"Naraku, what do you think?"
Aizen looked out calmly over the empty, silent village, attempting to discern even the slightest clue from the details before him.
On the surface, this place looked no different from any other village in the Sabitsura District.
Except that not a single soul could be seen.
Traces of daily life remained, as if the owners had simply stepped out for an urgent matter.
"Stand there and watch."
Naraku Sora looked at his friend beside him with the gaze one might reserve for a fool. "You don't actually expect me to find clues about a murderer, do you?"
Aizen: "..."
He really had been influenced by that guy, Hirako Shinji, to actually pin his hopes on Naraku Sora.
Ever since he was forced to join Squad 5, Captain Hirako Shinji seemed to have a screw loose, assigning him tasks constantly for no apparent reason.
And they were always the kind of tricky missions that no one else could complete.
Just as Naraku Sora had said when they first met, that guy was clearly targeting him on purpose.
To this day, Aizen still wasn't clear on how exactly he had offended Hirako Shinji.
'Perhaps he simply finds me an eyesore?'
Aizen tried to use Naraku Sora's way of thinking to find an answer.
'Impossible. Hirako Shinji doesn't look like a brainless idiot. How could he target a subordinate Soul Reaper for such a reason?'
Aizen shook his head and refocused his attention on the environment before him.
He quietly released a portion of his Reiatsu, instantly covering the entire village.
While he was busy with that, Naraku Sora, relying on his keen senses and the courage provided by having Aizen as a safety net, walked straight in.
He wasn't very good at delicate work like Reiatsu sensing, but he could try observing with his eyes.
Maybe he'd get lucky and find something.
Walking along the country path, the doors of the houses on both sides were wide open. Let alone souls, he couldn't even find a breathing living creature.
After searching three houses in a row, Naraku Sora found nothing.
However, just as he was about to give up, a smell that was strange yet carried a hint of familiarity suddenly flooded his nostrils.
"What is this?"
Naraku Sora frowned, trying to analyze the relevant components from the scent.
It was something he had never encountered in his memory, yet it gave him the illusion of being familiar.
He followed the direction the smell was coming from.
Soon, Naraku Sora stopped in front of a house on the very edge of the village.
He cautiously pushed the door open and entered.
On the other side, Aizen also walked into the village, frowning as he observed his surroundings.
"The silence is a bit eerie."
"Normally, even if all the souls in a village were killed, this situation wouldn't occur."
"Unless there is some other unknown danger hiding here..."
The interior of the house was extremely simple, without even a decent piece of furniture.
However, since Sabitsura was the 64th District, this was normal. Unless one lived in the lower-numbered districts, the living conditions were generally quite harsh.
Naraku Sora finally found a trace of anomaly inside the dim house.
In the corner, a viscous liquid was spread out, emitting a strange smell that seemed completely out of place with the surroundings.
Naraku Sora held his Zanpakutō and leaned in toward the liquid. Just as he was about to use his scabbard to test its depth, the back of his neck suddenly went cold.
In that instant, he snapped his head up.
A pair of blood-red eyes were embedded in a hideous face. Lacking eyelids for protection, they looked particularly abrupt and terrifying.
A twisted, deformed creature was crouching in the crevice between the ceiling and the wall, looking at him greedily.
It was as if it had seen a peerless delicacy.
Its bloody maw opened wide, and saliva dripped down, landing precisely on the puddle of liquid below.
Case solved.
Naraku Sora looked at the deformed creature hanging from the ceiling with a look of disgust, expressing that he had never seen such an ugly thing.
Even those two Adjuchas were much better looking than the monster before him.
The hunched figure seemed human, but it had three arms on the left side and seven legs on the right, and its whole body was covered in long black hair.
It was trying its best to look human, but failing miserably.
"Although I don't know what the hell you are," Naraku Sora sneered as he drew his blade, "it doesn't matter to me, because—"
"Any evil will be f*cking brought to justice!"
The moment his voice fell, the monster on the ceiling lunged down, wrapped in a foul-smelling wind, arriving in an instant.
During his days in the Central Great Prison, Naraku Sora had learned a truth.
If you want those heinous villains to be obedient, you have to be more brutal than they are.
Claws as sharp as blades slammed directly into the sword's edge, actually emitting the sound of clashing metal.
It looked like flesh, but it was actually Hierro.
Facing such an opponent, Naraku Sora showed no fear. Instead, the corners of his mouth turned up, and violent Reiatsu surged forth.
"Delicious... tasty... sweet... you smell so good..."
The monster was close at hand, its blood-red eyes bulging as they stared straight at Naraku Sora. A long tongue extended from its bloody mouth, trying to lick the "delicacy" in front of it.
"If you like it, then eat your fill!"
While suppressing the monster's sharp claws with one hand, Naraku Sora directly activated Hadō #11. Tsuzuri Raiden.
Brilliant golden lightning surged along the Zanpakutō, instantly engulfing the twisted body in sparks.
The powerful electric current coursed through it, causing the monster to fall into a brief state of paralysis and stiffness.
In a flash, solid Reiatsu, red as blood, erupted and wrapped tightly around the silver-white blade.
Horizontal slash!
Crimson sprayed everywhere.
The monster flew backward, the flesh on its chest bursting open to reveal bones and internal organs sliced neatly by the blade, spreading a stench of blood and rot.
Cut in two with a single strike.
However, even though its body was cut in half, the monster did not die. Flesh grew wildly at the severed section, forming tentacles that tried to reconnect the halves.
Naraku Sora did not hesitate. With a backhand swing, he delivered another fierce slash, flipping the creature's skull right off. The bulging eyeballs suddenly exploded, turning into a mist of blood.
By the time Aizen arrived, only a mess remained.
A familiar figure stood amidst the gore, grinning at him. The stark white teeth were particularly striking against the crimson that covered the ground.
For a moment, Aizen almost thought his Reiatsu sensing was broken.
If he hadn't noticed the outbreak of battle, he wouldn't have sensed the monster's Reiatsu at all.
Everything encountered today was somewhat too bizarre.
Aizen walked quickly to Naraku Sora. After confirming that the blood on the guy's body belonged to someone else, he didn't ask any further questions about his well-being.
"How did you find the opponent?"
"Intuition."
Naraku Sora looked completely honest.
He couldn't very well say he smelled the monster's stench and chased it all the way here, could he?
As the dignified 10th Seat of the Prison, didn't he need to maintain his image?
Aizen glanced expressionlessly at the guy in front of him. His intuition told him that Naraku Sora was lying.