Let us turn back the clock a little.
At that moment, Toji Fushiguro was leaning against a torii pillar, humming a tune as he waited for good news from Kano.
As far as Toji was concerned, he had used his planning and an ambush to kill that Six Eyes brat from the Gojo Clan, a boy with boundless potential, despite having no cursed energy himself. That alone was enough to strengthen his convictions and prove that jujutsu sorcerers were not invincible beings beyond his reach.
After all, even that kid who might well have become "the strongest" had died under the blade of a monkey without a scrap of cursed energy...
That meant they would bleed when he cut them, just like anyone else. They would... fall to the ground and die, too.
But Toji had barely had time to enjoy his victory before he heard rustling in the grass.
He frowned. At first, he thought Satoru Gojo's corpse had attracted scavenging crows or something similar, so he instinctively looked toward the sound.
Unfortunately, he had guessed wrong.
The sound in the grass... came from Satoru Gojo, who was slowly pushing himself upright, bracing against the grass flattened beneath his body.
Toji's eyes widened as though he had seen a ghost in broad daylight. He stared at the white-haired boy, covered in wounds and drenched in blood like a zombie.
There was a wound on his forehead where a blade had pierced it, but it had already healed, leaving only the faint outline of a puncture wound filled with fresh, tender pink flesh.
Satoru Gojo's Eyes of the Azure Sky once again shimmered with a deep blue glow. He curled his lips into a smile and spread his arms, as though embracing the entire world.
"Are you serious?" Toji stood dumbfounded, momentarily forgetting even to pull a suitable weapon out of the Inventory Curse Worm's belly.
"Dead serious." Satoru Gojo's eyes shifted, fixing on Toji as he smiled. "I feel fantastic!"
"Reverse Cursed Technique?"
"Correct!" The white-haired boy raised a finger. "When you wounded me so badly that I was about to lose consciousness, I simply gave up on maintaining Limitless and focused everything on Reverse Cursed Technique!"
"Cursed energy is negative energy! That means it can reinforce the body, but it can't heal it! But if you feed that negative cursed energy into more negative cursed energy, the two negatives make a positive. That produces positive 'cursed energy' capable of healing the body!"
"You lost because you didn't cut my head clean off!"
The sudden turn of events made Toji laugh in anger. A moment later, the two special grade cursed tools-the Inverted Spear of Heaven and the Soul-Devouring Blade-appeared in his hands. "Lost? This fight's only just getting started!!!"
Toji Fushiguro had already settled on a plan-if he could "kill" Satoru Gojo once, he could do exactly the same thing again!
"Is that so? Sure," Satoru Gojo said. But he had already entered a frenzied, self-absorbed state bordering on madness. He did not care what Toji had said and merely rambled to himself with wild abandon. "Maybe you're right!!!!!"
Toji could not be bothered to listen to his crazed babbling. He slashed with both blades, carving two gleaming arcs through the air, determined to kill him again!
But!
Satoru Gojo's Limitless cursed technique acted directly on space. Pure attraction and repulsion, produced by fluctuations within space itself, worked in orderly harmony, teleporting the white-haired boy straight behind Toji.
Speed could no longer describe it. It was almost a pure change of coordinates!
"Cursed Technique Reversal: Red!" Hanging upside down in midair like a bat, he floated behind Toji and flicked a tiny red orb of light from his finger.
In a panic, Toji quickly spun around and crossed his two cursed tools in front of him to block the orb!
Boom! Though the Inverted Spear of Heaven could forcibly nullify cursed techniques, it could not completely cancel the powerful repulsion contained within Cursed Technique Reversal: Red in such a short time. The mighty Heavenly Restriction Tyrant flew backward like a soccer ball struck with a brutal kick, smashing through tree after tree and gouging a trench hundreds of meters long through the woods beside the Tombs of the Star Corridor.
Battered, covered in wounds, and seeing stars, Toji Fushiguro finally struggled out of the crater, only to discover that Satoru Gojo, who had unleashed that terrifying blow, was already floating high in the air.
The white-haired boy was covered in wounds and drenched in blood, yet he grinned, his eyes shining with something divine, as though he had become one with the world.
He simply lay on his back in midair, floating and feeling the pulse of the world.
Only when Toji Fushiguro laboriously climbed to his feet did the white-haired boy turn his Eyes of the Azure Sky downward, gazing impassively at the disheveled, muscular man.
He neither mocked nor insulted him. He simply pointed one hand toward the sky and the other toward the earth, delivering those audacious words in a calm tone, as though stating a fact.
"Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one."
An ancient saying held that the greatest music was scarcely heard. In this situation, it could be understood to mean that true arrogance was not bluster, but the acceptance of one's own strength as an objective fact.
Stating a fact naturally required no excessive words or emotion. Just like one plus one equaled two, whether you shouted it or said it calmly made no fundamental difference. The latter merely conveyed a deeper, more substantial confidence.
Toji Fushiguro also knew he had already lost. The moment he tried to kill this awakened "strongest," his defeat had become inevitable.
But as a tyrant and the Sorcerer Killer, he had his own pride. If he chose to run simply because defeat was certain, hiding somewhere safe like a coward, then he would no longer be himself!
So Toji Fushiguro spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, put away the Soul-Devouring Blade, and pulled a chain-shaped cursed tool called the Chain of a Thousand Miles from the Inventory Curse Worm perched on his shoulder. He secured one end to the handle of the Inverted Spear of Heaven, then drew out as much chain as he could and swung it hard like a lasso, building up its momentum!
The chain clattered as he swung it faster and faster, whipping up fierce winds until he resembled a human helicopter.
Satoru Gojo floated in the air, quietly watching him. That gaze, devoid of either joy or sorrow, only fueled Toji's anger, and the desperate urge to prove something once again took command of his emotions.
"Hah!" Toji Fushiguro roared, with all the force of Zhang Fei frightening off Cao Cao's million-strong army with a single bellow at Dangyang Bridge.
Then he moved like lightning, flinging the chain in his hand and sending the Inverted Spear of Heaven flying straight toward Satoru Gojo!
Just as the short blade, bearing tremendous force, was about to pierce Satoru Gojo's neck, the white-haired boy leisurely adjusted his posture in midair, as gracefully as if he were brushing dust off his clothes.
The blade passed beside him without so much as scratching him.
Enraged, Toji Fushiguro guided the chain around from the side, trying to bind Satoru Gojo-but the boy's figure flickered, and he slipped effortlessly out of the web of chains. Even when Toji tried to tighten them, he caught nothing but empty air.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue." "Cursed Technique Reversal: Red."
Two orbs of light, one red and one blue, appeared beside Satoru Gojo as he floated in the air. At the same time, he extended his right hand and curled a finger as though preparing to flick a marble.
The red and blue orbs instantly merged into a single purple ball of light that danced at his fingertip.
"Hollow Purple." Satoru Gojo calmly aimed at Toji Fushiguro, who had exhausted every trick he had, intending to test his newly developed skill on him.
He combined two forms of "infinity" with completely opposing properties, creating a terrifying virtual mass that unleashed power far beyond basic Blue and Red.
When the purple light of Hollow Purple entered Toji's eyes, he knew there was nothing more he could do. Rather than die flailing like a pathetic clown, he might as well stand his ground with dignity.
But there was always room for a twist.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Anti-Gravity!" An unfamiliar woman's soft voice rang out across the battlefield, and a terrifying surge of cursed energy spread violently outward.
The Hollow Purple that had been about to strike Toji Fushiguro was caught by the sudden anti-gravity field and shot straight into the sky. It exploded among the clouds with a thunderclap out of a clear sky, but dealt zero actual damage, merely dispersing a vast stretch of white clouds to reveal the blue sky beyond.
Shock appeared on Satoru Gojo's and Toji Fushiguro's faces almost simultaneously.
The newcomer was a short-haired woman with a gentle bearing. If one had to describe her overall appearance, she looked somewhat like Doubao, the AI application from later years, but a conspicuous line of stitches stretched horizontally across her forehead.
"Who are you?!" Satoru Gojo immediately sensed the almost terrifying fluctuations of cursed energy coming from her. Newly awakened or not, he no longer had time to show off and turned his attention straight toward her!
The woman bowed slightly with graceful poise. "My name is Kaori Itadori."
By comparison, even the threat posed by Toji Fushiguro no longer seemed so important.
As luck would have it, Shoichi Kano emerged from the underground portion of the Tombs of the Star Corridor at that very moment, carrying Riko Amanai in his arms, with the Slit-Mouthed Woman strolling leisurely beside him.
Shoichi Kano then saw Gojo floating in the air and Toji Fushiguro facing off against him.
At first, he assumed this was the part of the story where Gojo awakened Reverse Cursed Technique during his Jujutsu High days-until he noticed that Doubao look-alike with the stitches across her forehead, standing somewhere between the two with an ambiguous smile.
Shoichi Kano froze on the spot. Isn't that fucking Kenjaku, currently wearing Kaori Itadori's body?! Kenjaku wasn't even in this part of the story!
Soon, all three parties noticed Kano and his companions, with Riko Amanai in his arms, almost at the same time.
And so an even more terrifying four-way standoff formed on the battlefield.
Before you continue