Chapter 872: Spiritual Legion Enhanced, The Bleach World Unsealed
Hum!
Suspended above a smoldering volcanic caldera, Kaito Shirogane drove his right arm forward with savage leverage. The translucent, violet draconic claws flickering over his skin sheared cleanly through the dimensional fabric.
Unlike the jagged, pitch-black spatial fissures violently blasted open by pure kinetic force under his Sixteen-Fold Kaio-Ken, Kaito could now directly perceive the structural lattice of spacetime itself.
It was not brute-force tearing; it was akin to taking a pair of shears to the coordinates separating two distinct locations, slicing the distance apart.
Hovering over the churning ocean waves nearby, Satoru Gojo observed the demonstration in silence, his thoughts racing over how his Limitless technique should evolve to counter an increasingly diverse array of spatial authorities.
He had long known how he met his end in the original canon—bisected clean by the spatial-cleaving World Slash of the King of Curses, Ryomen Sukuna, augmented through an adverse Binding Vow.
Now that he had grasped new power, the Limitless could no longer remain confined to rudimentary spatial manipulation. Gojo fully embraced Kaito's core creed: absolute might reigns supreme.
Consequently, he had begun accepting the authentic reality coiled within his soul: the true power of a Resurrección!
Meanwhile, across the vast Siberian expanse of the physical world, lush green grass had completely blanketed what was once a frozen tundra. The pervasive authority of the Golden Order had forcibly rewritten the local climate.
The Lands Between stood anchored like an immense, living Bounded Field, expanding its radiant influence toward the borders of the White Bear and the Eastland in lockstep with the continuous growth of the Erdtree.
Madara Uchiha stood beneath the towering canopy of the Erdtree, gazing up at the fruits of that inhuman sovereignty, gaining an updated measure of his host's design to reshape reality.
The more mission worlds he traversed at the back of that arrogant young warrior, the more cramped and pitiful the ninja world appeared in his memory.
Generations of shinobi locked in endless, bloody butcheries over microscopic strips of territory, forever bound to a cyclical curse of generational slaughter.
Narrow—suffocatingly narrow.
Even his grand Eye of the Moon Plan had failed to break free from that structural prison.
Though he loathed to admit it aloud, viewing his past ambition from this elevated vantage point laid bare how pitifully fragile his grand dreams had truly been.
Shatter the world... and forge it anew.
Through Whispering Worm and White Face, Madara had learned of his scripted fate: a pawn manipulated, dominated, and discarded unto death—a blind, foolish end virtually identical to that of the arrogant white-haired youth.
If granted the chance, he burned to rewrite everything. Not to indulge in the petty novelty of pacifying the ninja world within a localized derivative realm, nor to drown in the narcotic illusions of the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
He hungered to descend from a higher dimension to rewrite the fundamental trajectory of the Naruto cosmos itself!
To force the shinobi to awaken—to show them what authentic might was, and what true peace demanded!
Otsutsuki, Six Paths—all of them would bow before absolute power!
Behind Madara's back, dense chakra burned like a blazing pyre. His Impure World Reincarnation vessel granted absolute immortality, yet it severely lacked biological vitality and higher evolutionary potential.
"You mean to tell me... I am to plant the Divine Tree across disparate worlds, devouring the planetary chakra to evolve into an authentic Otsutsuki?"
Madara's voice was low, carrying neither wrath nor pleasure. Amatsu merely offered a gentle smile; she had no need to listen to vocal inflections when her divine eyes could deconstruct the core of most souls at a glance.
"Madara Uchiha, though Lord Mercenary Tao has demonstrated the terrifying supremacy of our Reincarnator caste and the vast ceilings of foreign power systems, you must not underestimate the lineage of the Otsutsuki..."
"At its core, that is an apex species capable of galactic colonization. Among the current generation of Reincarnators, beyond Yoko and Lord Mercenary Tao, scarcely anyone possesses the foundation to resist them."
Amatsu understood Kaito's purpose in sending Madara to her quadrant. She felt profound satisfaction seeing their Lord finally begin to systematically extract every ounce of utility from his underlying assets.
If the Great Calamity of the End was truly inbound, a sovereign commanding such comprehensive forces stood a vastly superior chance of inverting the board.
Amatsu placed zero faith in the calculated gambits of the Supreme Three Kings. Ultimately, the King of Miracles—the only figure proven to stand firmly on the side of humanity and the mortal world—was dead, while the true identities of the King of Souls and the King of Destiny were profoundly suspect; Amatsu saw no reason to believe their maneuvering was designed to shepherd the world through the final tribulation.
Even if reality survived, the price and manner of that survival remained a terrifying unknown.
Amatsu had laid her wager long ago, and on this board, she would commit without regret. Moving forward, she would steer every current to favor Lord Mercenary Tao and Lady Yoko Ekaterina.
Empowering the spiritual legion under Kaito's command was a natural step in that design.
Amatsu commanded extensive experience planting the Erdtree across the Naruto cosmos, having covertly secured a pivotal narrative asset in the process; even the Damaged Demonic Statue of the Outer Path had been submitted through Wushang under her direct instructions.
Guiding Madara toward becoming Six Paths Madara, and subsequently ascending into an Otsutsuki, was an entirely viable evolutionary vector. For Reincarnators, harvesting planetary chakra across accessible mission worlds presented a vastly lower barrier of entry than an Otsutsuki aimlessly wandering the cosmos in search of viable planets.
"This is a peerless relic harvested from another reality. Even to an operative of Lord Mercenary Tao's standing, it remains an extraordinary treasure. I shall now utilize it to modify your systemic ownership... I trust you will take no offense at my terminology."
Smiling, Amatsu produced a spherical capsule etched with intricate, exotic patterns.
[Master Ball]
[Type: Specialized Artifact]
[Quality: World's Rarity]
[Description: The crowning achievement of creature-capture technology from a certain realm, capable of forcibly containing foreign creatures, summoned entities, and quasi-summoned beings.]
[Usage Requirement: None]
[Effect 1: Hurl at a creature, summoned entity, quasi-summoned being, familiar, or shikigami. Upon a direct hit, forcibly seizes administrative ownership of the target and seals them within the Master Ball.]
[Effect 2: Can contain only a single unit at any given time. To contain a new unit, the previous entity must be formally released. Current Contained Unit: Lord of Frenzied Flame, Midra.]
[Effect 3: Should this artifact suffer catastrophic structural damage, the contained entity is forcibly released, severing all administrative ownership.]
On this matter, Madara proved far more pragmatic than Gojo. Though proud to the marrow, his lifetime as a shinobi had conditioned him to endure pragmatic compromises and harsh terminology with far higher tolerance.
He nodded slowly. White Face had thoroughly outlined the mechanics to him beforehand: the evolutionary path of planting Divine Trees across lower realms necessitated transferring his administrative ownership.
It would allow him to be carried into low-tier mission worlds under the banner of weaker Reincarnators, where his personal mass could dominate the narrative, initiating the systematic harvesting of the Divine Tree unhindered.
After all, Lord Mercenary Tao was far too monstrous; any mission world assigned to him would never grant Madara the operational bandwidth to quietly nurture and harvest a Divine Tree.
Having operated alongside White Face across multiple assignments, Madara maintained a baseline of tactical trust with her that surpassed his rapport with the other spirits.
Gazing upon the spherical artifact, Madara grasped the mechanics: he would be temporarily sealed within the capsule, carried across disparate realms by a relay of low-tier operatives.
Folding his arms across his armored chest, he let out a cold snort.
"Begin."
Amatsu's golden irises rippled as she studied the capsule in her palm. Sealed within was an alternate contingency; the Greater Will and the Golden Order were merely temporary transitional paths, and she had engineered multiple systemic branches.
A pity that one had to be liquidated today.
Gripping the Master Ball, Amatsu released the Lord of Frenzied Flame, Midra. As the apocalyptic fires of madness flared, Midra's emaciated frame coalesced beneath the boughs of the Erdtree.
Yet before he could parse the physical geometry of his surroundings, an array of lethal magical barrages converged upon his coordinates.
The Golden Order faction currently fielded a formidable cadre of high-tier Reincarnators; Amatsu was thoroughly prepared.
Madara observed the execution with icy detachment. This was the raw, unvarnished reality native narrative figures faced when encountering Reincarnators: the asymmetric information disparity was terrifying, resulting in native titans being dismantled before they could even draw breath.
Yet as an authentic shinobi, he harbored no moral aversion to such calculated ambushes.
Standing in the distance, Wushang and Wuxin watched Midra fall, an operative stepping forward to claim the Crimson Drop Card—likely yielding an authority aligned with the Frenzied Flame.
Madara offered zero resistance as the Master Ball expanded its capture field, drawing him into its core. In the cycles to come, this capsule would circulate through the hands of designated vanguards, clearing world after world.
Once Madara ascended into Six Paths Madara or reached the threshold of an Otsutsuki, Amatsu or Lord Mercenary Tao would formally reclaim his ownership.
Simultaneously, atop the summit of the Black Tower in the Paradise, Artoria received a specialized phial of blood that churned and burned like living liquid fire.
White Face watched the transaction with a faint pout. Though the blueprint had been her design, watching Mercenary Tao burn through such astronomical resources to empower his subordinate spirits still left her feeling a pang of phantom stinginess.
[Blood of the Red Dragon King]
[Quality: World's Rarity]
[Description: The extracted bloodline essence of one of the Five-Colored Dragon Kings from a certain realm, harboring the concentrated primordial might of a Magic Dragon.]
[Usage Requirement: Constitution > 50, or possession of a draconic bloodline.]
[Effect 1: Upon consumption, grants a minor probability of awakening the Magic Dragon bloodline.]
[Effect 2: Upon consumption, imposes a minor probability of incurring the Magic Dragon's Curse.]
Artoria carried the legendary mantle of the Red Dragon of Britain, endowed with the heavenly mandate of King Arthur. Regarding her evolutionary vectors, White Face had submitted twin proposals:
The first was leaning entirely into the extreme traits born of her corruption by All the World's Evil, hyper-specializing that malevolent mass to awaken her inner Magic Dragon.
The second was pursuing the orthodox path of King Arthur: seeking out the authentic Holy Sword and unsealing the Thirteen Constraints.
Artoria had chosen the former without hesitation.
She no longer believed in the noble chivalric ideals of her past; she chose to submerge herself completely within absolute violence and tyrannical sovereignty.
This phial was the highest-grade draconic catalyst the Paradise's quartermasters could secure in the current meta.
Artoria unsealed the phial and drained the fiery serum in a single draught. Because she was not an orthodox Reincarnator, none could guarantee whether the physiological adaptation would take root.
Only White Face had adamantly insisted that the conceptual resonance of Britain's Red Dragon would trigger a violent, sympathetic reaction with the bloodline of the Dragon King.
Hence, she had lingered within the Paradise specifically to witness the biological outcome.
Boundless, corrupted magical energy erupted from beneath Artoria's blackened plate armor. Intricate, crimson-black scales began spreading across her pale neck, radiating a suffocating wave of draconic majesty paired with violent biological vitality.
That immense presence could no longer be contained. Down in the courtyards, Hongchen and the high-tier defenders snapped their gazes toward the summit of the Black Tower.
A pillar of black-and-red mana pierced straight into the heavens.
ROAR!
Amidst a deafening, sovereign draconic bellow, the Red Dragon of Britain unfurled gargantuan wings, tearing into the upper atmosphere.
Watching the draconic Artoria vanish into the clouds, White Face mused over what had transpired during Mercenary Tao's private audience with the envoys from the Throne of Virtual Reality.
Her sharp instincts noted that Mercenary Tao was uncharacteristically pouring vast capital into expanding his personal faction!
Knowing his temperament, this anomalous investment pointed toward a singular conclusion: Mercenary Tao had sensed an impending bottleneck. Otherwise, a martial fanatic of his pedigree would never have bothered optimizing the latent potential of his specialized constitution.
The fact that this spiritual legion had lingered beneath his banner for so long without receiving formal investment until today proved the shift.
What kind of operational pressure could prompt Mercenary Tao to adopt this posture?
The Throne of Virtual Reality... Zanpakuto... The Bleach cosmos...
White Face's eyes lit up as the puzzle snapped into place!
The Throne had undeniably handed Mercenary Tao an invitation to breach the Bleach world. Moreover, Mercenary Tao recognized that he would likely be forced to operate within that realm in an astral, spiritual state!
Such an environment would heavily constrain the overwhelming biological supremacy of his physical vessel.
Consequently, he had broken precedent to systematically empower his spiritual legion as auxiliary vanguard units.
Naturally, there was an alternate probability: Mercenary Tao's personal progression had reached a developmental ceiling where standard market trades and resource conversions yielded diminishing returns.
He had to wait for the broader Reincarnator meta to scale further, unlocking higher-tier mission worlds to circulate the premium assets he required.
This was the foundational paradox of the Reincarnators: they operated as an interdependent ecological herd. Unlike early iterations of the primary Main God Space where any resource could be redeemed via points at a central terminal, this Space relied strictly on the deployments, discoveries, and open-market exchanges of its operatives to drive liquidity.
In other words: if only one or two operatives stood at the summit, the diversity of accessible resources was severely bottlenecked.
A mocking smile curved White Face's lips. She finally understood the deeper design behind leasing Madara Uchiha to external operatives—it was an indirect method of shepherding the growth of weaker Reincarnators.
To see the ruthless, bloodthirsty Mercenary Tao actively uplifting other operatives struck White Face as deeply ironic and amusing.
Hum!
White Face's breath caught in her throat. The world around her instantly lost all color, dipping into absolute monochrome. Turning her head, she found a white-robed silhouette drifting down from the sky, chin slightly lowered, peering down at her through icy, unblinking eyes.
The dark runic scriptures across his face had been re-blanketed beneath pristine white soul-matter, while the specialized nodachi resting at his hip was astonishingly long.
It was Black Face!
Having purged the spiritual calamity across the Eastland, he had undergone an authentic qualitative evolution. His baseline mass had grown terrifying, likely accompanied by the emergence of telepathic perception!
Having delivered a subtle, chilling rebuke to the spirit who dared harbor irreverent thoughts toward their King, Black Face glided into the Black Tower.
He had registered the King's summons.
[Special Unit: Archetype of Terminus and Genesis, you have triggered Special Event: Calamity of the Submerged Seireitei. Please report to your private quarters immediately; deployment sequence initiating shortly.]
Reviewing the spatial alert, Kaito knew the theater arranged by Sosuke Aizen had arrived.
With a single pulse of his will, Kaito recalled his spiritual legion into his Sea of Consciousness, stepping smoothly back into his private quarters.
[Deployment sequence commencing]
[3...]
[2...]
[1...]
[Deployment initiated]
Cascades of raw Information erupted within the private quarters, submerging Kaito's sensory pathways in an instant.
In that fraction of a microsecond, the Substitute Soul Reaper Badge resting within his palm turned scalding hot, threatening to fuse directly into his physical flesh and astral soul.
Hum—BOOM!
The instant Kaito broke free from the spatial information currents, the searing badge dissolved seamlessly into his biology. Autonomous control over his physical vessel was severed on the spot.
Atmospheric winds screamed around his ears as Kaito's physical form plummeted from the upper atmosphere, smashing violently into a cobblestone boulevard below. The entire street caved inward under the kinetic impact, fracturing into pulverized rubble.
Yet Kaito's astral soul continued to sink through the bedrock, unhindered by mass.
Seconds later, his consciousness re-emerged beneath an entirely different sky.
[You have arrived at Special Location: Rukongai]