Crossover Anime: Starting with Bankai from Demon Slayer

Chapter 323 The Optimistic and Open-minded Yaozai

As night fell completely, warm orange lights illuminated this small courtyard in Rukongai.

On the low wooden table, vegetarian dishes made by Beimingyu Xingming himself were laid out.

These light buckwheat noodles, golden-brown and crispy tempura vegetables, and steaming hot tofu miso soup, though far from the delicacies served on the tables of the Lingting nobles, are simply not as luxurious as they seem.

But for Asuka and her family, it exuded a reassuring aura.

Asuka sat cross-legged at the table, looking at the bowl of hot soup in front of her, and for a moment she felt as if she had returned to the Taisho era.

He returned to that cold winter night, to the moment when the nameless old man handed him a bowl of hot porridge.

"Asuka, try this." Shinobu sat down next to Asuka, naturally picked up a piece of pickled radish, and put it into Asuka's bowl: "This is a radish grown by Mr. Gyomei himself. It's very well pickled. Even Captain Unohana often asks me for some."

The bird picked up its chopsticks and put the radish into its mouth.

Five ants.

"It tastes good." Asuka nodded, giving a fair assessment.

The last time I ate human food was at Haru's house.

For someone like him who is used to replenishing his energy by absorbing spiritual pressure, he hasn't touched normal food in a long time.

The sweet, sour, and crisp taste made him truly feel that he had indeed returned to this world, which, though riddled with holes, still had a glimmer of light.

Watching Asuka devour her noodles, Kagaya and Amane exchanged a glance, their eyes filled with a smile of satisfaction.

The atmosphere at the dinner table gradually warmed up, and everyone tacitly avoided bringing up those heavy topics during the meal.

Shinobu Kocho softly recounted some of the changes that had occurred in Rukongai over the years, while Amane added with a smile some amusing anecdotes about the neighborhood.

The birds listened quietly most of the time, occasionally responding with a short question or two.

He could sense that although everyone was trying to appear relaxed, the gloom that shrouded everyone's hearts had not completely dissipated because of his return.

The name of that gloomy place is Aizen Sousuke.

After dinner, Xingming and Tianyin cleaned up the dishes, while Chuyi made an excuse to help and quietly left the room.

Inside the house, only Kagaya Ubuyashiki, Shinobu Kocho, and Asuka remained.

The candlelight flickered inside the lampshade, casting long shadows of the three people onto the paper sliding door.

"Alright." Asuka put down her teacup and looked up at Kagaya.

Although nominally, he was once her lord, but most of the time, Asuka treated him as a friend.

"We've finished eating, so it's time to wrap up our reminiscing."

"Kagoya, can you tell me what's going on with Nika?"

At Sōkyō Hill, he watched as the white-haired little girl rushed into Aizen's arms, completely unmoved by Shinobu's cries.

That kind of resoluteness cannot be achieved by being manipulated by simple illusions.

When Shinobu heard Asuka bring up the topic, she instinctively clenched the hem of her clothes.

She bit her lip and spoke again, blaming herself, "...It was my fault for not seeing through Aizen's disguise, which gave him the opportunity to get close to Hinata."

"No, Ren, this isn't your fault." Kagaya shook his head slightly, his face displaying an inexplicable calm.

Meeting Asuka's questioning gaze, he slowly spoke: "I don't know much about Aizen, but from our brief interactions, I've sensed that his intellect and speech far surpass those of ordinary people."

"If, as you say, even the entire Gotei 13, and even the supposedly strongest Captain-Commander Yamamoto, are manipulated by him, how could we possibly defend against his deliberate infiltration?"

Asuka frowned, tapping her fingers lightly on the table. "I once heard Shinobu say that your Ubuyashiki clan possesses a kind of 'futuristic vision' that allows you to glimpse the future."

"If that's the case, why didn't you sense anything amiss when someone as extremely dangerous as Aizen approached you? Why didn't you stop him?"

This is also something that the bird couldn't understand.

Even when Kagaya Ubuyashiki was seriously ill, he was able to grasp Muzan Kibutsuji's movements with his mysterious intuition, and even set up that earth-shattering self-destruction trap at the last moment.

Now that he has recovered his health, his intuition should be sharper than ever. How could he just stand by and watch his daughter walk into the abyss?

Faced with Asuka's questioning, Kagaya fell into a long silence.

The room was so quiet that the only sounds were the crackling of the candlelight and Shinobu's slightly rapid breathing.

After a long while, Yaozai picked up his teacup and took a sip of the tea, which had already cooled slightly.

He sighed, "Flying Bird, you overestimated the future of our race..."

"My future vision is not like that described in modern novels, where I can clearly see all the details of what will happen in the future."

"Sometimes, I do see visions of the future, but more often it's just chaos."

"It's more like an intuitive, vague perception of danger and opportunity, allowing us to smell that crucial scent at the crossroads of countless destinies."

Kagaya put down his teacup, gazing intently at the flickering candlelight, as if he had returned to those days and nights when he was troubled by images of the future.

"When Aizen first appeared beside Hinata and Hina as the captain of the Fifth Division, I did feel a little uneasy."

"I can't see that man's future, I can only see chaos and bloodshed."

"Therefore..." Kagaya's tone suddenly became somewhat strange, even tinged with a bitter smile: "I changed my approach, trying to glimpse the future of our family after our contact with that man..."

"But what I saw was not...complete despair."

Asuka's eyes narrowed slightly: "What did you see?"

Shinobu Kocho also looked nervously at Kagaya.

Kagaya slowly closed his eyes, as if reliving that scene: "In that blurry, somewhat bizarre fragment of the future, I saw Hinata..."

"Many people stood around her, including Death himself, and some strange beings I didn't recognize... She stood with them, laughing very happily..."

Hearing this, Shinobu's eyes instantly reddened again, while Asuka frowned deeply: "So, you think it's actually a good thing that she's going with Aizen? That's why you're not stopping her?"

"I'm afraid you don't know, so let me remind you: Aizen can completely control a person's five senses. Perhaps the future you see is just an illusion he wants you to see?"

Kagaya opened his eyes, his gaze clear and firm: "...It's not impossible. After all, the methods of you Shinigami are unpredictable, and I can't confirm what is real and what is illusion."

He stared directly at the birds, his eyes gleaming with a wisdom and magnanimity that transcended ordinary understanding.

"But what if it's not an illusion?"

"What if that's the inevitable outcome?"

The bird paused for a moment.

"Bird, the river of fate is never a straight line." Kagaya's voice was gentle, with a soothing power: "Sometimes, what seems like a dead end leading to the abyss may be the only bridge to a vast world."

"In this world, fortune and misfortune are always intertwined... Aizen taking her away might, in a way, be fulfilling her wish."

"If that was a hallucination, then as a father, I naturally bear the blame."

"But if that is the real future, it means that Nika will find her own meaning on that thorny path."

"She may get hurt, she may feel lost... but I believe that the children of the Ubuyashiki family will never be easily swallowed up by darkness."

After saying this, a helpless yet optimistic smile appeared on Yaozai's lips.