The Fire 3

When Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto reveals Zanka no Tachi, Haschwalth scoffs at the blackened, burnt-out blade, but the leader in Yhwach's guise cautions him against contempt: the Bankai gathers every flame of Ryūjin Jakka into the sword itself, letting its bearer end a fight in one cut by wrapping whatever it strikes in explosive fire. Recalling that his foe saw this weapon a thousand years past, Yamamoto doubts it is quite as remembered and dares him to find out. The mere presence of the released blade begins to parch the whole of Soul Society, drying Ukitake's throat, splitting Shunsui's lip, and forcing Unohana to silently beg the commander to finish before his power consumes everything.

The heat melts the wings of the Daiguren Hyōrinmaru that Cang Du had stolen, and Hitsugaya notes that every drop of water in the realm is evaporating. When Yamamoto's first strike merely slices his opponent's cloak without igniting, the leader wonders where the flames have gone, until a downward slash grazes the ground and erases a huge stretch of it along with a building. Yamamoto names this the eastern form, Kyokujitsujin, which concentrates all his fire into the blade's tip to wipe out anything it touches rather than radiate heat, and warns that not even the Quincy's finest defense, Blut Vene, can endure it. The leader tries to cut him down from beyond the blade's reach, only to find his own Reishi Sword mostly erased and Yamamoto untouched. Calling him foolish for not listening, the commander reveals the western counterpart, Zanjitsu Gokui, cloaking his entire body below the neck in flames that reach fifteen million degrees, so that wielding his Bankai turns him and his sword into something like the sun.

The eighth chapter of the fifty-seventh volume, Out of Bloom, this installment was adapted within episode 372. It lays out the first two of Zanka no Tachi's directional forms, East and West, and dramatizes the Bankai's danger to friend and foe alike by having its ambient heat threaten the entire Seireitei. The opponent remains the disguised Royd Lloyd.