The Supreme Soul, Starting with Death

The magnificent double gates floating above the clouds, resembling the entrance to a giant's royal court, and the enormous skeleton leaning over the gates overlooking the earth, are undoubtedly the Gates of Hell, which only appeared a few times in the Bleach storyline.

But why?

Why would the Gates of Hell appear here?

According to the early settings of Bleach, if a person who committed a great sin in life dies again after death, the gates of hell will appear and drag them into hell to suffer eternal punishment.

Furthermore, according to the Hell Chapter of the theatrical version, the souls pulled into Hell will be repeatedly tortured and killed by monsters called "Hell Wills," then resurrected at the bottom of Hell, only to be tortured and killed again, until their consciousness is completely obliterated in each painful death, turning them into walking corpses and then into dust. This eternal punishment will never end.

Later in the story, a new setting was introduced, depicting Hell as a landfill.

In the new setting, powerful Shinigami and Hollows, due to their excessively high spiritual density, cannot degrade and return to the world's spiritual cycle even when killed. They must be suppressed in Hell, otherwise they will become terrifying monsters.

It should be noted that the "Three Realms" created by the ancestors of the five noble families refer to the Soul Society, the Human World, and Hueco Mundo. Hell is not among the Three Realms. In other words, the history of this wretched place is even longer than that of the Soul Society, and it may even be younger than the Soul King.

If the premise that all powerful beings are suppressed in Hell is true, then who knows how many outrageous individuals are currently hiding in Hell? It's not impossible that a few super-powerful beings personally placed there by a Spirit King might suddenly appear.

But no matter which setting you follow, the Gates of Hell shouldn't be here now.

Gu Shi stared at the gates of hell in the sky, his heart filled with doubt. Could it be that since both the Chain of Blame and the Chain of Karma are chains, the Chain of Blame sensed that its own brother (the Chain of Karma) had been captured and came out to help take revenge?

Gu Shi secretly made a joke in his heart, but before he could even make himself laugh, his pupils suddenly contracted, startled by his own joke.

If you think about it carefully, although the wicked people in hell have different locations for the chains of wickedness, such as the neck, ankle, and wrist, they are all there.

but!

Whether it's Ichigo Kurosaki's sister Yuzu or Rukia Kuchiki, when they were corrupted by the miasma of hell and had just grown the Chains of Sin, the chains appeared in the center of their chests, which is where the Chains of Cause and Effect should be.

Furthermore, the functions of these two types of chains are remarkably similar.

The chains of cause and effect connect the soul and the body, allowing the soul of the living to return to their body and come back to life even if it is temporarily separated from the body, thanks to the chains.

The Chain of Sin connects the soul of the culprit to Hell on one end. Even if the culprit briefly escapes Hell, as long as the Chain of Sin remains, they will be pulled back into Hell. To escape Hell, the chains must be completely severed.

Could these two broken chains really be connected?

For example, the so-called "chain of blaming others" is a causal chain that anchors the target from the physical body to hell.

When an ordinary person dies, whether they go into the Hollowworld or the Soul Society, the chains of karma will automatically disappear.

But is it possible that this broken chain has not actually disappeared completely, and its "root" is just hidden deep in the soul? Once the Grim Reaper and Hollow who committed great sins in their previous lives are killed again, it will reappear to connect with Hell and send the souls that deserve eternal punishment to Hell.

[So, after I forcibly removed the causal lock, which had turned into dark red spiritual energy and was about to be hidden inside the mask, and released it into the air, the automatic screening program on the other side of Hell determined that a new karmic lock had been created, opened the gates of Hell, and intended to welcome the wicked?]

Gu Shi looked at the wisp of dark red spiritual energy with apprehension in his eyes. He took a few steps back as slowly as possible and whispered a warning to the people around him.

"Whatever you do, don't touch this spiritual energy. Be careful and don't let it blow away. Bai, go and catch a few animals."

Under the oppressive aura of the Gates of Hell, Tianpeng's fervor subsided. He calmly nodded and slowly retreated. Bai also retreated a distance before turning and rushing into the nearby forest. Soon, he returned carrying two rabbits.

"Kill him, and throw his soul into that spiritual energy."

Gu Shi was worried that the wisp of dark red spiritual energy would be blown away by the aura of his voice, so he kept the instructions as brief as possible. Bai always executed orders decisively, and he crushed the rabbit's head in one swift motion, throwing the little guy, who didn't even have time to feel the pain, directly onto the wisp of dark red spiritual energy.

However, after the two came into contact, there was no reaction. In terror, the rabbit's soul darted into the grass, leaving only a wisp of dark red spiritual energy behind.

Gu Shi glanced at the short section of the causal lock on the rabbit's soul's chest and immediately issued another command.

"Remove the chains of cause and effect and start again."

Bai crushed another rabbit's head, ripped off the chain around its chest, and threw it back onto the spiritual energy.

This time, things changed.

The moment the two made contact, the dark red spiritual energy eagerly burrowed into the rabbit's soul. Immediately afterwards, a jet-black chain emerged from the rabbit's chest like a venomous snake emerging from its hole, its front end pointing high towards the gates of hell in the sky.

At the same time, the gates of hell, which had been silent in the sky, finally opened slowly. The rabbit soul with chains hanging on its chest, like a cow being abducted by a UFO, was pulled by an inexplicable force towards the terrifying gate that had opened a crack.

Immediately afterwards, a thick arm slowly emerged from the crack in the door, holding a huge cleaver that was half the size of Gu Shi's body. It accurately stabbed the poor little rabbit, instantly shattering its spirit completely.

The targets of execution and guidance disappeared, the arm holding the greatsword slowly retracted behind the door, and the gates of hell slowly closed, vanishing into the white clouds like a phantom dissipating, along with the intense sense of oppression.

Chapter 162 Hellish Consciousness

As the gates of hell disappeared, Gu Shi breathed a sigh of relief. Although it was a bit embarrassing to say it like that, he was really quite afraid of hell. Who knew how many old monsters were hiding in that wretched place? If he really had a conflict with hell, the danger would probably be greater than fighting the entire Seireitei alone.

The most disgusting thing is that even innocent people, after being corrupted by the miasma of hell for a period of time, will develop a chain of guilt and become completely bound to hell.

Once the chains of vengeance grow on his body, Gu Shi will probably only be able to wait for Kurosaki Ichigo to be born so that he can continue his dream of exploring the stars. Then, like the black sword in the movie, he can find a way to get Kurosaki Ichigo to stab him a few times.

"Gu Shi! What happened?"

Gu Shi and the others were slowly calming down when suddenly Erlang's voice came from the foot of the mountain and quickly approached the summit.

Clearly, even Erlang, who was guarding the underground cavern, sensed the oppressive force of the Gates of Hell descending and rushed up as fast as he could.

"We're fine."

After loudly announcing that he was safe and sound, so as not to worry Erlang any longer, Gu Shi gently closed his eyes and began to change the material of his body, transforming himself back into a normal Hollow.

With such a major event occurring, he had no interest in continuing his research in the short term. Moreover, previous attempts had proven that making the body transparent did not allow him to fully uncover the secrets of the Void. He could only see the Lock of Cause and Effect being digested and absorbed by the Void, but he could not see why this process was happening.

Let's go back to normal first, eat something to help the wound heal.

Before Gu Shi's transformation was complete, Erlang had already rushed to the mountaintop. Seeing that Gu Shi was unable to concentrate for the moment, he quietly asked Tianpeng what had just happened.

Tianpeng was still quite frightened, and he obviously needed to vent and share with someone to help him calm down. So he quickly told everyone about the chains of cause and effect and the gates of hell.

Erlang was "dumbfounded and amazed" after listening to Tianpeng. Only after fully satisfying Tianpeng's psychological needs did he scratch his head and summarize what Tianpeng had said.

"In other words, you've found a special space outside the Three Realms and a way to open its gates. Should we continue with the plan for the Spirit Land? Could we perhaps find a way to directly conquer this hell?"

Gu Shi, who was standing next to Erlang with his eyes closed, twitched his eyelids a few times. If he wasn't so upset about the body material conversion, he would definitely have given Erlang a good scolding.

This big dog is usually very studious, but lately it's become increasingly clueless. Is hell something you can just touch?

To occupy hell, that's really daring... to think...

...It seems not impossible.

Unlike the artificially created Soul Society, Hell is clearly self-aware. Its thinking may not be as active as that of humans, but there is no doubt that it knows how to adapt.

In the movie, Ichigo Kurosaki enters Hell as a living person in order to save his sister. At first, according to the operating logic of Hell, he is a real intruder. On his way to the depths of Hell, the guardians of Hell, known as "Hell's Will," attack him more than once. During this process, Ichigo Kurosaki also wounds and kills several Hell's Wills.

But just as the Black Blade was about to sever all the chains of guilt and escape the shackles of hell, the many hellish forces that had previously been hostile to Kurosaki Ichigo suddenly reached a consensus and voluntarily contributed their power to Kurosaki Ichigo, who was fighting against the Black Blade. In an instant, their combat power was raised several levels, and they used him to thwart the Black Blade's conspiracy.

The thousands of wills of hell can reach a consensus in an instant without any communication process. It is hard to believe that there is no unified consciousness controlling them behind the scenes.

Since consciousness exists, does hell also have some kind of desire?

In theory, as long as desire exists, communication is possible.

Perhaps in the future we can actually have a chat with the consciousness of Hell and discuss establishing a base there? If Hell has the ability to move, maybe we can even ask it to act as a spaceship and take them all into space?

On his mental memo, Gu Shi quietly added a note, planning to talk to the consciousness of hell once he had the strength to escape unscathed from hell.

"Erlang, don't talk nonsense. The dangers of hell are far beyond your imagination. Never try to make contact with hell on your own."

After giving Erlang a piece of advice, Gu Shi stretched his body, which had mostly recovered, grabbed a few blue Tianpeng Pills and swallowed them, then patted the ground beside him.

"Come on, since you're all here today, I'll tell you a story. I'll give you a general overview of what hell is like."

Erlang, Tianpeng, and Bai Wenwen immediately ran to Gu Shi's side, waiting for Gu Shi to start speaking, while only Axido remained in a daze.

Unlike others who are unfamiliar with Hell, Ashido, as a Grim Reaper, had already learned about Hell during his student days. Furthermore, in his more than two hundred years of professional career, he had experienced several instances where the gates of Hell opened before his eyes, dragging the Hollows he had just killed into Hell.

In Asido's mind, "the gates of hell only admit the most heinous criminals" was like "things fall down"—it should be a basic rule of the world. But what did he just see?

Not only was the Gates of Hell tricked out by Gu Shi, but Gu Shi also grabbed a rabbit and took it back with great fanfare.

This was even more shocking to his worldview than the nobleman's plan to abandon him; its horror was comparable to the Grim Reaper and the Quincy getting married and having a Hollow.

“Ashido, come over here and listen. I have a lot of information that you don’t know.”

Seeing that Asido looked unable to accept it, Gu Shi greeted him with a mischievous grin. After Asido sat down next to him in a daze, Gu Shi cleared his throat and dropped the biggest bombshell.

"There should be quite a few Death Captains in Hell."

In one sentence, Gu Shi dealt another heavy blow to Asido's already shattered world of cognition. Before Asido could even question him excitedly, Gu Shi threw out the argument that the density of the captain-level Grim Reaper's spirit was too high to be degraded and had to be suppressed in Hell.

It must be said that this explanation is indeed logical. After all, the spiritual power of Captain-level Shinigami and Adjuchas-level Hollows is probably more than ten thousand times that of ordinary people, yet their physical size is not that exaggerated, and their spiritual particle density is extremely high, which seems completely reasonable.

Asito's mouth kept opening and closing. He wanted to refute and question, but in their past interactions, Gu Shi had proven him right more than once. Coupled with his logical explanation, Asito unconsciously began to believe Gu Shi's words.

But...those are the team captains!

Even though he had betrayed Soul Society, Asido only loathed the nobles. He still held the captains who had resolved major crises on more than one occasion in the same esteem.

But now, Gu Shi tells him that those captains who made great contributions to safeguarding peace and protecting everyone, and even sacrificed themselves on the battlefield, cannot get the peace they deserve after death. Instead, they will suffer the same fate as the most heinous criminals and be thrown into hell to suffer eternal punishment.

Asido simply couldn't accept this cruel reality.

Chapter 163 Aizen's Changes

"We're back?"

"Yes, he is indeed back."

Two young people dressed in the uniforms of the True Central Spiritual Arts Academy stood atop a high wave, gazing at the familiar land in the distance, their expressions somewhat complicated.

"I never imagined that our world really is a sphere."

Urahara Kisuke's eyes were filled with more joy and excitement. This somewhat long journey had verified the reliability of Gu Shi's words, making him wonder if Gu Shi's other unorthodox statements were just unverified truths.

Aizen, however, was lost in thought. He couldn't help but chuckle to himself. Before embarking on this journey, he had always believed that the world he had encountered was the whole picture, and he regarded those tiny places as the entirety of the world.

But look, how tiny is the place he once thought was the whole world compared to this world, no, this "planet"? And according to Kisuke Urahara's friend, such a planet is even smaller than a speck of dust in the vast starry sky.

Was he once full of pride, maneuvering and scheming against others in such a small piece of land?

For the next few hundred or even a thousand years, will he continue to cling to this tiny little place and play house with those boring people?

"It's like a joke."

"Hmm? Aizen-senpai, did you say something?"

Kisuke Urahara, standing next to Aizen, blinked. The surging waves around him made it impossible for him to hear what Aizen was saying.

"It's nothing, just some feelings."

Aizen's smile remained gentle as he stretched his back and waved with a smile.

"Alright, we should go back now. Even if we asked for leave, the teachers must be worried if we suddenly disappear for so many days."