"It's all right. Under those circumstances, there wasn't much choice... Besides, I can't blame other people for everything. I'm a jujutsu sorcerer. Other people might die with regrets, but I won't.
If you blame yourself like that, aren't you stealing the spotlight from my life? After all, I'm completely free."
Feng said this with a faint smile.
Yuji Itadori slowly loosened the fingers gripping his short pink hair.
The cold metal of the autopsy table seeped through his skin. He sat there bare-chested, his gaze resting on the hospital bed beside him, tangled in tubes and wires.
Those hoarse words-"completely free" and "won't die with regrets"-echoed through the empty basement.
The boy had just returned from the brink of death. His chest, heaving with panic and guilt, gradually settled at those casually spoken words.
He lowered his gaze to the unmarked left side of his chest, then slowly clenched both fists, his knuckles turning pale beneath the incandescent light.
"Completely... free, huh."
Itadori repeated it quietly, some of the uncertainty gone from his voice.
He snapped his head up. A pure, unwavering light, like that of a wild beast, gathered once more in his brown eyes. Water dripped from his chin onto the metal table.
"I understand. Since this is what you risked your life to achieve, I absolutely won't let myself die that easily!"
"Teacher, should we report Itadori's condition, then?" Feng asked, turning toward Satoru Gojo.
Satoru Gojo chuckled, idly tapping the toe of his dress shoe against the tiles twice.
He pulled his hands from his uniform pockets and casually stretched his arms overhead. His joints gave a faint crack.
"Report it? Why would we do that?"
He strode around Itadori's autopsy table, his tall frame casting a long, slanting shadow across the terrazzo floor.
His blindfolded face turned unerringly toward the hospital bed. The arrogant curve of his lips widened, carrying a chilling hint of calculation.
"Those old fossils upstairs just got their way with their plan to have someone else do their dirty work. They're probably celebrating in some dark basement right now.
If we hand them the news that Sukuna's vessel has come back to life, they'll arrange another, even more blatant execution without a second thought."
Satoru Gojo stopped walking. Even the cursed residue drifting chaotically through the surrounding air seemed to freeze for an instant.
"So until the Kyoto Sister-School Goodwill Event begins, Yuji will be a genuine 'corpse' in everyone's records.
During that time, I'll hide him away for special training and make cursed energy control second nature to him."
He bent slightly, bracing both hands against the metal frame of the hospital bed.
"As for you-your situation is even more delicate than Yuji's right now.
Those higher-ups slapped the 'Semi-Grade 1' label on you so they'd have a legitimate excuse to increase their surveillance. They'll do everything they can to test the limits of your cursed technique."
Satoru Gojo straightened and snapped his fingers sharply.
"But as long as you've got me, the strongest teacher, all those annoying flies can be kept outside.
Your only job now is to stay put in that bed until all your organs have grown back."
Beside them, Shoko Ieiri bent down and picked up the fallen fountain pen from the metal tray.
She casually wiped its tip with the hem of her white coat, pulled out a chair, and sat down again.
"Just don't turn my infirmary into a war room for your conspiracies.
Also, the mucous membranes of those newly reconstructed vocal cords are extremely fragile."
Shoko Ieiri glanced at the heart monitor, her voice carrying a clinician's cold, unquestionable authority.
"If a few more pointless remarks tear those wounds open again, I can't guarantee that saline alone will be enough to piece you back together intact."
"I see... Miss Ieiri said before that my body was made entirely of water and cursed energy, but something unexpected seems to have happened this time.
Sukuna's attack really did hit my flesh..." Feng said after some thought, his words a question.
At the hoarse uncertainty from the hospital bed, Shoko Ieiri's fingers paused halfway toward the medicine rack.
She turned, her perpetually weary eyes narrowing slightly beneath the cold light.
She returned to the bedside and gently hooked her slender fingertips beneath the edge of the thick bandages covering his chest.
As she slowly peeled away the clinging scabs, a faint sound like fabric tearing from skin rang harshly through the silence.
What should have been flowing, transparent, water-like cursed energy showed an eerie depletion around the wounds.
The wounds left by Dismantle were not smooth breaks in liquid. Instead, they revealed scorched, shriveled flesh that could not close itself, as though some higher law had forcibly "defined" that part of his cursed-energy shell as fragile mortal flesh in that instant.
"...It really is strange."
Frowning, Shoko Ieiri leaned closer to the bone-deep wound, her cool breath brushing over it.
"Your heavenly restriction should convert all physical damage into cursed energy depletion, using liquefaction to avoid structural collapse. But the edges of these wounds show clear signs of unusual trauma.
Even with saline acting as a catalyst, the cells are reconstructing three times more slowly than expected.
This doesn't look like his flesh was cut open. It's more as though Sukuna denied the very 'existence' of this part of him."
Satoru Gojo remained seated backward on the round stool, but his casual air vanished completely.
His blindfolded gaze seemed to pierce the bandages and flesh, looking straight into the disrupted pathways of cursed energy beneath.
He extended his right hand, holding it a few centimeters above the wound.
Because of Limitless, he never touched the skin directly, but the faint, scorched sensation lingering in the air there made his fingertips twitch.
"Ryomen Sukuna isn't just the embodiment of power. He's also the ultimate interpreter of the laws of jujutsu.
Yuji, when you confronted him in his innate domain, did you notice any unusual flow of cursed energy when he cut?"
Sitting on the autopsy table, Yuji Itadori pressed his lips together. He looked down at his calloused hands, a flicker of struggle and belated dread in his eyes.
"At the time... I just felt like he'd 'grabbed hold' of all the space around us for that instant. It wasn't as simple as cutting something open. It was like he saw through Feng's true nature.
He said... 'Once you decipher the rhythm of its flow, water is nothing more than a differently shaped lump of meat.'"
Itadori raised his head and stared anxiously at the weakened figure on the hospital bed, an almost imperceptible tremor in his voice.
"I'm sorry. He was adjusting his cursed technique specifically to counter the properties of 'water.'
The instant he swung, he used cursed energy to forcibly disrupt the frequency of your liquefaction, making your body solidify during the microsecond of impact.
He was toying with the limits of your heavenly restriction."
Satoru Gojo withdrew his hand, the smile at his lips turning dangerously cold.
He stood, his tall frame casting an enormous, oppressive shadow across the wall.
"Analyzing frequencies, huh... That's a thousand-year-old monster for you. Feng, your 'water body' isn't invulnerable.
In his eyes, once he understands the pattern of your cursed energy fluctuations, he can bypass your defenses and 'cut' you directly at the soul level."
Satoru Gojo walked to the window, his back to the others. His voice sounded slightly distorted in the empty room.
"That also explains why your wounds are healing so slowly. That patch of 'water' remembers the fear of being killed, and it's refusing to flow again.
For a while, you won't just have to recover. You'll also have to learn how to protect that fragile core even after someone has 'seen through' you."
Shoko Ieiri replaced the bandages, her movements efficient and touched with a clinician's coldness.
"Did you hear that? If you don't want to become a puddle of stagnant water for real next time, don't even think about moving a finger until your cursed energy circulation is completely smooth again.
I'll double your fluids. As for that burning pain in your soul, you'll just have to endure it yourself."
That was indeed the case. Feng remembered that Sukuna would also use soul-cutting slashes against Mahito in the future.
Because he was an incarnated vessel, Sukuna could easily touch the boundary of the soul.
And Itadori could do the same.
For precisely that reason, it was no surprise that Sukuna had managed to damage his soul.
"Teacher, I want to learn Reverse Cursed Technique."
Feng lay flat on the hospital bed, his eyes fixed on the slightly mottled concrete ceiling above.
Because of his throat injury, the words "I want to learn Reverse Cursed Technique" emerged with a painfully rough, sandpapered texture, stirring a faint echo in the empty room.
Satoru Gojo, who had been about to rise and check Itadori's condition, abruptly froze midway through the motion.
He slowly straightened, the teasing curve on his almost divinely sculpted face fading little by little.
His blindfolded eyes seemed to scrutinize the heavily bandaged body on the bed through that thin layer of fabric.
"Reverse Cursed Technique, huh."
Satoru Gojo rolled the term around in his mouth, his tone unusually slow and grave.
He walked to the head of the bed. His tall, dark silhouette instantly blocked most of the light, enveloping the figure lying there in a crushing sense of pressure.
"Feng, do you know what you're saying? Among jujutsu sorcerers, that's a one-in-ten-thousand 'miracle.'
Multiplying the negative energy of cursed energy to produce positive energy isn't just a matter of talent. It requires a kind of 'illusory perception' of the world's underlying laws."
He extended a hand and swept it through the air above the blood-soaked bandages, cold reason in his voice.
"Normally, to grasp it, you either have to tear your own self apart on the brink of death, like I did, or possess some indescribable innate intuition, like Shoko.
For someone whose water body is built from heavenly restriction and pure cursed energy, trying to force the creation of positive energy could completely destroy your already unstable balance and turn you straight into a puddle of stagnant water that can never recover."
Yuji Itadori listened from the autopsy table, bewildered. He still didn't fully understand what Reverse Cursed Technique was, but he sensed the danger in Gojo's unprecedentedly serious tone.
He instinctively edged forward, his eyes filled with simple astonishment.
"Huh? That sounds really dangerous.
But if he learns it, wouldn't all Feng's injuries heal up in a flash?"
Shoko Ieiri gave a short, faintly mocking laugh.
She twirled the ballpoint pen in her hand, a sharp glint passing through her heavily shadowed eyes amid an illusory haze of smoke.
"Yuji, it's not that simple. Even I have trouble explaining exactly how it works."
She stood, the hem of her white coat tracing a weary arc through the air.
She walked to the other side of the hospital bed and looked down into those dark red eyes, her tone returning to a clinician's brisk detachment.
"Listen carefully. Two negatives make a positive. You forcibly reverse something 'negative' like cursed energy, twisting it as though you were braiding rope.
It feels like short-circuiting a circuit with a snap, catching the sparks that burst out in that instant, then stuffing those sparks into dead cells.
Are you sure that, in your current mental state, you can perform a cursed energy conversion ten thousand times finer than precision surgery while enduring the agony of Sukuna cutting your soul?"
Satoru Gojo leaned back against the wall, his long fingers tapping rhythmically against his thigh.
He didn't immediately reject the nearly insane request. Instead, he showed a cold anticipation, as though watching some rare creature evolve.
"Since you brought it up, let's give it a try. But let me make this clear first-my teaching methods are seriously hardcore.
You can't learn Shoko's 'intuitive approach,' and my 'genius approach' is all about creating 'something' directly from 'nothing.'"
Satoru Gojo lowered his head slightly, a wisp of white hair swaying at the edge of his blindfold.
"Until you recover and leave the infirmary, I'll put you through that near-death sensation of being 'cut open' every day.
Only by truly experiencing that critical point where cursed energy collapses will you have a chance of seeing the 'light' of reversal in that darkness.
Are you mentally prepared? It'll be much more painful than taking a slash from Sukuna."
Before you continue