Ichigo's throat bobbed.
Others might not be able to tell, but only he and Uryū, as Quincy, understood what kind of terrifying power was contained within Tsunayoshi's crossbow bolt.
It was the culmination of Reishi control. Ichigo even felt that using a weapon like this against the Forest of Menos was a little like using a cannon to kill a mosquito—no, a swarm of mosquitoes.
"Ahem. Uh, Tsunayoshi, we'll get out of your way."
Without another word, Ichigo pulled Uryū along, intending to retreat some distance. His instincts told him that the power released by Tsunayoshi's arrow would definitely not be simple.
"That's not necessary." Tsunayoshi stopped Ichigo from retreating. "Rather, I never planned to shoot into the cave entrance in the first place."
Tsunayoshi understood what Ichigo meant. Ichigo was afraid that with him and Uryū present, Tsunayoshi would hold back out of concern that the power erupting from the cave entrance might injure them.
"If you're not shooting into the cave entrance, where are you planning to shoot?" Ichigo asked, looking at the endless desert.
"Anywhere will do."
Tsunayoshi raised the crossbow and aimed it with an extremely casual posture.
"This crossbow has a sight. I don't need to care about accuracy."
Just as Ichigo was about to retort that having a sight was precisely why one needed to aim, he noticed Uryū's solemn expression.
"Kurosaki, look at that crossbow!"
Ichigo did not understand what there was to look at. They were all variations of Heilig Pfeil. When Masaki had been teaching him, he had long since grown tired of seeing them. Tsunayoshi's crossbow was only a little more colorful than usual—
Ichigo's eyes suddenly widened.
He saw a square interface appear in front of the crossbow bolt. Why did the scene inside the interface look so much like the Forest of Menos?
"Mm. It's a mess. Let's go a little deeper."
As Tsunayoshi's voice fell, the image pushed deeper inward. Very quickly, the familiar Forest of Menos appeared before Ichigo's eyes, filled with those monotonous giant branches and Gillians.
"Just now, was that where our arrows landed?" Ichigo asked half in disbelief as the chaotic scene from before resurfaced in his mind.
"That was the place we attacked. There are traces left behind by Sprenger!" Uryū said with certainty. He recognized that smooth, angled cut surface as the mark caused by his attack.
"How is that possible?"
Although his mind had already accepted it, Ichigo's mouth still muttered in disbelief.
"Isn't a mirage in the desert a perfectly normal phenomenon?" Tsunayoshi explained with a light laugh.
The cause of this phenomenon was the Desert Flames acting as the sight. By using the mirage phenomenon of the desert, Tsunayoshi could observe the situation at his target location without personally going there.
But that alone was not enough. If the Earth Flames forming the crossbow mechanism were the activation core of this crossbow, then the Desert Flames serving as the sight were the guarantee that the arrow would strike.
As the image continued advancing, Tsunayoshi found a position he was relatively satisfied with. Then, facing that interface, he pulled the crossbow's trigger.
With a faint whoosh, before anyone except Tsunayoshi could react, the arrow had already entered the interface in front of the crossbow.
"Not good!"
Realizing that Tsunayoshi's crossbow bolt had already been fired, blue light simultaneously flashed across the bodies of Ichigo and Uryū beside him. It was the power of Blut Vene.
In Ichigo and Uryū's eyes, Tsunayoshi had simply fired an arrow casually forward. Out of respect for that arrow, the two of them instinctively used the Quincy's strongest defensive ability, attempting to resist the impact of the arrow's explosion.
"What are you two doing?" Tsunayoshi turned back curiously after noticing Ichigo and Uryū suddenly use Quincy power.
Two seconds passed, but the imagined shockwave did not appear. Uryū immediately raised his head and looked at the sky, as though everything had nothing to do with him. Ichigo, meanwhile, scratched his cheek somewhat awkwardly and asked,
"Tsunayoshi, where's your arrow?"
"Isn't it inside? The Forest of Menos."
Tsunayoshi pointed at the image before him. However, that image no longer showed anything resembling the Forest of Menos. It was a vast expanse of white, and nothing could be seen clearly.
"You mean your arrow passed directly through this screen and shot into the Forest of Menos?" Ichigo struggled to understand.
"You don't believe me? The shockwave should be here soon."
Tsunayoshi lowered his head and looked at the ground.
After another few silent seconds, the earth suddenly began to tremble. A series of impacts surged up to the surface, and the ground started shaking violently.
"An... earthquake?" Ichigo tried to understand what was happening in Hueco Mundo using knowledge from the World of the Living.
"Isn't that exactly what it is? A violent explosion occurred deep inside the Forest of Menos. Many of the supporting branches will have been destroyed. It'll be fortunate if the underground cavern below doesn't collapse," Tsunayoshi explained.
Down in the desert, the people who had originally been standing on the ground all used Shunpo to move into the sky after sensing the intense tremors. Even Ashido scooped up Nel and dodged together with her, leaving only a few Fracción trembling in place.
What Tsunayoshi's arrow relied upon was the illusory and real nature of Desert Flames. The instant he fired the arrow, the Heilig Pfeil turned illusory and merged into the image before him. Then, within the interface, it became real and fell onto the target point as an arrow once more.
It could be said that as long as the sight existed, the hit rate of Tsunayoshi's crossbow bolt was one hundred percent. No one could escape this arrow once they were locked onto by Desert Flames.
That was why Tsunayoshi did not care about the angle of his aim. From the moment this crossbow bolt was created, it inherently possessed the property of certain hit. As long as Desert Flames could cover the target, Tsunayoshi could decide victory from a thousand miles away at any time.
Uryū took a deep look at the crossbow in Tsunayoshi's hand.
Tsunayoshi, whom his father had once called someone without Quincy talent, now possessed such a terrifying spirit bow. Even Ryūken probably had never imagined this, had he?
The image in front of Tsunayoshi was a vast expanse of white. As the earth's veins trembled, the white radiance grew brighter and brighter. That was a sign that the Reishi was becoming increasingly dense.
Deep inside the Forest of Menos, countless Gillians were experiencing seven different forms of death.
Some were completely crushed into Reishi by the gravity of Earth Flames.
Some were quietly fermented by Swamp Flames and dissolved into viscous liquid Reishi.
Some were directly sliced down to the size of Reishi by the sharpness of Forest Flames.
Some were compressed into fragments by the heavy explosive force of Mountain Flames.
Some were frozen into ice peaks by Glacier Flames.
Some vanished without a trace under the heart-piercing barrage of countless arrows from Stream Flames.
The Gillians wanted to flee, but they could not escape at all. The moment they were locked onto by the sight, they had already fallen into the trap of reality and illusion created by Desert Flames. How could creatures driven only by instinct possibly escape the blockade of Desert Flames?
Kisuke Urahara's face was somewhat pale. Even he had not expected Tsunayoshi to cause such a massive disturbance. Even while driving his Zanpakutō with all his strength to restructure the Reishi, he still could not keep up with the speed at which the Gillians were being broken down into Reishi.
"It's coming out!" Kisuke Urahara shouted.
The concentration of Reishi underground was too high. Under the pressure from the lowest layer of the endless desert, all of the Reishi was being forced in one direction: the cave entrance in front of Urahara and the others.
Aizen's expression changed slightly. He could not allow this Reishi to rush out of the cave entrance. If the Reishi scattered into the air, that would mean the effectiveness of his Jūreichi would decrease by another portion.
Should he activate the seal ahead of time?
If he did that, Urahara's restructuring ability would no longer be able to reach into the seal. Did that mean he would have to settle for only a space with a high concentration of Reishi?
Aizen quickly made his decision. Without Urahara's restructuring, these Reishi might not settle in the short term, but the quantity of Reishi was clearly more important to him.
As for the subsequent settling of the Reishi, that could only be slowly handled by Aizen and Kaname Tōsen later.
Aizen appeared at the edge of the instruments Gin Ichimaru had placed with a Shunpo. His gaze fell on Gin Ichimaru, signaling with his eyes for Gin to act with him.
However, Gin Ichimaru did not receive Aizen's eye signal at all. As an observer, he had noticed more details than Aizen.
The underground Reishi current was clearly about to burst to the surface, yet Tsunayoshi, who was above the cave entrance, still showed no intention of leaving. Gin Ichimaru did not believe Tsunayoshi enjoyed being washed over by a Reishi current for no reason.
Then there was only one conclusion: Sawada Tsunayoshi had long since anticipated the current situation.
Thus, Gin Ichimaru was not anxious in the slightest. In any case, it was not his problem.
Tsunayoshi calmly pulled the black hole serving as the crossbow mechanism out from the crossbow. He loosened his fingertips, and the finger-sized black hole fell into the passage leading to the Forest of Menos.
Just as the Reishi from the Forest of Menos surged near the surface, the black hole suddenly released a terrifying suction force, drawing all the restless Reishi around itself.
The Reishi riot in the Forest of Menos was resolved.
With the finger-sized black sphere as its core, wherever the black hole passed, all the Reishi began revolving around it.
Like a rolling snowball, the deeper it went into the Forest of Menos, the larger the Reishi sphere became. Yet the gravitational pull produced by the black hole at its core showed no sign of weakening whatsoever.
Although it was only the size of a finger, this black hole was the collection of all the power of Earth Flames. The attractive force it produced was simply not something Reishi could escape.
Withdrawing the power of the Crossbow of the Earth, Tsunayoshi lightly drifted down to Kisuke Urahara's side.
"I'll leave the rest to you, Manager."
"Leave it to me. What a long process this is going to be," Kisuke Urahara said while scratching his head.
The main issue was that the quantity of Reishi Tsunayoshi had converted was simply too enormous. Repetitive work was always the most annoying.
"Thanks for the hard work. After we get back, I'll treat you to a hot spring."
Tsunayoshi patted Urahara on the shoulder, then turned to look at Aizen.
"That's all the Reishi there is. I can't produce any more than that."
"You jest, Sawada Tsunayoshi. Judging by your recovery, after some time passes, you could fire another attack of the same scale inside, could you not?" Aizen said.
As someone who had once explored the Forest of Menos, Aizen basically understood its range. Through the previous Reishi disturbance, he could sense that more than half of the Forest of Menos had been destroyed by a single move from Tsunayoshi.
But that also proved that the amount of Reishi the Forest of Menos could be converted into had not yet reached its limit. As long as Tsunayoshi was willing, the quality of the Jūreichi could still be raised further.
"Forget it. The quality of the Reishi absorbed by the Earth Flames is already no worse than Karakura Town."
Tsunayoshi rejected Aizen's request without even thinking about it.
When working for someone else, there was no need to do a perfect job.
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