First Real Battle

At night, Tokyo's bustling downtown was a vivid ukiyo-e painting of neon signs and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, radiating both extreme prosperity and a certain restless agitation.

"Starting a fight in a place like this puts a lot of pressure on the Curtain responsible for concealing our presence."

Suguru Geto looked up at the department store towering into the clouds, its exterior covered in massive LED ads. There was a trace of professional seriousness in his voice.

"If we alert any civilians, we'll be writing reports until dawn again."

"Leave that troublesome stuff to the assistant supervisors. You really worry too much, Jie." Satoru Gojo adjusted his sunglasses, his gaze piercing through the lenses toward the darkness atop the building.

"Found it. A big ugly bastard that makes my skin crawl. A Semi-Grade 1 Cursed Spirit born from humanity's collective disgust and fear of caterpillars. It's up there on the roof having sweet dreams."

He turned to Lu Ping, who looked somewhat tense, and flashed a neat row of teeth.

"Hey, Lu Ping. Jie and I will head up and casually crush that thing. You and Shoko guard the exits down here. Don't let any little flies slip out and scare the pedestrians."

"Okay." Lu Ping nodded, standing in the shadows along the side of the department store.

"Here we go!" Satoru Gojo tapped the ground with his toe, and his body was instantly wrapped in an invisible force. The power of Blue distorted space in an instant, turning him into a streak of white light that tore through the night sky toward the rooftop.

Suguru Geto shook his head helplessly and rapidly formed hand seals.

Amid a deafening roar sealed off by his technique, a white dragon dozens of meters long and gleaming with a metallic sheen—Rainbow Dragon—burst through the air. Carrying him, it followed close behind and blocked every possible escape route for the cursed spirit.

Down below, the noisy street seemed like a separate world from this place.

"Those two always have to make such a scene." Ieiri Shoko pulled a mint from her pocket and casually tossed one to Lu Ping.

"We're off tomorrow morning. Want to go see a movie in Shinjuku? We can stop by the warehouse and pick out a cursed tool that suits you, too. Your style of just swinging shadows around puts you at too much of a disadvantage in close combat."

Lu Ping caught the candy, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. The cool flavor eased his tense nerves. "Sure. I really do need a weapon that fits my hand."

As a shikigami user, he needed more ways to protect his own body.

The two chatted pleasantly below the building, and the brief peace almost made Lu Ping forget that he was in the dangerous world of jujutsu.

Then, at that moment, a shrill scream suddenly came from the rooftop, followed by a thunderous crash of shattering glass.

On the roof, Satoru Gojo was unleashing his pressure without restraint. With one punch, he crushed half of the enormous Caterpillar Cursed Spirit's body.

But in the instant flesh flew everywhere, the cursed spirit triggered some kind of innate splitting technique in its desperation. Its bloated body rapidly broke apart into dozens of offspring the size of hounds, which frantically crawled down the exterior walls of the building.

"Oops, my hand slipped." Satoru Gojo stood at the edge of the rooftop, looking down at the fleeing shadows with a wicked grin.

"Lu Ping, since you said you had a new realization, let me see just how tough your new shikigami really is!"

One of the foul-smelling, bristly offspring was incredibly fast. In the blink of an eye, it had dropped to less than ten meters above the ground. Madness and killing intent flashed in its compound eyes as it targeted the two below.

His first real battle.

Lu Ping felt his heart skip a beat. It was the instinctive fear of his body.

But immediately afterward, the Three Corpses Manipulation within him awakened like a shark that had scented blood.

A jujutsu sorcerer fought by wielding negative emotions. Fear would inevitably invite death.

What was there to fear? The strongest duo was right above him, and the best healer was right beside him. If he didn't act now, when would he?

The moment that unease arose, the Azure Corpse lurking within his shadow bit it to pieces.

Lu Ping's agitated mind instantly became as calm as an icy lake. He bent his knees slightly and interlocked his fingers, his fingertips sketching the shadow of a wolf's head beneath the moonlight.

His innate technique, Three Corpses Manipulation, resided within his shadow. It had inherited and altered the original Ten Shadows Technique.

"Come forth, Shadow Wolf."

Drawing upon his will, he forcibly poured the power of the Three Corpses into his shadow.

Boom!

Lu Ping's shadow expanded wildly like spilled ink. Then, an enormous black wolf, far larger than an ordinary Divine Dog and over two meters tall, slowly rose from the darkness. A faint azure mist swirled around its body, while dim starlight flickered in and out of sight within its eyes.

"Roar—!"

Shadow Wolf let out a roar, pushed off with its hind legs, and became a bolt of black lightning as it collided head-on with the Caterpillar Cursed Spirit's offspring in midair.

Its movements were more savage and aggressive than those of the Divine Dogs. In a single exchange, Shadow Wolf's cursed-energy-infused fangs clamped tightly around the cursed spirit offspring's throat.

The power of the Azure Corpse resided within it, directly cutting off the cursed spirit's ability to regenerate.

Before everyone's astonished eyes, Shadow Wolf did not tear it apart. Instead, it opened its abyssal maw and swallowed the remains, which contained Grade 2-level energy, in just a few bites!

The once-ferocious offspring did not even leave behind a trace of cursed energy residue.

Lu Ping stood where he was, sensing the energy fed back through Three Corpses Manipulation.

"...Something's off." He frowned slightly.

After devouring that cursed spirit, he could feel that his total cursed energy had indeed increased slightly. Yet the sense of fullness and purity was nowhere near as immediate as when the Azure Corpse had devoured that tiny bit of his unease.

Watching Shadow Wolf feed, Lu Ping gradually pieced together the answer. The Three Corpses were born from humanity itself, so devouring one's own emotions resulted in a one-hundred-percent pure conversion. Cursed spirits, meanwhile, were aggregates of negative emotions, but they were filled with all kinds of chaotic, filthy, mixed curses. They were like low-quality pills: too many impurities, and their conversion efficiency was frighteningly low.

As he pondered this, Lu Ping suddenly felt a powerful wave of dizziness.

In a single day, he had gone from awakening his technique to forcibly altering the Ten Shadows Technique. His mental strength had already reached its limit. His body swayed, and he was about to collapse.

Just then, a warm palm carrying a faint scent of tobacco gently supported his back.

Ieiri Shoko had somehow come up behind him. Her signature lazy gaze now held a trace of approval.

Pure white cursed energy flowed around her fingertips as Reverse Cursed Technique continuously poured into Lu Ping's body, rapidly easing the exhaustion caused by overexertion.

"Hey, there's a limit to showing off." Shoko chuckled softly and patted Lu Ping's shoulder with her other hand.

"But that move really was intimidating. Nice work, Zenin Clan's... immortal cultivator?"

The white-haired young man descended from above, looking at the now-peaceful street and the strange wolf shadow gradually fading beneath Lu Ping's feet.

Satoru Gojo adjusted his sunglasses, concealing the genuine interest that had been stirred in his eyes.

"Tsk, tsk. This guy's shikigami has changed flavor."