Facing a charge of twenty thousand men, even the countless blades of Senbonzakura Kageyoshi could not stop them completely.
Rayleigh was very conscious of his Reiatsu consumption, so aside from using Gōkei to cut down the enemy's numbers in one sweep, he had been controlling Senbonzakura conservatively the whole time.
Countless blades returned to his side, reforming into an ordinary sword.
After releasing Senbonzakura Kageyoshi, Rayleigh drew Ruri'iro Kujaku from beside him.
"Bloom in frenzy, Ruri'iro Kujaku!"
Shining vines surged toward the enemy.
Using the strength of their spiritual pressure as a filter, Rayleigh selected those with larger amounts of Mind and wrapped the vines around them, sucking the power from their bodies.
Watching their comrades go from living, breathing men to shriveled bags of skin and bone chilled the soldiers to their cores.
Many times, soldiers on the battlefield were not afraid of death itself.
What they feared was an end worse than death.
They could tell that even after being reduced to such a state, those men were still alive.
And that kind of life was worse than simply dying.
'Too slow.'
A trace of dissatisfaction appeared on Rayleigh's face.
These people had too little spiritual power since Ruri'iro Kujaku's buds had not filled enough.
Naturally, they could not bloom.
Even if he drained all the life force from these people, the amount of spiritual power he gained would still be little more than a drop in the bucket.
So he controlled Ruri'iro Kujaku and continued searching for targets with reckless intensity, draining more spiritual power.
But by now, the enemy had also reacted.
Gathering their courage, they raised their weapons and began hacking at Ruri'iro Kujaku's vines.
Yet when their blades struck, they were only deflected.
The soldiers were left at a loss.
"We can't cut them!"
"Stabbing doesn't work either!"
"Damn it, what the hell are these glowing vine things?!"
Seeing this, one of the commanders also swung his weapon down at them.
The result was no different.
After his weapon trembled violently, it was knocked aside all the same.
The toughness of these vines was astonishing.
Only after draining forty people of all their spiritual power did one of Ruri'iro Kujaku's buds finally bloom.
Rayleigh had no time to be elegant, he opened his mouth and chewed it directly.
The Reiatsu inside his body rapidly recovered.
"So that curse only slows down my natural recovery. External Mind can still be absorbed."
'Heh.'
Rayleigh withdrew Ruri'iro Kujaku and drew Hyōrinmaru.
"Sit upon the frozen heavens, Hyōrinmaru!"
First came Shikai.
After Rayleigh released his Zanpakutō, two swings of his blade sent two ice dragons tearing through the air.
The enormous ice dragons rampaged through the army before finally exploding into waves of cold air.
Seeing large numbers of soldiers collapse and lose the ability to fight, Marius grabbed Ares and shouted.
"See?! You idiot! I told you we needed to prepare countermeasures against the cold! But no, you just had to rush out immediately!"
Ares broke into a cold sweat, but he still stubbornly argued back.
He shoved Marius aside and shouted, "Eek! Cold is a minor problem! You can overcome it with burning passion and willpower!"
"No one can overcome it like that, you stupid god!"
Marius was speechless.
After feeling the speed of his Reiatsu consumption, Rayleigh decisively used Bankai.
"Daiguren Hyōrinmaru!"
If possible, he wanted to directly use Shikai Hyōketsu.
However, Hyōrinmaru had told him that his current self still could not control that kind of technique.
So he could only settle for the next best option.
"Zero Degree Release."
This was a new technique Rayleigh and Hyōrinmaru had developed after learning that he could not yet use Shikai Hyōketsu.
Instead of condensing the moisture in the atmosphere into ice blocks, it went deeper, freezing water molecules into tiny grains of ice dust.
Cold air at negative seventy degrees rushed toward the kingdom army, using the atmosphere itself as its medium.
Zero Degree Release was a technique that prevented the cold air from freezing the moisture in the atmosphere, and it was also a more refined use of Tensō Jūrin.
For Zanpakutō standing at the peak of fire and ice, both of which were tied to temperature, influencing the environment was an extremely simple matter.
And for the environment—or rather, nature itself—to kill humans was far easier still.
As everyone knew, water froze at zero degrees Celsius under standard conditions.
In other words, when the temperature dropped below zero, water would begin to freeze and eventually solidify completely.
But Hyōrinmaru had changed that phenomenon, controlling the freezing point and pushing it far below zero.
The cold air Rayleigh released now, upon touching the human body, could lower a person's body temperature from 36.7 degrees Celsius to hypothermic levels within one minute.
To achieve this result, Rayleigh deliberately preserved the humidity, lowered the temperature, and intensified the dry, freezing wind.
In that terrifyingly cold environment, the soldiers of the kingdom army could not even open their eyes.
The surface of their skin felt as though it were being sliced apart inch by inch. Every breath felt like swallowing a thousand needles.
The pain was unbearable, and soldiers began collapsing one after another.
In the eyes of those falling into shock, at the far end of this frozen hell stood a cold-faced boy.
'Ah...'
'We were wrong.'
To dare challenge such a man—dying for that was not even worth pitying.
Because what they had done was foolish beyond measure!
As more and more soldiers collapsed from hypothermia, Ares saw his own men falling in waves at the front of the battlefield, unable to approach that figure at all.
He immediately roared, "Mage units! Archers! Attack together!"
Once his command was delivered, large numbers of archers immediately removed the bows from their backs, nocked their arrows, and aimed at Rayleigh.
Seeing a dense rain of arrows rise into the sky, Rayleigh lifted the hand holding Hyōrinmaru.
Sword pressure erupted from the blade, carrying freezing air with it.
The dense arrow rain was blown apart, and the cold air covered the arrows in a layer of frost.
"Fire the magic!"
Multicolored magical light flared within the army.
Seeing this, Rayleigh pointed his blade toward the mage unit.
Before their chants could be completed, he released a directional wave of cold air.
A freezing gale swept forward with ice crystals.
Whoosh!
In an instant, the long, overlapping chants suddenly broke off.
The kingdom army's mages all clutched their throats.
Some dropped to their knees, while others rolled across the ground, but every one of them wore the same expression.
Agony.
Their throats had been damaged by ice crystals, leaving them in unbearable pain and unable to chant magic anymore.
The tears they had just squeezed out froze in place, and the brutal cold made their movements increasingly stiff.
The kingdom soldiers felt their limbs gradually slipping away from them.
The cold on the surface of their bodies invaded deep into their bones, as though blocks of ice had formed inside their joints.
Irregular heartbeat, clouded consciousness.
Symptoms of hypothermia began to appear.
"Hadō #58: Tenran."
Rayleigh added fuel to the fire.
A massive tornado mixed into the freezing gale, cutting down the enemy's body temperature even faster.