The chase

In the night sky, the curtain of rain resembled an enormous upturned bowl, moving with the domain's master as it doggedly pursued the black shadow fleeing ahead.

"Should I say you're good at running... or just afraid to die?"

"I remember now. You're the Special Grade recorded at Jujutsu High, code name Kurourushi, the cockroach cursed spirit... In that case, that sword just now must have been the Festering Life Sword. It can freely change its attack trajectory, making it hard to defend against, right?"

Feng abruptly appeared in midair. Without the slightest pause, his long right leg, wrapped in highly compressed water, slammed into Kurourushi's bloated back with enough force to split mountains and shatter stone.

With a deafening thud, the special grade cursed spirit's massive body abruptly stalled in midair, then veered off its original course toward the city like a kite with a severed string, plummeting diagonally downward.

Below lay a sprawling school campus whose lights had long since gone out.

BOOM!

Kurourushi's body smashed through the indoor gymnasium's alloy dome like a black meteor.

Dust and shattered building materials sprayed everywhere amid the torrential rain, leaving an enormous crater several meters deep in what had been a level wooden floor.

"You've run about five or six kilometers now. If you keep going, even I'll start getting a headache."

Feng landed lightly on the edge of a classroom building's rooftop not far from the gymnasium.

He stood straight, his clothes snapping in the raging wind and rain, his slightly lowered dark red eyes coldly surveying the wreckage below.

"Good thing today's a day off and there aren't many students around. Otherwise, this would be hard to clean up."

Deep within the ruins, grating scrapes mingled with the sounds of writhing flesh.

Kurourushi slowly crawled up from the rubble and wood splinters.

Countless newborn cockroaches were forcibly filling and stitching together the portion of its body that positive polarity energy had blasted away.

Although the lingering positive energy slowed its regeneration, the special grade cursed spirit's tenacious vitality remained chilling.

It did not flap its wings and flee again.

Its animal instincts and limited intelligence told it that the strange black clouds overhead, which moved wherever Feng moved, could not be escaped through speed alone.

As long as it remained in this downpour, the sharp water blades that penetrated every opening and carried an absolute sure-hit rule would slice it apart bit by bit.

To survive-or rather, to feed-it had to eliminate the source on the rooftop.

A vicious gleam flashed in Kurourushi's compound eyes. It abruptly hunched its battered body, its abdomen convulsing violently.

"Blaargh-"

With a nauseating, sticky sound, a murky black torrent reeking of pungent acid gushed from its abyssal mouthparts.

This was no mere venom, but a mixture of the flesh and blood of curse users it had devoured and specialized flying insects hatched by the highly concentrated negative cursed energy in its gastric juices.

Like a high-pressure jet, the black torrent surged upward against the countless water blades falling with the rain, heading straight for Feng on the classroom building's rooftop.

The flying insects mixed into the acid began glowing a dangerous red in midair, clearly possessing the ability to self-destruct.

This was only the first layer of its killing blow.

At the same instant it spat out the venom, Kurourushi drove its powerful hind legs down, shattering what remained of the gymnasium's foundations.

Its enormous body climbed rapidly along the classroom building's exterior, its sharp limbs plowing deep furrows through the hard wall tiles.

It had calculated that the column of venom would cut off the young man's escape routes above and in front. At that moment, the damaged [Festering Life Sword] in its hand underwent a teeth-grating transformation.

Twisted lumps of flesh and insect eggs extended wildly, turning the short sword into a grotesque flesh whip several meters long.

The flesh whip was not only covered in barbs, but also wreathed in highly concentrated black cursed energy.

With a shriek that tore through the air, Kurourushi leaped up from the side of the classroom building and lashed the flesh whip across the rooftop's edge!

The blow was meant not only to cut through the rooftop railing and Feng's waist, but also to force him into the air with a broad physical sweep, sending him straight into the next round of its insect swarm's killing net.

It was a cornered beast's desperate struggle, with nothing held back.

The corrosive torrent of acid pierced a broad swath of rain, striking the steel framework at the rooftop's edge with a piercing hiss. Thick smoke rose as the metal instantly dissolved into twisted slag.

Yet the black figure had already vanished without a trace beneath the cover of the rain, as though he had never existed in that space.

"So you have some basic, beastlike intelligence?

"If you had a domain, that would be a headache. But you're in my domain right now. An attempt to trap and kill me at this level won't do much."

Deafening thunder suddenly erupted through the air.

In a blind spot that even Kurourushi's compound eyes could not track, space twisted unnaturally.

A fist wrapped in black sparks struck the special grade cursed spirit squarely in the back within a ten-thousandth of a second.

-Black Flash.

With the sharp crack of space shattering, dark red lightning exploded at the point of contact. The powerful shock wave instantly pulverized the falling raindrops into clouds of mist.

Kurourushi's back carapace, tough enough to withstand heavy weaponry, shattered in an instant. Dark green bodily fluids and charred shell fragments sprayed in every direction.

Like an out-of-control cannonball, its massive body smashed through the drainage pipes outside the classroom building and slammed into the campus's central courtyard with a shrill howl.

The hard marble ground instantly collapsed. Amid flying dirt and stone, an enormous crater more than ten meters across formed in the center of the campus.

Atop a distant high-rise, Kenjaku's fingers abruptly stopped tapping the ledge.

For the first time, a grave wariness appeared in his normally unruffled eyes.

"Under the heavy strain of Domain Expansion, he can still catch that millionth-of-a-second window with such precision and trigger the spatial distortion of a Black Flash..."

He leaned forward slightly, staring intently at the figure slowly rising amid the dust.

"This kind of combat talent can no longer be explained by Heavenly Restriction alone.

"Satoru Gojo, just what kind of monster have you been raising in secret?"

Feng leaped lightly down from the rooftop's edge. The sound of his leather shoes touching the ground rang especially clearly through the silent campus.

He casually wiped a splash of foul-smelling green slime from his cheek.

"Oh my, looks like you're having quite a rough time."

"That's dangerous. Just how long has it been since you brushed your teeth? Though I suppose cockroaches don't need to do that."

"You really are aloof. I've been talking to you all this time, and you haven't said a single word back."

At the center of the crater, Kurourushi let out a shriek more agonized than any before it.

A substantial portion of its body had been reduced to charcoal by the Black Flash. The wound surfaces left by the spatial distortion had even brought its terrifying regenerative ability to a temporary halt.

The excruciating pain drove Kurourushi completely out of its mind. Its one intact arm plunged into its shattered abdomen.

CRACK!

With the sound of flesh being forcibly torn apart, it wrenched out the [Replica Mikazuki Munechika] it had swallowed earlier, now coated in viscous gastric juices and black, bloody pus.

Rather than return the weapon, it wildly poured all its cursed energy into the cracked blade.

The constantly writhing flesh and insect eggs produced by the Festering Life Sword spread frantically along its arm toward the blade, attempting to transform this elegant weapon into some grotesque, massive armament of flesh.

Kurourushi crouched low, its broken wings vibrating violently and sending out bursts of piercing ultrasound.

The next second, it abandoned all ranged attacks. With an almost suicidal frenzy, it became a black hurricane and lunged straight at Feng.

It would use that damaged, curse-infested blade to slice apart and devour the human who had brought it the terror of death.