The Long War

Crimson robes manifested around Natsuki's body, and his Zanpakuto was swung by his hand.

Spirit Particle Arrows shattered one after another, and the occasional residual impact that landed on him was easily blocked.

The Quincy had forcibly seized control of the surrounding Spirit Particles, which caught him slightly off guard.

But the opponent was not Azashiro Kenpachi, who could imbue his own will into the Spirit Particles. This meant that once the attacks unleashed by the Quincy were shattered, those Spirit Particles could be absorbed by Natsuki.

With every breath he took, the Spirit Particles scattered in the vicinity after the arrows shattered were all drawn into Natsuki's body.

In this brief moment, he had already decided how to deal with the Quincy.

That was to ensure that not a single Spirit Particle remained in this space.

Since the opponent had forcibly entered this state and commandeered the Spirit Particles that were originally his to command, he simply needed to swallow all the Spirit Particles into his own body. Natsuki did not believe that a Quincy could manipulate the Spirit Particles inside a Shinigami's body.

If they could achieve that, the Quincy wouldn't need to struggle in battle against Shinigamis; they could simply manipulate the Spirit Particles to make a Shinigami's body collapse, after all, a Shinigami's body was also composed of Spirit Particles.

The fact that the Quincy could not do such a thing showed that they could only manipulate the Spirit Particles in the surrounding air.

Once this thought took root in Natsuki's mind, a massive vortex quietly emerged.

The crimson mist also faded and then dissipated.

After Natsuki's Zanpakuto was released, it possessed two distinct forms.

One was internal, and the other was external.

Externally, he could imbue all nearby Spirit Particles with his aura, manifesting as crimson butterflies and crimson mist. Aside from the mist being able to slightly confuse an opponent's vision, its greatest function was that its presence could quietly absorb the spiritual power of others to nourish Natsuki himself. Furthermore, those crimson butterflies could provide Natsuki with a global field of vision.

Such an ability was extremely convenient when fighting Shinigamis or Hollows, as it would constantly weaken them.

However, it was ineffective when fighting a Quincy.

While he could absorb the Quincy's Spirit Particle Arrows, a Quincy did not possess powerful spiritual power within their own body; the power of a Quincy was not spiritual power at all, so it was difficult to weaken them.

On the contrary, although the Spirit Particles here were imbued with Natsuki's aura, they did not contain his own will. If the Quincy's ability to control Spirit Particles were stronger, they could manipulate these particles.

Therefore, to better counter the Quincy, Natsuki entered his other state.

That was the internal state.

In the internal state, the environmental bonuses would vanish, and he would lose his global field of vision.

In exchange, his own various powers would be enhanced to the extreme, predicated on the forcible plundering of surrounding Spirit Particles. The ability to absorb Spirit Particles still existed, but it was now localized to his Zanpakuto.

It took only a moment.

The crimson mist vanished entirely, leaving only faint crimson streaks on the black Shihakusho Natsuki wore, while the blood-red glow on the Zanpakuto in his hand grew increasingly intense.

Swish!

Natsuki stomped his foot against the ground, his figure launching forward at high speed.

This was not Shunpo, merely pure physical strength, yet the speed displayed at this moment was no different from Shunpo.

The Quincy, who had forcibly entered the final Quincy form with the help of the Sanrei Glove and was able to move thanks to Ransotengai, prepared to continue manipulating Spirit Particles to launch an attack on Natsuki.

However, when he channeled his Quincy power to gather Spirit Particles, he discovered that very few responded to his power.

Puff!

A blade flashed by, and a head fell to the ground.

No matter how powerful Ransotengai was, allowing a Quincy to ignore injuries to their limbs or body to continue fighting, it had one prerequisite: the vital points must remain unharmed.

Once vital areas like the head or heart were struck and the Quincy died, Ransotengai became useless.

"Pure-Blood Quincy, what troublesome fellows they are!"

Glancing at the Quincy's corpse on the ground, Natsuki couldn't help but let out a sigh.

If not for the fact that his Zanpakuto's ability happened to provide some restraint against the Quincy, defeating this Pure-Blood Quincy would not have been so easy.

The Quincy's ability to manipulate Spirit Particles was indeed a significant counter to Shinigamis.

However, this was the reality of this world—a state of mutual balance.

Shinigamis countered Hollows, while Hollows, due to their savage fighting style, could gain some advantages when facing Quincy—not to mention that the power of a Hollow was like poison to a Quincy—and the Quincy held a greater advantage when facing Shinigamis.

If Shinigamis did not possess Zanpakuto, it would be very difficult to defeat a Quincy relying solely on Zanjutsu, Hakuda, Hohō, and Kidō.

Quincy were adept at long-range attacks; Hakuda required close quarters to be effective, while Kidō and Shunpo were both susceptible to the Quincy's interference, and Zanjutsu, like Hakuda, only worked at close range.

Natsuki couldn't help but think of the crushing defeat suffered by the Shinigamis at the start of the Thousand-Year Blood War in the original history.

By that time, the Quincy had already found a way to counter the Shinigamis' Zanpakuto.

Once the Zanpakuto were also countered, the Shinigamis were left with no options against the Quincy, which was why so many were killed or injured in such a short time.

The Quincy hiding in the shadows of the Seireitei and launching a surprise war was one thing, but the primary reason was that their abilities had been countered.

This war was longer than he had imagined.

Or perhaps, this was what a war between races should look like.

Thinking of the Thousand-Year Blood War in the original story ending in just a few days, or the Ninja World War in that other series ending in a few days, it all felt rather absurd.

In the blink of an eye, several years had passed.

After nearly eight hundred years of reproduction and growth, the number of Quincy in the Human World was not small; it was only the pure-blooded families that had dwindled, while mixed-blooded Quincy were actually more numerous than they had been a millennium ago.

For the Shinigamis to completely erase the Quincy race from the world was not a task that could be accomplished in a few days or months, let alone the fact that in the face of the Shinigamis' slaughter, the Quincy were not a group of fools waiting for their own extinction at the hands of the Shinigamis.

They either resisted or fled.

Dealing with those who resisted was straightforward enough; the Shinigamis simply had to fight and kill them.

But when faced with those who fled, the Shinigamis had to spend time tracking them down.

After all, the order issued by the Central 46 was to completely wipe out the Quincy race, and they would not let them off just because the Quincy had gone into hiding.