Chapter 343: Funeral

As H'el finished his incantation, the three thousand spheres behind him halted, no longer absorbing spiritual energy.

"Why isn't his Black Coffin reacting?" Jushiro Ukitake tightly gripped his twin swords, Sōgyo no Kotowari, staring suspiciously at the nearby dark spheres. He immediately swung his sword, releasing a blade of energy toward one of the spheres.

The energy blade passed through the sphere, which became a shadowy illusion before gradually disappearing.

When all the dark spheres had vanished from Ukitake's sight, he felt an ominous sense of foreboding. He looked toward H'el, where the three captain-level Shinigami had fully unleashed their Bankai, their immense spiritual pressure raging like a hurricane above the Seireitei, aiming directly at H'el.

"Don't get close to him!" Ukitake urgently shouted at them, feeling a deep unease about the mysterious disappearance of the dark spheres.

Sure enough.

Before the three captains could react, their bodies suddenly felt as if they were being weighed down by a mountain, the air pressure around them abruptly increasing, suppressing even their powerful spiritual pressure.

The spiritual particles in the air above the Seireitei grew suddenly heavy, a pure, oppressive force descending upon anyone with slightly weaker spiritual pressure. It caused their vision to blur, their chests to feel tight, and a frantic, suffocating sense of dread to rise within them.

"What's going on?" Love Aikawa, bent under the pressure, couldn't help but exclaim, his face showing a mix of shock and disbelief.

They had unleashed their most powerful spiritual pressure, releasing the ultimate form of their Zanpakutō through their Bankai, yet now they were being crushed by this pressure.

How immense was the energy to create such overwhelming pressure?

"It's the spiritual particles; he's using the absorbed particles to create some kind of mysterious pressure." Kensei Muguruma had just begun to feel the pressure from the spiritual particles when Ukitake's warning reached him, prompting him to retreat, but he couldn't escape in time.

The sky beneath H'el quickly darkened as four massive black screens, like inky blotches, rose up around him.

With a resounding thud, the four huge black screens beneath H'el lifted from the edges, forming what looked like a towering black wall or the lid of a coffin, sealing H'el, Kensei Muguruma, Rose Otoribashi, and Love Aikawa inside.

The Kurohitsugi (Black Coffin), Hadō #90, was complete.

Outside, the oppressive pressure suddenly vanished, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief, their eyes wide with horror as they gazed up at the enormous black coffin in the sky.

All the pressure had been trapped within the coffin.

Inside the coffin, darkness was so deep that nothing could be seen except for their own glowing silhouettes. As the immense pressure and gravity bore down on them, even Kensei Muguruma struggled to breathe.

Kensei couldn't help but grimace in pain, his eyes bulging with bloodshot veins, his teeth clenched as he tried to stand against the crushing force, but he couldn't. His legs buckled, forcing him to one knee as he gasped for air.

"Why…?"

He felt like he was drowning, his organs starving for oxygen, his mouth dry and gasping, every cell in his body suffocating under the pressure.

He had never experienced such unbearable agony before.

It was worse than any torture, a hundred times more excruciating.

Even being killed by a blade would be preferable to this.

"Ahhhh!!"

With a contorted, blood-filled face, Kensei let out a fierce roar, summoning every ounce of his spiritual pressure and strength, trying to rise from his knees. But as soon as he started to stand, he vomited a large amount of blood and fragments of his organs.

The pressure forced him back down, his knees hitting the dark ground, his hands slick with a mixture of sweat, blood, and viscera, dripping onto the ground before him.

"It's useless." H'el appeared out of the darkness, stepping towards Kensei's bowed head, his Zanpakutō in hand. "The spiritual particles within the Black Coffin resonate with your spiritual pressure, creating an unbearable weight.

Captain-level spiritual pressure is indeed powerful, but it's no match for this overwhelming pressure and confinement."

Kensei's breath was heavy, his face twisted and bloodied, veins bulging as blood and sweat dripped from his lips, pooling into a small, gruesome puddle.

He could no longer speak, only manage weak, gurgling sounds as more blood flowed from his mouth.

"Your only hope is to control the spiritual particles resonating with you, using every bit of your potential and ability to master them. If you succeed, not only will you escape this crushing pressure, but you'll also gain control over these particles, acquiring immense power.

Only then might you be able to lift your head and look at me."

H'el looked down at Kensei's head with a cold indifference.

The spiritual particles inside the Black Coffin had been tuned to resonate with the captains' spiritual pressure, subjecting them to a pressure hundreds or thousands of times greater than they could normally bear.

If a captain still had untapped potential, they might be able to master these particles, escape the pressure, and discover new depths of their power, along with a greater capacity to control spiritual particles.

But how many captains could withstand such immense pressure? How many had such vast, untapped potential?

Though H'el had revealed the weakness of his Kurohitsugi, he doubted that Kensei, Rose, or Love had the ability to overcome the crushing force.

Shaking his head, H'el sighed inwardly. None of them possessed the talent or potential.

"Lastly, know this: time inside this Black Coffin flows differently from the outside world. I'm sure when other Shinigami speak of you in the future, they won't mock you for failing to withstand even a second inside my Black Coffin," H'el said with a calm detachment.

*Thud.*

Kensei finally couldn't take it anymore. His face, blood-red and twisted with bulging veins, turned grotesque as his eyes rolled back, collapsing into the bloody puddle below him, his limbs twisted unnaturally.

H'el shook his head, noticing that Kensei had fallen. He glanced at the other two captains, Rose Otoribashi and Love Aikawa, who had succumbed even earlier.

With a wave of his Zanpakutō, the entire Kurohitsugi shattered like glass in the sky, breaking into black shards that slowly scattered. The shards reflected the defeated forms of Kensei, Rose, and Love, their bodies bloodied, their eyes rolled back, faces red and twisted in the aftermath of their defeat.

The three captain-level Shinigami fell along with the black shards, descending like a rain of darkness, a funeral for the three captains.

°°°

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