Chapter 82: Rukia's Chronicles of Hell
Time winds back to a short while ago.
In the official propaganda of the Soul Society, Hell is the final destination for all evil. Aside from this single slogan, there are no further descriptions of Hell. Even within the Seireitei's Central Academy of Spiritual Arts, there are teachings regarding certain rituals related to Hell, but beyond that, information is non-existent.
Data concerning Hell has been intentionally or unintentionally suppressed. Exploration and research remain classified at the highest level; most Soul Reapers don't even know if such research projects actually exist, let alone their specific findings.
Rukia had always found this strange. But once she arrived in Hell and saw the landscape with her own eyes, she understood everything!
Hearing the word "Hell" makes it easy to imagine a dark, barren, eerie, and desolate wasteland. This is a fatal misconception. Hell is not dark. The "daylight" here lasts for sixteen to twenty hours at a time; the sunlight is exceptionally bright, and the year-round temperature stays above a hundred degrees Celsius. Occasionally, pillars and rain of fire descend from the sky, pushing local temperatures to well over a thousand degrees.
Hell is not barren either. Vast, sprawling forests are everywhere, filled with exotic flora and fauna. Vitality is dense—so dense that the plants and trees generally possess teeth and barbed tentacles.
Furthermore, Hell is not eerie or "scary." On the contrary, it possesses a unique, intoxicating beauty. For instance, there is the Sea of Boiling Oil, which churns with tsunamis every few days, tempting one to dive in for a butterfly stroke. Or there is the Mountain Range of Blades, which rolls irregularly and leaves nothing standing in its wake, inspiring a hero's passion for mountain climbing.
Nor is Hell unpopulated. Quite the opposite: the population is exploding. These inhabitants are scattered in every corner, and they are exceptionally "hospitable," loving to "greet" any new face they haven't met before.
At this moment, Rukia encountered a group of such hospitable residents!
Dozens of residents had fused their bodies together, layer upon layer, forming giant spheres of flesh several meters high. When these "Human Meatballs" detected Rukia's scent, they let out sharp, frantic howls and accelerated toward her, attempting to absorb her into their mass.
A "monster" needs to be unique to earn the title. If they are common enough to rot in the streets, they are merely part of the scenery. Having seen these bizarre things for days, Rukia viewed them as normal and moved on.
She didn't dodge or transform. She simply walked forward. The ultimate power of Absolute Zero spread from her footsteps, instantly freezing the rolling meatballs. As Rukia passed them, they shattered into fine powder.
With a single movement, she had eradicated over a thousand residents, but Rukia's gaze didn't waver. She didn't even feel pity.
There is no death in Hell!
Any form of death results in a rebirth within Hell. However, this is not a blessing of immortality; it is the Eternal Punishment of Purgatory. Through eons of dying over and over again, one's sanity is eventually ground away, leaving them as "Soul-Lost Corpses" (Kushinado)—the most common denizens of Hell.
Under long-term exposure to Hell's miasma, these residents undergo various changes. Sometimes they grow branches and leaves, becoming bizarre plants; sometimes their bodies mutate and swell into monstrous creatures; others are dominated by Hell's will and become Jailers. The formation of meatball clusters was just one of many variations.
Rukia continued her quiet trek through Hell. Every time a resident offered a "warm greeting," she responded with a cold, elegant nod of invisible frost. In Hell, slaughter and destruction are as common as saying "hello."
Rukia now fully understood why the Soul Society suppressed information about this place. If the Soul Reapers knew that anyone with Grade 3 spiritual pressure or higher was destined for this environment after death, it would cause a massive upheaval.
After walking for a long time, she reached her destination: a narrow, winding path inside a perpetually erupting volcano. There, Rukia found a dozen figures draped in cloaks or wearing masks.
They were diverse in appearance and expression, with varying degrees of decay or mutation. They shared only one defining feature: somewhere on their bodies, they bore a Chain. The chains were pitch-black, radiating an ominous, treacherous light.
In the undying realm of Hell, not everyone becomes a mindless corpse. Some, through sheer willpower or combat prowess, die fewer times and maintain their sanity. After being infected by the miasma, they gain a portion of Hell's power—but at the same time, black chains sprout from their bodies.
These beings are known as Tōgaren (Sinners).
This power is not a blessing, but a curse. Once a Sinner, one faces even more tribulations. The probability of a fireball falling on your head or a man-eating plant sprouting under your feet increases by dozens of percentage points. Even the mindless corpses will hunt Sinners like rabid dogs.
In a sense, Sinners are the true "prisoners" of Hell. Malice weighs on them endlessly until those who escaped the eternal punishment of mindless death finally break. There is no escape; the black chain is an extension of Hell's will. They might hide safely for a moment, but the chain could yank them into a terrifying deathtrap the next.
Regardless, Sinners are the only beings in Hell capable of logic, communication, or trade.
They were wary of Rukia because she bore no chain. In Hell, someone with their sanity intact and no chain is either a newcomer or a terrifying existence. The latter is rare, but since there is no death, the odds of meeting one aren't low.
"I need food and water."
Rukia ignored their suspicion. Though one cannot die, hunger and thirst still exist. While Hell is lush with life, very little of it is "edible."
It differs from the Soul Society. There, Soul Reapers need Reishi-rich food. In Hell, everything is saturated with miasma. The less miasma food contains, the more precious it is. To get it, one must forage or trade.
Sinners, having some resistance to miasma, can purify food by absorbing the rot into themselves. However, this has a price: many Sinners purify too much, hit a miasma-overload, and end up having to "respawn" as mindless husks.
After a silence, one Sinner looked up. "What do you have to trade?"
He was not human or Soul Reaper, but a Hollow. His left arm had mutated into a tentacle covered in tumors, leaking miasma. Yet his eyes were calm—too calm.
In Hell, the distinctions between Human, Hollow, Soul Reaper, and Quincy have long faded. There are only the Sinners who keep their logic and the corpses who have lost it. Even a naturally violent Hollow learns logic and coldness to preserve its mind. Those who fail become puppets.
"Information. Information that might let you escape Hell."
Rukia offered her chip. It instantly seized the attention of everyone present. For those with their minds intact, escaping Hell is the ultimate pursuit. Without even verifying her claim, the Hollow tossed food and water to her. The others followed suit, showing their desperation.
Rukia knew that if she lied or failed to deliver, they wouldn't hesitate to gamble their lives to kill her.
"The Soul King has awakened and begun the cleansing of the Three Worlds. This is a cataclysm unseen in a million years..."
Rukia didn't go into detail, but for these Sinners, it was world-shaking news. No one simple lands in Hell; many were once legends who had targeted the Soul King Palace themselves. They chewed on the value of this intel, their eyes lighting up with ambition.
Rukia left them to their thoughts. After packing her supplies, she walked away.
The weather was shifting. As the "sun" set, the sea of fire-clouds dispersed, replaced by a blizzard fierce enough to crack bone. For most, this was harder than the day, but for Rukia, it was "refreshing."
Despite the "good" weather, Rukia sighed. "The so-called King of Hell... what is it, and how does one achieve it?"
Ever since Mo Yu had sent her here with his "Express Administrative Approval Punch," she had been puzzled. She didn't feel Hell treating her as a "special talent." If anything, the residents "greeted" her more violently than they did the Sinners, but that was all.
Rukia had no clue how to claim the throne.
The frustration gnawed at her. She looked at the icy gale tearing up the topsoil and let out a sigh. Suddenly, the wind stopped. The blizzard and the churning black clouds were "frozen" in place, as if trapped in invisible amber. Even the flying debris stood still in mid-air.
Since falling to Hell, Rukia felt her power growing, but she didn't care. She was filled with an unnamable irritability and needed a vent. Like a noble lady kicking a pebble in a fit of pique, Rukia had frozen the myriad phenomena before her.
After venting, she felt slightly better.
She could endure the frustration because she had discovered a secret: time in Hell and the Three Worlds is not synchronized. One day in the Soul Society might be days, weeks, or longer in Hell. Even within Hell, time is inconsistent—fast in some zones, slow in others.
In Hell, Time itself is a form of malice. A newcomer might look for a relative who died earlier, only to find they had already endured eons of torture and become a mindless husk due to time-dilation.
Regardless, this meant Rukia still had "time."
Behind her, the Sinners hiding in the volcano crawled out to see the change. They shivered. Everything in that zone was solidified by an invisible frost. They realized that anything entering that area—even the wind—was gradually petrified.
Awe began to fill their hearts. In Hell, death is nothing. What is truly terrifying are the "Supreme Evils" that stand above death. One Sinner, unable to take the misery anymore, ran into the frozen zone. With a look of happiness, he solidified and became part of the silent landscape.
The others were silent. They felt fear, but also understanding. To be lost in a "Supreme Horror" was, in a way, a form of salvation—one of the few paths in an undying Hell that approximated the release of true death.
Rukia didn't look back. She walked on without a clear goal. Sometimes she wondered what the point was. Did the "King of Hell" status even exist? No answer came.
Perhaps this was the fundamental logic of Hell: everything you do is a meaningless torture, ending only in eternal sinking.
Occasionally she met acquaintances: evil Hollows she had once hunted, or old generations of Soul Reapers she had seen in archives. She would stop to chat. Hell has many flaws, but one virtue: under the weight of universal suffering, everyone drops their past grievances. Even Hollows she had personally slain greeted her warmly, giving her a thumbs-up and saying her killing stroke was "splendid and magnificent."
(Of course, this friendliness might have been related to the frozen dead-zones Rukia left in her wake).
Rukia would also seek out "Legendary Seniors" among the Sinners. Her understanding of the world widened. She talked to Soul Reapers from before the Gotei 13 was founded, Nobles with gossip from tens of thousands of years ago, and "Unnamable Beings" who spoke of body-modification experiments from eons past.
She listened to the incoherent whispers of "living fossils" who had fallen hundreds of thousands of years ago, trying to piece together the scenery of the Soul King's descent a million years ago. She even found ancient totem paintings on giant rocks from a time before the Three Worlds were divided—back when Hell was in its early stages of evolution.
The more she saw, the more she felt that Hell was a Giant Iceberg. All history and life were frozen within it from top to bottom. Everything inside seemed to shift with time, but fundamentally, it was just the crushing weight of cruel cold, grinding everything into fragments and gluing the dregs into the ice. The iceberg grew larger, and the interior grew more foul and unnamable.
No digestion. No change. No transformation. After a million years, the iceberg was still just an iceberg full of trash and remnants.
Rukia thought about this. She didn't know why, or if it mattered. But she felt the key to the problem lay here.
Then, one day, she saw a Crimson Sun rise from one end of Hell. Along with the blinding fire, a powerful voice of will echoed:
"I, Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto, intend to rebuild the Seireitei within Hell! All who were once enemies of the Seireitei, all who once fought for it—come forth! Witness the resurrection of the Seireitei in Hell!!!"
Hearing the voice and the will within it, Rukia turned and walked toward the rising sun. She suddenly wanted to visit the old man and have a long talk.
The ultimate power of frost spread with every step. Behind her, the myriad things of Hell were frozen solid, falling into eternal silence.
End of Chapter
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