"Culling Game" Opening Ceremony

Drip. Drip.

Cold. Stiff.

Those were Xuan's first impressions after opening his eyes. The sharp scent of disinfectant filled his nostrils.

His eyes, tightly shut from the low temperature, slowly opened. Rows of metal cold-storage drawers filled his vision. This body of Xuan's lay bare-chested on an icy bed, its steadily recovering heartbeat transforming it into an entirely different form.

"Phew..."

A chilly breath dispersed in a cloud of white mist. Xuan sat up and looked at his unfamiliar, healthy, youthful hands.

"Kenjaku just casually found a corpse for me to incarnate into?"

Xuan sat upright and casually stretched his limbs, his joints cracking loudly.

He looked around, his gaze settling on the electronic clock above the wall, which emitted a faint blue glow.

November 1, 2018, 12:00.

"Ha... looks like I woke up a little late?"

The corner of Xuan's lips curled up. He swung himself off the bed, and memories belonging to this body's original owner surged into his mind like a tide—betrayed by a woman, betrayed by his brother, then driving while distraught and getting into a car accident. Damn, Japanese people really did have to take someone down with them even when they died.

As he walked out of the morgue, the security guard on duty was just slowly waking from his "nap."

A naked man radiating an inexplicable sense of oppression swaggered out of the morgue, and the guard's phone fell from his hand with a smack.

"Yo, that lunch looks pretty good. Mind pointing me toward the clothes?"

Xuan stretched lazily, then extended a hand under the guard's blank stare. Trembling, the guard pointed toward the deceased belongings area.

"Thanks! Saves me from stripping clothes off a pile of corpses... Hmm... this is Sendai, right?"

Xuan patted the guard on the shoulder.

"Oh, right. What's your name?"

"Ah... Mamoru... Ito Mamoru."

Xuan stared at Ito Mamoru's face, then nodded.

"Alright, I'll remember your name. Um... by the way, could you lend me some money?"

Xuan took the wallet the guard handed over, pulled out ten thousand yen, then tossed the wallet back. Following the direction the guard had indicated, he headed to the deceased belongings area, picked up a set of clothes belonging to the body's original owner, and after zipping them up, walked toward the wall and stepped into the shadow between its corners.

In an alley, Xuan emerged from the shadows.

Though it was November in Tokyo, the streets were utterly deserted. The wind carried a bone-chilling cold, yet Xuan found the air almost excessively fragrant.

It was not the charred smell of roast pheasant in the wild, nor the faint fragrance of wild fruit. It was a scent ingrained in Xuan's previous life, one capable of instantly stirring humanity's most primal desires—fried chicken.

"Looks like I borrowed that money for nothing... Though, come to think of it, today's Thursday..."

Of course, Crazy Thursday was a China-exclusive promotion. Japanese people definitely did not have a tradition of going to KFC on Thursdays—probably. Thinking that, Xuan tossed the ten-thousand-yen bill into the shadows.

Stepping out of the alley, Xuan saw the red-and-white sign ahead. A vague memory from his past life brought to mind that drool-inducing old man...

"No Crazy Thursday, but free fried chicken?"

Xuan inhaled the scent in the air and walked toward the entrance.

However, the instant he stepped onto the stairs, his footsteps paused slightly.

Mixed into the rich aroma of fried chicken was an intense, nauseating stench of rot.

It was the scent of a "sorcerer."

More precisely, the scent of an incarnated body like his own.

"Come to think of it, the Sendai Colony... How far had the manga updated before I came here?"

Xuan narrowed his eyes slightly and searched his memories. In his previous life, the manga had reached the point where Yuta Okkotsu fought four opponents alone in Sendai—after that, he remembered nothing. As he thought, Xuan's right hand habitually formed a sign, black shadows spreading upward from his wrist.

"Ha, whatever. Maho, lend me your sword—"

Xuan's breath suddenly caught. As the Ten Shadows Sorcerer who had stood at the pinnacle during the Muromachi period, and likely the only person in jujutsu history to have tamed Mahoraga, he instantly sensed something wrong with the technique within him.

The connection had been severed.

Not only Mahoraga—he could no longer sense Max Elephant, Piercing Ox, Round Deer, Toad... not even Nue.

His shikigami were like kites swallowed by clouds. Though he could still hold their strings, he could no longer "see" them at all.

Kon!?

Kon was gone too?

"A side effect of reincarnating through incarnation?"

Xuan examined his technique—hmm, those shikigami had not been destroyed. Rather, this body's exorcism rituals were completely blank. In other words, he simply needed to tame them again.

...Perhaps it was because he was an incarnated body.

Of course, the complete reset of the shikigami's taming data also meant—

"Woof!" "Awoo—"

With a flick of his hand, Xuan violently flung the black shadow from his wrist, sending it skimming across the ground.

Two massive wolfhounds, one white and one black, sprang lightly from the shadows and excitedly circled Xuan.

"Just as I thought, Little White."

"Awroo!"

Xuan crouched down, wrapped an arm around the snow-white Divine Dog, and vigorously ruffled its head.

"Long time no see. Has it been over six hundred years? Hm?"

Although Divine Dog: Black continued circling Xuan's legs, Divine Dog: White slowly backed away and sat down after hearing that, its blood-red eyes filled with a distinctly human-like speechlessness.

"Don't be like that... There are still things nearby that we need to deal with—"

Xuan clapped his hands, and the black and white Divine Dogs dissolved back into shadows, returning to his body.

Xuan was an unaffiliated bloodline of the Zenin Clan, a Ten Shadows Technique user from the Muromachi period, and the strongest sorcerer of that era. Perhaps he was also the only Ten Shadows Sorcerer in history to have subdued Mahoraga.

The Zenin Clan had left no records about him, nor had anyone bothered to investigate how long the line of Ten Shadows sorcerers had been severed during the Muromachi period. After all, that was neither unusual nor an exception.

Those who were not Zenin were not sorcerers; those who were not sorcerers were not human.

No matter what, Xuan had no intention of returning to his clan to put up with those old bastards. True, the Ten Shadows Technique could make him the next clan head, but considering the environment of ancient Japan, he was still somewhat afraid of being killed on the spot.

Of course, after subduing Mahoraga, he no longer had that concern.

Tap.

"Jujutsu sorcerers, cursed spirits, modern times, ancient times..."

Xuan casually flexed his fingers, his eyes carrying a trace of disdain as he looked toward the source of the footsteps.

Tap.

"Hey, you with the ridiculous hairstyle. Which kind are you?"

Following the distinct sound of dress shoes striking the ground, Xuan saw a figure standing farther down the street. The man wore a heavy-looking black leather jacket, and the exaggerated pompadour hanging over his forehead remained perfectly unmoved in the cold late-autumn wind.

The moment he saw that flamboyant hairstyle and bearing, Xuan already knew who the man before him was.

Ryu Ishigori.

The instant their gazes met, the cursed energy around both of them immediately readied itself for battle. Ryu Ishigori's sharp eyes swept back and forth over Xuan before finally settling on his seemingly "relaxed" stance, the corner of his mouth lifting into a curve mixed with anticipation and provocation.

"Modern sorcerers probably still haven't figured out what's going on... Unlike you, I'm an ancient jujutsu sorcerer too."

Ryu Ishigori's voice was low. In his perception, the cursed energy of the man before him tightly wrapped around his body, and even the slightest leakage was like dancing, rising flames. Not only was his total cursed energy far greater than Ryu Ishigori's own, but the sheer "intensity" of it was far beyond anything he could hope to reach.

"You don't seem to be from the same era as me... Did you come later, or earlier...? The cursed energy around you is like fine wine aged in a cellar. It makes my mouth water..."