Causality

"The mighty Ox grants me strength to pull up mountains."

Shiyue Shuo drove down a fist.

Sukuna raised all four arms to block.

"Bang!"

The earth shattered.

Their battle entered its most primal stage: hand-to-hand combat.

Shiyue Shuo had gone completely mad by now. He had no reservations left.

The healing glow of the [Horse] Talisman flickered across his body, nearly joining into one continuous sheet.

"You lunatic!"

For the first time, Sukuna found himself in trouble. The human before him simply could not be killed, possessed absurd strength and terrifying speed, and had one trick after another.

"Oh? Can't hold on anymore?"

Shiyue Shuo slammed his forehead into Sukuna's.

"Thud!"

Sukuna reeled from the impact, dazed.

"Now!"

Shiyue Shuo locked his arms around Sukuna's waist and carried them both into the air.

"The majestic Tiger grants me the power to distinguish good from evil."

Shiyue Shuo wrapped his arms around Sukuna from behind, plunging his hands directly into Sukuna's chest. But he was not grasping for his heart—he was reaching for something far more intangible.

Within that pitch-black Innate Domain, he saw the Curse King seated high above, and Megumi Fushiguro, barely alive beneath the throne.

"Wake up...!"

Shiyue Shuo's soul roared.

Black-and-white light became chains that tightly bound Sukuna's soul.

"Don't even think about it!" Sukuna snarled in fury. He fought wildly within his body, cursed energy turning into blades that frantically carved at the soul-arms Shiyue Shuo had thrust inside.

Pain.

Agonizing pain that pierced to the marrow.

Shiyue Shuo felt as though his soul were being sliced into a thousand pieces.

But he did not let go.

"Fushiguro! Wake up! We're going home!"

In that endless darkness, Megumi Fushiguro's finger twitched.

"...Shiyue?"

That faint response became the final straw.

An attack from within and without.

"Aaaah!"

With a furious roar, Shiyue Shuo yanked backward.

"Riiip—"

In the real world, Sukuna let out a shrill scream.

A dark red mass brimming with evil energy was forcibly dragged from Megumi Fushiguro's body by Shiyue Shuo.

It was not merely a soul, but a physical entity fused with the properties of a cursed object—the combined mass of nineteen fingers and that shriveled mummy head.

"Thud."

Megumi Fushiguro's body lost its support. A cluster of pale golden light gently held him as he fell toward the ground.

Meanwhile, the dark red mass in Shiyue Shuo's hand began to rapidly collapse and solidify the instant it left the flesh.

"It's over, Curse King."

"What a delightful experience! Sukuna, I probably won't forget you for the rest of my life."

"You... damn... brat..."

Sukuna's voice was filled with resentment and venom, but without a vessel, he was ultimately nothing more than a cursed object.

After a cloud of black smoke, a pile of wax-like fingers radiating intense heat and a shriveled head remained in Shiyue Shuo's hand.

Sukuna had ultimately underestimated him. Before he could even deploy his Domain or use those outrageous binding vows, Shiyue Shuo's soul extraction had caught him completely off guard.

Shiyue Shuo's figure began to blur, every cell in his body screaming in agony. The world's rejection of him reached its peak at that moment, and thunder rumbled deafeningly overhead.

"Shuo!"

Amid the ruins below, Yuta Okkotsu and Yuji Itadori caught the falling Megumi Fushiguro.

"Megumi's okay! He's still breathing!" Yuji shouted excitedly.

Shiyue Shuo let out a breath of relief.

But he knew it was not over yet.

The thing in his hand was an absolute hot potato. If he did not handle it properly, those rotten old bastards in the higher-ups, Kenjaku lurking in the shadows, or even that reckless Uraume would all try to seize it by any means necessary.

"I can't leave it to anyone."

Shiyue Shuo looked at Sukuna's remains in his hand.

"The Shadowy Snake grants you omnipresence."

He activated the Snake Talisman.

This was more than mere invisibility—it erased it from the very concept of "existence."

To everyone present, and even to sorcerers across the entire world, the thing in Shiyue Shuo's hand vanished into thin air. It no longer emitted cursed energy, no longer occupied space, and even the fact that "it was there" became blurred.

Only Shiyue Shuo knew that he had hidden the pile in a gap created by the Snake Talisman. No one in the world besides him could find it.

After finishing all that, Shiyue Shuo immediately began desperately suppressing the Talismans. Like a kite with its string cut, he plummeted straight down.

"Shuo!"

Satoru Gojo appeared in an instant and caught him.

"Nicely done. That was seriously way too reckless." Gojo looked at the blood-covered Shiyue Shuo in his arms, and a trace of barely perceptible excitement flashed through those Six Eyes.

"Gojo-sensei..." Shiyue Shuo forced his eyes open, his voice weak. "Mahoraga... those shadows..."

"Shadows?" Gojo frowned. "I'll look into it. Get some rest first."

"And... the sky..."

Shiyue Shuo raised a trembling hand and pointed upward.

Everyone instinctively looked up.

The instant they did, their blood froze.

The black vortices that had previously only been spinning at eight points had now stopped rotating.

"Rumble, rumble."

That was not thunder, but the sound of space breaking apart.

At the centers of seven of those vortices, black lightning poured down like waterfalls.

An aura more pure and more evil than Sukuna's descended from those seven voids.

"What are those..." Kusakabe's sword trembled in his hand.

From the first vortex, a massive green mountain of flesh slowly squeezed out. It had no fixed form, only an enormous mouth capable of devouring heaven and earth, along with thick, powerful arms.

From the second vortex, a black hurricane burst forth with a howl. Within the wind, a monster with a toad-like face croaked with eerie laughter.

From the third vortex came overwhelming thunder. A vicious demon clad from head to toe in blue armor strode forth atop lightning.

From the fourth vortex, floodwaters surged forth. A female demon with a mermaid-like body and a seductive yet savage face rode towering waves, as though she intended to drown the entire world.

A gray shadow flashed through the fifth vortex. It had bat-like wings and moved so quickly that even Satoru Gojo's Six Eyes could only catch afterimages. It circled through the sky, unleashing piercing shrieks.

The earth rumbled within the sixth vortex. A bull-headed demon with two horns and a body as hard as stone crawled out. Every step it took triggered a small earthquake. The red light in its eyes was filled with a desire to rule the earth.

The seventh vortex was the strangest. There was no sound at all, only a pale, elegant demon in ancient robes with four arms floating silently in the air. The space around it was distorted, and even gravity reversed at its whim.

Seven figures. Seven demon gods. Seven super cursed spirits that surpassed the realm of Special Grade.

This was the world's forced correction of causality, brought about because Shiyue Shuo had unleashed incomparable power.

They floated above Tokyo, looking down upon the humans and sorcerers below as if they were ants. Behind them, countless low-grade cursed spirits poured out from the vortices.

"This... is bad."

Gojo handed Shiyue Shuo over to the arriving Shoko Ieiri, then slowly rose into the air and placed himself before everyone.

Even the strongest, always so confident, broke out in a thin layer of cold sweat as he faced those seven monsters radiating an aura of destruction.

"So this is... the world's causality you mentioned?"

Lying on a stretcher, Shiyue Shuo looked at the seven familiar figures in the sky and revealed a bitter smile.

"The Eight Demon Lords... other than Shendu, they're all here."

"No, Shendu came long ago."

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