"Crack..."
As the pitch-black crescent flew toward Kuruyashiki...
Kuruyashiki immediately drew his Zanpakuto on instinct, trying to block it!
With a light sound, the Zanpakuto in Kuruyashiki's hand snapped in two...
"What?!"
Kuruyashiki stared at his shattered Zanpakuto and blurted out involuntarily.
Then, beneath Kuruyashiki's shocked and disbelieving gaze, the black crescent Araki had unleashed slammed fiercely into his body! Even Kuruyashiki's physique, as robust as a brown bear's, could not withstand Araki's slash...
The instant Kuruyashiki came into contact with the crescent Araki had cut loose, blood gushed from his mouth and nose. His eyes gradually rolled white, his consciousness faded, and he was flung backward like a broken doll, dragged along by Araki's crescent. He traced a miserable straight line through the air before crashing heavily into the barrier that enveloped the Seireitei.
Crack!!
The barrier covering the entire sky over the Seireitei, said to be formed from an enormous quantity of Spirit-Sealing Stone, was as fragile as a thin sheet of paper before Araki's slash.
Amid repeated cracking sounds, countless fractures immediately appeared across the barrier in the sky. Then Kuruyashiki flew out of the Seireitei and continued soaring toward the heavens...
Yes, Kuruyashiki did not stop there. Driven upward by Araki's slash, he shot toward the higher skies. The seventy-two barriers that, in Aizen Sōsuke's eyes, would have required tremendous time and effort to breach were like nothing before Araki's attack!
And so Kuruyashiki flew into the sky!
Yes, Araki had sent Kuruyashiki directly from the Seireitei to the Soul King Palace with a single slash!
"My, my~"
"This is not a place you can come to..."
When Kuruyashiki reached the highest point in the sky, Hyosube Ichibei, the Eyeball Monk who had been guarding the place ever since Kuruyashiki appeared, reluctantly made his move.
Hyosube