Miwa Seigen did not even have time to look up before the azure energy sphere, compressed from pure, high-density negative cursed energy and tearing visible ripples through space along its path—the Technique Reversal: Blue—came hurtling down like a falling star, ripping across the sky!
"Boom—!!!"
There was no chance to react or defend. The enormous azure sphere struck the four-meter-long Ironhide Centipede squarely in the head at a speed beyond the limits of what a human retina could perceive.
There was no scream, no struggle.
Its living armor, as hard as a cursed tool, along with the flesh and segments within it, was instantly ground into its most primitive molecular state by the absolute gravitational collapse of Blue, vanishing into thin air!
The violent shockwave blasted a horrifying crater nearly ten meters wide into the bluestone ground, its edges smooth as a mirror.
Amid the billowing dust, a foot clad in a black high-top uniform boot stepped over the rubble and casually stopped at the edge of the crater.
A breeze swept past, revealing the youth's dazzling white hair, gleaming arrogantly beneath the moonlight, as well as the sunglasses hanging loosely on the bridge of his nose, utterly incapable of concealing the amused look in his eyes.
Satoru Gojo's azure Six Eyes instantly locked onto the dense patch of shadow on the ground some distance away, where Ieiri Shoko's and Lu Ping's steady cursed energy signatures could be sensed.
After confirming that the two were alive, Satoru Gojo could not help but let out a sigh of relief. "Nice one, Lu Ping. You actually held out until we got here. You did good."
Only then did he tilt his head slightly and look at Miwa Seigen, who had been thrown to the ground by the blast and left in a wretched state. A particularly wicked curve tugged at his lips.
"Well, well~ Mr. Sewer Rat over here, mind telling me... who hired you?"
As the dust and roaring winds faded, azure afterglow crackled like electric arcs around the edge of the ten-meter crater.
Miwa Seigen truly deserved his reputation as an old-school Grade 1 Curse User with years of experience in the black market.
The instant that terrifying energy called "Blue" descended, every hair on his body stood on end. His instinct for imminent death left him no time to hesitate. He immediately abandoned his badly injured companion and forced the Centipede shikigami beneath him to charge head-on and violently self-destruct.
"Boom!!"
Centipede's carapace, as tough as a Grade 2 Cursed Tool, and its remaining immense cursed energy exploded completely in the same instant.
The intensely concentrated inward gravitational collapse collided head-on in midair with the utterly unrestrained outward blast.
The two nearly destructive forces shredded against each other, miraculously tearing open a brief zone of vacuum equilibrium at their violent center.
That delay, lasting only a fraction of a millionth of a second, left Miwa Seigen with a sliver of hope for survival.
He tumbled miserably out of the shockwave, half his body scorched and dripping with blood, yet he had escaped death.
"Cough, cough... ptoo!" He spat out a mouthful of bloody foam mixed with fragments of internal organs and stared in utter horror at the white-haired youth by the crater.
In truth, he had not survived entirely because of his own experience. It was because Satoru Gojo had deliberately held back.
Against an attack of this level, Satoru Gojo wanted to capture someone alive so he could follow the trail and wipe out both the mastermind behind it and the mole within the upper ranks of the Jujutsu World.
But Miwa Seigen's mind was completely consumed by fear. He could not possibly realize that.
"Not bad, old man. You're pretty tough." With one hand in his pocket, Satoru Gojo looked down at him through his sunglasses, his tone as relaxed as if he were out for a stroll. "Hey, your technique looks kind of interesting. Not going to explain it?"
In his extreme panic, Miwa Seigen did not hesitate to reveal everything in order to forcibly increase his remaining cursed energy output through the Binding Vow of "revealing one's technique."
"My technique is Shikigami Imbuement! It can forcibly bestow a shikigami's abilities and core onto specific real animals, twisting and mutating them into shikigami for my use! The deeper the bond I have with a creature and the longer I've raised it, the stronger it becomes after conversion! And the maximum number I can maintain at once... is three!"
He roared wildly, but his mind was calculating furiously. His only goal was to escape!
Fortunately, before Centipede had taken Blue head-on, his caution had led him to dismiss Sea Moon the jellyfish and Hooktail the Burrowing Scorpion in advance, preserving those two trump cards.
Now, as the Binding Vow from revealing his technique took effect, cursed energy surged wildly back into his depleted body. Miwa Seigen rapidly formed a twisted lotus hand sign and roared savagely, "Get the hell out of my way!!"
"Whoosh!"
In an instant, the translucent pale-blue jellyfish, Sea Moon, appeared out of thin air once more.
Empowered by the Binding Vow, its enormous bell writhed violently. The moment it appeared, it spewed out a vast cloud of deep-blue toxic mist without restraint, completely obscuring the streets within dozens of meters and dimming even the moonlight.
At the same time, Hooktail, the pitch-black Burrowing Scorpion, burst out of the soil beneath his feet.
Miwa Seigen lunged forward, allowing the giant scorpion's thick legs to seize him tightly before it shot forward in a blur, digging frantically toward the depths underground!
At the center of the toxic fog, Satoru Gojo frowned slightly.
At this point, his control over the Limitless Technique was still far from effortless. His current Limitless could selectively block matter based on mass, speed, and cursed energy intensity, but he could not yet achieve molecular-level precision such as automatically filtering poisonous gases.
The pungent stench made his senses sting faintly.
Fortunately, with those cheat-like Six Eyes, Satoru Gojo possessed technique-adjustment precision almost akin to that of a god.
He stood motionless in the toxic fog, his brain running like a supercomputer as he adjusted the spatial barrier frequency of Limitless.
The process delayed him for only five short seconds.
Underground, Miwa Seigen sensed the hesitation above him, and a burst of ecstasy welled up in his heart. It worked! So what if he's the divine child? He's still just some brat who has never left the greenhouse! I'm getting away now...
But before his delight could spread across his face, the hard rock and earth above his head suddenly let out a terrifying groan as though they could no longer bear the strain.
"Crack!!"
A pair of enormous dragon claws, covered in hard blue-green scales and as massive as heavy cranes, tore through the entire surface layer with absurd brute force. Like reaching into a bag for something, they seized the fleeing scorpion shikigami with terrifying precision and yanked it straight out from deep beneath the earth!
Dirt flew everywhere, and moonlight fell across his face again.
Miwa Seigen looked up in terror and saw a colossal Eastern dragon-shaped cursed spirit, dozens of meters long and radiating suffocating pressure, coiled in the night sky—it was Rainbow Dragon, renowned as the strongest in defense below Special Grade and hailed as the pinnacle of Grade 1 cursed spirits!
And atop that lofty dragon head stood a youth in a black Jujutsu High uniform, with strange bangs and narrow eyes half-lidded. His hands were in his pockets as he looked down at Miwa Seigen with cold indifference.
A second-year at Jujutsu High and the wielder of Cursed Spirit Manipulation—Suguru Geto.
"Senior, isn't it a little too rude to play burrowing rat in someone else's territory in the middle of the night?"
Suguru Geto's voice was calm, yet it carried an unquestionable authority.
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