"Jogo! I've told you before, haven't I?"
He paused, each word hammering into Jogo's heart like a heavy mallet.
"Don't provoke me?"
Jogo's pupils snapped wide open. Bloodshot veins burst across his eyes, his heart gripped by an unspeakable terror.
Provoke him?! Are you kidding?! Isn't this demon supposed to be lying low on North Road?! You'd run if you saw him coming—who the hell would dare provoke him?!
"I..." Jogo's lips trembled, forcing out a bitter explanation, "It wasn't..."
Chen Tian's mouth twitched, the curve holding no warmth—only the coldest mockery.
"My house," his voice dropped abruptly, like a frigid wind scraping out of an abyss, "has been reduced to rubble."
Jogo's pupils shrank to pinpricks, his mind going blank.
House? What house? The one in Suginami Ward?! Destroyed?! By who?!
It wasn't me! I swear it wasn't me, boss!?
The roar inside him nearly burst his throat. A crushing sense of injustice, mixed with even greater terror, chilled his blood to ice! Which idiot caused this mess and was pinning it on him?!
"I..." Jogo still struggled to explain, his voice trembling.
The world fell silent, leaving only a faint hum in the air.
No drawing of a blade. No precursor of cursed energy erupting.
A blue-white slash, as if cutting through space itself, tore across the entire domain without warning!
It appeared out of nowhere—no one had time to react.
The expression on Jogo's face hadn't even shifted from shock, rage, and terror before his instincts forced him to lunge backward—
The twisted, evil black tree that formed the core of his domain "Vast Myriad Realms" froze mid-motion. The countless malformed fetal faces on its trunk locked in place, and the grotesque branches like pregnant bellies stiffened unnaturally.
A hair-thin line of light pierced straight down from the crown's center, spreading to the roots.
Boom!!!
The colossal black tree split cleanly down the middle, collapsing left and right!
A piercing shriek of countless infants erupted from within the trunk—the death cries of the imprisoned cursed spirits at its core, severed in an instant! The foundation of the domain was cut through with a single slash!
Vast Myriad Realms—annihilated!
Whoosh—!
The backlash of the domain's collapse sent Jogo flying backward, blood spraying from his mouth. Not because he was injured—but because he hadn't even seen how Chen Tian drew his blade.
That single slash had shattered not just the domain, but a thousand years of his understanding—that power could be so utterly unreasonable.
"You..."
Chen Tian's icy voice sounded without warning, right at the back of his neck.
"What are you looking at?"
Jogo's entire body stiffened, instincts screaming danger! He desperately tried to widen the distance, but Chen Tian's figure shrank in his vision.
His body was pulling away—so why... couldn't he feel his limbs? A tearing, alien sensation seized his heart!
He looked down—
His body was still flying backward! But his arms and legs hung suspended in midair, frozen at the spot where Chen Tian had been!
The severed edges were smooth as mirrors, not even bone fragments visible.
Half a second later, blood erupted like a fountain held back too long, gushing from the severed limbs!
The dull sound of flesh tearing finally reached his ears.
"Gah?!" A choked, guttural cry tore from Jogo's throat, only now registering the agony.
He watched his own limbs, like discarded parts, fall helplessly from the air, thudding onto the rubble-strewn ground.
Dust stained dark red by splattered blood.
His body, now missing all four limbs, crashed heavily into the rubble, sending up a cloud of dust. The violent impact and searing pain made Jogo's vision blur, but his survival instinct overrode everything.
Reverse Cursed Technique!?
The vast cursed energy within him surged wildly. The ragged, bloody stumps immediately began to writhe and regenerate—new arms and legs visibly taking shape!
But just as the flesh was about to form—
A shoe sole, covered in gravel and dust, ground mercilessly into his face! The force nearly drove his head into the earth!
"Gyaaah—!" Jogo's face was crushed, his features twisted, bones cracking under unbearable pressure.
Shame! A shame that pierced his soul! But the threat of death was greater!
Gravity Technique Jun!?
Forgetting to counterattack, Jogo instinctively activated his technique, his crushed face aimed upward, his will locked onto that figure of absolute dread—Chen Tian! The cursed energy within him erupted, applying the gravity manipulation technique without reservation onto Chen Tian's body!
He would crush this bastard into a meat patty!
An invisible force field instantly enveloped Chen Tian. Yet—
Chen Tian's suspended body remained utterly motionless. Not even the hem of his hanging clothes stirred a fraction.
The foot pressing down on Jogo's head remained steady, firm, even pressing harder downward, as if the technique Jogo had unleashed with all his might was nothing more than a gentle breeze brushing against an unyielding boulder.
"Huh?!" Jogo's eyes bulged, disbelief flooding his mind. He could feel the gravity field activating, the Gravity Technique truly in effect—so why?! Why was it having no effect at all?!
Gravity Technique Thousand Jun!
Jogo gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead as he poured out gravity again, the air itself emitting a faint hum from the sudden, crushing weight.
Chen Tian kept one hand in his pocket, looking down at him with eyes cold as ice. Not only was he not crushed, but the foot on Jogo's head suddenly felt the gravity load double!
Crack! The ground beneath Jogo instantly fractured and sank deeper! He felt like his own spine was screaming under the strain.
"Keep going," Chen Tian's voice remained flat. "Try harder. Let's see how much gravity it takes to crush your own head."
That sentence hit Jogo like a bucket of ice water.
He understood in an instant! The gravity he applied to Chen Tian was like an ant trying to shake a tree—utterly useless!
Instead, this terrifying gravity field seemed to act directly on the area beneath Chen Tian's "foot"—or rather, on "himself" under that foot!
The stronger the gravity he applied, the more terrifying the force of Chen Tian stepping on him! It wasn't Chen Tian pressing down hard—it was Jogo himself using his Gravity Technique to madly crush his own head!!!
Jogo's face twisted in terror, and he immediately cut off the Gravity Technique's output! The useless force field on Chen Tian vanished in an instant.
The pressure from that foot eased slightly, but it still pinned him down like a block of iron.
"Nero! Listen to me!" Jogo's voice cracked with fear and panic, blood seeping from the corner of his twisted mouth. "It wasn't me! It wasn't me who destroyed your house! It wasn't my fault!"
"I know." Chen Tian's voice carried no emotion, as if stating an irrelevant fact. "It was just collateral damage from players fighting in the Culling Game, right? I know all of it."
"Then..." Jogo's mind went blank, almost collapsing.
You know? Bro?! You know and you still came for me?! You still chopped me into a stump and stomped on me?! What the hell is this?! Go after the one who did it!
A mix of immense grievance and terror clogged his throat, leaving him unable to spit out another word.
Chen Tian looked down at his face, twisted from the stomping and shock, and added coldly, pronouncing his fate:
"But since you're the game's organizer and didn't set a rule preventing players from destroying anything related to me, I'm going to tear your crappy game apart right in front of you."
The foot on his face lifted slightly. Just as Jogo thought the other was about to let him go and his technique could finally reactivate, his flesh frantically regenerating—
The foot slammed down with the force of ten thousand jun!
Target—Jogo's head, still pondering "Why am I the one getting hurt?"
Dust and rubble exploded upward like a bomb!
Chapter 13: Smashing the Barrier
Port of Dongjin, ruined battlefield.
Kashimo Hajime shook his wrist, sticky blood dripping from his fingertips.
The player at his feet had gone silent, their body twisted and embedded in the cracked asphalt.
"Tch," he clicked his tongue, his eyes filled with bored irritation. "How dull."
He looked up at the gray sky sealed by the Culling Game barrier, his voice carrying a breath of longing: "Haguruma... you bastard... where are you hiding? Come out and fight!"
The moment his words faded—
Woom—!!! An unprecedented, scalp-tingling tremor swept through all of Dongjin!
It was as if countless strings stretched to their limit were plucked simultaneously, emitting a high-pitched wail!
Then came the sharp, piercing—
Crack! Crack crack crack crack!
Like a massive glass dome about to shatter! The sound was so dense it made hearts stop!
Kashimo Hajime snapped his head up, his pupils contracting sharply!
There, on the semi-transparent barrier wall that had been glowing faintly with an ominous light, countless glaring blue-white fissures suddenly appeared!
Each one radiated a cold, pure, ultimate aura of destruction!
Countless fine but lethal slashes of light materialized out of nowhere, dense as a spiderweb, madly spreading and intersecting across the entire sky!
"What the hell?!" Kashimo Hajime's entire body tensed, his violent cursed energy instinctively exploding, lightning crackling around him!
An unprecedented sense of danger hit him like ice water!
The next second, his gaze locked onto the center of the sky where the cracks were thickest!
A figure hovered there.
White hair wildly whipping in the chaotic energy currents, black clothes flapping loudly.
His right hand casually held something...
No, someone!
A young man in tattered robes, his limbs severed at the roots, relying on Reverse Cursed Technique to painfully regenerate flesh buds, drenched in blood and battered to the extreme!
Kashimo Hajime's eyes instantly flew wide!
His mouth unconsciously parted slightly. He recognized that face!
"Jogo?!" That side-scarred curse spirit, who had turned the entire Curse world upside down, whose very name made even the oldest curse masters feel an unfathomable dread—Jogo?!
And now he was like a torn cloth sack, being carried in someone's hand like garbage?!
This utterly shocking scene plunged Kashimo Hajime's mind into a brief blank.
He stared fixedly at the cold, indifferent profile of the white-haired youth in the sky, his violent battle intent replaced by an overwhelming shock and suspicion.
This guy... who is he?!
Chen Tian glanced up at the blue-white cracks still lingering across the sky. Those traces of blade light, like frozen lightning, flickered on and off against the dim barrier wall.
"Nero, you can't destroy the barrier." Jogo's voice carried a hoarse rasp, the broken roar of his throat making his speech sound like wind through a crack. "This barrier was carefully prepared by me over countless years. Even if you destroy the barrier at the Port of Dongjin, barriers in other places can still complete the ritual here."
He suddenly let out a hoarse laugh, the cross-sections of his severed limbs squirming with pale pink flesh buds. "You think that's enough to..."
"Is that so?" Chen Tian turned his head, white hair falling over his eyes, obscuring his gaze. "Then I'll just destroy all ten of your 'carefully prepared' barrier points at once."
Jogo's laughter abruptly stopped, his regenerating eyes bulging in shock.
Ten? How did he know the exact number? In his investigation, Nero had never even bothered with the Curse world.
Before he could find an answer, Chen Tian's figure had already turned into a faint black afterimage.
The next second, on the highest hotel rooftop in the Port of Dongjin, the air twisted slightly.
Chen Tian appeared on the rooftop carrying Jogo, casually tossing him aside with a dull thud.
"Cough—!" Jogo was thrown so hard his breath seized, the half-regrown flesh on his severed hands instantly splitting open.
Chen Tian didn't look at him, his left hand loosely gripping empty air at his side.
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