"I won't let you die like this, Mr. Gu."
Mishima's expression was resolute. "I can't abandon a companion. If you can stay rational inside me, then we just have to keep you from fully manifesting, right? I can keep being your vessel."
Gu Yanzhi found that rather amusing. He was the one who had cursed this boy, yet the boy actually considered him a companion. Did he really think he was the hero of some hot-blooded manga?
At the end of the day, he was still just a kid.
"Either way, we still need to go to Sendai Stadium," Gu Yanzhi said, his voice nearly flat.
"That Okkotsu is strong. He's the only one who can shelter the ordinary people trapped in the Sendai Colony."
With that, he fell silent and left Mishima to continue familiarizing himself with the cursed technique.
The rustle of crawling cockroaches rose from the corner again. Mishima took a deep breath, raised his hand once more, and began practicing coating things in cursed energy over and over.
Gu Yanzhi silently watched Mishima train, but his thoughts never stopped.
He was considering the possibility of continuing to inhabit Mishima.
If he really could remain rational indefinitely, living as a parasite inside Mishima would greatly benefit his future plans. Mishima might be a novice jujutsu sorcerer, but Gu Yanzhi had the raw stats on his side-Kurourushi was a special grade cursed spirit, after all, with the reserves of cursed energy to match. Even if his fine control of cursed energy was still crude, that enormous baseline alone meant tremendous potential output.
Besides, Mishima had some talent. After only a few hours of practice, he had gained a basic grasp of cursed energy coating. Having figured out that much without any systematic instruction, he probably counted as a quick learner among ordinary jujutsu sorcerers.
Given time and Gu Yanzhi's help, Mishima's combat ability might reach the threshold of a Grade 2 Sorcerer, or even approach the level of a Grade 1 Sorcerer.
If Mishima reached that level, then with the added support of Gu Yanzhi's special grade cursed spirit reserves, they might have a chance to join the later battle against Sukuna.
Although a fledgling jujutsu sorcerer probably wouldn't play any decisive role against an enemy of Sukuna's caliber, the process would give Gu Yanzhi opportunities to earn more causality points. Fighting alongside the main cast and helping change the plot at critical junctures were both important sources of causality points.
But all of that rested on one condition: he wouldn't go berserk again.
Gu Yanzhi hadn't determined why he could remain rational inside Mishima. He knew little about cursed spirits attaching themselves to ordinary people-the original story hadn't offered many examples resembling his situation, either.
For now, he could only come up with two possibilities.
First, he had unwittingly made some kind of binding vow while on the brink of death.
In exchange for putting his body into dormancy, he had gained the right to prolong his life inside Mishima.
Second, he had forcibly attached himself to Mishima.
The reason he could still remain rational was that the damage from his earlier suicide attempt hadn't healed, leaving his cursed spirit body dormant.
That slash to the neck would have thoroughly exorcised an ordinary cursed spirit, but Kurourushi was different-the cockroach cursed spirit's vitality ranked among the highest of all cursed spirits. The severe injury hadn't been fatal, but his body had entered dormancy to recover. During that dormancy, the cursed spirit's instincts-including its hunger for flesh and its urge to slaughter-were suppressed to a minimum, allowing his consciousness to remain clear and untouched by those instincts.
Of the two possibilities, Gu Yanzhi leaned toward the latter. Although that slash had cut deep, he was still a special grade cursed spirit. Taking over the body of a kid who was also badly injured wouldn't have required a binding vow-cursed energy's raw instincts and the will to survive would have been enough to drive the process.
And if it was merely dormancy caused by severe injury, that meant this body would wake up sooner or later.
Gu Yanzhi didn't consider himself much of a bleeding heart.
Of course he wanted to do everything he could to avoid the bloody carnage a rampage would cause, but that desire came more from his aversion to losing control than from any lofty moral principles. He believed his moral boundaries were far lower than an ordinary person's. If that risk and an opportunity to grow stronger were placed on opposite sides of a scale, forcing him to gamble on one possibility...
He would most likely still choose the latter.
Gu Yanzhi had a feeling about the world of Jujutsu Kaisen that he couldn't quite put into words.
He had died too many times here and lived too many times, too. Every time he opened his eyes, there were new faces, new circumstances, and a new death.
Without his realizing it, that cycle had shaped a certain view in him-this world felt more like an instance he had to clear than a real world.
That faint sense of indifference wasn't something he had deliberately chosen. It was more like a layer of protection the system had worn into him through repeated transmigrations and deaths. The people he encountered felt more like NPCs in a game than living beings in the truest sense. He didn't truly belong to this world, either; he was merely a player here to clear it.
Gu Yanzhi voiced none of those thoughts. He merely watched Mishima diligently practicing his cursed energy control and fell silent.
Whichever possibility was true, the boy before him was the unluckiest one of all. If Gu Yanzhi went berserk, Mishima, as his host, would undoubtedly be the first to bear the risk.
Even if Gu Yanzhi never went berserk, the boy's future would probably never be as peaceful as it had been before. Someone who had been inhabited by a special grade cursed spirit would retain an indelible trace of its presence. Even if Gu Yanzhi restrained his cursed energy, that oppressive special grade aura would still seep out from time to time.
Other people wouldn't want to get close to Mishima-they wouldn't know why, only that he instinctively made them uncomfortable and that they wanted to steer clear. Jujutsu sorcerers would scrutinize him as the host of a monster. In their eyes, he wouldn't be a victim, but a potential source of danger, a bomb that could explode at any moment.
The boy would probably end up caught between jujutsu sorcerers and non-sorcerers, unwelcome on either side.
And given their situation, if they followed Gu Yanzhi's plan to gain more causality points and joined the main cast in battle...
What chance would a novice who had only just learned cursed energy coating have of surviving an enemy of Sukuna's caliber?
The more his thoughts wandered, the more tangled they became, so Gu Yanzhi simply gave up.
"Forget it. Let's find Okkotsu first. Once we meet him, everything should become clear. With his strength, he ought to be able to handle whatever happens."
Before you continue