A Life Flashing Before One's Eyes

Below, the Demon Slaying Blade stabbed toward his ankle. Chen Tian merely raised his leg slightly, and the blade skimmed beneath his shoe without so much as grazing him.

The wild grin remained on Sukuna's face, but a flicker of shock passed through the depths of his pupils.

Mahoraga was supposed to disrupt his rhythm, force him to counterattack, and adapt to Chen Tian's slashes by sheer force!

But Chen Tian... was too bizarre!

Faced with the frenzied, seamless assault of three top-tier shikigami and the Domain's ceaseless slashes, he moved as if strolling through his own backyard! His dodges were precise to the millimeter, his blocks effortless, and he was even wielding his sword with just one hand...

Slashes? Mahoraga? In his eyes, they probably didn't even qualify as a sideshow!

This wasn't a battle at all. It was more like... he was toying with them!

Fury's low growl erupted! The two hands maintaining the Domain remained perfectly still, while the hands summoning Mahoraga suddenly shifted! Blinding flames of Cursed Energy compressed in her palms and took shape in an instant!

Two concentrated bolts of fire, molten as lava and faster than the speed of sound, tore through the air!

Their trajectories were treacherous, sealing off Chen Tian's escape routes! One arrow aimed straight for his brow, while the other cut off his retreat!

The timing was vicious, catching the split-second gap as Chen Tian turned aside from Mahoraga's sweep and knocked away a slash from the side with the Enma Sword!

Fast! Brutal! Deadly!

Domain suppression, Mahoraga's restraint, and a fiery assassination! Three killing blows at once!

Chen Tian seemed to have nowhere to dodge! He had just swung his sword to deflect a barrage of slashes, and his stance faltered slightly!

Sukuna's sneer stretched almost from ear to ear—he had him!

A metallic crash rang out, deafeningly sharp!

The dark scabbard of the Enma Sword had somehow appeared in front of Chen Tian!

It moved so fast it left no afterimage! The deadly fire arrow from the left was knocked aside with incredible precision by the scabbard, exploding into a shower of flames!

At the same time, Chen Tian's body performed a movement that was nearly impossible under the laws of physics. Pivoting on his heel, he bent backward as suddenly as a weightless willow fluff, defying inertia!

A scorching wave of fire roared past the tip of his nose! The second arrow missed and exploded in the sea of blood behind him, sending up a towering pillar of fire!

Even as he bent backward, his right hand never paused. His wrist flicked, and a streak of blue light swept upward!

The two Domain slashes that had attacked from the blind spot behind him shattered on impact!

Smooth as flowing water! All in one fluid motion!

Block, dodge, slash!

Three entirely different responses unfolded in perfect sync in the blink of an eye, as if he had rehearsed them millions of times!

The sneer on Sukuna's face froze completely.

"This is getting... a little boring."

Chen Tian sidestepped Mahoraga One's savage blow, his voice as calm as if he were commenting on the weather.

Before the words had even left his mouth, he flipped backward! In midair, his left hand formed a sword seal and rose in front of his chest.

"Phantom Sword."

He murmured the words, without warning!

Nine long swords fashioned from pure blue light appeared around Chen Tian, hovering silently, their points aimed at their target.

The nine blue lights vanished in an instant, as if they had never existed.

The next moment—

Thrust! Thrust! Thrust!

The sounds of flesh being pierced rang out!

The three Mahoraga attacking in a frenzy abruptly froze!

The tips of blue swords suddenly emerged from their chests, necks, and heads!

There was no tearing as the blades pierced their flesh. Instead, the deadly swords seemed to have simply "grown" inside them, appearing out of nowhere within their thick Cursed Energy armor and bodies!

Even the roaring slashes tearing through the Domain seemed to pause for a moment.

The shock on Sukuna's face instantly replaced his frozen expression. His four blood-red eyes fixed on the three Mahoraga pierced from within by the glowing swords.

It was useless! Mahoraga's near-rule-like ability to "adapt" couldn't even activate in time against his opponent's bizarre spatial sword technique!

The three towering figures convulsed violently. Their powerful bodies collapsed in an instant, bursting like punctured balloons into three enormous sprays of blood and flesh within the sea of blood.

The Phantom Swords vanished.

Chen Tian landed lightly, the Enma Sword angled casually toward the ground, its blue glow reflected in his impassive face.

The Domain's slashes came roaring at him again, but he casually swung his sword and cut them apart, sending sparks flying.

He looked up at the demonic figure in front of the shrine.

"Is that all? Looks like you still can't entertain me."

Chapter 20: A Life Flashing Before One's Eyes

Outside the Domain, at the edge of a skyscraper rooftop.

Satoru Gojo stood with one hand in his pocket, his blue Six Eyes fixed on the area enveloped in warped, blood-red space.

The invisible Fukuma Mizushi stood silently amid the ruins, like a massive dark-red cocoon emanating an ominous aura.

"Strange..." Gojo-sensei frowned slightly. A hint of gravity showed beneath his white eyelashes. "Shouldn't the Domain Expansion have triggered an even more violent clash of Cursed Energy? Why is it... so quiet? There's not a sound."

He rubbed his chin, sounding uncertain. "Could it... have ended that quickly? Did that guy get killed?"

Yuji Itadori crouched nearby, gripping the concrete ledge at the edge of the rooftop so tightly that his fingertips had turned pale.

He stared at the eerily silent blood-red Domain. His lips moved a few times before he finally managed to speak:

"Gojo-sensei... I don't think... Nero would lose."

"Oh?" Gojo turned his head, his gaze settling on his student's tense face. "Why not?"

Itadori took a deep breath, struggling to calm his churning emotions, then quickly recounted everything he had witnessed:

"When we were trapped inside the Culling Game barrier, he... Nero... used some method I couldn't understand to dismantle the enormous barrier covering all of Tokyo, just like taking apart a pile of wooden blocks! It felt... like he was tearing down a sheet of paper. That simple!"

"Then..." A trace of lingering fear flickered in Itadori's eyes. "The moment the barrier collapsed, it looked like he... swung his sword? Or did something? Anyway, in that same instant, every curse and Curse User with a Cursed Energy signature throughout Tokyo... was wiped out!"

He paused, his voice carrying a lingering note of disbelief:

"And back in Shibuya... when Sukuna first used his Domain Expansion, he casually cut it to pieces! Along with Megumi's Mahoraga, which he also killed with one strike..."

Itadori's voice was quiet, but every word landed on Gojo's heart like a heavy hammer.

Gojo abruptly turned around. His Six Eyes, capable of seeing through all things, widened with shock:

"Huh?! He's that strong?!"

He instinctively looked toward Nanami Kento, who had remained silent as a mountain, as if seeking confirmation:

Nanami Kento pushed up his glasses, his gaze razor-sharp behind the lenses.

His jaw tightened. Meeting Gojo's eyes, he offered no unnecessary words, only a slow, grave nod.

The air seemed to solidify.

The eerily silent blood-red Domain, Itadori's account of that terrifying feat, Nanami's wordless confirmation... An unprecedented chill crept silently up Gojo's spine.

He slowly turned back toward the terrifyingly silent Domain. Deep in his blue irises, a battle lust rose—something beyond mere curiosity, almost feverish, and mixed with the wariness of someone standing on the edge of an abyss.

"Nero..." The corners of Gojo's mouth slowly curved into an excited smile. His voice was as light as the wind.

"This just keeps getting more and more interesting."

Inside the Domain, Sukuna's rage seemed to take on physical form.

"Unable to entertain you?" The Cursed Mark on Sukuna's face twisted and warped, and his four blood-red eyes nearly spat fire. "I'm going to cut you to pieces!"

The density of the slashes suddenly doubled. Countless Lataib and Hachi intertwined into a storm of death, completely swallowing the spot where Chen Tian stood.

If anyone could see the flow of Cursed Energy, Chen Tian would have been lost in a sea of white.

Chen Tian merely bent his knees slightly as the Enma Sword traced a blue arc in his hand.

In a flash of swordlight, every incoming slash disintegrated the moment it touched the blade.

Sukuna could feel it clearly—every one of his slashes had been intercepted, without even a shock wave left behind.

"Gahhh!" Sukuna roared in fury, the veins bulging in his four arms as Cursed Energy surged wildly.

Chen Tian suddenly returned his sword to its scabbard. The metallic scrape rang especially sharply in the silent Domain.

"I'm bored."

The instant the Enma Sword left its scabbard again, all of Fukuma Mizushi shuddered violently.

The blue swordlight cleaved through the blood-red space like lightning. Everything it passed—shrine beams, bone altars, even the very rules of the Domain—was neatly split in two.

Sukuna's pupils contracted.

He saw his Domain shatter like glass, while the swordlight continued onward, heading straight for him!

The sharp crack of the Domain breaking pierced Sukuna's eardrums.

As the blue swordlight swept past his body, he felt no pain—only a bone-deep chill bursting from his marrow, as if even his soul had frozen.

His four blood-red eyes contracted violently. The blood-red Domain in his vision was like a shattered mirror, cracks racing outward from the swordlight's path.

"Impossible..." Sukuna's expression turned to shock.

He watched as his Domain completely disintegrated, the shrine beams turning to dust and the bone altars evaporating into mist.

And then—light.

Dazzling sunlight poured down like a flood, instantly swallowing all the blood-red darkness.

Sukuna instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes, but through the gaps between his fingers, he saw something even more shocking: the swordlight still had force behind it, cleaving straight toward the sky!

The leaden clouds formed from his Cursed Energy split cleanly apart, revealing the brilliant blue sky beyond.

Sunlight streamed through the rift in the clouds, casting golden shafts of light over the ruins, like salvation after divine punishment.

On the rooftop outside the Domain, Yuji Itadori sprang to his feet. "The sky... split open?!"

The Six Eyes reflected the sword mark that stretched between heaven and earth. "That strike... even cut through the weather."

In Sukuna's eyes, the blinding sunlight began to fill his entire vision, until...

Nothing remained but an endless white.

Sukuna's blood-red pupils contracted. Only then did he make out the smiling face before him, its skin marked with stitches.

"Yo, King of Curses..." Mahito tilted his head, his grin stretching almost from ear to ear. "I've been waiting for you."

Sukuna lowered his head to look at his body, then raised his eyes to sweep over the pure white void.

Silent, empty, cold. He tugged at the corner of his mouth, wearing a smile of unclear meaning.

"Heh." Sukuna's voice was calm, betraying no emotion. "Seeing you tells me how things ended for me."

Mahito burst into a shrill laugh, his body shaking irregularly like a melting wax figure. "Hahahahaha! A failure! A complete failure! So, what was it like, getting cut in two by that monster?"

Sukuna paid no attention to Mahito's laughter. He lifted his head, his gaze seeming to pierce through the pure white and look toward some distant place that did not exist.

"It was pretty good," he said flatly.

A new figure appeared in the pale emptiness.

Ryomen Sukuna stood quietly behind Mahito, his long black hair hanging loose. His eyes, beneath their stitches, curved with the familiar, unfathomable smile. He said nothing, only watched Sukuna in silence.

Then a bone-chilling cold spread through the void, and tiny crystals of ice formed against the pure white background.

Uraume appeared without a sound, dropping to one knee and bowing his head low, his face hidden in shadow.

Ice crystals covered most of his body, like frozen tears.

"Lord Sukuna..." Uraume's voice was hoarse and broken, weighed down by unbearable grief and resentment.

He raised his head slightly. Beneath his silver hair, his cold eyes were filled with desperate disbelief. "How could you..."

Sukuna's gaze passed over Uraume, who remained bowed before him. "Why the long face!"

Sukuna's low rebuke made Uraume's shoulders tremble, and ice crystals fell in a rush from his lowered eyelashes.