Chapter 72: Mayuri Kurotsuchi Blasted to Dust for the Second Time
Mayuri Kurotsuchi's Bankai, Konjiki Ashisogi Jizō, summons a giant, aberrant creature with the head of a baby and the body of a caterpillar. It is a common "summoning-type" Bankai in the Soul Society.
There is a saying in the Seireitei that summoning-type Bankai reflect the most essential aspect of a Soul Reaper's soul. This rings true here: the giant baby head symbolizes a vast, primal innocence and curiosity; its sharp wails represent a straightforward cruelty that exists before the comprehension of morality; and the sharp blades hidden beneath the caterpillar torso witness a spirit of distortion and ruthlessness.
Mayuri was indeed such a man. His mind was pure in its pursuit of the unknown, unconcerned with the feelings of others and devoid of guilt. He used any means necessary to satisfy his curiosity, only to turn away in boredom once a subject was "solved."
At this moment, the Ashisogi Jizō reflected Mayuri's current state of servitude. Hell's miasma swirled around it; fleshy pustules erupted across its body, bursting to spray corrosive, toxic pus everywhere. Even the Hellish Macho-Men withered and collapsed instantly upon contact with the fluid.
But the Jizō's sinister presence could not deter Uryu Ishida. Even the Reishi ocean under his command roared in resonance with his fury, transforming into a surging tide that swallowed the macho-men and charged toward Mayuri.
Feeling the approaching tide—pushed by a rage that caused battle intent and killing intent to skyrocket—Mayuri remained expressionless. If he weren't under external control, he would have turned and left already.
After falling to Hell, he had spent time reviewing his battle with Uryu. His conclusion: he loathed enemies like Uryu Ishida!
To Mayuri, a man who uses sheer will and hot-blooded passion to trample common sense, break through impossible limits, and create miracles at whim is a dream as an experimental subject—but a nightmare as an opponent. Such foes drastically inflate the "cost" of combat.
Had he still been in his lab in the Seireitei, Mayuri might have tried to improvise. Unfortunately, he was dead. And as everyone knows, you can't take your belongings to the grave. Spat back into the Soul Society by Hell, he had nothing but a "Hell-issue" Zanpakuto. He was even worse off than before; at least then he had a multi-functional defensive suit—even if it had been punched through in one hit.
Ashisogi Jizō struck first, exhaling a cloud of poisonous gas mixed with toxic pus toward Uryu. The Jizō was not a brawler; its toxins were its trump card. Yet, the move proved useless. Before the gas could even reach Uryu, the sheer kinetic energy of the surging Reishi ocean vaporized it.
Mayuri clicked his tongue and spat, though he had expected as much.
"MAYURI KUROTSUCHI!"
Uryu, overflowing with rage, was closing in fast. The brilliant sea of Reishi seemed to catch fire, illuminating heaven and earth with a majestic glow. Within that light, a stronger, more potent power was brewing.
"Absolute Realm 55%..."
Uryu's roaring will drove his strongest Quincy Fist.
"A mere 5% increase in output, yet the physical force of the punch has increased by nearly 68.935% compared to the 50% baseline? The ratio of Absolute Realm index to raw power is... fascinating," Mayuri evaluated coldly.
He didn't plan to give up easily. He raised a hand, and Ashisogi Jizō transformed. Its caterpillar body swelled, and multiple deformed arms—seemingly taken from different monsters—burst from its sides. Thick Hell miasma exploded outward, forming a sinister black halo above the Jizō's head!
"REISHI BLASTING FIST!"
As Uryu swung a fist like a peerless beast, the Jizō met him head-on with its many monstrous arms.
The trend of hiding a "trump card" in the Seireitei was of ancient and untraceable origin, but Mayuri knew that almost every named character in the Gotei 13 did it. (If you asked how he knew, well, as a mad scientist who recorded everyone's data 24/7, it was second nature).
Mayuri's secret was that everyone thought his Bankai dealt purely toxic damage. In truth, Ashisogi Jizō—as the mapping of Mayuri's soul—possessed the core mysteries of [Modification] and [Adaptation].
Mayuri had performed countless surgeries on himself. This essence of a mad scientist was sublimated into a Bankai that could read enemy data and adapt. Furthermore, it possessed excellent "mod-ability," allowing for pre-installed combat grafts.
Hell was not empty; it was a library of bizarre monsters. To Mayuri, it was a natural resource pool. Since arriving, he had treated Uryu as a hypothetical enemy and completed a basic refit: stripping the arms and Reishi meridians from Hell-beasts and grafting them into the Jizō.
This stitched form was called Konjiki Ashisogi Jizō: Hellish Eight-Armed Asura. Its logic was simple: discard all tricks and match Uryu's firepower head-on.
The experiment yielded its result. To Mayuri, it was... unsatisfactory.
After taking one 55% Reishi Blasting Fist, the grafted Hell-arms shattered one by one, and the Jizō's main body cracked.
"Hasty grafting led to a high rejection rate, and the material count was too low," Mayuri evaluated coldly. "However, the traits of the Hell Miasma are exactly as I predicted..."
Mayuri's gaze landed on Uryu's right hand. During the collision, although the Jizō lost the trade, the excess miasma had touched Uryu's fist. It clung to the skin, corroding it and forming threads of pitch-black scars.
This was why Mayuri chose a head-on clash. Against Reishi and Three-World lifeforms, Hell Miasma wasn't a "poison," but it worked better than any poison ever could. However, the "yield" was low. Mayuri estimated it would take ten more rounds for the corrosion to actually decide the battle.
But did Mayuri have ten rounds? Not against a high-purity Martial Artist.
"GIVE ME POWER! Absolute Realm 60% Output... REISHI BLASTING FIST!" Uryu roared.
Mayuri looked exasperated. "I hate your type most. No technical skill, a head full of muscle, zero intelligence. Just one move over and over. If power isn't enough, you just increase it. There's no joy in the calculation of the game with you. And another thing: only a 5% increase in index, yet the power jumped by 92.231% over the 55% base? Can the increments not be a bit more regular? It's making me very irritable!"
Complaint aside, Mayuri had no answer for it. He could calculate precisely and set traps, but he couldn't handle an enemy who "erupted" at will. An enemy with an unpredictable ceiling is the death of all strategy.
"Fine. Back to the lab, then."
Facing the incoming Reishi tide, Mayuri abandoned resistance. He let the peerless iron fist blow Ashisogi Jizō apart before it slammed directly into his own chest.
At the final moment, Mayuri turned his head toward the Seireitei—specifically, toward Yamamoto. The blood-eyed Commander watched indifferently but did not intervene. He knew Mayuri wasn't looking for help; he was looking for an answer.
Why did none of the resurrection backups I hid in various secret locations activate?
Yamamoto lowered his gaze, offering no reply. It was unnecessary. In truth, Yamamoto didn't know who had infiltrated the Research Department to destroy the backups. But it didn't matter. Mayuri was the most hated man in the Seireitei; if he was down, the list of people wanting him to stay dead was long enough that Yamamoto didn't care to think about it.
His silence was the answer. Mayuri looked enlightened. "I see..."
Whatever he realized was irrelevant. Mayuri didn't actually care about the betrayal; he just wanted the data to solve the riddle. Then his thoughts were cut off as he was blasted into dust for the second time.
Uryu Ishida, having reduced his enemy to ash again, felt no joy. He sensed that Mayuri wasn't truly gone; he had simply fallen back into Hell. To a man who had already died twice, this was just going home.
Of course, the journey back wasn't easy. The "Purity-Brained" World was greedily chewing on even the scattered Hell Miasma; it certainly wouldn't let Mayuri's remains go easily.
Uryu wanted to charge into Hell to finish him, but not knowing where the gates were, he suppressed his killing intent. "Next time we meet will be your true end!"
He turned back to the Hellish Macho-Men.
While Uryu fought, the Gotei 13 didn't stand by. Learning from earlier, lower-ranked Reapers held the defense while Seated Officers and above sorted the purge. With the Captains using Bankai, the slaughter rate skyrocketed. However, mass-killing the macho-men triggered a reaction: black cocoons formed, and more "Dead Ones" returned from Hell.
Some were old faces, some new, but all were powerful—many at Bankai-level. Unlike Mayuri, few were sane. Most were lunatics who opened with Bankai and fought with a suicidal madness, giving the Captains a massive headache.
Yamamoto watched with indifference. He knew Hell was no paradise. Those who sank there were killed, resurrected, and killed again in an endless cycle of "Muken" agony until their sanity was ground away, leaving them as hollow "Soul Corpses."
Hell offered no release—only Eternal Tribulation.
But that didn't matter. It was only a "Tribulation" while in Hell. If it manifested in the Soul Society, it had to answer to him: Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto, the strongest Reaper of a millennium.
The shattering of Ryūjin Jakka had spread from the tip to the middle. The soul-power once condensed within the blade was returning to its source. Without a medium, he needed only to clench his fist. Flames erupted from his body, tearing through the Monk's seal. His remaining right arm charred and withered, but beneath the blackened flesh, a dull, magma-like radiance exploded!
There would be no more Zanka no Tachi. There was only the Remnant Flame Body.
He raised his hand and punched. A blood-red sun bloomed from the earth and fell with unstoppable force, granting an equal and tyrannical death to the creations of Hell.
Meanwhile, in the underground lab of Las Noches in Hueco Mundo, a screen behind Aizen beeped, showing high-energy Reishi readings from the Soul Society.
In the past, Aizen would have obsessed over this data. Now, he didn't care. Partly because such readings were common lately, but mostly because something else held his focus.
Before Aizen stood a massive crystalline vat. Ichigo Kurosaki lay within, submerged in nutrient fluid, in a deep slumber. Aizen's gaze was intensely focused, as if looking at the world's most precious treasure.
Thanks to Reishi Recomposition, Ichigo's "minor injuries"—being sliced into hundreds of pieces—had healed quickly. But he wouldn't wake up. Aizen sensed it wasn't that he couldn't wake up, but that he refused to.
"What are you fighting in your dreams... that keeps you from returning?" Aizen whispered.
In his observation, Ichigo's aura fluctuated wildly. Injuries would occasionally appear on his body only to heal instantly. He was locked in an endless, world-shaking war within his mind.
Kaname Tosen entered the lab and reported respectfully: "The Hellish soldiers have breached the spatial barriers of the Soul Society and are invading Hueco Mundo..."
"Have the Espada lead the army to meet them," Aizen ordered without turning around. His eyes never left Ichigo.
Though blind, Tosen's over-developed spiritual senses caught the scene. He didn't think Aizen's sexual orientation had done a 180-degree turn; it was simply that the current Ichigo possessed an extraordinary charisma.
In Tosen's spiritual vision, Ichigo in the vat was like a Sun of condensed Purity. Every second, he erupted with light and heat that was invisible to the eye but deafening to the soul. And with every passing second, he seemed to grow stronger, more potent!
Ichigo was still metamorphosing—evolving persistently.
Aizen was watching that process. And he, too, was beginning to understand.
End of Chapter
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