Chapter 174: Refusing to Engage With Trash Mobs: A Civic Duty
Consider the question.
How do you apply complete control at its most complete?
Before now, Matsushita Yusuke might have had several different answers. But in this moment, the only conclusion available to him was exactly what the word implied.
Unity.
Gather every particle of reishi within Ichion Enpo's full range, with everything he had, pushing toward a single concentrated purpose.
Reishi was inherently malleable. After calibrating the domain to the appropriate parameters, he had the capacity to arrange and recombine these particles in any configuration he chose.
What was Kido, at its core?
An application of reishi. Nothing more.
Different arrangements and combinations, assembling or breaking down specific reishi into specific patterns — following exactly that principle, what Matsushita Yusuke was constructing right now was a Kido entirely his own.
Unohana's expression shifted as the realization arrived.
"He can actually do this?"
Surprise would be the honest description. Because what Matsushita Yusuke was doing in this moment existed, technically speaking, in the realm of theoretical possibility.
Any Shinigami with a reasonable depth of technical knowledge could grasp the essential nature of Kido and the basic principles of reishi application.
But the Kido framework, as it existed, had been in continuous use for centuries without meaningful revision.
Why was that?
Control of power, and the problem of reishi sequencing.
The amount of reishi Kido required was typically fixed. Why?
Because more was never simply better. Using the right quantity in the right arrangement produced clean, efficient results without excess, and extracted maximum effect.
Pouring in as much reishi as possible produced only uncontrolled cascade, the Kido collapsing in on itself, and ultimately a backlash against the caster.
That principle held at every tier, from the most basic techniques to the highest-ranked. Measured application was the universal standard.
For practitioners with sufficient skill, making subtle refinements to a technique, developing something more personally suited that diverged meaningfully from the standard form, was in itself a mark of genuine strength.
Aizen's Kurohitsugi was exactly that kind of thing. Aizen had a deep and particular attachment to that Kido. In his hands it was practically... ahem. Getting off track.
The point was: even for those capable of modifying and personalizing Kido, adequate preparation was still required, and only moderate changes were possible.
For Matsushita Yusuke, however, none of that applied.
He was the master of this entire domain.
Which meant reishi instability was not a variable. In this moment, following the current of his intent, everything within the domain was being pulled apart and broken down at speed.
The first things to disappear were the trees and the rocks.
Each object with a defined shape was swept up as if by invisible force, scattered into the air, then struck by what followed close behind, torn apart by the overwhelming pressure.
They fractured, broke apart, dissolved into the most fundamental flows of reishi, spiraling through the space like schools of fish riding a current.
After that.
The earth disappeared.
The ground within the domain was being stripped away at speed.
Silently, it sank. The soil split apart inch by inch, crumbling, losing all defined shape.
The ground collapsed and was consumed. Under the watching awareness of both Unohana and Tosen, the terrain encompassed by the domain, stretching for several kilometers in every direction, dissolved without a sound and was gone.
Everything inside the domain was under Matsushita Yusuke's complete command.
He raised both hands above his head, making a motion as though he were holding something up from underneath.
No one could tell what exactly he had taken hold of. All anyone could see was reishi approaching something close to a boil, spiraling in tight formation, rotating continuously through the domain.
Something invisible was quietly assembling itself into form.
"..."
Mouth completely dry.
That was the only description Tosen had available.
As a captain who had achieved Bankai, he understood what his own full output looked like. In terms of scale, he could affect a comparable area.
But watching something of this magnitude erase itself in utter silence conveyed a particular pressure that raw destructive power alone never did.
People tended to be cautious around things that exceeded their comprehension.
Tosen was no exception.
He had no idea what Matsushita Yusuke was building toward. His reason for being here was nothing more than confirming the current state of his strength. After a brief pause, he chose to fall back.
Though by any standard measure of distance, Matsushita Yusuke had by now shrunk to approximately the size of a mung bean in his awareness.
BANG.
A heavy impact.
A bloody left hand burst through the side of the Kurohitsugi, forcing open a gap of roughly half a meter. The palm pressed down against the broken edge, grotesquely tensed muscle pulling taut, and in an instant the force released.
One face of the Kurohitsugi was torn fully open and crushed.
"Not bad at all, Matsushita!!!"
Zaraki came charging out.
His hair was gone. His body was shredded to the point where bone showed through in places. His face had essentially lost its shape.
But his eyes were still burning.
And what could be read across what remained of his expression was unmistakably excitement.
The reishi threads of the Kurohitsugi were extraordinarily dense. An ordinary spirit body subjected to that would simply be ground apart, dissolved, reduced to nothing. Reiatsu was the measure of physical resilience, though, and Zaraki's body was built to take punishment at exactly this scale.
Of course, after what countless spines had done over time, the flesh had been stripped to the point of nothing. But that was precisely why his energy was running higher than it ever had.
A good opponent.
Worth everything he had.
Brilliant yellow reishi surged around him, a wild and overwhelming presence radiating from his body in every direction.
But what met him was not the intense clash he was expecting.
The azure world Matsushita Yusuke commanded stretched open before him, and it was approaching its final stage.
Don't engage with trash mobs.
I'm dropping my ultimate first. You do what you want.
Matsushita Yusuke's gaze dropped, and he spoke in a flat tone.
"Hado #99: Goryutenmetsu."
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