The lesser undercards down in Seireitei are all but finished. Yhwach, Haschwalth, and Ishida have arrived at the realm of Royal Palace, and are met by Zero Squad Captain and Royal Guard Shutara Senjumaru, who cuts a regal, aloof figure as she summons the Soul King’s Blade.
But before that, we get a brief flashback to centuries earlier, when Hyousube Ichibei was proposing a non-aggression pact between the Soul King and the Quincy. Turns out Yhwach is the Soul King’s erstwhile son, and basically tells Ichibei to shove his pact.
While this is going on, Shiba Ganju joins Ichigo, Orihime, Chad, and Yoruichi aboard the cobbled together rocket to take them up to the palace, claiming to have been given info on the place by his sister. Orihime warmly comments how this feels like when they went to Soul Society to rescue Rukia. Now it’s Ishida-kun they hope to bring home.
Yhwach counters Shutara’s guards with the “W” Sternritter, a two-tongued weirdo who can’t be touched, but when he’s dispatched, the Quincy King summons his own Royal Guard: Askin plus three other powerful Sternritter we hadn’t seen in action before.
One of them has a big-ass rifle, which he uses to shoot Shutara in the head and then destroy the five Squad Zero’s floating islands. This is looking too easy for the Quincy…and it is. All of their gains were an illusion weaved by Shutara.
In reality, Yhwach and his people are trapped within a giant cage made of trees grown forth from Hikifune Kirio’s body. Kirinji Tenjirou shows up, as well as Nimaiya Oh-Etsu with a new prototype zanpakuto that’s so sharp that no amount of strikes can can dull it and no sheath can hold it.
Nimaiya uses this ridiculously powerful sword to defeat the three Quincy Royal Guards with one stroke; I won’t bother with their names since they simply didn’t last long enough to note them. Askin manages to just barely survive the one stroke, but he doesn’t survive a second.
Yhwach, apparently unfazed by the hasty fall of four of his top generals, manages to slip outside Hikifune’s tree cage. This makes Hyousube “Osho” Ichibei, whom he met with and did not defeat back in the black-and-white flashback, the only one between him and the Soul King.
Fortunately, Ichibei doesn’t seem any less capable of repelling Yhwach as he was back then. And even if Yhwach does manage to kill or get past him, Ichigo and his friends are on their way.
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