Damn it... At this distance, that kid will be dead in less than a second.
Feng frowned, his thoughts racing.
In his intense concentration, even time itself seemed to slow around him.
I can manipulate liquid infused with my own cursed energy... I can control it... Then...
I've got it!
The black-haired boy steadied himself after being driven back, the hem of his dark blue uniform dropping sharply in the cold air.
Without a moment's hesitation, Feng spoke the command, his voice clear and steady.
"Rainfall."
Then he raised both arms, and a jet of high-pressure water, denser and more tightly compressed than before, erupted in front of him.
The water tore through the air with a piercing sonic boom. Like a spear that could pierce anything, it punched straight through the gray-white tentacle of flesh strangling the little boy.
Foul black fluid splattered in every direction as the thick tentacle snapped in two.
Freed from its grip, the boy screamed in terror and fell straight toward the rubble-strewn floor.
But just before he hit the ground, the stream that had pierced the tentacle did not disperse despite losing its target.
The water abruptly changed shape in midair, spreading flat with a speed that defied physics. It became a soft, elastic net of liquid that securely caught the falling boy.
At the same time, the physical space of the entire abandoned office underwent a transformation.
Without any preliminary ritual, ink-black clouds billowed into existence beneath the ceiling.
Without warning, torrential rain poured down inside the sealed room.
The curtain of rain instantly enveloped the entire space. Feng's own pure cursed energy, as vast as the sea, flooded every corner with the downpour.
Amid the sweeping rain, the water net holding the boy seemed to come alive.
Following the paths of the falling and flowing rainwater, it swiftly drew back, pulling the terrified, dazed boy safely to Feng's feet in the blink of an eye.
"I'm not done yet!"
The dense raindrops falling from the clouds underwent a drastic change the instant they touched the enormous cursed spirit on the wall.
Water that had been gentle a second before became harder than steel upon contact with the enemy.
Like bullets pouring from countless automatic rifles, they carried devastating momentum as they relentlessly punched through the cursed spirit's massive shell, pieced together from countless human faces.
Thud, thud, thud, thud-!
The dense impacts blended into one continuous barrage.
The hard gray-white flesh the cursed spirit prided itself on was as fragile as tofu before the bullet-like rain.
Black blood and shredded flesh flew everywhere beneath the downpour.
Nobara Kugisaki stood in the pouring rain.
She instinctively raised an arm to shield her head and face, only to discover in astonishment that the deluge capable of riddling a powerful cursed spirit with holes became nothing more than harmless water droplets when it landed on her.
Her light brown pupils shrank to pinpoints.
She stared fixedly at Feng, who stood at the center of the rain looking even thinner than before.
"This... This is... Domain Expansion!?"
Nobara Kugisaki's voice cracked slightly from sheer shock.
She could hardly believe that an ultimate art standing at the pinnacle of a jujutsu sorcerer's power, something most Grade 1 Sorcerers could never attain in their entire lives, had appeared in a first-year student from her own class.
But the brutal battlefield gave her little time to stand stunned.
The cursed spirit on the wall, riddled with holes, did not immediately crumble into ash.
It let out a hysterical, agonized shriek that nearly pierced their eardrums.
The core masses of flesh embedded deep within the wall began swelling violently, glowing a dangerous, murky dark red. Even the surrounding load-bearing walls cracked under the strain.
"That monster's trying to blow itself up!"
Nobara Kugisaki quickly assessed the situation.
Even inside her companion's domain, if a dying Grade 3 cursed spirit, or one approaching Grade 2, managed to detonate in an enclosed space...
The resulting shock wave, mixed with venom and cursed energy, could still injure Feng, whose body was already depleted, and the defenseless hostage.
Now that the hostage had been pulled to safety, nothing held her back.
"Don't think opening a domain means you get to hog all the glory, rookie!"
The girl gritted her teeth, three long nails appearing between the fingers of her left hand as if by magic.
She poured blue cursed energy into them without holding anything back. Her arm muscles tensed, and she hurled the nails toward the cursed spirit's rapidly swelling core on the wall.
Three streaks of blue pierced the rain, embedding themselves precisely in the depths of the cursed spirit's splitting flesh.
Then Nobara Kugisaki gripped her hammer with both hands and struck hard at the empty air, producing a deafening crack.
"Straw Doll Technique: Hairpin!"
The nails embedded in the cursed spirit erupted into savage spikes of cursed energy.
The blast tearing it apart from within combined perfectly with the bullet-like rain pouring down outside to finish it off.
With a muffled boom, the wall collapsed completely.
Under the combined assault, the cursed spirit that had tried to take them down with it finally disintegrated. Its enormous body turned into a cloud of black ash and vanished in the torrential rain.
"It's sort of a property of my cursed technique. Sorry I got your clothes wet, but it gave me a few ideas for new ways to use it..."
Feng smiled faintly, his dark red eyes glancing upward before he released his Domain Expansion.
As his words fell, the clouds and downpour filling the sealed room instantly drew back like illusions.
The curtain of rain vanished into thin air. Apart from the water strewn across the floor and the lingering dampness in the air, it was as though that awe-inspiring domain had never existed.
Without the rain washing over it, much of Feng's dark blue Jujutsu High uniform now hung loose and hollow on his body.
With the torso beneath no longer filling it out, the fabric looked especially oversized around the collar and cuffs.
Nobara Kugisaki shook her wet orange bob, sending droplets flying onto the dusty wall.
She looked down and tugged at the damp fabric clinging to her shoulders and waist, unable to keep herself from frowning.
She had put plenty of effort into getting Jujutsu High to tailor this uniform to her measurements.
"Don't give me that. Technique properties or not, a girl's clothes are precious."
The girl pursed her lips and deftly tucked her hammer back into the equipment belt at her waist.
She was not angry. After all, in that desperate moment, he had not only saved the hostage but also created the opening for a finishing blow.
But her mind had not stopped working just because the fight was over.
Nobara Kugisaki's gaze swept over the black-haired boy's body, so frail that a gust of wind seemed enough to knock him down.
Calling a tangible spatial lockdown on that scale a "technique property" like it's nothing? Give me a break.
Whether or not this ability counted as a true Domain Expansion, a move capable of changing the rules of the surrounding environment had to come with an unimaginable cost.
And that cost was already written plainly on the new student's body-he was using his own mass as fuel for his technique.
This self-destructive way of fighting could not become a habit.
She followed the boy's gaze toward the window.
The black "Curtain" in the sky, like an overturned bowl of ink, was rapidly breaking apart from the top. Dappled sunlight spilled through the cracks in the barrier onto the ruined street.
"Looks like that wild gorilla downstairs, Itadori, has some skills after all. At least he didn't drag us down."
The girl turned around, her light brown eyes fixing directly on Feng. A rare, serious warning entered her gaze.
"Hey, whatever new use you just thought of, take a look at yourself first.
If you're going to keep throwing your body away like it's disposable on future missions and 'use yourself up,' I'm not putting your puddle back together."
After delivering that barbed warning, Nobara Kugisaki stopped looking at him.
She strode through the puddles toward the little boy still trembling in the corner.
She crouched down, doing her best to soften her usual overbearing manner, and offered him a wet hand.
"All right, kid. The monster's dead for good. Give me your hand. It's time we got out of this dump."
Before you continue