"Granted."
Facing Sasakibe's kneeling bow, Rosse smiled faintly and nodded in an extremely casual manner.
Under the shocked gaze of everyone present, he spoke those words of pardon in the calmest tone possible, words enough to stun everyone.
'He just... agreed?'
Hearing that light promise, every surviving Soul Reaper at the scene stared blankly in disbelief at Rosse in the sky.
They felt like the world had gone insane.
Just moments ago, when Rosse killed Kuchiki Byakuya and the others, he had been ruthless and decisive.
He possessed the power to destroy everything in an instant, so why would he agree so readily to such an unreasonable request, one that could even be called the seed of future revenge?
Wasn't he afraid these people would rise again in the future?
In the entire battlefield, only Aizen, who had been floating silently beside Rosse like a shadow the whole time, watched everything with a knowing smile.
Among everyone present, probably only Aizen could completely understand what Rosse was thinking at this moment.
Because Aizen understood clearly.
From the very beginning, Rosse descended upon Soul Society only to enjoy an entertaining play to pass the time. That was all.
As for how the play ended, who lived and who died, whether Soul Society survived or fell, Rosse did not care about any of it.
He had already handed the choice completely over to the actors themselves and allowed them to decide.
He disdained deliberately guiding things or forcefully deciding an ending.
Did someone want to die gloriously for honor like Kuchiki Byakuya?
Fine. Rosse would grant them a song of death.
Did someone want to cast aside dignity and endure humiliation like Sasakibe Chojiro so that a trace of Soul Society's bloodline could continue?
Fine. Rosse would generously grant them a chance to keep living.
Instead, people like Kyoraku Shunsui, who constantly struggled to survive, would continue suffering under torment.
The more they wanted victory, the more pain they felt.
The simpler their thoughts were, the easier things became.
There were no schemes, no concern about wiping out every last root.
Rosse stood far higher than they had imagined.
From the moment he first appeared in the Bleach world, his strength had already surpassed ordinary captains by far.
At that time, aside from the Soul King, nobody in the entire world was his match.
From beginning to end, he had never treated the people of Soul Society as opponents.
In front of him, these so-called 147 sparks of hope could develop for another ten million years and still only be dust he could crush at any moment.
Why would he need to fear them?
The ridiculous part was this: Even now, even after everything that happened, the Soul Reapers still failed to understand this point.
They simply could not understand that if all they wanted was a stable and peaceful life... they never needed to gather like fools and resist Rosse, trying to destroy him.
As long as every Soul Reaper had chosen submission from the start, as long as they accepted the new order Rosse established and treated him as the new Soul King, with Rosse's tolerance, he truly would not have minded casually granting these insects eternity. The lives they lived would have been better and more peaceful than during Head Captain Yamamoto's era.
After all, Rosse alone caused far less destruction than the nobles had over the past thousand years.
It was the Soul Reapers themselves who personally strangled peace with their ridiculous arrogance and prejudice and chose this dead end filled with corpses.
Watching as an outsider, Aizen pushed up his black-framed glasses.
The smile on his face slowly faded, while waves unlike anything before rose in his heart.
At this moment, he finally understood with complete clarity.
Back when he first met Rosse, the distance between them had been unimaginably vast.
Today, his strength was probably no weaker than the Rosse of that time.
But in terms of vision and conviction, he was still far, far beneath him.
Even now, if he himself sat upon that supreme throne and faced these ignorant rebels who challenged him again and again, he absolutely would have crushed them mercilessly with overwhelming power and erased them together with Soul Society without leaving behind a single hidden danger.
He could never do what Rosse was doing now, treating them like insignificant wildflowers by the roadside, forgiving their foolish actions with a kind of almost cruel tolerance.
In Rosse's eyes, those captains and Royal Guard members fighting desperately from beginning to end were merely toys.
And since they were toys, their life or death did not matter. From start to finish, they were only playthings.
Snap!
As Rosse casually rubbed his fingertips together, a crisp snapping sound echoed across the silent battlefield.
In an instant, the sky seemed to split open. A gentle but impenetrable golden beam poured down from the heavens, completely covering Sasakibe Chojiro and the 147 lucky survivors behind him.
Inside the beam, the suffocating smell of blood outside was entirely cut off.
The moment the light descended, the remaining Soul Reapers struggling to survive among the ruins all raised their heads together.
On their dust-covered and bloodstained faces appeared envy, regret, and even jealousy.
Of course they wanted to survive too. Deep down, they were screaming desperately that they wanted to surrender.
But in despair, they realized nobody around them was like Sasakibe Chojiro, someone important enough and willing to abandon all dignity to beg for a chance to live on their behalf.
Besides, Sasakibe had not even protected all of Squad One. He had only selected veterans with absolute conviction. Why would he care about people like them, whose beliefs shifted with the wind?
Aizen stood upright in the air with one hand in his pocket.
He lowered his head slightly. Behind his lenses, his gaze swept down, taking in every complicated, ugly, and cowardly expression below.
There were actually still many people alive on the battlefield.
But unfortunately, in Aizen's eyes, most of them were pathetic followers.
Their souls had no opinions of their own. They merely drifted with the current during the storm.
What were they waiting for?
Were they hoping another hero would step forward and speak for them?
Or deep down, did they believe low-level nobodies like themselves had no right to make requests of a god high above them?
"What laughable weak-minded thinking," Aizen sneered beneath.
In the eyes of these Soul Reapers, Sasakibe Chojiro was a respected captain, so he had the right to make demands.
But in the eyes of an elephant, was there really any difference between ants and grasshoppers?
To Rosse, Sasakibe Chojiro was at most a slightly larger grasshopper that jumped a little higher.
Since Rosse could agree to Sasakibe's request out of appreciation for pure conviction, then he could also agree to any ordinary squad member who dared step forward and face a god at this moment.
Unfortunately, among these Soul Reapers, not a single person remained with the courage to take that step.
In truth, although the army surrounding Squad Ten today looked enormous, if one counted carefully, the actual participants made up less than half the total forces of the Gotei Thirteen.
Where had the other half gone?
Some were too frightened to face Rosse's pressure.
Some benefited from Rosse's new policies and felt grateful.
Others simply wanted to protect themselves and stayed behind closed doors instead of joining today's confrontation.
But these clever people did not understand one thing.
Inside the meat grinder where the old order and the new world collided, abstaining never meant safety.
When the storm arrived and everyone needed to choose a side, remaining neutral was itself a position.
Perhaps if Ichibe and the Royal Guard had won today, they could have tolerated the Soul Reapers who did not participate for the sake of rebuilding Soul Society. At most, they would have pushed them to the margins.
But on Rosse's side, there was absolutely no room for fence-sitters.
To the king of the new world, loyalty that was not absolute was absolute disloyalty.
Only those who chose him without hesitation in desperate circumstances had a path to survival.
From the moment most of Soul Society's upper ranks chose to raise their swords instead of lowering themselves to seek continuation, the ending of Soul Society had already been decided.
"Does anyone else want to step forward?"
Rosse floated leisurely in the air, his long fingers lightly tapping the sword hilt.
His voice was not loud, yet it carried a pressure that made people's souls shake.
He was not in a hurry at all.
As the sole director of this grand play, the most exciting final scene had already arrived. He had more than enough patience to enjoy the last sights upon these ruins.
However, silence filled the space below.
"Rosse. Stop waiting. Everything is over."
Amid the hopeless silence, Nimaiya Oetsu let out a heavy sigh, as if he had aged a thousand years in an instant.
He raised his hand, forcefully shook the dirt from Sayafushi's sheath, then used the sword tip to support himself as he staggered upright.
"I have to admit it was our arrogance that buried Soul Society with our own hands."
Nimaiya Oetsu raised his head and looked at the sky with mixed emotions.
In truth, he understood this better than anyone.
Back when Rosse first arrived in Soul Society, although he had already been very strong, he absolutely had not reached today's untouchable level.
At that time, if the Royal Guard had not remained aloof, if the five of them had attacked together with everything they had, they might have been able to eliminate him before he fully developed.
In fact, when Aizen went to Hueco Mundo and brought back Rosse, such a huge event could not possibly have escaped the Royal Guard, who monitored everything across the Three Realms.
If they had only lowered their heads slightly and looked down at Soul Society a few more times, the actions of Aizen and Rosse back then would have been impossible to hide from their senses.
But they did not.
They sat arrogantly among the clouds of the Royal Palace, blindly believing in the Soul King's absolute power, foolishly convinced that no living being in this world could challenge the Soul King's authority, and that no power could overturn an order that had lasted for a million years.
Thinking back on it now, they had been wrong.
Even taking ten thousand steps back, even if Rosse, this anomaly, had never appeared in the world, looking only at Aizen's terrifying growth speed and careful planning, if they had continued their past numbness and carelessness, then in a few hundred years, or even just a few decades, they still would not have been able to stop Aizen from dragging them down from their pedestal.
So no matter what, the Soul King used as a lynchpin probably would have died sooner or later.
This rigid world would eventually face destruction.
The only difference was whose hands it would die by.
Nimaiya Oetsu turned his head and exchanged a deep look with Ichibe Hyosube, whose body was charred black not far away.
One glance felt like ten thousand years.
These two ancient members of the Royal Guard, who had lived for endless ages, both saw the same resolve in each other's eyes.
There was no discussion, not even a signal.
The two of them suddenly shattered the ruins beneath their feet. One held an unmatched sharp blade, the other gripped a giant brush. Like one black and one white streak of light carrying absolute resolve, they launched their final charge toward Rosse in the sky.
As the only two beings from the current Soul Society who had existed for over a million years, they had already lived through unimaginably long ages.
Other people could retreat if they knew they could not win. They could surrender. They could flee.
But the two of them could not retreat.
Life may once have been important to them when they were just born.
But after the endless passage of time, when both the Soul King and the world they were meant to protect had already reached an irreversible end, then these immortal bodies they had been granted completely lost the meaning of existing.
After losing the duty that supported their existence, even if they rediscovered the original ideals and convictions they once held, what right or reason did they still have to continue living?
Slash!
In the sky, two dull tearing sounds rang out almost at the same time.
There was no shocking collision of spiritual pressure, nor any grand clash of techniques.
As Rosse swung his blade with complete casualness, two sprays of crimson blood bloomed in midair.
Endless blood rain turned into a fine red mist and scattered downward from the heavens.
The falling droplets struck the ruins with soft sounds, like a sorrowful elegy mourning these two ancient gods who had protected the world for a million years.
To be fair, Ichibe and Nimaiya Oetsu could not truly be called competent protectors of Soul Society.
They allowed the rotten system to continue, ignored the cries of the lower classes, and even permitted the Soul King to be mutilated into a human pillar.
But it could not be denied that they truly used their bodies and strength to forcibly maintain the fragile balance of the Three Realms for over a million years.
So long that even they themselves had forgotten why they first drew their blades, yet they still clung to the duty of maintaining stability like instinct.
Only this time, the abilities they took pride in appeared far too weak before absolute power and calculation.
Even so, they still did not choose surrender.
After losing all hope, they still chose to use their own way to bring themselves to their final chapter.
A man cannot decide when he is born, but he can decide when he dies.