When Sukuna's laughter reached its peak and abruptly died away, Chen Tian's voice rang clearly through the silence. Each word fell like ice hitting the ground, chilling to the bone:
His voice was not loud, yet it clearly overpowered the wind whistling through the ruins and the faint wails in the distance.
"Entertain me."
Chapter 6: King of Slashes? More Like a Jester!
"Entertain me."
The four words crashed into the wild laughter like a boulder!
Sukuna's laughter cut off as if a beast had been throttled, leaving only a suppressed, uncontrollable rush of excitement hissing in his throat.
The wild red light in his eyes flared, and the black Cursed Marks on his face seemed ready to burst into flames!
How many years had it been? No! Had anyone ever dared speak to him in that tone?!
"Ha ha ha ha! Good!!" Sukuna's wild laughter erupted again, shaking rubble loose from the ruins. His voice brimmed with pure destructive desire. "Let this great one see what you're made of!!! Open—!!!"
He clapped his hands together. The raging flames instantly compressed and collapsed between his palms! The air screamed as the heat scorched it! The flames twisted wildly in his grasp, taking shape!
The next instant, his left index and middle fingers formed a sword sign while his other three fingers curled loosely, as though gripping a giant bow! His right hand pulled back as if drawing a bow with immense strength!
A massive, several-meter-long bow of raging flames and curses appeared out of thin air!
Its string thrummed as it drew taut. A scarlet arrow, radiating an aura that could incinerate all things, locked onto the tiny figure high in the sky!
The space in the direction of its tip warped!
"Here's a little welcome gift!!! You bastard!" Sukuna snarled, then abruptly released his drawn-back right hand!
TWANG—!!!
The bowstring cracked like thunder!
The flaming arrow vanished! No—it had moved too fast for the eye to catch even a blur. All that remained in sight was a straight, scorching red streak that pierced heaven and earth!
Where it passed, the air evaporated instantly, leaving a pitch-black tunnel of vacuum!
One hundredth of a second later!
BOOM—!!!!
High above, the clouds over the spot where Chen Tian had been hovering caved inward like a lake struck by a boulder, then exploded!
A gigantic cavity of fire, hundreds of meters across, suddenly spread through the clouds. Molten waves of flame surged along its edges as the violent shockwave tore the surrounding clouds apart and shoved them away!
The belated boom rolled across the skies above Shibuya like a war drum sounded by the gods!
Sukuna's crimson eyes fixed on the heart of that destructive crimson lotus. His mouth stretched into a grin as he waited to enjoy the sight of his opponent turning to ash or fleeing in disarray.
The center of the crimson lotus was empty! The white-haired figure had seemingly evaporated into thin air!
Without warning, a bone-chilling cold swept through the air like a polar gale, piercing the furnace-hot Cursed Energy barrier around Sukuna and brushing against the back of his neck!
The sneer on Sukuna's face froze once more.
His crimson pupils, stiff with disbelief, turned to his side.
Chen Tian was standing right there! Less than a meter away!
The wind kicked up by his high-speed movement had lifted his hood slightly, and a few strands of white hair fluttered in the breeze.
He was spotless from head to toe. Even his breathing remained perfectly steady! It was as though the arrow that had torn through the clouds and could have vaporized a mountain had been nothing more than a breeze brushing past his ear!
He did not even look at Sukuna's frozen face.
A dull thud as something hit the ground.
Chen Tian casually swung his left hand.
Jogo, limp as a ragged sack and slick with blood, with only dregs of Cursed Energy left in him, sailed in an arc and crashed into Panda's furry, rigid body.
The impact made Panda's bulky frame wobble. He instinctively clutched the scorching, revolting "trash" in his arms, eyes wide as his mind completely shut down.
Only then did Chen Tian's gaze pass over Kusukabe, who was equally frozen beside them, and Panda, who was holding the volcano-headed Cursed Spirit and looking utterly bewildered.
"Why haven't you left yet?"
The space gave a barely audible hum.
Kusukabe and Panda, still holding Jogo, blurred and warped in an instant, as though an unseen eraser had wiped them off a sheet of paper. The spot they had occupied was left perfectly clean, without so much as a speck of dust stirred up.
And at the very instant they disappeared—
Two faint sounds, like blades slicing through fresh paper.
Nearby, the two Curse Users whom Sukuna's Cursed Energy had pinned in place were still wearing expressions of dazed fear and relief at having survived.
Their bodies, along with the Cursed Tools and clothing they wore, were pierced all at once by billions of invisible, perfectly parallel, razor-sharp threads!
There was no spray of blood, no anguished scream.
Their bodies had transformed in an eerie instant into hundreds of perfectly identical cubes, their edges smooth as mirrors!
Flesh, bones, clothing, metal Cursed Tools... every material had been neatly sliced apart. The smooth cut surfaces reflected the distant flashes of the explosions! The blood had been sealed within the cuts, taking on an eerie dark-red hue.
A pile of muddy-colored meat, mixed with scraps of fabric and metal, crashed to the ground like garbage dumped off an assembly line at a slaughterhouse.
The silence of the entire process contrasted horribly with the destructive fire cloud still expanding and roiling overhead, and the delayed, thunderous boom that followed. The disparity made one's scalp crawl.
Only then did Chen Tian slowly turn all the way around to face Sukuna. Sukuna's eyes were fixed on him, their crimson depths showing disbelief and incandescent fury for the first time.
Chen Tian's right hand rested on the hilt of the Enma Sword. He lightly flicked its guard with his thumb.
A faint, crisp click.
A blade bright as ice slid soundlessly an inch from its ornate guard, catching the light with a cold gleam.
The stiffness in Sukuna's face cracked like a shell of ice. The Cursed Marks on his face writhed wildly, and the corners of his mouth crept upward, baring sharp, pointed teeth in a ferocious smile that mingled rage, exhilaration, and disbelief.
"Slashes...?!"
"Slashes?!" The stiffness on Sukuna's face fell away like shattered ice, replaced by a fury and exhilaration so absurd they twisted and swelled to monstrous proportions!
He stared at the inch of snow-bright blade Chen Tian had casually drawn, then glanced at the pile of Curse User fragments beside him, cut as precisely as if they had been shaped in a finely crafted mold.
Violent Cursed Energy boiled and surged within him, threatening to break free of the body that contained it!
This man... was using slashes?!
He actually dared to play at slashing in front of the King of Curses, who commanded slashing in its ultimate form and had inscribed "Lataib" and "Hachi" into the very source of Jujutsu?!
The muscles in Sukuna's face twitched uncontrollably. Then his mouth stretched wider and wider, almost splitting to his ears, revealing gleaming white fangs. A low, frenzied laugh rolled out of his throat. "Heh... heh heh heh... ha ha ha ha! This is interesting! You bastard!!!"
Before the laughter had even faded, his madness had reached its peak!
Without warning, Sukuna thrust out his right hand and swung his index and middle fingers at Chen Tian, who stood less than five meters away.
The air gave an almost imperceptible tremor and warp! An intangible slash, concentrated with pure cutting intent, crossed the space in an instant, aiming to tear Chen Tian and the ground beneath him apart!
Fast! Brutal! Absolute!
This was Sukuna's slash! The Root of Jujutsu! The embodiment of death!
Chen Tian did not even look at the slash's trajectory.
He merely shifted half a step to the side, casually, as though strolling after a meal.
The "Lataib" that could cleave a Special Grade Cursed Spirit passed his fluttering coat hem and slammed into a ruined office building dozens of meters behind him!
SHHK—!!!
The office building's enormous glass curtain wall split soundlessly, as though made of paper, in a smooth cut running from top to bottom!
Then the entire structure began to slide along the cut, shifting out of alignment with a teeth-grinding groan of steel and concrete. At last, with a deafening roar, it broke in half and raised a cloud of dust.
Chen Tian tilted his head slightly and glanced sidelong at Sukuna, whose expression had instantly frozen. His gaze was calm and utterly still, without even the slightest ripple.
The message was as clear as if it had been carved onto Sukuna's retinas:
"..." Sukuna's wild grin froze for a tenth of a second. Then the halted smile exploded like cold water poured into hot oil!
Violent Cursed Energy erupted from every pore, like an out-of-control volcano, blasting the rubble across the ground like bullets!
"Interesting! This is so interesting!" Sukuna roared, his voice warped with extreme excitement. "Then let's go again!!! Lataib! Lataib! Lataib! Lataib! Lataib—!!!"
He had become a runaway artillery platform of slashes!
His hands' sword-sign fingers whipped about wildly, moving so fast that they left a blur beneath the dim moonlight!
One! Two! Ten!!
Dozens, then hundreds of invisible slashes swarmed through the air, blanketing everything!
In an instant, they ripped through all the air between them! Their trajectories crossed and overlapped, forming a web of death that covered every possible path of escape and could grind a steel jungle to dust! It came crashing down toward Chen Tian!
This was the King of Curses' slashing! Relentless! Impossible to evade!
Faced with this storm of slashes that could destroy the heavens and earth, Chen Tian moved!
No earth-shaking burst. No surging wave of Cursed Energy.
He simply... walked.
His figure drifted through the narrow space like a wisp of white smoke beneath the moon, moving at his leisure.
His left foot touched down lightly, avoiding three crossing slashes;
His right foot shifted back, letting seven slashes skim past him and explode behind him;
He leaned casually to one side, and several slashes swept past his nose and waist, cutting apart a twisted bus in the distance!
As leisurely as a stroll in a courtyard! As effortless as a master at play!
Every movement was precise to the tiniest fraction; every dodge was as easy as breathing!
The storm of slashes that could rip space to shreds seemed as slow as toy knives thrown by a child before him!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-BOOM—!!!
The entire battlefield in Shibuya became a dumping ground for Sukuna's slashes!
One "Lataib" after another painted the steel jungle with the Reaper's brush!
The high-rise apartments on the left were severed at the waist, their upper halves tilting before crashing to the ground!
On the right, countless slashes struck the outer wall of a shopping center at once, and glass and concrete poured down like a waterfall!
Ahead, the entrance to an abandoned subway station was split in two, exposing the pitch-black tunnel below!
Behind him, a billboard tower was cut diagonally, its enormous screen crashing down in a shower of sparks!
Clouds of dust rose without end! Explosions flashed one after another! Chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, and burning car wreckage rained down!
Amid the scene of utter devastation, only the small patch where Chen Tian stood remained peaceful, like the eye of a storm.
The ground beneath his feet was intact, and he had not disturbed even a speck of dust. His white hair did not stir.
There he was, moving freely through the furious storm of slashes Sukuna had unleashed—enough to destroy half a district—and evading every deadly cut as easily as a ghost.
Sukuna's frenzied slashes continued for a full ten seconds!
When the final "Lataib" sliced a distant low-rise building in half, and it collapsed with a deafening roar, he finally stopped swinging his fingers.
His chest rose and fell slightly from the explosive exertion. His crimson eyes fixed on the blurry white figure at the center of the smoke, and what burned in them was no longer merely rage and exhilaration. There was also a trace of... incredulous doubt!
The storm of slashes stopped.
The dust slowly settled.
Chen Tian's figure came back into focus.
He was still standing where he had been, without retreating an inch. Not even a new crease had appeared in his clothing! Through the drifting dust, his cold gaze settled on Sukuna's twisted face.
It was still those same two words, ringing clearly over the collapsed ruins:
Sukuna's breath caught. The muscles in his face twitched wildly, as fury, excitement, and humiliation surged through his eyes like lava!
He slowly raised his right hand, placing his thumb against his curled index finger and aiming at Chen Tian.
At his fingertip, a spot of profound black Cursed Energy gathered, so dark it made one's heart seize.
"...'Hachi'!"
Sukuna's thumb snapped off his index finger!
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