"You think you're worthy?"
A cold, mocking smile curled Feng's lips. His slender fingers settled on the hilt of the sword resembling Mikazuki Munechika, and his thumb gently pushed the guard free.
"New Shadow Style: Simple Domain."
The instant he spoke, a pale blue spherical domain erupted outward from him, sweeping along the ground.
A teeth-grating screech filled the air. The three gravity-powered crossbow bolts fired from his blind spots struck the domain's edge as though they had hit an invisible iron wall. Their tips shattered instantly, and they lost all momentum, falling to the floor.
The Detonation Tag attached to the arrow’s tail was forcibly stripped of cursed energy, reduced to a scrap of paper.
At the same time, the concrete beneath Feng's feet, which had been bubbling like a swamp, instantly regained its original cold hardness under the Simple Domain's absolute neutralization.
Behind a load-bearing pillar in the hall, the Semi-Grade 1 curse user wielding the terrain technique coughed up a mouthful of blood. The backlash from his forcibly interrupted technique left his face deathly pale.
"Simple Domain?!" He clutched his chest, his pupils contracting sharply as he shouted in terror.
"Get back! That's the absolute defensive range of a counterattack sword-drawing technique!"
"I'll use you for a little practice!"
"New Shadow Style: Sword draw."
A silver-white flash of steel blazed through the hall like lightning tearing through a dark room.
Feng vanished from where he stood. Carried by savage momentum, he crossed more than ten meters in an instant and charged onto the abandoned iron walkway on the second floor.
Squelch-
Three chilling sounds of flesh being torn apart rang out almost simultaneously.
The three Grade 2 curse users preparing to reload their crossbows had no time to react. All they felt was a sudden chill across their abdomens.
They lowered their heads blankly. Blood gushed like fountains from the clean cuts across their bellies, and all three bodies crumpled onto the iron walkway like empty sacks.
"Don't get cocky, brat!"
Kuroda, the Grade 1 curse user, seized the tiny opening after the young man's slash.
His muscles bulged, and the bandages soaked in dark red cursed energy around his arms instantly hardened. Like two heavy steel drills spinning at high speed, they tore through the air with a furious roar and hammered toward Feng's skull from behind and to the side.
That all-out strike from a Grade 1 curse user could have pulverized a solid load-bearing pillar in an instant.
Yet Feng did not even turn his head.
He merely raised his left hand, instantly reinforcing and compressing pure, high-density cursed energy in his palm.
Bang!
Fist met palm with a muffled explosive report.
Kuroda's furious expression froze. He felt as though his all-out strike had hit an immovable mountain, every bit of its momentum swallowed whole.
Crack!
The sharp snap of breaking bones rang clearly across the walkway.
Using nothing but cursed energy reinforcement, Feng abruptly closed his five fingers, crushing Kuroda's prized steel fist along with its bandages.
A scream had only just risen in Kuroda's throat when the coldly gleaming blade mercilessly pierced his abdomen.
Feng casually flicked his sword wrist. Kuroda's hulking body traced an arc through the air, plunging from the second floor and smashing through an abandoned workbench below, sending dust billowing everywhere.
The female curse user reacted swiftly.
Ignoring Kuroda, whose fate was unknown, she seized the instant the young man flung him away, all ten fingers flying through a series of motions.
Dozens of poison-coated Thousand Needles, guided by invisible threads of cursed energy, wove a vast, sickly green net in midair, sealing off every possible landing spot.
"Something's wrong with his physical combat! There's no sign of a cursed technique activating!"
She retreated rapidly, gritting her teeth as she assessed the fight, cold sweat beading on her forehead.
"Still trying to struggle? I'm not the type to go easy on a woman. At most, I'll keep you alive, but it certainly won't be pleasant."
Feng moved as lightly as though he weighed nothing, twisting his waist in midair at an impossible angle.
With flexibility that defied human anatomy, he slipped calmly through the gaps between several poisoned needles and landed unscathed before the female curse user.
"Lie still, and you won't die."
His blade swept upward, trailing a gruesome spray of blood.
The leather clothing from her flank to her shoulder split instantly, and a wound deep enough to expose bone cut across half her torso.
Worse still, strange crescent-shaped cursed residue began spreading through the wound, devouring the surrounding flesh like something alive. The female curse user let out a piercing scream and collapsed, rolling across the floor in agony.
"A monster... You've got to be kidding!"
Watching their strongest fighters fall in an instant, the three remaining Semi-Grade 1 curse users finally succumbed to utter despair.
They retreated back-to-back to the edge of the hall, frantically squeezing out every last drop of cursed energy they had. It gathered into three immensely powerful shock waves of different colors as they attempted one final, desperate stand.
Feng remained where he stood, not even bothering to raise his sword again.
Moisture in the air rapidly gathered and compressed around his left arm. In the blink of an eye, it formed a hard layer of [Water Armor], dense cursed energy flowing through it.
The three cursed energy shock waves, powerful enough to demolish the plant, slammed into the Water Armor. They produced only a series of dull thuds before the flowing water completely dispersed their force, scattering them into a shower of droplets.
Feng's gaze was icy as he casually flicked his Water Armor-covered arm forward.
Dozens of highly compressed water needles shot out like bullets from a gun.
After a shrill whistle through the air, the remaining curse users screamed as the water needles precisely pierced their limbs and shoulders. The tremendous impact pinned them firmly to the concrete walls and floor behind them, leaving them unable to move.
The cavernous underground water treatment plant fell silent again, with only the dripping of blood and low groans of pain echoing through it.
It's over... It really wasn't much of a challenge for me... Feng mused, his dark red eyes shifting slightly.
Several kilometers from the abandoned water treatment plant, on the rooftop of an unfinished high-rise.
The night wind stirred the hem of a five-strip Buddhist robe with a faint flutter.
A man with a ring of strange stitches across his forehead stood with both hands tucked into his broad sleeves, gazing down at the distant industrial district that had fallen deathly silent.
His narrow, deep-set eyes held no trace of unnecessary emotion, only the cold gleam of meticulous reason.
"A completely one-sided rout... Were they not even capable of forcing him to reveal more of his hidden cards?"
The man murmured to himself, a smile devoid of warmth curling his lips.
For his grand plan, spanning a thousand years and now approaching its culmination, sealing Satoru Gojo inside the "Prison Realm" was an absolute prerequisite.
Yet this black-haired young man who had suddenly appeared in Tokyo was a dangerous variable entirely outside his thousand years of calculations.
Piecing together fragments from his intelligence network, this unregistered sorcerer possessed an unusual heavenly restriction and domain abilities, and could apparently hold his own against Ryomen Sukuna with three fingers.
"That man, Satoru Gojo, seems to have high hopes for this variable.
If this power is allowed to keep growing unchecked, or if he suddenly intervenes at the critical moment of the sealing in Shibuya, he'll be a truly troublesome obstacle."
The man's gaze fixed on the underground water treatment plant as he slowly drew his right hand from his sleeve.
Ink-black cursed energy churned and compressed in his palm, giving off a nauseating, oppressive aura.
He was not acting on emotion. His decision came from an entirely rational assessment of risk-he had to exploit this perfect window while Satoru Gojo was out of the country to thoroughly ascertain this variable's limits and the mechanics of his cursed technique.
"Since those useless fools couldn't even serve as a touchstone, let me raise the standard of this test a little.
If you can't even stomach this 'appetizer,' then you aren't much after all."
With an explosive surge of cursed energy, a massive, writhing black shadow took shape above the rooftop.
Then the shadow plunged into the night like a meteor, hurtling silently toward the Harajuku Suburbs.
Inside the abandoned underground hall, the smell of blood had yet to dissipate.
The curse users pinned to the walls and floor by water needles let out broken groans of pain.
Yet amid that brief, deathly stillness, the surrounding temperature abruptly dropped to freezing.
The cursed residue lingering in the air underwent an instant qualitative change. A suffocating stench flooded into the enclosed underground space like a tsunami breaching a seawall.
It smelled of rotten wood, rusted scrap metal, and the overwhelming reek of corpses-nothing a human could possibly give off.
Rustle, rustle... rustle, rustle, rustle...
At first, it was only a faint scraping sound. But within two short seconds, it grew thousands upon thousands of times louder, becoming an eerie wave of noise that made the scalp crawl.
The ventilation ducts in the ceiling shattered, drainage covers burst off the floor, and black tides poured from cracks in the surrounding walls.
They were hundreds of thousands of flesh-eating flying insects and cockroaches, each giving off faint cursed energy.
They shoved and bit at one another, gathering into black waterfalls as they flooded the hall with ravenous hunger.
The grievously wounded curse users lying immobilized on the ground barely had time to scream before the black Insect Swarm swallowed them.
A dense chorus of horrifying chewing and snapping bones rose from beneath the Insect Swarm. Even the blood was devoured before it could flow.
"What?!" Feng turned sharply in alarm.
At the center of that nauseating feast, the concrete ceiling directly above the hall collapsed with a thunderous crash.
A massive special grade cursed spirit, shaped like a grotesque upright cockroach, crashed into the center of the settling tank amid the falling rubble.
Savage red light glinted in its compound eyes. It held a terrifying cursed tool made of twisted chunks of flesh and tightly packed insect eggs-the [Festering Life Sword].
The special grade cursed spirit "Kurourushi" had arrived.
(Note: the original work explicitly stated that Kurourushi was a cursed spirit Kenjaku released from Cursed Spirit Manipulation, meaning Kenjaku had already subdued Kurourushi before the Culling Game.)
There was no human emotion, nor any pointless probing words. At this monster's core lay only the pure instincts to kill and feed.
It did not even roar. Within a tenth of a second of its feet touching the ground, the battle had already begun.
Under the absolute control of special grade cursed energy, the Insect Swarm covering the floor instantly split.
Part of the swarm became two black whirlwinds more than three meters in diameter, closing in simultaneously from both sides to encircle and shred the central area of the hall. The impenetrable physical barriers sealed off every escape route and all room to dodge.
At the same time, Kurourushi's enormous body pitched forward. Its powerful hind legs crushed the hard concrete floor, unleashing terrifying speed utterly at odds with its massive size.
Following directly behind the cover of the Insect Swarm, Kurourushi gripped the foul-smelling Festering Life Sword tightly in both hands and brought it down with mountain-cleaving force toward the head of the motionless, black-haired figure straight ahead.
Before the blade even reached him, the cursed insect eggs attached to the Festering Life Sword-capable of hatching instantly and devouring flesh-were already sweeping toward his face on the fetid wind!
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