The Choice

At Akasaka Palace, Lin Yi sat across from Suguru Geto.

He did not believe that, with Suguru Geto's years of experience as a Special-Grade Sorcerer, he could fail to see the potential Yuta Okkotsu had displayed in their battle.

Suguru Geto might have been able to gain a slight upper hand over Yuta Okkotsu early on through experience, but Yuta Okkotsu had already maxed out every level bar. All he lacked were a few skills.

And Yuta Okkotsu's talent allowed him to quickly learn every skill a Special-Grade Sorcerer needed to master.

As an advanced technique for using cursed energy, he had learned the Reversed Cursed Technique simply by fighting Lin Yi once.

After mastering the Reversed Cursed Technique, it would probably take Yuta Okkotsu only half a year, with Satoru Gojo as his teacher, to use the converted positive energy to drive the reversal of his own technique.

All that remained were Domain Expansion and Maximum Technique, the ultimate moves of cursed techniques.

But even if Domain Expansion were excluded, if Yuta Okkotsu, who had already mastered those first two techniques, fought Suguru Geto, who had only mastered Maximum Technique over all these years—

Even if Suguru Geto threw in all six thousand-plus Cursed Spirits he had collected, he might not be able to defeat Yuta Okkotsu.

More importantly, Lin Yi did not believe that, after watching his battle with Yuta Okkotsu, Suguru Geto still could not understand the relationship between Yuta Okkotsu and the Cursed Spirit Rika.

Yuta Okkotsu and the Cursed Spirit Rika mutually sustained one another, though Yuta Okkotsu held the dominant position.

That also meant that as long as Yuta Okkotsu realized that it was his curse that had turned Rika into a Cursed Spirit and willingly lifted that curse from her—

Then even if Suguru Geto killed Yuta Okkotsu, the Cursed Spirit Rika he obtained through Cursed Spirit Manipulation would be nothing but an empty shell. She would not possess any so-called boundless cursed energy, because Yuta Okkotsu was the one providing it.

Yet even so, Suguru Geto's answer was that he wanted to subdue the Cursed Spirit Rika to accomplish his grand cause.

"If that is the case, then your death will be meaningless, Suguru Geto."

"That would still be better than living in a world full of monkeys, wouldn't it, Yi-chan? Do you care about me that much?"

"It is not concern, Suguru Geto. For what you have done, and for the people you have killed, you need to pay with your life. It is only that a meaningless death like yours would cause a lot of trouble, which is why I wanted you to give up on attacking Jujutsu High and Yuta Okkotsu.

That way, things will be easier for you and easier for me."

"Looks like I was right. Yi-chan and Satoru really get along. Maybe you can even become good friends with him."

"Then the negotiations have broken down, correct?"

"It seems so, Yi-chan. Perhaps you are right—my death will be meaningless. But in a world where I have never been able to smile from the bottom of my heart, I would rather die like this."

Hearing that, Lin Yi stood and left, but Suguru Geto called out to him.

"Yi-chan, have you forgotten the Binding Vow between us?"

"The terms of the Binding Vow were that I would collect some Cursed Spirits you were interested in, and help you cause a little trouble for Jujutsu High when necessary, but I refused to take part in bloody conflicts. What you are about to do is target a boy. That is not part of our Binding Vow."

Lin Yi repeated the terms of the Binding Vow he had made with Suguru Geto. When he opened the door, he saw Suguru Geto's two adopted daughters pressed against it, eavesdropping.

When they saw that Lin Yi was the one coming out, the two girls quickly moved aside and did not dare look at him.

"You should think about your two daughters as well, Suguru Geto."

After saying those final words, Lin Yi left without looking back, leaving Suguru Geto sitting there alone in desolation.

Looking at his two adopted daughters as they timidly walked in, Suguru Geto finally revealed a gentle smile.

"It is alright, Nanako, Mimiko. Yi-chan and I just had an argument."

Lin Yi rode his motorcycle aimlessly through the streets. His unpleasant conversation with Suguru Geto had left him in a terrible mood.

Whether it was today's battle with Yuta Okkotsu, arranging for Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo to meet, or this conversation, Lin Yi had done everything with a purpose.

If his battle with Yuta Okkotsu could make Suguru Geto realize that even if he killed Yuta Okkotsu and stole the Cursed Spirit Rika, it would do nothing for his grand cause, then Suguru Geto's death could be delayed.

Even if Kenjaku, that thousand-year-old sorcerer, lost patience and came to his door to kill him, Suguru Geto had enough ability to hold out until Lin Yi could warn Satoru Gojo. That way, even if Kenjaku successfully took over Suguru Geto's body, Satoru Gojo might not be sealed after receiving a warning in advance. The Shibuya Incident and the Culling Game might never happen.

Satoru Gojo would kill Kenjaku, and as for whether Yuji Itadori would swallow the finger containing Sukuna's sealed soul under Kenjaku's arrangements, that no longer mattered.

Without Kenjaku plotting in the shadows, Sukuna would not revive even if he remained sealed within Yuji Itadori until the boy died of old age.

It was not that Lin Yi was particularly noble or overflowing with saintly compassion. It was simply that the underlying logic of the world of Jujutsu Kaisen was too absurd.

Under the world's underlying rules, Cursed Spirits were born from the cursed energy and negative emotions that overflowed from most ordinary people. Yet the cycle of their birth remained within a roughly controllable range.

As long as most ordinary people remained unaware of Cursed Spirits, fewer of them would be born, and their birth cycles would grow longer. This was especially true for disaster-class Special-Grade Cursed Spirits, where one might only appear once every few centuries.

That was why the exorcism of Cursed Spirits by sorcerers in Japan, as well as in other countries and regions, was fundamentally like the Holy Grail War in the neighboring Fate setting: it was carried out in secret.

Whenever the commotion became too great, they brushed it off as a gas explosion.

Moreover, in the Jujutsu Kaisen storyline, sorcerers and Cursed Spirits had battled in Japan for thousands of years, yet Jujutsu Society had recorded only seventeen Special-Grade Imaginary Cursed Spirits. Of the four disaster-class Special-Grade Cursed Spirits, only four had been born over all those years, and two of them had only recently appeared.

But if the Culling Game began, and Jujutsu Society and the Japanese government were forced to reveal the existence of Cursed Spirits to the entire world, making the majority of ordinary people realize that their negative emotions could create Cursed Spirits, that would be a different matter.

At first, there might not seem to be any obvious changes, since Japan was still a massive vortex of cursed energy.

But the global population was what it was. Several countries had populations larger than Japan's.

And when it came to negative emotions, those countries were not necessarily any better than Japan, a nation under immense pressure. Who knew what level of Cursed Spirit might spawn from those population giants?

Cursed Spirits at the level of the Four Disasters would still be manageable. Once he mastered the Reversed Cursed Technique, technique reversal, Maximum Technique, and Domain Expansion, then combined them with his passive Devour and all-attribute absorption, he could handle them without any pressure.

But what if a Special-Grade Cursed Spirit far more outrageous than the Four Disasters spawned? What if one at the level of five Sukunas appeared? Wouldn't that be completely screwed?

"Damn it. In the end, I still need to kill Kenjaku to solve every problem. But how am I supposed to find him?"

Lin Yi braked sharply and pulled over by the roadside, beginning to think about how to drag out and kill the thousand-year-old sorcerer Kenjaku, who had been hiding in the shadows and orchestrating everything.

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