Time slipped by in an instant.
The red countdown on the system panel drew ever closer to zero.
The night hung heavy over Adachi Ward, Tokyo Metropolis.
Satoru Gojo wore a simple black Jujutsu High uniform, his hands tucked into his pockets.
He stood outside a rundown apartment building and glanced up at the address plate.
His deal with Toji Fushiguro had been settled. The other man had taken the money and left.
He had come today for Megumi Fushiguro.
"This should be the place." Satoru Gojo headed upstairs and stopped at the door at the end of the corridor.
He had just raised his hand, his fingertips not yet touching the yellowed doorbell.
His surroundings abruptly changed.
The lights went out in an instant.
The corridor vanished. So did the door.
Nothing remained but gray-white walls, joined end to end to form an enclosed square space.
There were no gaps for windows, no exits. Even above his head and beneath his feet were the same walls.
There was no light source, yet he could see the texture of the walls.
Satoru Gojo pulled off his sunglasses. His Six Eyes were fully active.
"No cursed energy." He raised an eyebrow. "Not even a trace."
The air was so quiet he could have heard a pin drop. The walls around him were slowly closing in at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The space was shrinking.
Satoru Gojo raised his hand. The faint glow of Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue lit his fingertips, its gravitational pull tearing furiously at the walls, but they did not budge. Not even a speck of dust flaked off.
"The 'ghosts' Yang Jian mentioned? Does getting close to the walls trigger something?" Satoru Gojo calmly watched the enclosing walls and reached a conclusion.
He did not panic.
But he remembered why he had come. Megumi Fushiguro was still in this building.
"Damn, what rotten luck. Does this count as getting off to a bad start?"
Satoru Gojo sighed and turned his palm over.
From somewhere, he pulled out a large, gleaming golden bag.
At the same time, in the Jujutsu High dormitory.
[The second Paranormal Invasion has begun.] [Location: Megumi Fushiguro's residence, Adachi Ward, Tokyo Metropolis.] [Paranormal Strength A: A-rank.] [Host, please take action as soon as possible.]
Yang Jian sat up in bed.
Dark red letters flickered across his vision.
Megumi Fushiguro's residence? The timing is spot-on.
Yang Jian wasted no time.
He picked up the Deceiving Ghost Necklace, then reached back and drew the billhook embedded in a wooden board.
Red light erupted.
It took only two seconds.
A streak of red light cut through the night sky and landed precisely atop a utility pole outside the rundown apartment building.
Yang Jian balanced on an insulator with one foot.
The night wind snapped at his collar as he looked coldly down.
The old four-story apartment building had vanished.
In its place was a mass of dense gray mist, completely enveloping an area two hundred meters across.
No light shone through. Not a sound could be heard.
It was as though a chunk of the real world had been forcibly gouged out, leaving only deathly silence.
The Ghost Eye stared into the gray mist, its gaze instantly piercing the surface.
Inside was not one complete space, but countless separate square chambers.
Each person was trapped alone in their own space, facing four walls that slowly closed in.
"Hey! What the hell's going on?! Let me out!"
In one of the spaces below, a middle-aged man frantically struck out around him. His hand slammed against the gray-white wall.
In an instant.
The man's body turned like soft mud dissolving in water. There was no scream, no struggle.
His entire body was "sucked" into the wall at tremendous speed.
All that remained was a relief of a face twisted in agony. It struggled on the wall for half a second before falling completely still.
After absorbing a living person, the walls seemed to close in a little faster.
"Touching the walls is the trigger, and it creates separate spaces too." Yang Jian's gaze was icy as he quickly worked out its killing rules.
His gaze swept rapidly across the area.
In a space in one corner.
Megumi Fushiguro had fallen to the floor. The four- or five-year-old boy was too terrified to make a sound.
In front of him, a black Divine Dog bared its teeth, trying to shield Megumi Fushiguro behind it.
The Divine Dog suddenly lunged at the approaching wall.
The instant it made contact, half its body turned gray-white and began to dissolve.
The rule-based attack worked against shikigami as well.
Yang Jian was about to act when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the most out-of-place thing in this ghost domain.
A Body Bag made of pure gold lay quietly in the very center of a separate space.
Even the chilling aura of the closing walls was completely blocked by that layer of gold.
If he remembered correctly, it was the one he had given Satoru Gojo at the hospital.
The guy had actually chosen to crawl straight into the gold bag and give up trying.
The corner of Yang Jian's mouth twitched.
The Ghost Eye abruptly opened as wide as it could.
The red light of his three-layer ghost domain surged like floodwater bursting through a dam, forcing its way into the gray-white mist.
The two supernatural forces grated violently against each other in midair, producing a tearing sound that set his teeth on edge.
His three-layer ghost domain could only force open a breach. It could not completely overpower the other force.
But that was enough to save people.
Like a searchlight, the red glow locked onto the survivors in each separate space.
The next second, red light flashed.
More than a dozen figures tumbled out onto the grass beneath the utility pole, landing in a scattered heap.
Megumi Fushiguro landed hard on the lawn. The Divine Dog, missing half its body, dissolved into a pitch-black shadow and weakly withdrew beneath his feet.
"H-help!" The ordinary people who had narrowly escaped death screamed, scrambling away from the gray mist.
Yang Jian did not look at them.
He remained atop the utility pole, staring down at the only thing in the mist that had not been transported out.
Gold blocked all supernatural power. His ghost domain could not enter the Body Bag, so naturally he could not transport the person inside it out either.
"The strongest in the Jujutsu Society."
Yang Jian spoke coldly, his voice carrying the chill of his ghost domain as it pierced the gray mist and reached its target precisely. "Planning to hold your own funeral early? Get the hell out of there, or I really won't be able to save you."
The gold bag remained still for two seconds.
Rustle.
The zipper was pulled open from inside, and a long, slender hand emerged.
Satoru Gojo poked his head out of the bag, his silver-white hair slightly tousled and his sunglasses perched on his nose.
He looked up at Yang Jian above him and whistled.
"Yo, that was fast." Satoru Gojo complained without a trace of embarrassment in his voice. "Just my luck. I came to find that kid, and then this crap happened."
"Bring your bag and come out to watch."
Yang Jian looked away, fixing his gaze on the gray-white walls that had begun moving again.
Satoru Gojo lifted the pure gold Body Bag, which weighed dozens of pounds, with one hand. His figure flashed as he used Limitless to teleport beyond the edge of the gray mist. He spotted Megumi Fushiguro at once and landed steadily beside him.
He patted the little boy's head, pulling a comically astonished face.
"You look way too much like him." Then he looked up at the figure atop the utility pole.
"I'll keep an eye on these people. What about you? How are you going to deal with this ghost thing we can't even make sense of?"
"Contain it."
Yang Jian turned his right hand over, and a billhook covered in dark red rust fell into his palm.
Beneath Tokyo Metropolis's night sky, the blade reflected a sinister gleam that sent a chill through the heart.
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