Violet and black energy divided heaven and earth into two separate worlds.
The dreamlike violet light tore mirror-like cracks through the space around Aizen. Pitch-black skulls collided with the violet light, and the energy that erupted from the impact devoured everything nearby.
In the lower Soul Society, the Shinigami hiding in the Rukongai stared blankly at the sky that had been split into two halves.
As for the other souls without Reiatsu, they were directly forced to the ground. The invisible pressure left them unable to stand.
"What exactly is happening?"
Renji's voice trembled slightly. The hand gripping his Zanpakutō kept tightening. If Sasakibe had not stopped him, he would have already used Bankai and gone up to investigate.
The unease in Sasakibe's heart was no less than anyone else's.
But the experience of a veteran lieutenant forced him to respond calmly.
Although Yamamoto had not explicitly told Sasakibe their plan, after following Yamamoto for his entire life, Sasakibe could more or less guess that the energy erupting in the sky at this moment was related to the Soul King Palace.
That was why Sasakibe used his authority to forcibly suppress the restless Shinigami.
He could not simply watch these people throw their lives away by getting involved with the Soul King Palace.
At the entrance of the Shin'ō Underground Great Prison, Kisuke Urahara's hands moved rapidly as he quickly arranged for other surveillance spirit bugs to head toward the battlefield.
The screen had gone black.
The collision between Aizen and the Monk was a wide-range, indiscriminate attack. A tiny surveillance spirit bug had been instantly swallowed by it. As for the surveillance spirit bugs near the Hōōden, they had also been caught within the attack's range.
So the screen was now completely black.
Urahara could only use the hole in the barrier that Aizen had previously smashed open and send new spirit bugs through it.
No one dared to urge Urahara.
They were all still replaying the last image shown on the screen.
The overwhelming collision of violet and black.
Yamamoto glanced at Tsunayoshi several times. He wanted to discuss it, but could not speak.
At this moment, Tsunayoshi was fully driving the power of his Rain-attribute Transcendent Bankai, cleaning up the aftermath produced by the battle between Aizen and the Monk.
On the other side, Kisuke Urahara was even busier. He had even activated his Bankai and installed several mechanical arms onto himself. Several arms flew across the keyboard at incredible speed.
As for the others, they did not possess the same level of insight. Yamamoto could not hold an effective discussion with them.
"Old man, if you and I join forces, it may not be impossible to fight."
Sensing Yamamoto's frustration, Ryūjin Jakka actually took the initiative to transmit emotion to him.
Very soon, ripples began to stir within the silent atmosphere.
The image on the screen began to recover.
Kisuke Urahara had already deployed new surveillance spirit bugs. Through the vision of the spirit bugs, after flying past layer after layer of barriers, the scene of the Soul King Palace was about to appear before everyone.
A mess.
An utter mess.
The first thing that entered their eyes was debris from buildings floating everywhere.
In the clash between the Monk and Aizen, several nearby Zero Division detached palaces had all suffered disaster. They had been blasted into fragments by the aftermath of the battle.
If not for the barriers, these fragments might have become a second disaster for the Soul Society.
Within the entire Soul King Palace area, the only structure that still appeared intact was the detached palace behind the Monk.
Even the Omotesandō had not escaped the range of their attacks. It had been torn apart together with everything else.
Then everyone looked at the two figures facing each other at the center.
They were Aizen and the Monk.
A trail of blood flowed from the corner of the Monk's mouth.
He was not unharmed. Aizen's Mugen Hōsai explosion had indeed pierced through the Ōken and injured his internal organs.
But the Monk did not care at all.
Even the detached palaces that had been reduced to fragments could not affect him in the slightest. As long as his own detached palace still existed, reviving the other palaces was merely a matter of a single word.
What satisfied the Monk most was that, at the cost of injury and collapsing buildings, he had left a smear of ink on Aizen.
In the end, Aizen was still one step behind the Monk.
When their attacks collided, all the black contained within Mugen Hōsai had been absorbed by the Monk into Futen Taisatsuryō.
It was precisely because that portion of power was missing from the technique that the Monk found a single opportunity within its vast might.
With just one stroke, Ichimonji blackened nearly half of Aizen's body.
The scales of victory had already tilted.
Aizen, blackened by Ichimonji, had already begun to show abnormalities.
The fact that he was standing still was the best proof.
Ichimonji's blackening of Aizen's name had already taken effect.
With half his name missing, Aizen began to doubt his own existence.
Why had he appeared here?
What was he doing?
The Monk would not let such a perfect opportunity pass.
With a ferocious grin, he raised Ichimonji, pointed its tip straight at Aizen, and charged toward him.
The half-blackened Aizen was only doubting himself.
He was not stupid.
Seeing the Monk rush toward him with fierce momentum, he instinctively raised his hand and waved out a dazzling magic array made of eye-shaped petals.
The magic array appeared on the Monk's path.
One deep-violet ghostly hand after another reached out from the array and grabbed toward the Monk.
Those ghostly hands were all Hollow arms, and the claws on them flashed with a cold sheen.
"How troublesome."
The Monk complained, then swiftly swung Ichimonji, cutting down the ghostly hands one after another.
Sōsuke Aizen had clearly already begun to doubt his own existence, yet he could still rely on instinct to hinder the Monk's movements.
But that was all Aizen could do.
After the Monk broke through the magic array he had thrown out, Aizen still stood motionless in place.
Only when he saw the Monk's figure appear again did he prepare to release another attack to obstruct him.
It was already too late.
Having seen through Aizen's movements, the Monk completed his ink-splashing and Shunpo in one fluid motion.
While stopping Aizen's attack, he pulled the distance between them into his own attack range.
The blade of Ichimonji once again transformed back into a brush tip.
A great amount of black ink poured down from Ichimonji, dyeing the still relatively clean Aizen into a little black figure.
Aizen's movements stopped the moment the ink splashed down.
Not even his instinct to stop the Monk could make him move anymore.
Looking at Aizen, who could no longer resist, the Monk revealed a pleased smile. He continued to swing his brush and splash ink, filling in the remaining blank spaces on Aizen's body.
From head to toe, Aizen was completely dyed black.
At this point, he could have gone straight to cosplay as the culprit silhouette.
Confusion and curiosity completely occupied Aizen's heart.
He had forgotten his own name, yet desperately wanted to know who he was.
Having lost the ability to resist, he was like a statue, allowing the Monk to manipulate him at will.
"…He lost?" Shinji's voice was filled with doubt.
He clearly felt that he hated that blackened man, yet no matter what he did, he could not remember that person's name.
"That person's name has been completely blackened. What comes next is the true terror of the power known as names."
With Tsunayoshi's reminder, everyone focused their attention on the screen, afraid they might miss something.
On the screen, the Monk stood in front of Aizen and chuckled.
"Now it is time for the real business. Shin'uchi—oh, I almost forgot. I have already named it Bankai!"
The brush tip of Ichimonji in the Monk's hand turned from black to white.
Pure and flawless.
Not a trace of ink remained.
"Shirafude Ichimonji!"
After speaking the name of his Shin'uchi, the Monk raised his hand and began writing in vigorous strokes across Aizen's blackened body.
After the brush strokes crossed over one another, two large white characters were imprinted on Aizen's body.
Ant.
Tsunayoshi explained Ichimonji's ability to everyone at just the right moment.
"Name erasure and renaming. That is the truly terrifying part of that Zanpakutō. The physical qualities of a target that has been renamed become the same as the name given to it."
"Now that person has been branded with the word 'ant.' No matter how powerful he was, his actual strength is now no more than that of an ant. The sort that any random passerby could step on and kill."
As if to confirm Tsunayoshi's words, after admiring his own calligraphy for a moment, the Monk raised his foot and stomped down hard.
It was once again the same method as Senri Tsūtenshō.
A giant foot appeared above Aizen's head and stomped down toward Aizen, who now bore the name "Ant."
With the name of an ant, the only power Aizen could display was the power of an ant.
It was impossible for him to withstand the Monk's foot.
The fact that his body did not explode outright was already a benefit of having fused with his Zanpakutō.
Aizen fell toward the lower world at extreme speed.
Every time he struck a layer of the barrier, the Monk's giant foot would catch up, crush Aizen down, smash through the barrier, and send him falling farther toward the lower world.
At this moment, Aizen's condition could be said to be worse than descending through eighteen layers of hell.
There were seventy-two barriers between the Seireitei and the Soul King Palace. Including the first stomp, he would have to take seventy-three kicks from the Monk before returning to the Seireitei.
However, the current Aizen no longer had the mental space to care whether he was being beaten down into the Seireitei.
He had already fallen into the philosophical question of who he was.
I am an ant.
"Troublesome. Old Man Yamamoto, if that ant is allowed to be stomped down like this, the Seireitei may suffer a severe impact," Tsunayoshi warned.
Even the barriers could not withstand the Monk's giant foot. The Seireitei's barrier, which still had not been repaired after its performance with Aizen, would fare even worse.
"Kyōraku, Ukitake, go out immediately and stop the impact of the ant falling onto the Seireitei. Kisuke Urahara, calculate the ant's landing point for them," Yamamoto ordered at once.
"Understood!"
Kyōraku and Ukitake immediately vanished with Shunpo.
The others continued watching the screen and began discussing.
"Tsunayoshi, after being hit by that name-altering technique, does that mean he can only be an ant for the rest of his life?" Ichigo asked curiously as he leaned closer.
"Normally speaking, he is the only one who controls the conceptual ability known as names. But the ability to rename something is not necessarily invincible," Tsunayoshi said after thinking about it.
"Hm? You already have an idea?"
As the companions from the World of the Living who were most familiar with Tsunayoshi, they immediately focused their gazes on him.
However, Tsunayoshi did not reveal his idea.
"Let us wait and see first. I do not believe that ant will be willing to remain an ant."
Tsunayoshi's intuition told him that the ant sealed in ink would not be an easy opponent.
If one had to speak of a method to undo the renamed state, they had one person beside them who might be able to do it.
Orihime's rejection of phenomena.
Using a conceptual ability to oppose another conceptual ability might be able to rescue that person from the state of being an ant.
But doing that would be equivalent to openly opposing Squad Zero.
When calculated that way, the loss would outweigh the gain.
The reason Tsunayoshi did not state the method was that he had decided to trust his intuition.
To trust that ant who refused mediocrity.
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