Yachiru and Gomukure

In the center of the Gomukure District, next to that broken well.

A dozen figures held their breath, tiptoeing, inching out from the surrounding shadows and ruins.

Their eyes were fixed on the figure lying motionless in the center of the clearing, clutching all sorts of deadly objects in their hands: rusty iron shards, sharpened bones, wooden clubs with stones tied to them.

The leader was the scrawny man who had been thrown away earlier by Kurayashiki Kenpachi.

His eyeballs darted around rapidly, half filled with fear, the other half with irrepressible greed and madness.

They walked slowly, each step cautious, as if the ground was covered in invisible thorns.

The distance was shrinking, five meters, four meters, three meters...

t w k n . c m awaits you

Three meters.

The legendary "three meters."

Everyone stopped abruptly at this distance, the air freezing for a few seconds.

The person on the ground still hadn't moved, only his chest rose and fell gently with shallow breaths.

The scrawny man was the first to break, his shoulders starting to shake, then his whole body trembled.

He grinned, revealing his few remaining yellow teeth: "Three meters! Do you see it? Three meters! We're in!"

He suddenly turned his head and snarled at his companions behind him, whose eyes were equally red, spittle flying:

"Ever since this demon arrived in the Gomukure District, anyone who stepped within three meters of him got cut down! Dead or crippled! Wasn't that old big bad guy fierce enough? How many blows did he last? Didn't he end up lying down too?"

He panted, his fingers trembling as he pointed at the youth on the ground: "But now? He let us get close! He's lying here! What does that prove? It proves he's finished! That Shinigami's blow crippled him!"

The last shred of hesitation was completely burned away by greed. The scrawny man let out a strange cry from his throat: "The demon's head is mine! No one touches it!"

He gripped the half-broken rusty saber and lunged forward first.

He wanted to chop off the head of the "demon" who had once made the entire Gomukure District tremble. Perhaps then he could become the new "big bad guy"!

Seeing this, how could the others bear it any longer?

"Tear him apart!" someone yelled, and more than a dozen figures moved at once, waving their ragged weapons and swarming forward!

They wanted to shred this former symbol of fear, to declare the beginning of a new era with his blood and flesh!

"You'd better not go any closer."

A voice rang out, soft, with the unique sweetness of a little girl.

"You'll die."

Everyone, including the scrawny man who was halfway through his charge, froze.

Their necks turned stiffly in the direction of the voice.

Under the half-dead old tree by the well, a little girl was standing there, though no one knew when she had arrived.

She was small, wearing ill-fitting, faded old clothes, and her short pink hair was a bit messy.

She stood there quietly, her small face expressionless, just watching them.

A brief, dead silence.

Then, boisterous laughter erupted.

"Ha! Hahahaha!" The scrawny man laughed so hard he bent over, wiping away tears of mirth.

"Where did this little brat come from? What "good" luck to have "fallen" right into the Gomukure District?"

He deliberately emphasized the word "fallen," because in the Rukon District, new souls appeared randomly in any area, and appearing in the Gomukure District was basically starting on hell difficulty.

He looked the pink-haired girl up and down and said with malicious amusement: "Wait, after we're done with this demon, I'll "teach" you properly how to "live" in the Gomukure District." The malice in his words was undisguised.

The little girl was unfazed by his taunts. She continued to look at them earnestly and repeated, her voice clear:

"You really will die."

"Die? Why die? Just because this one is already crippled..." The scrawny man sneered and turned around, ready to continue his "beheading mission."

His smile froze instantly on his face.

A shadow, without any warning, enveloped him.

It wasn't the sky darkening, but a presence with a strong smell of rust and blood that suddenly appeared extremely close behind him.

The scrawny man had survived in the Gomukure District until today thanks to his almost beast-like intuition for danger and his utterly unscrupulous reaction speed.

Almost the moment he felt the shadow, all thoughts of greed and dreams of becoming a big bad guy vanished from his mind, leaving only the most primal survival instinct.

Turn around! Kneel! Beg for mercy! He ran through the entire process in his mind, and his body immediately followed suit, turning, bending his knees...

Chomp.

A light sound, like a ripe fruit being sliced open.

On the scrawny man's face as he turned, the expression of terror and readiness to beg for mercy still lingered, but his eyes were rapidly losing focus.

He felt a chill on his neck, and then all his strength, all his thoughts, rapidly drained away with that chill.

Thump thump thump thump...

A series of dull thuds echoed, almost in unison.

The dozen or so Soul Reapers who had been so aggressive moments ago now lay sprawled across the ground.

Their wounds varied, but they had all died instantly. The clearing was suddenly so quiet that only the wind whistling through the broken well could be heard.

The young man stood there, casually gripping the jagged long sword in his right hand, blood slowly dripping from its tip.

He extended his left hand and pressed it against his neck, moving it from side to side with a faint "crackling" sound from his cervical vertebrae.

He looked down at his chest, where the horrific wound inflicted by Kurayashiki Kenpachi had now vanished.

Only a faint, thin scar remained on his skin, as if from an old injury.

He tilted his head slightly, looking at the sword in his hand with some confusion, then swept his gaze over the instantly killed corpses around him.

"My strength has increased?"

He muttered to himself, his voice full of bewilderment.

The moment he had woken up, the power surging through his body, the smoothness when he swung his sword, it all felt different from before.

Before he could ponder it further, he felt his pant leg being tugged gently.

He looked down.

The little girl with pink hair had, at some unknown time, walked up to his side. She was looking up at him with her