"I can't get greedy here. Focusing too much on my weapon will only hold me back!"
Feng abruptly loosened his fingers before the blade-sharp gust reached them.
The instant the hardwood staff lost its support, the heavy face of Mei Mei's axe drove it into the ground with a dull crash.
Mei Mei did not hesitate for even a moment when her target disappeared.
Her long legs, clad in deep purple fabric, traced an almost perfect semicircle through the air. The wind swept up loose stones and tore through the air with a piercing howl.
Feng rolled swiftly across the ground, stirring up a cloud of dust scented with earth and grass.
As the sweeping kick, powerful enough to snap his neck, passed over his head, he narrowly put two body lengths between them.
"My body is wide open right now. If I were her... I'd definitely attack at this moment." Feng kept moving as he thought.
His rough fingers closed around the staff on the ground again. Using the momentum of his roll, he sharply twisted his waist.
The staff carved a full, savage, dark red arc through the air, stirring up a heavy gust as he swung blindly toward where he sensed his opponent.
Whoosh!
The staff smashed through the air, but unexpectedly, he felt no impact against flesh.
An instant before the attack reached her, Mei Mei bent her slender body backward with a flexibility that defied human anatomy, until she was almost parallel to the ground.
Her enormous braid flicked lightly through the air. Following the rotation of her waist, the long axe in her single-handed grip spun nimbly around her fingers.
The back of the axe struck the sweeping staff with a crisp clang, effortlessly deflecting the brute force that could have shattered stone.
"Good instincts.
Even without being able to see, you can pick up subtle changes in the airflow. It seems this 'tuition fee' includes a premium for talent."
"She really is fast... If my speed is ten, hers is about fifteen, and the gap in strength is even greater..." Feng assessed calmly.
*"It's true that in Jujutsu Society, a momentary emotional outburst can produce tremendous output. But at the same time... overly unstable emotions actually compromise your cursed energy efficiency.
That's also why I'm losing in hand-to-hand combat..."*
Mei Mei planted one hand on the ground and gracefully crossed her long legs in the air, regaining her balance.
She straightened up. The amusement in her pale blue eyes faded, replaced by a cold scrutiny, as though she were appraising the value of her prey.
"But instincts alone won't keep you alive for three minutes in a real fight to the death.
You're too slow. To an experienced sorcerer, your movements are as plain as ink on white paper."
Before she finished speaking, Mei Mei vanished again. This was no ordinary movement; precise cursed energy control had instantly enhanced her explosive power.
A second later, she appeared in the blind spot behind his flank, before he could recover from his staff swing.
She did not swing the heavy axe. Instead, she drove the thick butt of its handle viciously toward his slightly stiff back, with enough crushing force to punch through a lung.
In the shade at the edge of the woods, Megumi Fushiguro's pupils abruptly contracted.
He instinctively took half a step forward. The shadow beneath his feet writhed and expanded violently in the sunlight, as though some pitch-black monster were about to burst free.
"Deliberately leave an opening to bait a counterattack, then use the gap while the opponent recovers to move into their blind spot... Is this how a Grade 1 Sorcerer fights?"
Megumi Fushiguro clenched his fingers so hard that his knuckles gave faint pops.
He held his breath, his gaze fixed on the figure trapped in a desperate situation.
"Feng, don't turn around! It's a trap!"
But his voice was slower than the incoming axe handle. That lethal threat was already pressing toward one side of Feng's spine.
Mei Mei's movements looked effortless, yet they sealed off every conventional avenue of escape.
"My Domain Amplification doesn't neutralize cursed techniques... it neutralizes cursed energy. That means I can block this strike!"
The next instant, Feng snapped his staff upright and thrust his body forward to meet the blow.
With a shrill whistle that tore through the air, the heavy axe handle slammed into the middle of the upright hardwood staff.
At that instant, instead of the expected crack of splintering wood, a low, eerie hum reverberated through the air.
A film of light as thin as a cicada's wing clung tightly to the staff and the front of his clothes.
The purple cursed energy wrapped around the axe handle, powerful enough to crush his internal organs, rapidly dissolved and unraveled upon touching that light, like snow falling into boiling water.
The raw momentum remained heavy even without cursed energy reinforcing it. But in the opening created by its neutralization, Feng threw his center of gravity forward and used the recoil to slip inside Mei Mei's reach.
His dark blue trouser leg traced a sharp arc through the air. A high whipping kick shrieked toward the side of Mei Mei's head.
Mei Mei's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
A reversal of this caliber, coupled with interference in the very nature of cursed energy, went far beyond anything she had expected from a "newcomer."
Rather than take the powerful kick head-on, she swiftly tucked her left arm up to protect her temple while bending her entire upper body backward at an almost bone-breaking angle.
Thud!
The sound of his toes brushing her leather bracer was unusually dull. Mei Mei's slender figure slid several meters backward across the grass, her boot soles plowing two distinct, deep furrows through the earth.
The instant she steadied herself, the enormous axe turned halfway around her fingers and settled horizontally in front of her again. Her braid whipped wildly in the wind, hiding the smile on half her face.
"What you just did... isn't something simple cursed energy reinforcement can achieve.
Was that 'Domain Amplification,' compressing a domain over the surface of your body? What an unexpected expense."
Mei Mei ran a fingertip over the shallow dent left in her bracer.
Deep within her pale blue eyes, a professional sorcerer's greed had given way to a deeper fascination with the unknown.
"The price Gojo quoted didn't mention that you'd already mastered a technique of this caliber.
If you're planning to 'save money' this way, I'll have to consider raising my fee, or-turning up the intensity of this lesson."
In the shadows at the edge of the woods, Megumi Fushiguro clenched both hands into fists. The sting of his nails digging into his palms reminded him that this was no illusion.
His dark green eyes remained fixed on the lingering spatial distortion at the center of the field, while the tactical picture in his mind underwent a frantic reconstruction.
*"He neutralized Mei Mei's cursed technique... no, he directly dissolved the cursed energy coating it?
That definitely wasn't a coincidence. His movements are still unpolished, but that ability to suppress the very essence of a cursed technique..."*
Megumi Fushiguro's jaw trembled slightly from how tightly he held it. He keenly sensed that the atmosphere on the field had changed.
*"This is bad. Mei Mei is getting serious.
That look... she's no longer observing him as a 'coach.' She's 'hunting' Feng as an opponent on her own level."*
Before the words had finished, the crow on Mei Mei's shoulder let out a piercing cry.
Several black birds that had merely been circling among the trees suddenly swooped down, forming a black vortex around Mei Mei.
At that moment, the cursed residue on the enormous axe began turning from purple to black, growing so dense that it was almost viscous.
"That old witch..." Feng frowned.
*"I actually forgot for a moment that her Divine Wind cursed technique lets her share the crows' vision in the first place. In other words...
Has she been using her cursed technique from the very beginning?
I can't rule that out..."*
Before you continue