Reverse Cursed Technique

Only the monotonous ticking of the heart monitor broke the silence in the spacious underground medical room.

The pale surgical light shone straight down onto the bed.

Layers of thick bandages tightly wrapped Feng as he lay flat. Dark red blood slowly seeped from the through-and-through wound Sukuna had left, mingling with the exposed cross section of cursed energy beneath it, which should have been transparent and watery but now looked like a shriveled phantom.

Saline dripped down the IV tube, slowly flowing through the indwelling needle into his battered shell.

"Pain... my body doesn't really feel any pain. If I had to describe it, I do feel kind of groggy.

If Reverse Cursed Technique means multiplying cursed energy, then producing completely different, positive energy inside a body filled with cursed energy really would be difficult. But looked at another way, for someone made entirely of cursed energy, that kind of precision work should also count as instinct.

Actually... sensei, can I understand the multiplication in Reverse Cursed Technique as merging two equal amounts of cursed energy into one, so that two negatives make a positive?"

At the slightly hoarse explanation from the bed, Satoru Gojo slowly straightened from his lazy slouch against the wall.

"Merging? Bringing them together?"

Gojo chuckled and snapped his long fingers crisply in midair.

The Six Eyes concealed beneath his black blindfold precisely tracked the faint energy circulating through the body on the bed, a body constructed purely from cursed energy.

"Wrong. If you're just bringing equal amounts of cursed energy together, that's addition at best.

One clump of negative emotions plus another only gives you an even bigger mass of negative energy."

He took a long stride forward and raised both hands, holding his index fingers opposite each other before his chest.

"Multiplication means absolute collision and crushing force. It's like forcing two enormous, high-speed gears to mesh while they're turning in opposite directions.

It's definitely not a gentle blending. It's forcing them to grind and squeeze against each other at the brink of destruction, until they produce a spark of life that's their complete opposite."

Shoko Ieiri stood at the foot of the bed, her cool gaze moving from the bandages to the vital signs monitor beside it.

She reached out to adjust the IV's flow valve, producing a faint metallic clink.

"Not feeling pain isn't something to celebrate."

Her voice carried a clinician's cold rationality.

"Pain is a living creature's first line of self-defense.

Sukuna's slash left a mark directly on your soul, severing the cursed energy feedback in that part of your body. That's why you feel groggy.

Right now, you're like a leaking precision vessel. You can't even sense your own interior collapsing."

Sitting cross-legged on the autopsy table, Yuji Itadori abruptly scratched his short pink hair, his brows twisting into a tight knot.

He looked at Gojo, then toward the bed, his face full of confusion and shock.

"Gears? Sparks? So you're saying you have to set off an explosion inside your own body, then use the light from it to heal yourself?"

Itadori swallowed, his voice rising involuntarily.

"That sounds like you'd just blow yourself sky-high!"

Gojo slipped his hands back into his pockets, his widening smile carrying an undisguised hint of danger.

"Exactly! Your instincts can be pretty sharp sometimes, Yuji."

He looked down at the bed, his tone turning chillingly serious.

"Precisely because you're 'water' constructed from cursed energy, the margin for error in this kind of precision work approaches zero.

If those multiplying gears fail to mesh, the runaway negative energy will blow you up from the inside in an instant. Not even a wisp of steam will remain.

That's the kind of 'instinct' that stakes your life. Before you start, you'd better be prepared to be blown to pieces."

Feng slowly raised an arm wrapped in layer upon layer of thick bandages.

As he turned his palm upward, a faint sound of liquefaction came from the somewhat stifling air around him.

A stream of transparent water appeared out of thin air. Refracting the pale light, it swiftly condensed into a tiny sphere hovering above his palm, its surface reflecting the basement's cold vaulted ceiling.

"What if I did it outside my body? There isn't really any difference, after all. My cursed technique and I are bound together, but that way, even if it explodes, it shouldn't kill me outright."

Gojo's gaze, hidden behind his black blindfold, immediately locked onto the hovering sphere.

Through the Six Eyes, the paths of cursed energy circulating inside it were laid bare.

Keeping his hands in his pockets, he tilted his head slightly and gave a noncommittal chuckle.

"A novel idea. You could even call it a very sneaky loophole. But you're overlooking the most fundamental logic of how cursed energy works."

Gojo took his time walking over to the edge of the bed.

He extended a long index finger, stopping a few inches from the water sphere. Through the barrier of Limitless, his fingertip lightly tapped at the transparent orb.

"Cursed energy originates at a human's navel and flows throughout the body along its circuits. The body is the engine, the reactor that supports every high-pressure operation.

Once cursed energy leaves the body's pathways, it becomes loose sand with no pressure holding it together.

Trying to force two streams of negative energy to 'multiply' with microsecond precision inside a detached medium like this, without any high-pressure confinement..."

He withdrew his finger, a trace of ruthless rationality in the curve of his lips.

"That's like igniting nuclear fusion inside a leaky plastic bag. It can't produce positive energy at all. The instant friction occurs, it'll only cause chaos.

More fatally, your cursed technique is bound to you. Conceptually, this water sphere is still an extension of your 'body.'"

Shoko Ieiri leaned against the metal medicine cabinet with her arms folded. A doctor's sternness flashed in her heavily shadowed eyes. She stared coldly at the water sphere, then shifted her gaze to the scarred shell on the bed.

"Satoru is right. For someone with a Heavenly Restriction whose body is made entirely of cursed energy, operating outside the body is no safety valve. That water is essentially a piece of your 'flesh.'"

She straightened, the hem of her white coat swaying gently.

"If it runs wild and collapses outside your body, the destructive backlash will travel along your cursed technique's connection and flood straight back into your core without losing any force.

Without distance to cushion it or internal circuits to dissipate the force, that backlash will instantly tear your already damaged cursed energy circulation to shreds.

You wouldn't be blown to pieces, true, but your cursed energy structure would dry up like a drained puddle, killing you on the spot."

Still sitting cross-legged on the autopsy table, Yuji Itadori widened his brown eyes. He stared fixedly at the seemingly harmless little water sphere, his Adam's apple bobbing with a strained swallow.

"Oh! So it's like holding a stick of dynamite with a super-short fuse?

Even if you toss it a little way away, when it explodes, the fire will race straight back to your hand and wreck your whole arm, right?"

Itadori clutched his pink hair, his face full of worry and indecision. He turned toward Gojo, a note of urgency entering his voice.

"But Gojo-sensei, if doing it inside your body blows you up, and doing it outside kills you with the backlash, then it's a total dead end!

Can anyone actually do something like that?"

Gojo didn't turn around. He lowered his gaze to the bandaged figure on the bed.

The air pressure around him seemed to sink slightly beneath the presence he now radiated.

"That's why it's called a 'miracle.' There's no retreat, no clever shortcut.

Either you face the fear of being blown to pieces and make those gears mesh inside your body's high-pressure furnace, or you stay here like a good little patient who needs protecting."

He bent slightly, an oppressive smile appearing on his impeccably handsome face.

"Still, if you're trying to find loopholes in your cursed technique even in this condition, your brain clearly hasn't broken yet.

Now take that piece of 'flesh' back. Until your wounds heal, stop wasting what little cursed energy you have left after all that leaking."

"I'm not looking to get myself killed just yet. Heavenly Restriction really isn't a good thing... it'd be a lot better if I had a flesh-and-blood body."

Shoko Ieiri lowered her eyes, her gaze sweeping over the bandages wound around his torso.

She slipped her hands back into the pockets of her white coat and gave a faint, chilly scoff.

"A flesh-and-blood body?"

She turned her head and glanced toward the row of tightly shut metal refrigerated cabinets at the back of the medical room, her eyes carrying the indifference of a medical examiner accustomed to gruesome sights.

"If you really had an ordinary flesh-and-blood body, you wouldn't be lying in a bed where we can still give you an IV. You'd be lying in one of those cabinets.

A jujutsu sorcerer's daily life means dealing with meat grinders. When an ordinary body takes a slash of that caliber, there's nowhere left to even put a needle for emergency stitches.

Your Heavenly Restriction at least preserved your basic shape."

At her words, Yuji Itadori's shoulders drew inward slightly as he sat cross-legged on the autopsy table.

He lowered his head, his right hand unconsciously tightening around the fabric of his uniform over his chest.

A few hours earlier, a clawed hand had pierced straight through that spot. The hollow sensation of flesh being torn away still seemed to linger in his marrow.

"Yeah... Miss Shoko is right."

Itadori's voice sounded subdued. He raised his head, his eyes holding a lingering dread that belonged only to someone who had died once.

"An ordinary body really does break easily. When your heart gets ripped out, there's nothing you can do except feel cold and hopeless.

You can't even move a finger or get out a complete sentence."

Gojo crossed his long legs and leaned back against the cold concrete wall.

The Six Eyes hidden beneath his black blindfold seemed to scrutinize the gauze-wrapped body on the bed across the empty space.

His lips curved mercilessly, his voice echoing through the spacious room.

"Don't get picky about that heaven-sent restriction. It's a lifesaver plenty of mediocre people could only dream of having."

He stepped forward, his leather shoes clicking crisply against the terrazzo floor, and stopped beside the metal bed rail.

His tall frame instantly blocked most of the harsh light, casting a deep shadow.

"An ordinary body would have been sliced into thousands of evenly sized cubes of meat the instant it faced Ryomen Sukuna's 'Cleave' and 'Dismantle.'

The only reason you can still lie here in one piece and complain is that the 'water body' you dislike forcibly delayed the point at which you were counted as dead."

Gojo leaned forward slightly, bracing his arms on the rails on either side of the bed and bringing himself closer.

The suffocating pressure of a Special Grade Sorcerer slowly spread with his steady breathing.

"Give up those unrealistic hypotheticals.

If you can't change the nature of the vessel, then you have to work within its existing framework and force that reversal flame to ignite."

"I was just commenting," Feng said helplessly.