The water ran in the bathroom for a long time.
Yan Si stood beneath the showerhead, tilting his face up and letting the hot water wash over it.
His waist-length black hair clung wetly to his skin.
He had set the temperature a little high, almost scalding, and his skin had long since turned red. But he merely narrowed his eyes slightly, enjoying the faint sting-with his senses amplified a hundredfold, even the sensation of water molecules striking his skin was impossibly distinct, like someone pinching him maliciously.
Very maliciously.
It reminded him of some less-than-happy experiences from his childhood. Tsk. Where would he even begin?
He raised his left hand, palm up.
There should have been a hideous knife wound there, deep enough to expose bone, one he had inflicted himself. Now, however, his skin was as smooth as ever, without so much as a scar.
Reverse Cursed Technique was even more formidable than he had expected. Severed hands and feet, a torn-out heart and lungs-he could survive it all.
"So convenient."
He spoke softly, his voice carrying a faint echo in the bathroom.
"So much fun..."
Steam spread across the mirror, blurring his outline into a hazy watercolor. Flesh tones, black, purple... all mingled together. It was beautiful.
Yan Si reached out and drew a line through the misted mirror with a fingertip, revealing the excessively beautiful face behind it.
The steam made his deep purple eyes look even more moist. The red mark between his brows was eerily vivid, and his wet black hair clung to his neck and collarbones. The sight was a little suggestive.
He stared at himself in the mirror for a few seconds, then suddenly smiled.
"So pretty~"
Narcissistic, but also true.
His mother had been a great beauty, and his father a handsome young man. He had inherited his mother's face and his father's eye color, receiving all the best traits of both.
The difference was that he wasn't mentally ill. He was relatively normal.
"If I were a cursed spirit," he told the mirror, blinking cheerfully, "I'd want to eat you too~"
After all, this body looked delicious-a beautiful frame, pale skin, even his veins possessing a fragile beauty, weak cursed energy, and a constitution that drew cursed spirits to attack him.
To those monsters born of negative emotions, he was probably like a walking cream cake wafting a sweet fragrance, complete with a built-in monster lure.
A delicious dessert.
Not coming for a taste would be a disgrace to their identity as cursed spirits.
He turned off the shower, grabbed a towel at random to wrap around his waist, and walked barefoot out of the bathroom.
The solid wood floor felt pleasant underfoot.
He couldn't be bothered to dry his hair, letting droplets run off the ends and leave dark patches on the floor.
He pushed open the bathroom door and entered another room on the third floor.
The Yan family's ancestral home was enormous, with quite a few rooms on the third floor alone-seven bedrooms, with all the rest used for storage. Their layouts were nearly identical: the same carved wooden beams, the same old-fashioned wooden windows, the same hard beds and recliners.
His parents from his previous life and this one had occupied two of them. After those two died, their rooms had stood empty, with only Uncle Li regularly sending people to clean them.
There were actually far more empty rooms than occupied ones.
Six empty rooms, one occupied.
He changed into pajamas.
Yan Si settled into the familiar recliner, his wet hair spreading a damp patch across its back. He stared at the ceiling and began considering his next steps.
He couldn't stay in China anymore.
Not because he was afraid. The density of cursed spirits in China was far lower than in Japan. Tengen, that massive cursed spirit magnet, wasn't in China but in Japan. China's cursed spirits had been drawn over there.
In China, ordinary people would encounter cursed spirits only a handful of times in their entire lives. The problem was his constitution-[Supernatural Cursed Spirit Attraction, desire to attack: 150%].
Having that in a country with so few cursed spirits was like switching on a ten-thousand-watt searchlight in a desert. There might not be many insects in the desert, but every last one would throw itself at his face like mad.
Ever heard of light traps? Yan Si himself was the light.
In just one day, Grade 4 and Grade 2. Who knew what would come tomorrow? Grade 1? Special Grade?
(The reason he could distinguish their grades was that whenever he was attacked or touched, the system would stick a label over their heads.)
He wasn't afraid of dying, nor of dying from pain. After all, he had the passive skill "Pain Immunity."
The problem was that he didn't actually want to blast his ancestral home into rubble. A forty-million house, plus the Italian sofas and rosewood screens he had smashed with a single punch-repairing them was a hassle, and replacing them was too.
Besides, the established institutions in China that trained jujutsu sorcerers were difficult to get into.
China's Jujutsu Society was strict. "Taoists" and "Monks" each operated independently, placing great importance on lineage and requiring adherence to all kinds of rules.
He was an outsider with nothing but Reverse Cursed Technique and a little weak cursed energy. He had no knowledge of cursed techniques, no intelligence network, and no sources for cursed tools. He didn't want to become a monk or a Taoist, nor did he want anyone telling him what to do.
Besides, keeping someone like him in China would practically make him a walking jinx.
Japan was different.
Jujutsu High, the heart of Jujutsu Society, had the strongest faculty-though a certain white-haired guy was still a student, Masamichi Yaga seemed pretty good too?-the most comprehensive training system, and, most importantly, countless cursed spirits and countless major characters.
Jujutsu Kaisen was set in Japan, after all.
"Make major characters experience pain, earn 1-1,000 points on a sliding scale..."
He wasn't interested in torturing people. Teasing them, though, interested him quite a bit.
Yan Si lounged lazily in the recliner, a glimmer of delight flashing through his eyes.
Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, Shoko Ieiri, Masamichi Yaga, and the future Yuji Itadori, Megumi Fushiguro, Nobara Kugisaki... every one of them was a walking experience pack.
Provided, of course, that he could reach them alive and avoid being casually crushed to death.
"Reverse Cursed Technique. Reverse Cursed Technique that can be used on other people."
He murmured the words, his fingers tapping unconsciously on the recliner's armrest. "A very good foot in the door, isn't it?"
In this era, in 2005, anyone with Reverse Cursed Technique was an extremely valuable asset.
Shoko Ieiri had been placed under Jujutsu Society's "protection" well before she even enrolled.
He was a fifteen-year-old boy with Reverse Cursed Technique and no ties to any jujutsu faction. Even if his cursed energy wasn't exceptional, that was enough to attract the higher-ups' attention-or rather, enough to make them reluctant to kill him outright.
Of course, the risks were considerable too.
The darkness, conspiracies, and power struggles among the higher-ups of Japan's Jujutsu Society, their oppression of ordinary jujutsu sorcerers... Yan Si had seen all that filth in the original story.
Strangely, though, he didn't find it repulsive. Instead, he felt a little... excited?
"Treacherous hearts, power struggles, disgusting schemes and plots..."
He casually picked up the pillow beside him, hugged it, and pressed it over his face, laughing into it.
"Just thinking about it is so much fun."
"Humans are so entertaining..."
After all, in his previous life, he had lived within mathematical formulas. The world had been precise, rational, black and white.
Since he was going to play a game in this life, he naturally had to pick something interesting to get a real thrill.
A dull, uneventful daily life?
That was for ordinary people. As a great transmigrator who had died once, came equipped with a system, and could spend pain points as currency, he naturally had to dive into the most chaotic, most insane, most interesting place available.
Yan Si climbed out of the recliner. His wet hair was still dripping, but he had already opened his laptop.
The internet in 2005 was still primitive. The ticket-booking website looked like shit, its colors hurt his eyes, and it loaded pitifully slowly. Even so, he patiently filled in his details and bought a ticket to Tokyo three days later. First class, paid in full, without batting an eye.
His parents had left him a substantial inheritance-the numbers in his bank account were delightfully long.
After paying, he closed the laptop, dug one of the best phones currently available out of a drawer, and sent a text to Uncle Li, the butler:
[Uncle Li, I accidentally blew up the third-floor sitting room in the ancestral house while battling an evil ghost. Sorry for the trouble, but please bring some people over to deal with it. Also, I'm going abroad for a few days. I probably won't be back for a long time~]
After sending the text, he tossed the phone aside, dug a Game Boy out of the bedside table, and started playing Tetris.
Retro 8-bit music rang through the quiet room as blocks fell, rotated, stacked, and vanished.
Yan Si stared at the screen, his fingers flying over the buttons, the light and shadow of black-and-white pixels reflected in his pupils.
His brain automatically broke the game down into a mathematical model-optimal solutions, probability distributions, space utilization, clearing efficiency... but he soon forced himself to stop calculating.
"If you're playing a game, just play the game," he muttered. "Why turn it into math problems? What a buzzkill."
He wanted to take that fruit knife, which was already nearly burned away, and give his brain a stab.
Oh, right. Speaking of the fruit knife, he needed to buy a good knife for self-harm, or it wouldn't penetrate his flesh.
His phone vibrated.
Uncle Li's reply was earnest and tactful:
"...Young master, isn't it almost time for this year's medical checkup? If you have time, could we go for the checkup before you travel?"
Yan Si looked at the text and laughed until his shoulders shook.
A tactful way of asking whether he was out of his mind~
Li Shu, Uncle Li, had been the Yan family's butler for nearly forty years. He had been there since Yan Si's grandfather's time, watched his father be born and go mad, watched his mother fall ill and harm herself, and now watched this "adorable child" grow up. Yan Si sincerely believed he was normal.
Li Shu was probably the person who understood the Yan family's genetic defect better than anyone else in the world-mental illness, the very real, hereditary kind.
But he, Yan Si, wasn't mentally ill.
Yan Si leisurely typed a reply:
"Uncle Li, if my mental illness ever flares up, I'll just die. I'm still alive right now and can still text you, which proves my head is perfectly clear."
"Also, if anything happens to me in Japan, don't donate my inheritance~ Welfare organizations won't spend the money where it ought to go~ If possible, find people yourself, one at a time, and help them directly."
After sending it, he put his phone on silent and continued playing Tetris.
About five minutes later, the phone vibrated again.
Uncle Li: "...Understood. Someone will come to repair the house tomorrow. You... stay safe."
The sixty-six-year-old Li Shu sat at his desk, a tall, broad man clicking away on his computer. After two clicks, he suddenly sighed. Two more clicks, another sigh.
He was worried.
He had watched Yan Si grow up. Though the boy was a little unhinged at times, he was normal most of the time.
He didn't know what had gotten into him today, talking about wrecking the house while battling a vicious ghost, then going to Japan and all that.
He sounded as though he were making arrangements for after his death.
Li Shu was truly at his wits' end with the Yan family. He sighed and sent another message: "Young master, if you see anything strange, be sure to call me first..."
Yan Si stared at the text for a few seconds, paid it no mind, and lazily continued his game.
Uncle Li looked at the message Yan Si had sent him, helplessness in his eyes, along with something else.
Li Shu didn't dare argue with Yan Si.
He knew there wasn't a single normal person in the Yan family.
More than a decade earlier, Li Shu had told Yan Si's father, Yan Zeming, "You just said you could fly. That was a hallucination, Mr. Yan."
And then his father.
That dazzling mathematical genius who had been nominated for the Fields Medal.
To prove it wasn't a hallucination, he had looked left and right, thought it over seriously, then opened a window and jumped out before Li Shu could react.
Of course, that proved he really could fly. Just not for very long.
Fortunately, it had been the second floor, with landscaping below. Yan Zeming had broken a leg but hadn't died. From then on, however, Uncle Li understood that arguing with the Yan family about "what was real" and "what was a hallucination" was an extremely dangerous undertaking.
Their reality and everyone else's reality seemed never to exist within the same coordinate system. Their thought processes were bizarre too.
Don't try to reason with lunatics.
Yan Si played for a while, then tossed what he was holding aside and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling.
It was already dark outside. The April breeze carried the dampness peculiar to the waterside region, slipping through the gaps in the wooden window and stirring his half-dried hair. He suddenly felt a little hungry, but couldn't be bothered to go downstairs. He simply lay in the recliner, letting drowsiness gradually wash over him.
In three days, he would go to Japan.
To the island nation with the world's highest density of cursed spirits and a persistently high death rate, to the place with the divine child of the Six Eyes, the Cursed Spirit Manipulation user, and the future strongest. He would knock on Jujutsu High's gates as an "unaffiliated jujutsu sorcerer who could use Reverse Cursed Technique," and then-
"And then," Yan Si closed his eyes, his lips curving into a delighted smile, "let's see just how adorable everyone can be~"
Pain points were the real hard currency.
And he already couldn't wait to try farming a few little points off those "major characters" in Japan.
Besides, he was pretty curious about them himself.
Such adorable characters.
Heehee. A "fan meet-and-greet."
He was the idol, and they were the fans.
Who could blame him for being so good-looking?
Before you continue