sovbooks Chapter 777: The Collapse of Belief Often Happens in an Instant
Chapter 777: The Collapse of Belief Often Happens in an Instant
BOOM! BOOM!
Violent lightning and heavy water continuously collided and annihilated each other in the void.
However, because of the urgent countdown on Soul Society's side, this battle representing the current peak was destined not to last too long.
Aizen had almost completely given up on defense.
Like a tireless berserker, he pushed the destructive power of his Takemikazuchi form to the limit. Every slash and every move carried his full strength without reservation, turning into purple thunder that tore through space as it crazily strangled toward Rosse.
But precisely because he was going all out, Aizen sensed the suffocating gap more clearly than anyone else.
There was absolutely no way to resist.
Or rather, they simply were not on the same level.
His lightning slashes, powerful enough to vaporize mountains, fell onto Rosse's deep blue sea like stones sinking into the ocean, unable to stir even a ripple.
Meanwhile, Rosse did not even need complicated techniques. Just a casual swing of the Sea God Halberd carried hundreds of billions of tons of heavy water that easily crushed Aizen's lightning defenses and tore apart his body.
Aside from Kyoka Suigetsu, Aizen could not find any method capable of resisting this kind of power.
But the pride belonging to a seeker of the path made it impossible for him to use such a trick-like illusion ability in this pure clash of strength.
So again and again, he allowed the Sea God Halberd to tear through his thunderstorm and sever his flesh and bones.
Blood sprayed everywhere, limbs broke apart.
But every fatal injury caused by Rosse would rapidly heal the next second through the Hogyoku glowing strangely in his chest.
And every time he was pulled back from the edge of death, the Hogyoku would raise his spiritual pressure another level higher.
In theory, as long as his belief did not collapse, this cycle of healing and evolution could continue forever until he could finally touch Rosse's clothes.
Even if it meant exchanging wounds for wounds and life for attrition, he seemed capable of dragging this battle into an endless swamp and eventually wearing Rosse down.
But looking at the man in the sky whose breathing rhythm had not changed even slightly from beginning to end, a bone-chilling coldness gradually seeped into Aizen's heart.
He suddenly had an extremely absurd feeling.
Even if he drew Kyoka Suigetsu now, he probably could not distort this man's senses for even one second.
"Lord Rosse!"
In midair, the missing half of Aizen's body that had been cut away by the Sea God Halberd rapidly regenerated beneath the Hogyoku's purple glow as flesh buds intertwined and slowly restored him.
He stopped his endless charge, his chest rising violently.
Expressionless, he stared at Rosse. The fanatic thirst for knowledge still burned in his eyes, but his voice carried a trace of hoarseness that was almost impossible to notice.
"This meaningless war of attrition may continue for days, even months, without result. Come, give me a fatal strike. I know that from the moment you accepted this battle invitation, you already possessed the ability to do so."
He desperately wanted to know exactly where he fell short compared to the person before him.
The power Rosse displayed now was indeed far above his own, but it still had not reached the level of being an entire dimension higher, nowhere near the omniscience and omnipotence of the Soul King at his peak.
If anyone else had been standing here today, Aizen's pride would never have allowed him to admit defeat.
He would even firmly believe that as long as the Hogyoku remained, he would eventually win.
But because his opponent was Rosse, deep down he knew he would lose.
The tragic part was that he did not even know where exactly he had lost.
He needed an answer. He wanted to lose with complete conviction.
"As you wish."
Standing atop countless waves, Rosse lightly nodded.
Judging by the time, after accompanying Aizen in battle for almost a day, the grand play on Soul Society's side was about to begin as well.
Actually, Rosse had never been someone who enjoyed passionate blood-soaked battles from beginning to end.
To him, battle was merely a means to achieve a goal.
Compared to exchanging blows with fists and flesh, what he truly enjoyed was plucking the strings of fate and standing above others while playing with the hearts of those who thought highly of themselves.
Just like now.
A cruel yet elegant smile curved at Rosse's lips. He slowly raised his right hand, and the Sea God Halberd casually traced a dark blue water mark through the void.
Slash!
There was no earth-shaking phenomenon, no overwhelming pressure.
Aizen's right arm suddenly detached cleanly from the shoulder, the cut as smooth as a mirror.
This was just an ordinary slash.
So ordinary that if Aizen had instinctively released even a trace of spiritual pressure for defense, this water blade would not even have pierced the protective layer on his body.
In fact, not just Aizen, even Hitsugaya Toshiro watching from several thousand meters away could have casually blocked it by drawing Hyorinmaru.
"This attack… what was special about it?"
Aizen frowned slightly, his gaze falling onto his empty right shoulder.
The reason he had completely abandoned defense was to personally feel what kind of truth a fatal strike contained.
But after carefully sensing the remaining spirit particle fluctuations inside his body, this really was just an ordinary slash.
'Why would he use such a weak attack… wait!'
Aizen's body suddenly stiffened.
His always calm eyes abruptly widened as he stared at his right shoulder in absolute horror.
The wound, which should have regenerated within one ten-thousandth of a second, showed absolutely no movement.
Bright red blood dripped from the injury one drop at a time onto the white sand below.
And the Hogyoku in his chest, said to grant all the host's wishes, now resembled a dead stone, without the slightest healing glow.
'What is going on?'
'Why did the Hogyoku stop working?'
"Sosuke…"
Rosse's voice, like a devil whispering, suddenly sounded before Aizen.
At some unknown point, he had already crossed space itself and arrived directly in front of Aizen.
Rosse leaned slightly forward and extended his pale slender fingers, lightly touching the silent Hogyoku in Aizen's chest.
"How long has it been… since you truly desired 'evolution' from the bottom of your heart without caring about anything else?"
The instant those words fell—
Buzz!
The Hogyoku suddenly erupted with unprecedented dazzling light.
In the next second, Aizen's right arm regrew once more in an extremely twisted way.
However, when that brand-new arm fully formed, what fused with the hand was no longer Kyoka Suigetsu flowing with purple lightning.
Aizen suddenly felt a terrifying heat capable of burning souls coming from his palm.
He stiffly lowered his head and discovered that his newly regenerated right hand was tightly gripping an ancient katana engulfed in monstrous flames.
"You've got to be kidding…"
Aizen's pupils shook violently. His entire face twisted slightly from extreme horror, "How could it possibly be Shigekuni's Ryujin Jakka?"
He had never once possessed any desire to evolve toward Captain Commander Yamamoto. So why would the Hogyoku ignore his will and materialize a power that did not belong to him?
Combined with Rosse's casual question earlier, it felt as though lightning had split apart every layer of fog in Aizen's mind at that instant.
With intelligence unmatched in Soul Society, he completely saw through the horrifying truth behind everything in just one second.
"Haha… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Within the dead silent void, hysterical laughter suddenly exploded out.
Aizen suddenly raised his head and stared at the dim sky, laughing so hard his body bent back and forth.
That laughter carried endless sorrow and misery, the joy of finally seeing the truth, yet also extreme confusion after the complete collapse of his faith.
The violent spiritual pressure accompanying his laughter completely lost control, turning into endless deep purple spirit particle rain pouring down across the white sand desert of Hueco Mundo.
He looked insane.
This was the only thought that appeared in the minds of all the spectators at the same time.
"What's wrong with that guy Aizen?"
Several thousand meters away, Hitsugaya Toshiro frowned in confusion while enduring the pressure of the spirit particle rain.
'Isn't it just that Ryujin Jakka suddenly appeared when his arm regenerated?'
Although it was strange, what kind of riddle were these monsters talking about that pushed Aizen into such a state?
He had heard about the Hogyoku's wish-granting effect before. Didn't this count as another evolution?
"I seriously wonder if your brain is filled with shaved ice. How did you even become captain of Squad Two?"
Matsumoto Rangiku clicked her tongue in amazement from the side before deliberately speaking in an exaggerated tone of sudden realization.
"Oh… I forgot. So you climbed up through the captain's back door. No wonder your wooden fish brain can't even understand this."
Actually, she herself had not completely figured it out either, but that did not stop her from putting on airs and mocking this former junior.
"Cut the sarcastic crap! Hurry up and explain what's going on!"
Hitsugaya gritted his teeth in anger, veins bulging on the back of the hand gripping his sword hilt.
"The essence of the matter is actually very simple."
At that moment, Unohana, who had been quietly standing nearby with a gentle smile the whole time, softly spoke.
Her voice was gentle like water, yet carried a chilling cruelty.
"Captain Hitsugaya, you also know that the essence of the Hogyoku is a miraculous object that 'responds to the expectations deep inside people's hearts and materializes them into evolution.' In other words, as long as Aizen possesses endless desire to evolve, with the Hogyoku's support, he can infinitely evolve beyond all limits until reaching the Hogyoku's own limit."
"That's right," Hitsugaya nodded. This was also the common understanding within the Gotei 13.
"But just now, the understanding Aizen regarded as absolute truth completely collapsed."
Unohana slowly raised her head. Within her gentle eyes reflected the man laughing madly in the sky, while a cruel curve rose at the corner of her lips.
"What if… from the very beginning, this Hogyoku never truly acknowledged Aizen as its master? The Hogyoku is only driven by subconscious desire, following the person who most desires and longs for evolution. And the reason it chose to fuse with Aizen and help him repeatedly break through the boundaries between Shinigami and Hollow was actually not because of Aizen's own will at all?"
"Huh?"
Hitsugaya sucked in a cold breath, his voice unconsciously rising several pitches.
"Senior Unohana, you mean… the Hogyoku's true master was the Commander Captain all along? H-How is that possible?"
Hitsugaya swallowed hard, unable to hide the horror on his face.
Forget someone as proud as Aizen, even just hearing this while standing here made his scalp go numb and nearly drove him crazy.
Ever since completely joining Rosse's side, he had learned a great deal about Aizen's plans back then.
A man with intelligence almost beyond monsters spent his entire life and plotted for hundreds of years for a divine object unlike any other, only to discover that it acknowledged his greatest enemy as its master?
And during the final battlefield, the greatest trump card he believed he possessed had actually belonged to the enemy the whole time?
Just imagining that absurd sense of betrayal was enough to mentally break someone.
"And that's not even the most devastating part."
The smile on Unohana's face grew brighter and brighter, as though she were admiring a beautiful piece of art being smashed apart.
"Captain Aizen also achieved enlightenment at that moment just now. All this time, the core driving force supporting the Hogyoku and allowing him to constantly surpass life and death and continue evolving… was actually never his own desire for evolution. It came from Rosse's expectation of wanting to see Aizen evolve."
"According to the Hogyoku's absolutely idealistic rules, whoever possesses the stronger expectation has their will carried out. This means Rosse's expectation and desire for Aizen's evolution far surpassed even Aizen's own expectation for his personal evolution."
Unohana's gentle voice drifted through the wind, every word stabbing directly into the heart.
"This is the real reason Captain Aizen became like this."
"That's insane…"
Hitsugaya stiffly raised his head, his gaze extremely complicated.
At that moment, all the caution and hostility in his eyes disappeared, replaced by extremely deep pity as he quietly looked toward the broken figure in the sky who was still laughing hysterically.
If it were him, he could not even imagine how hopeless he would feel.
To become a king standing above the heavens, to replace the incomplete Soul King, Aizen had abandoned everything, plotted for an entire lifetime, and carried endless curses and karma on his back.
Yet in the end, he discovered that the unshakable belief that he would evolve into a god was, in the Hogyoku's judgment, actually weaker than someone casually "wanting him to grow stronger because it would be fun".
'What a tragic joke.'
Any mentally sound powerhouse facing this truth would not think it was because Rosse's belief was too strong. Instead, they would uncontrollably fall into self-doubt.
They would doubt whether the ambition and belief they had always been proud of were nothing more than a self-satisfying joke from beginning to end.
Compared to Rosse's abyss-like terrifying conviction, their own obsession was insignificant to the extreme.
Rosse did not even need to swing his blade. With just one casually revealed truth, he completely erased and denied the entire meaning behind Aizen Sosuke's existence over the past several hundred years from the very root!
"How pitiful…"
Hitsugaya lowered his head and muttered softly.
This was probably the first time in his life that he felt Aizen Sosuke, the man who once toyed with the entire Gotei 13 in the palm of his hand, could actually look this tragic and pathetic.
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