Senjumaru stared hard at Aizen, countless questions swirling through her mind.
In the fierce battle just now, she had clearly seen with her own eyes Aizen being swallowed and sealed by flame and lightning.
Especially under Ichibe's "Seal" character, even space itself had been twisted and compressed until escape was almost impossible.
Shunsui and the others were shocked as well, but not exactly surprised anymore.
Shinji sighed. "Honestly, I've gotten used to it. At this point there's nothing that can really surprise me anymore."
This former vice-captain of his had given him far too many shocks and twists—
To the point his sense of shock was already numb.
Byakuya, however, hadn't reached that kind of mental state yet. He stared at Aizen coldly and said,
"It's Kyōka Suigetsu, isn't it?"
Because of that ability, Seireitei had suffered countless losses.
So many powerful shinigami had been grievously wounded because of it.
On that matter, Hitsugaya probably had the most right to speak—
After all, he was the one who'd been stabbed the most times.
"Impossible. It can't be Kyōka Suigetsu."
Senjumaru immediately denied that guess and looked at Aizen with a grave expression.
"I know Aizen's ability. Ichibe has already told me all about Kyōka Suigetsu. Since the beginning of this battle, I have never once seen him release his zanpakuto."
Ichibe knew the true name of every zanpakuto.
Before the battle began, he had specifically explained Kyōka Suigetsu's ability to her.
And right now she was absolutely certain—
From the start of the battle until now, Aizen had never drawn a blade.
In fact… Aizen didn't even have a zanpakuto on him.
The shinigami present would never doubt Senjumaru's words, but precisely because of that, they all turned to Aizen with even more serious expressions.
"What's going on? Without a zanpakuto, how can he use Kyōka Suigetsu?"
"Could it be it's not Kyōka Suigetsu?"
"Cole, did you notice what kind of ability Aizen is using?"
"Was it just ultra high-speed movement to dodge everything?"
"…"
The shinigami traded guesses in low, tense voices.
After Aizen had evolved multiple times, they were already completely unable to understand his abilities anymore.
Cole, on the other hand, didn't seem too bothered. He raised an eyebrow slightly and looked at Aizen with keen interest.
"Aizen, after you evolved into this form, you fused with Kyōka Suigetsu, didn't you? So now you can trigger its ability directly."
Back in his previous life reading the manga, he'd always been curious about that point.
When Aizen evolved to that stage, even his zanpakuto had disappeared. So how had he been using Kyōka Suigetsu's ability?
And at that point, Aizen had still been in a sealed state—
Yet relying on Kyōka Suigetsu, he'd managed to completely hypnotize Yhwach, leading directly to Yhwach's final defeat.
All of that could only really be explained if Kyōka Suigetsu had fused completely with Aizen.
Shunsui and the other shinigami all felt their hearts jolt. They involuntarily sucked in a breath of cold air.
Their gazes toward Aizen carried a hint of pure fear.
Triggering Kyōka Suigetsu with no conditions at all!?
Wasn't that just a bit too broken!?
Kyōka Suigetsu had already been basically unbeatable as it was.
If it didn't even have a "prerequisite viewing" anymore, wouldn't that make it an outright god-tier ability?
Hearing Cole's words, Aizen gave him a slightly surprised look.
"You actually guessed it?"
He hadn't mentioned Kyōka Suigetsu at all—he had merely spoken a single sentence.
And yet Cole had inferred everything from that.
As expected of the human who had repeatedly made him stumble…
His way of thinking really was out of the ordinary.
With that thought, Aizen said calmly,
"That's right. I've already perfectly fused with Kyōka Suigetsu. It is no longer my zanpakuto—it is my ability."
When he evolved to his fifth stage, Kyōka Suigetsu had already vanished.
Even if the enemy had never once seen Kyōka Suigetsu's shikai, he could still forcibly impose its hypnotic ability upon them.
Urahara couldn't help swallowing hard as he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, feeling an overwhelming pressure settle over him.
Faced with Aizen in this form, even he had no idea how to respond.
It was terrifyingly close to "unsolvable."
"Impossible!"
Oetsu suddenly shouted, staring at Aizen with an icy gaze.
"If you can use Kyōka Suigetsu's power, then why couldn't Ichibe sense it? He has the ability to know all true names…"
"Are Zero Division members all this foolish?"
Aizen cut off Oetsu mid-sentence, looking down at him with cold disdain.
"I already said it—Kyōka Suigetsu has fused with me. It's no longer a zanpakuto. Did you really think that man could still see it?"
He had already broken past the boundaries between shinigami and hollow.
He was no longer limited by either race.
Ichibe's ability only applied to the zanpakuto of shinigami.
It had no effect on the Resurrección of arrancar, and naturally couldn't target someone like him, who had transcended both sides.
Hearing Aizen's ridicule, Oetsu's face went purple with rage. He glared furiously at him.
"You bastard… you destroyed your own zanpakuto and you still dare talk to me like that…"
He was a swordsmith.
In his entire life, what he loved most were zanpakuto.
Now, faced with Aizen, who had devoured his own blade, there was only one impulse boiling in his heart—
The urge to kill.
"Hey, swordsmith old man, I'd advise you to calm down."
Cole spoke in a lazy tone.
"With your current strength, even if there were ten more of you, you still wouldn't be able to beat Aizen. If it was the old you, maybe then you could try."
Oetsu's mouth twitched, but he had no choice but to admit Cole was right.
He might be a member of the Zero Division, but just in terms of reiatsu alone, he was inferior to Aizen.
Unless his comrades were willing to make a sacrifice and undo their blood-oath seals, he practically had no way of standing against Aizen.
"So what do we do, then, Cole, Urahara?"
Shunsui turned to Cole and Urahara, deciding to hear what they had in mind.
Urahara's head was already pounding. He still couldn't fully grasp Aizen's current state, let alone come up with a countermeasure right away.
Cole, however, stroked his chin and said,
"I think Kyōka Suigetsu still has limitations. There's no way it can enforce absolute, forced complete hypnosis."
In the original Thousand-Year Blood War, Aizen had indeed put on quite the display, brutally disrupting a portion of Yhwach's perception.
But he hadn't been able to produce the same kind of complete hypnosis he had before.
That meant that, in this state…
Aizen couldn't achieve absolute complete hypnosis. He could only manage a more ordinary degree of hypnosis.
"In other words, as long as you've never seen Kyōka Suigetsu's release, and your reiatsu is roughly equal to Aizen's, you can probably resist complete hypnosis. At least you won't be casually one-shot."
Cole voiced his conclusion as he thought it through.
After all, Aizen couldn't be too invincible.
Otherwise, in the Thousand-Year Blood War, the final boss wouldn't have been Yhwach—
It would've been the sealed Aizen sitting right here.
Aizen did not refute him, nor did he offer any explanation.
His gaze instead turned toward the inner sanctum of the Soul King.
It was a sacred structure floating in midair—a tapered cylinder of holy blue, composed of four levels stacked atop each other.
That was where the "Soul King" dwelled.
If he killed that thing and overthrew the Zero Division's rule, he could create a new world of his own design.
A brand-new world with a brand-new order.
Just as Aizen's gaze burned hotter and hotter and he was about to move his legs, cracks spread across the Black Coffin beside him.
Seeing this, the leg Aizen had just lifted lightly came back down. He stared coldly at the shattering Kurohitsugi.
"So you're still alive, Ichibe?"
The massive black coffin broke open under brute force.
The monk-like shinigami walked out, smashing his way through, his entire body soaked in blood, his pupils solid white, eyes locked unblinkingly on Aizen.
"As long as I am here, you will not lay a hand on the Soul King. Give up."
As he spoke, Ichibe's rage erupted.
Violent reiatsu exploded from his body, surging outward like a howling storm.
The giant brush in his hand swung in a wild arc.
When his power reached its peak, he roared:
"Kurome yo (Blacken), Ichimonji!"
As the zanpakuto released, the brush tip at the front of the giant pen morphed into a blade, radiating a strange, indescribable spiritual pressure.
In an instant, an invisible sense of dread descended.
Cole, Aizen, Senjumaru, Oetsu, Kirio, Shunsui…
All of them paled.
They could all sense just how dangerous this zanpakuto was.
With a step that shattered the ground, Ichibe shot forward like a cannonball, the brush-blade in his hands hacking down in a vicious arc.
A faint unease rippled through Aizen's heart, but he still lifted his hand to meet the blow.
"A zanpakuto like that… what kind of ability does it have? Do you really think you can stand against my Kyōka Suigetsu?"
The brush-blade slammed hard into the white hollow matter of Aizen's arm.
The strike itself was strong—
But what shocked Aizen wasn't the force of the blow.
It was that half his power, inside his body, had suddenly vanished into nothing.
"My reiatsu…"
Before Aizen could even finish speaking, he saw a huge foot fly toward him and smash into his face.
"Boom!!!"
With a deafening crash, Aizen was sent flying by a single kick.
Cole had been watching from the side, enjoying the show—
But almost immediately, he saw Ichibe's massive hand swinging toward him as well, as the monk roared:
"You get the hell over there too!"
(End of Chapter)
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