like Kurosaki Ichigo,
so effortlessly defying all logic—
making her centuries of training
seem like a joke by comparison.
That was what shocked the "Goddess of Flash" the most.
"Gulp…"
Tessai swallowed hard.
Staring at the constantly shifting image,
he forced himself not to get motion sick.
Awkwardly, he said,
"To ignore Hōgyoku-Aizen's will like that
and forcibly throw him out of Karakura Town…"
"Is something like that…
really possible?"
Tessai felt completely numb.
That was a transcendent.
Not some house pet
you could toss out when it misbehaved.
Ichigo was treating Hōgyoku-Aizen
as if he weren't even a person!!!
What stunned Tessai even more was—
As he finished speaking,
the Ichigo on screen suddenly halted in midair.
He finally gave the video feed a chance
to catch up to him.
Then,
Ichigo raised his arm
and gave a light, casual swing.
He didn't even use Tensa Zangetsu—
It looked no different
from a person throwing out a bag of trash.
Yet the result—
"BOOOOOOM!!!"
The air trembled.
Spiritual particles exploded.
With a deafening shockwave,
Aizen's body turned into a human missile,
shot down from several thousand meters up.
He slammed into the ground
outside the outskirts of Karakura Town.
In an instant,
the earth shattered.
A crater opened up—
the kind of deep impact scar
you'd expect from a falling meteorite.
Countless shards of stone blasted outward.
A sudden sandstorm erupted,
ripping up trees and vegetation in its path.
And in the end—
In the rolling clouds of dust and shockwaves,
the only clear figure
was Hōgyoku-Aizen himself.
After he hit the ground,
his whole face was still
pressed firmly into Ichigo's palm,
savagely pinned down.
The crust of the earth groaned and buckled,
his facial features twisted,
squeezed together and driven deep into the ground.
This entire scene
was broadcast without a single cut.
The viewers' expressions
shifted from initial shock,
to blank confusion,
to a strange stillness,
until finally—
they were completely numb.
Throughout the process,
not a single person,
not one powerhouse anywhere,
could properly process what they were seeing.
Everyone's brain
simply froze.
Inside Squad One,
The atmosphere was dead silent.
Even the Head Captain,
who usually kept his eyes half-closed in calm,
was staring wide-eyed now.
In over two thousand years of life,
he had watched rivers change course,
sun and moon cycle endlessly.
He had seen the evolution of Soul Society
and the Shinigami world with his own eyes.
Yet everything he had ever seen or experienced,
even his basic understanding of how the world worked—
All of it exploded in this moment.
He simply could not make sense
of what was happening before him.
To be blunt—
In the Head Captain's mind,
this looked exactly like a sci-fi movie.
Everything on screen
felt impossible in reality—
And yet Kurosaki Ichigo
had done it.
And—
He was doing it
while crushing Hōgyoku-Aizen with one hand.
That was the most terrifying part.
"Seeing this…"
"I honestly don't even know
who the real protagonist of this inventory is anymore."
"Is this some kind of teaser
for the next inventory ranking?"
Kyoraku Shunsui's pupils trembled.
He was so shaken
he nearly started stuttering,
completely losing his usual laid-back composure as Commander.
Only now
did he finally become certain—
That mystery number-one spot
everyone had been guessing at,
the one at the top of this "Top Ten Zanpakutō" list—
Could only belong
to that black Zanpakutō in Ichigo's hand.
Only then
did this absurd scene have any explanation.
At this moment,
Unohana Retsu,
always observant,
lifted her gaze toward the screen.
Her eyes lingered on Ichigo's right hand,
and she spotted another piece of solid evidence.
"Did you all notice?"
"Kurosaki Ichigo's right hand—
the black Zanpakutō in his grip—
the chain extending from the hilt…"
"It's tightly wrapped around his entire arm."
"And in that sense,
he's almost identical to Hōgyoku-Aizen."
Following Unohana's reminder,
the Captains finally snapped out of it,
forcing themselves to calm down.
Their eyes shifted
to Ichigo's right arm,
then to Hōgyoku-Aizen for comparison.
It was exactly as she said.
The condition of their arms
was practically the same—
The only difference
was that Ichigo's was a binding,
while Aizen's was a fusion.
Nothing more.
Right now,
the evidence was overwhelming.
It was set in stone—
Ichigo had become a transcendent as well.
He might even outweigh
Hōgyoku-Aizen.
"Hiss…"
Abarai Renji drew in a deep breath,
still shaken as he exclaimed,
"Good thing we have this inventory video."
"Otherwise, people at our level
would never be qualified to see any of this."
"For sure…"
Byakuya Kuchiki nodded, his expression complicated.
"The backlash from a battle between transcendents—
just the aftershocks alone
are a hundred times stronger
than our Bankai."
"For us, it's not just impossible to watch…"
"We wouldn't even be able to sense their spiritual pressure."
After speaking,
Byakuya's shock deepened.
He clearly remembered—
During the detailed inventory of Senbonzakura last year,
the first opponent showcased
had been Ichigo,
who had only just become a Shinigami at the time.
And back then,
the Zanpakutō shown in the footage
was nothing more than a huge, unwieldy cleaver.
At that time—
None of the viewers across the world
had paid special attention to it.
No one thought that kind of ordinary Zanpakutō
would amount to anything.
Most assumed it would appear once as a supporting character,
then never be seen again.
Yet now—
Ichigo was turning the tide of the world.
And that black Zanpakutō of his
was standing on equal footing with Kyōka Suigetsu.
Such an unexpected, astonishing result
forced Byakuya to completely reevaluate him.
At the same time,
amid another wave of gasps—
Hōgyoku-Aizen's figure
struggled its way up
from the bottom of that massive crater.
The once immaculate white coat he wore
was ripped to shreds.
It was now covered in dust,
dirty and disheveled.
His expression,
brows knotted,
no longer carried that serene arrogance—
it was full of rage.
Hōgyoku-Aizen spoke in a low, cold voice:
"Kurosaki Ichigo, I understand now."
"The reason your spiritual pressure
hasn't run out of control."
Facing the direction of the video,
Aizen stood up,
letting his spiritual pressure roll outwards,
instantly blowing away the lingering dust around him.
A confident curve slipped back onto his lips
as he declared smugly:
"Your spiritual pressure hasn't vanished."
"On the contrary—
you've willingly merged into it yourself."
"Through some kind of ritual
similar to a sacrificial technique—"
"You've completely converted your spiritual pressure
into spiritual body power."
"That drastically raised your physical strength, grip strength, movement speed,
and throwing speed…"
"That's why you can fight like this!!!"
Once this explanation from Hōgyoku-Aizen
was revealed through the inventory video
and echoed across reality—
The audience once again
couldn't help but shout in shock.
"What the—?!"
"Using spiritual pressure and Hōgyoku power
to reinforce the spiritual body?"
"Isn't that basically some kind of forbidden cultivation technique?!"
"Since when did the Bleach world
have this kind of alternative training method?"
"So if you just do this,
you can become a transcendent?"
"Where do we sign up?
We viewers would love to learn it!!!"
(End of Chapter)
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