"Superhumans"

Xia Jie's destination this time was Jiangcheng, China, an obscure little eighteenth-tier city.

There had been no city called Jiangcheng on Blue Star, where he had lived in his previous life. But considering this was a parallel world, there was no point dwelling on place names.

Before coming to China again, Xia Jie had done some research and gained a rough understanding of the country's city classifications and geography.

China's cities were likewise divided into super first-tier, first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier cities. There were four super first-tier cities and nine first-tier cities.

The plane Xia Jie had taken landed in Ninghang City, the nearest first-tier city to Jiangcheng.

Calling it close was relative—it was still over two hundred kilometers away. But by high-speed rail, it only took about an hour.

Xia Jie stepped off the plane and checked the time. It was not yet one in the afternoon.

The flight from Tokyo to Ninghang had been quite fast, taking less than three hours.

While on the plane, Xia Jie had wondered whether some flying Cursed Spirits might appear in the sky and cause an aviation accident.

Fortunately, the entire journey had been smooth, and his worries had not come true.

Of course. If the skies were full of Cursed Spirits too, the major airlines would probably be the first to cry themselves unconscious in the bathroom.

Wearing sunglasses, Xia Jie walked out of the airport and drew plenty of whispered comments from young women along the way. A few bolder ones even came up to ask for his contact information.

Even Xia Jie himself was surprised. He had never received this kind of treatment in his previous life.

But then he thought about it. He was now 1.86 meters tall, muscular, and handsome. Catching the attention of a few young women was hardly surprising.

Unfortunately... I have no intention of becoming a player for now.

Xia Jie politely turned down the young women's requests for his contact information in fluent Japanese, then strode out of the airport.

It was still early, so Xia Jie was in no hurry to head to Jiangcheng that day.

He planned to spend a day exploring Ninghang first and get a feel for the atmosphere of China's modern cities, then take the high-speed rail to Jiangcheng tomorrow.

Streets, malls, tourist attractions... Xia Jie toured more than half of Ninghang at a cursory pace.

Even with his powerful physique, his feet were starting to feel like they no longer belonged to him. Yet Xia Jie remained excited inside.

Ninghang's prosperity exceeded his expectations. It was no less impressive than Tokyo, Japan, and it gave him an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

Even Shinjuku, where he had lived for ten years in his memories, could not give him this feeling. It was a special emotion known as "home and country."

By the time he returned to his hotel, it was already nine at night.

Xia Jie took a shower, sat on the bed, and meditated for half an hour to recover some of his mental fatigue.

Then he communicated with the Parasite Spirit within his body and had it display a 3D map of Ninghang City on his retinas.

Certain locations on the map were marked with special symbols by Xia Jie. They indicated the locations of Cursed Spirits he had sensed.

Ninghang was even more prosperous and densely populated than Tokyo, so naturally, it produced no fewer Cursed Spirits than Tokyo did.

However, whether in quantity or quality, Ninghang's Cursed Spirits were far weaker than those in Tokyo.

Xia Jie was not particularly surprised by this.

On the surface, Japanese people were modest, courteous, and polite, but many of them were repressed and psychologically twisted beneath that facade.

This caused the Cursed Energy they leaked to reach an alarming level. The number and strength of Cursed Spirits naturally far exceeded those in other cities with comparable populations.

People in China also had all sorts of negative emotions, but those who casually shouted things like, "The one in the wrong isn't me—the world is," were far fewer than in Japan.

Most Chinese people knew better. They would not casually curse the world they lived in, which meant the Cursed Energy they leaked was nowhere near as severe as Japan's.

But in terms of total leaked Cursed Energy, China and Japan were nearly on par, because of China's enormous population base.

Therefore, the frequency of supernatural incidents in China was probably similar to that in Japan.

But across China's vast territory as a whole, such incidents remained roughly within controllable limits.

The rabbits of China might have a higher tolerance for these kinds of supernatural incidents than the people of Japan.

It was not that China had made the existence of Cursed Spirits public. Rather, the government's public-opinion guidance was thorough enough.

To prevent people from leaking even more Cursed Energy out of fear of Cursed Spirits, China's Jujutsu Society also kept the existence of Cursed Spirits confidential. However, it did not hide Jujutsu Sorcerers nearly as much.

Videos of Jujutsu Sorcerers fighting even occasionally circulated online, and Chinese people had grown accustomed to them.

Chinese people more or less knew Jujutsu Sorcerers existed, but they regarded them as "superhumans" who possessed special abilities.

China's general public discourse deliberately encouraged this view. Reports about "superhumans" had appeared in the media as early as decades ago.

Rumors also circulated that these "superhumans" had all joined an organization called the Flower Dragon Group, which secretly protected national security.

Although the authorities had never publicly acknowledged it, these "superhumans" had long been an almost openly known presence in China.

Because people knew they existed, even when some places occasionally saw battles beyond ordinary limits, people merely assumed they were conflicts between superhumans. They rarely connected them to invisible Cursed Spirits.

It was a clever method, but an extremely effective one.

At the very least, people were more curious than afraid about battles between superhumans, so they did not produce too many "curses."

Quite a few countries adopted similar propaganda methods, which provided a certain degree of cover for battles between Jujutsu Sorcerers and Cursed Spirits.

Japan's Jujutsu Society, meanwhile, still clung to old-fashioned and conservative rules. It prohibited all publicity related to curses, and its work in this regard was truly inadequate.

That was why Xia Jie had been able to seize the opportunity and use the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons to create the new legend of "Kishimojin," which had even been heard of across the ocean.

Only after the news reached Japan again did the Higher-Ups of Jujutsu High finally wake up and begin adopting China's special method of obscuring public opinion.

Though it had not been implemented for very long, Japan's citizens gradually accepted the explanation because of the public-opinion environment in other countries.

After all, if every other country had superhumans, wasn't it perfectly normal for their own country to have them too?

It was just that the Jujutsu Sorcerers affiliated with Jujutsu High were all holding back a bellyful of resentment toward the Higher-Ups.

The Higher-Ups' outdated and sluggish way of doing things had long dissatisfied them, but Japan's rigid hierarchy made it difficult for them to openly question it. They could only endure in silence.

This was also why Jujutsu Sorcerers led by Gojo Satoru were determined to reform Jujutsu Society.

In Xia Jie's view, however, there was a strong chance that Jujutsu High's Higher-Ups had been slow to act because Brain was controlling them.

In order to make Japanese people generate more Cursed Energy, Brain deliberately wanted the existence of Cursed Spirits to become public. But it could not make the matter too obvious, so the best approach was to handle certain matters slowly and let incidents continue fermenting.

Why did Japan's Jujutsu Sorcerers so often feel that the Higher-Ups had rocks for brains?

Why did their orders often seem profound at first glance, yet prove utterly meaningless and unable to withstand scrutiny?

That was the fundamental reason.

With Brain stirring up trouble among the Higher-Ups, Jujutsu High naturally became like a foul swamp piled high with sludge, leaving no visible hope for the future of Japan's Jujutsu Society.