"What is wrong? Are you not going to continue attacking?"
The Monk rested Ichimonji on his shoulder and asked Aizen with a smiling expression.
"What did you do?" Aizen clutched his chest.
He did not know what had happened, but that did not stop him from guessing that the Monk had done something.
"Aizen, your name has only half of itself left."
The Monk placed Ichimonji against his palm and tapped it lightly.
"My Zanpakutō is called Ichimonji. Its ability is to cut names, not flesh. You have lost half of your name, and with it, you have also lost half of your power."
"Name?"
Aizen did not care about his weakened state. Instead, he immediately caught the key word.
Name.
"With half your power gone and Kyōka Suigetsu rendered ineffective, how will you block my attack?"
In the next instant, the giant palm swept toward Aizen again.
Caught by the sudden attack on his real body, and with his abilities weakened, Aizen was slapped flying by the Monk's Senri Tsūtenshō.
The Monk did not choose to chase after Aizen. Instead, he raised his leg high and stomped hard toward the ground.
It was the same principle as Senri Tsūtenshō.
The Monk could use Reiatsu to condense and enlarge any part of his body.
With a slight prediction of Aizen's trajectory, a huge foot appeared above Aizen's head. It mirrored the Monk's movements exactly and stomped down toward Aizen.
If things continued like this, and Aizen did not resist, he would likely be kicked straight back down to the lower world by the Monk.
But he was Aizen, who had just completed fusion with his Zanpakutō.
How could he possibly be defeated so easily?
Dozens of violet barriers appeared above his head in succession.
It was Dankū, yet not quite Dankū.
It was a product Aizen had created by combining his current power with an improved version of the seventy-two-layer barrier.
Bang, bang, bang!
The sound of mirror surfaces shattering rang out one after another.
The Monk's technique was indeed powerful. It smashed all the way down to the final barrier before his attack was completely stopped.
The Monk scratched his head somewhat helplessly.
Had he known this insect would be so hard to kill, he should have chased after him. If he had pursued him, he could have added another blow.
Surely, with one more slap, this insect Aizen would be unable to endure it.
Aizen stood up, looking slightly disheveled. He raised his hand and swung out a series of black-violet fireballs toward the Monk.
Just like when he had dealt with Ōetsu, all of these fireballs were Sōkatsui.
Aizen did not expect these Sōkatsui to injure the Monk.
His plan was to burn down the Monk's detached palace first, give him something to deal with, and buy himself some time.
"I have already seen this technique."
The Monk spread both hands and chanted softly.
"Ura Hadō: San no Dō—Teppūsatsu!"
The Monk was enveloped by a golden dragon head. The dragon puffed out its cheeks and spat a hurricane toward the rain of fire Aizen had launched.
The violent wind extinguished all the flames at once.
"Ura Hadō? It seems Squad Zero really does possess quite a few good things," Aizen said.
In the Seireitei, he had never found any information about Ura Hadō. Other Kidō outside the standard numbered system had all been personally created by Kidō masters.
"You may surrender obediently if you are afraid."
Although the Monk said that, he began chanting again in the next instant.
"Hyapporankan!"
A ring of golden Reiatsu appeared around the Monk. The Reiatsu split into countless rods of light and shot toward Aizen.
Aizen did not simply sit and wait for death. He raised his hand and returned the same Hyapporankan.
"If we are competing in Kidō, I fear no one!" Aizen said with great confidence.
In his view, the Kidō he had improved would not lose in the slightest to the Monk's Ura Hadō.
However, because of the decline in his physical functions, several of the rods of light Aizen fired were pierced through by the Monk's golden rods and nearly struck his body.
"Is that so? The facts do not seem to agree."
Hearing the Monk's mockery, Aizen felt rather helpless.
With a debuff of weakness hanging over him, even the attacks he released were weakened. No matter how accurate his aim was, he still could not block all of the Monk's attacks.
At present, the problem he needed to solve was his weakened body.
Where there was a thought, there was a response.
Aizen felt the power inside his body recover somewhat.
After completing his Transcendent Bankai, he had become intoxicated by his own overwhelming strength. In doing so, he had unconsciously neglected the Hōgyoku's most fundamental ability.
A smile returned to Aizen's face.
Wave after wave of immense Reiatsu surged from his body and rolled toward the Monk.
"Oh? You can actually restore your strength?"
The Monk stroked his beard. After thinking for a moment, he said, "Kyōka Suigetsu does not possess that kind of power. The thing producing this change is that little object called the Hōgyoku, is it not?"
Aizen's expression changed.
Judging from the previous battle with Ōetsu, Ōetsu should not have understood the Hōgyoku. So why did the Monk know about it and even infer its ability?
"There is no need to be surprised. All names in this world are under my control. From the day it was called the Hōgyoku, I already knew of its existence."
"I must say, you can be considered a genius as well. To bring such a little thing to its current height… I suppose I should take this a bit more seriously!"
After saying this, the Monk once again revealed that terrifying expression with both eyes turned pure white.
Ichimonji swept before him.
"Paint it black, Ichimonji!"
A vast splash of ink followed the path of Ichimonji's swing. At the same time, Ichimonji's brush-like tip changed into a sharp blade.
Is this the Monk's Shikai?
For some reason, Aizen felt a faint sense of unease in his heart.
While there was still some distance between him and the Monk, he had to seize the initiative!
One mysterious violet-and-white flower after another bloomed beside Aizen. He raised his palm and mobilized his Reiatsu, aiming the center of each flower at the Monk.
Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō.
Ten consecutive shots!
Ten destructive beams shot straight out from Aizen's side. Judging from their momentum, they were clearly aimed at taking the Monk's life.
Just as the beams were about to enter the range of the detached palace, the Monk swung Ichimonji and splashed ink into a wall, blocking all ten beams at the same time.
What was going on?
Aizen could feel that his Reiatsu output still had not stopped. So why had Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō simply stopped right in front of the detached palace?
The Monk's figure flickered rapidly. In an instant, he charged in front of Aizen.
As he swung his Zanpakutō, ink splashed out again.
Aizen, who had already prepared himself, hurriedly condensed a mirror in front of him.
The ink splattered onto the mirror, and Aizen immediately lost control over it.
A thoughtful expression appeared on Aizen's face.
He quickly used mirror-like Dankū barriers to protect himself from all directions, forming a space that not even water could seep into. He used this to shield himself.
"It seems you have already guessed Ichimonji's ability."
The Monk's face still bore that chilling, terrifying smile.
"Ichimonji can blacken anything it touches, causing it to lose its original name."
Erasure of names.
Aizen immediately understood what that strange feeling had been.
Whether it was Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō or the mirror that had blocked the ink, both had been blackened and stripped of their names by Ichimonji.
After losing their names, those attacks and defenses naturally lost their original meaning.
All of them were nullified by the Monk.
At this thought, Aizen's expression changed sharply.
In that case, his Dankū could not defend against the Monk's attack either!
Sure enough, taking advantage of the gap while Aizen was thinking, the Monk easily tore open Aizen's defense with his blackened Zanpakutō.
This defensive space had instead become a jar used to trap Aizen inside.
Bang!
Aizen immediately shattered the mirror space. Combining Shunpo and Sonído, he rapidly pulled away from the Monk while not forgetting to detonate the power within the mirror shards.
Mirror Flower Explosion.
A violent violet flame shot into the sky.
The Monk, who was inside the shattered mirror region, stood at the center of the explosion.
Perhaps this misfortune would turn into fortune, and it would deal effective damage to the Monk?
The flames of the explosion were blown apart by Reiatsu, revealing the Monk within.
The veins all over the Monk's body bulged, yet he did not appear injured in the slightest.
"You did not think that killing a few of my colleagues meant you could look down on the power of the Ōken, did you? This is an Ōken forged from the pure power of the Soul King!"
With a loud shout from the Monk, the veins across his body receded.
The Ōken.
Aizen fell silent.
The Monk's physical strength was completely different from that of the other members of Squad Zero.
This was the power of an old monster left over from ancient times.
Who knew how many years the power of the Soul King had accumulated within his body?
Before Ichimonji's name-erasing ability, close combat was completely disadvantageous.
If Aizen used long-range attacks, he also had to take the strength of the Monk's Ōken body into consideration.
Unless Aizen's attack could surpass the Monk's physical durability.
The vertical eye on Aizen's forehead slowly closed.
The six mirror wings behind him flew outward and merged into the surrounding space.
Under the influence of Aizen's power, the surrounding space gradually began to transform into black-violet.
Looking at the environment around him growing darker and darker, the Monk understood.
Aizen was about to use a major technique.
A full-coverage attack unleashed with an overwhelming amount of Reiatsu, meant to erase him together with the Ōken.
The idea was not bad.
But the Monk laughed aloud.
"It seems you still do not understand my ability. Before Ichimonji, all black is under my control!"
The moment the Monk's words fell, the area centered around him suddenly turned into two colors: black and white.
He waved Ichimonji while chanting something, as though conducting a sacred prayer.
The world was divided into two regions.
One side was a fantastical black-violet space.
The other was a black-and-white world governed by the Monk.
"O twilight, O eternal darkness, come here. Come and meet everyone… So that he may never again be reborn, so that he may never again become our sacrifice."
The Monk recited the entire chant of over one hundred and thirty characters without missing a single word.
The closing of Aizen's vertical eye was also extremely slow.
At the exact moment the Monk finished the chant, the vertical eye finally closed, and the black-violet region where Aizen stood became completely dark.
"Futen Taisatsuryō!"
Behind the Monk, a black mausoleum suddenly rose.
Around the mausoleum stood countless pitch-black gravestones. From the graveyard emerged innumerable black skulls.
The road of skulls spread toward the region where Aizen was while absorbing the blackness of Aizen's domain.
All blackness was for the Monk to use.
The black road of the dead formed by Futen Taisatsuryō rushed toward Aizen's position, guided by the Monk's true vision.
At that moment, the vertical eye Aizen had painstakingly closed suddenly opened.
Supremely illusory Reiatsu burst forth in an instant.
The originally pitch-black region was immediately dyed in a brilliant violet radiance.
"Mugen Hōsai!"
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