end of hypnosis7 (Truth Under My Strings)

Aizen closes on Rukia beside the wrecked scaffold and hauls her up by the collar, noting that his spiritual pressure has left her too drained to stand on her own. He spots Ichigo still clinging to consciousness and warns the boy that his split torso is held together only by his spine, so rising is physically hopeless no matter how fierce his will. Telling Ichigo his role in the affair is finished, Aizen begins to unspool the truth behind everything.

Aizen admits he foresaw the intruders landing in western Rukongai, staked out the area, dropped the stone barrier around the Seireitei, and had Gin personally drive Ichigo off, leaving Kukaku's cannon as the sole way inside. The spectacle of the invasion kept every Shinigami occupied, letting a captain's murder pass almost unremarked. He then stuns Ichigo by revealing that the boy has been serving Kisuke Urahara all along, having come to save Rukia on Urahara's instructions. Aizen lectures that a Shinigami's four disciplines each stall at a fixed ceiling and that only Hollowfication breaks past it, prompting Ichigo to recall his inner Hollow and Rukia to remember Kaien Shiba's death. He names the object that dissolves the wall between Hollow and Shinigami in an instant: the Hogyoku, forged by Urahara outside Soul Society's laboratories. Unable to destroy his own creation, Urahara sealed it inside a soul, choosing Rukia as its vault, then slipped her a Reishi-free gigai that would quietly drain her powers until she became an ordinary human, concealing the orb rather than rescuing her. As Aizen turns to what he did once Rukia resurfaced, Komamura crashes down and swings Tenken at him in a fury.

This chapter is the seventh of the ten-part end of hypnosis sequence and appears in the twentieth collected volume, which carries the same title and features Gin Ichimaru on its cover. Tite Kubo first published it in Japan through Shueisha in late 2005, with Viz Media issuing the English edition in 2007. The material was adapted into the anime's sixty-first episode.