(Everything is fictional and takes place in a parallel world. Please do not relate it to reality.)
Late at night, a young man wearing black, austere-looking double-frame glasses stared excitedly at his computer. Filthy rubbish and countless cola cans littered the floor.
Behind him stood a simple metal bed frame, its mattress piled with opened Pinduoduo cardboard boxes. Judging by the number of iced tea bottles on the floor, he had not left his room in days.
A sliver of soft moonlight slipped through the tightly drawn curtains and fell across the bed. Its pure glow stood in stark contrast to the rubbish strewn over the sheets.
"Wow! Our beloved Akutami finally posted an update!"
Seeing the update notification on his screen, Lin Mu practically danced with joy. He grabbed an unopened can of cola and cracked it open. After a moment's thought, he climbed onto his bed and dug a fairly intact bag of chips out from under his pillow. He checked the expiration date. Yep, only three months past the date. Still edible.
With a rip, the chip bag opened. In the light spilling from the computer, the chips gleamed a bluish green. A closer look would have revealed tiny tufts of green fuzz on them.
But he paid no attention to those little details. With his cola open, he curled up in his chair and excitedly clicked on the latest chapter, muttering, "How could a mere Sukuna possibly beat Satoru Gojo? Today, Gojo's going to smash his head in!"
That was right. As a devoted Jujutsu Kaisen fan, Lin Mu's favorite popular character was Satoru Gojo. He had even splurged on plenty of Gojo merchandise. Unfortunately, he had never made it to the convention. He had bought a Jujutsu High uniform to cosplay Gojo, and even the glasses on his face had been specially ordered from Pinduoduo for 9.9 yuan.
[Hollow Technique: Purple] Seeing Satoru Gojo catch Sukuna and Mahoraga off guard with that devastating blast, Lin Mu leaped to his feet in excitement. He grabbed a huge handful of chips and stuffed them into his mouth. They tasted strange, but he did not dwell on it. In his eyes, the two already-weakened opponents could not possibly survive that attack.
"Ultimate victory belongs to Satoru Gojo!"
"Cough, cough. I admit you're strong, but that attack still isn't enough to exorcise me."
Reading on, he saw Sukuna, wounded all over, brace one hand against a wall and struggle to his feet. His presence had weakened to an extreme. For the first time since the start of the Shibuya battle, he had been reduced to such a miserable state. There was barely an uninjured patch left on his body.
By contrast, Satoru Gojo's cursed energy was gradually recovering. With both hands on his hips, he said disdainfully, "So this is your limit, then?"
Just as he prepared to unleash his Cursed Technique: Red, a soft chuckle suddenly reached his ears. The next instant, he felt dozens of pounds lighter.
[Dimension Slash] Seizing the moment Satoru Gojo let his guard down, Sukuna unleashed the Dimension Slash he had just learned and successfully turned the Gojo before him into two-and-a-half Gojo.
"What?!" It happened so suddenly that Lin Mu had no time to react before he saw Satoru Gojo split in two. What he found even harder to accept was that Gojo's final words were about failing to let Sukuna fully enjoy himself.
Refusing to believe it, Lin Mu read it again. Once he confirmed that his eyes were not deceiving him, he slumped into his chair and sank into thought.
"He lost. Satoru Gojo, the strongest, actually lost." I don't believe it. The author must have drawn it wrong!
After reading the updated chapter over and over, he could only force himself to accept the truth.
Sukuna had actually been studying Mahoraga's attacks all along. The moment Mahoraga had severed Satoru Gojo's arm earlier, Sukuna had learned how to break through Limitless's defenses. Without anyone noticing, he had drawn all of Gojo into the Dimension Slash's attack space and slashed the entire space itself.
No jujutsu or physical substance could withstand the Dimension Slash, which had successfully broken through Satoru Gojo's Limitless. Sukuna had only taken [Hollow Technique: Purple] head-on earlier to make Gojo lower his guard, giving him the opening he needed to kill the modern era's strongest Special Grade sorcerer in one stroke.
"That really was delightful! Satoru Gojo, I doubt I'll ever forget you!" With Sukuna's final words, the updated chapter came to an end. But Lin Mu remained dazed, his eyes vacant. Thin trails of green liquid seeped from the corners of his mouth, looking much like the chips he had just eaten. He refused to accept this ending.
"Heh. The two-and-a-half Gojo who got cut in half isn't the clown. Ryomen Sukuna, beaten black and blue, isn't the clown either. You and I, sitting in front of our computers watching this reversal, are the biggest clowns. And you, my friend, Gege Akutami-you should have died in the womb, or been strangled by your umbilical cord at birth, instead of coming into this world to draw manga!"
After spitting those words through gritted teeth, he suddenly felt dizzy. Sukuna's face on the computer screen seemed to be silently mocking him for being powerless to change the ending.
Bang! Unable to contain his fury any longer, he punched a huge hole in the computer before him, still muttering, "You dare laugh at me? Today, I'll let you taste what it's like to be cut in half!"
With that, he hugged the laptop with its gaping hole to his chest, ready to rip it straight in two. But he had forgotten to unplug the power cord. Amid a crackle of sparks and electricity, his lips moved, yet he never managed to utter another word. In his final moment before death, his mind seemed to clear. With neither father nor mother, he had lived alone as a shut-in in this vast, lonely city.
Almost no one knocked on his door except his elderly landlady. As he lost consciousness, he did not wonder whether anyone would collect his body. Instead, he wondered whether this would affect the old woman's life afterward. After all, aside from charging him a few hundred extra yuan every month as a room-cleaning fee...
She had never actually cleaned his room, but she treated him pretty well in every other respect. He did not even tidy his own room, yet he often had to help take out her rubbish. At last, he closed his eyes helplessly. If I survive this, I'm definitely going to punch that old landlady a few times. Fuck, this really pisses me off.
If I get the chance, I'll make sure she knows that even a shut-in isn't someone she can exploit however she likes. That final thought flashed through his mind before he blacked out completely.
"Ding! Congratulations, host. You have bonded with the Villain Check-In System."
"Who am I? Where am I? What happened to me?" Lin Mu opened his eyes and looked around at a sea of blood-red surroundings. The ground was covered with skeletal remains he could not identify. "Hiss... Why does this place look so familiar?"
Before he could figure it out, the voice of that essential transmigration cheat rang out in his mind. At once, he stopped examining his surroundings. Having this system meant he had transmigrated.
"Hahahaha! It's finally my turn to reach the pinnacle of life! Just as I thought, every shut-in who dies in front of a computer gets to transmigrate!"
His joy lasted only a few seconds before a crack rang out! It sounded as though something had shattered inside his mind.
"Warning! Warning! Physical and spiritual strength too high. Physical and spiritual strength too high. System destruction imminent. System destruction imminent! Activating hidden backup power."
"Oh my god, what's going on? Am I going to croak as soon as I get here?" Hearing the system's warnings, he could only feel that the situation was dire. Although he did not know what world he had transmigrated into, he seemed to have provoked some powerful being-one that could even destroy the system.
"Ding! The system has forcibly erased the original soul. Host, please integrate the memory fragments as soon as possible. The system will now debug and repair itself. Dear host, good luck!"
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