The rain was still falling.
Sendai's high-rise district had been battered to pieces. Billboards dangled beside shattered walls, and power lines trailed into pools of water, occasionally spitting blue-white sparks.
Wind swept between the buildings, carrying cement dust, the smell of burning, and the tang of blood. More than anything, though, it carried the scent of rain washing everything clean.
Ryu Ishigori stood at the edge of a broken floor, the burns on his chest still smoking. Revealing his Cursed Technique had given him a slight boost.
But only a little...
Perhaps that was because Long Xi had already known his Cursed Technique, but had learned about it through means outside this world.
He was stronger, but only slightly.
The two Long Xis stood in front of and behind him, trapping him between them.
One had bluish eyes, rain dripping from the tips of his hair.
The other had reddish eyes, lingering firelight still held in his palm.
Ryu Ishigori looked left, then right. Clearly, the red-eyed one was a little stronger.
Something seemed to occur to him, and he suddenly smiled.
"Hey, Long Xi."
He raised a hand to wipe the blood from his chin, his voice brimming with interest.
"If a child were sitting in front of a lavish feast, would you tell him to eat slowly?"
Rain pattered against the shattered floor slabs.
Long Xi didn't answer immediately.
He knew this question wasn't just idle chatter.
For someone like Ryu Ishigori, his mouth spoke of food, but his mind was on fighting... The feast was a powerful opponent, and the child was the hunger he hadn't satisfied in hundreds of years.
If it had been Yuta Okkotsu, he probably would have said-eat slowly, don't choke.
But Long Xi wasn't Yuta Okkotsu.
Nor would he go out of his way to humor anyone.
Long Xi looked at Ryu Ishigori and flexed his wrist, still numb from the impact.
"If it really came to that, I'd tell him to hurry up and eat."
Ryu Ishigori raised an eyebrow, his interest mounting.
"Why?"
Long Xi stepped half a pace forward through the rainwater, shards of glass crunching softly beneath his sole.
"If I let the food go cold!"
"How could he possibly taste it at its best?!"
Ryu Ishigori froze for a moment.
The next second, he burst out laughing.
His laughter seemed to pierce the curtain of rain, rattling the shattered window frames nearby.
"This guy really isn't boring!"
"That's exactly it!"
He reached into his tattered jacket and pulled out a cigarette. The pack had been crushed flat, and the cigarettes inside were bent beyond recognition.
He didn't care. Holding back the rain with cursed energy, he rubbed his fingertips together, producing a spark.
The cigarette lit.
He took a drag, and the white smoke he exhaled was quickly scattered by the rain.
"My first life left me about eighty percent full."
Ryu Ishigori raised his head toward the gloomy sky.
"I fought strong guys... met some fine women... booze, food, fame-I had everything worth having."
He held the cigarette between his teeth, his smile fading a little.
"Honestly, I probably didn't have any regrets."
After saying that, he fell silent for a moment.
Long Xi didn't interrupt, either, waiting for him to continue.
Even the barrage of live comments went quiet for a few seconds.
Ryu Ishigori finished his cigarette and flicked it away. The rain knocked the butt into a crack.
"But I always felt hungry."
He lowered his gaze to Long Xi, cursed energy slowly rising from his shoulders and back.
"It wasn't that I hadn't eaten enough. Something was missing."
"Now I know what it was."
Ryu Ishigori grinned, his cursed energy already beginning to gather!
"My life was missing dessert!!"
The instant those words left his mouth, Long Xi's body moved before his mind did.
Blue Eyes Long Xi raised his arm.
Boom!
Ryu Ishigori was already in front of him. An elbow slammed into his forearm, bone and cursed energy giving a dull thud together as a section of the floor collapsed beneath his feet.
The red-eyed Long Xi threw a punch from the side!
Ryu Ishigori tilted his head to dodge and drove his shoulder forward, scattering the flames woven into the blow.
Immediately afterward, he drove his knee toward the pinned Long Xi's lower abdomen, while his other hand twisted around the red-eyed Long Xi's wrist!
They all moved at once!
The three crashed into the building, walls cracking like brittle crackers.
Rainwater, firelight, and Cursed Energy Blasts exploded together between the floors.
Ryu Ishigori held nothing back, laughing as he fought!
"You have it too, don't you, Long Xi?"
"That dissatisfaction."
"Dissatisfaction with your own life!!!"
Blue Eyes Long Xi raised his palm. Rainwater wrapped around Ryu Ishigori's arm, trying to disrupt the circulation of his cursed energy.
Ryu Ishigori violently swung his arm, blasting the rainwater away through sheer output, then slammed a fist into his shoulder.
Blue Eyes Long Xi went flying, smashing through three floor slabs before landing on the top floor of the commercial building opposite.
Seizing the opening, the red-eyed Long Xi attacked from behind. The flames in his palm compressed into a blinding red light, then unleashed a devastating strike in an instant!
"Furious Flame Mound-Void!"
An invisible impact struck Ryu Ishigori in the back.
Ryu Ishigori slid several meters forward, his boot soles carving two deep furrows into the concrete.
He turned and fired another blast.
The Cursed Energy Cannon no longer traveled in a straight line.
The blue-white beam bent in midair, curved around the flames, and slammed into the red-eyed Long Xi's chest.
Boom!
The red-eyed Long Xi was sent flying too. He shattered the ceiling and fell from the upper floor all the way to the building's fourth floor.
After smashing through several ceilings in a row, no matter how tough his body was, even he felt a little embarrassed!
More importantly, Ryu Ishigori pushed off and chased him down.
He gave Long Xi no chance to catch his breath.
Cursed Energy Cannons rained down from above, blasting apart every connection between the floors. The weight of three stories came crashing down at once, bending rebar as concrete slabs hurtled toward the red-eyed Long Xi with an ear-splitting roar.
Flames erupted through the gaps.
The red-eyed Long Xi darted out at the last moment, half his clothes torn away and a section of his chest caved in. Reverse Cursed Technique immediately began repairing the damage.
But the pain didn't disappear.
A Jujutsu Sorcerer's hand-to-hand abilities were closely tied to cursed energy reinforcement. Strength, speed, reflexes, and defense all depended on cursed energy output.
And this was precisely what made Ryu Ishigori so absurd.
He was a Cursed Energy Cannon.
A cannon in the literal sense.
Even after Long Xi merged his two accounts, his total cursed energy could barely compare to Ryu Ishigori's. In terms of output, however, Ryu Ishigori surpassed him by far more than a little.
In other words.
If they started on equal footing, without accounting for intelligence, plans, Binding Vows, or the livestream's recovery.
Ryu Ishigori would win.
No matter how you looked at it, Ryu Ishigori would win.
But a fight was never just a matter of putting numbers in a table and comparing them.
Long Xi raised a hand to wipe the blood from his lips and grinned.
"Good thing..."
"I've never liked playing fair."
The next second, Blue Eyes Long Xi shot off another building's roof, stepping on the rainwater as he leaped into the sky.
He didn't go to support the red-eyed Long Xi.
Instead, he headed straight for the clouds.
Ryu Ishigori was pursuing the red-eyed Long Xi, his attention completely occupied by the flames and close-quarters combat.
In the air, Blue Eyes Long Xi plunged headfirst into the low-hanging rain clouds.
He had begun preparing three hours earlier.
This rain hadn't been summoned on a whim.
It was a battlefield he had built bit by bit, using all his cursed energy alongside the livestream's terrifying recovery speed.
Every raindrop held traces of his cursed energy.
Every cloud had been fed to the brim in advance.
There was only one purpose.
To use this rain to establish a Binding Vow.
To exchange a vast, prepared Cursed Technique for cursed energy output comparable to Ryu Ishigori's for a short time.
And for another, even greater Binding Vow...
The clouds churned.
The sound of rain above the city suddenly stopped.
It didn't grow quieter. It vanished completely!
Ryu Ishigori threw a punch at the red-eyed Long Xi, only for his fist to stop halfway.
"Hm?"
He looked up at the sky in surprise, feeling the circulation of his own cursed energy slowly return to normal.
The rain was gone?!
Even the blue-eyed Long Xi had disappeared.
In the instant he froze, Long Xi's aura surged.
Flames burst from beneath his skin. Cursed energy, like floodwater forcibly crammed into his body, pushed his muscles, bones, and nerves to their limits.
The two accounts needed to touch to merge.
But there was a second method. The first option was for both to touch and fuse together. The second was death!
Death wasn't a problem.
As long as that vast cursed energy resurrected him, the account could reappear.
And at the instant of death, all its power would return to the main body.
In other words-
Long Xi had returned to his complete form!
Almost instantly, Ryu Ishigori assessed the situation and understood why his opponent had just done that.
"You split your power in two, huh..."
"You returned to your peak in an instant. Almost none of the energy you spent fighting me is gone... no, it's much more than that..."
"Did you use that other you to make a Binding Vow?"
Ryu Ishigori's mind raced, and he even guessed exactly what Long Xi had done.
Question: in Jujutsu Kaisen, what kind of Binding Vow ranked highest?
The answer was life! Just like Mai, who sacrificed her life to create a weapon, Long Xi's second account had also offered up his life as the price!
In exchange for strengthening his main body!
When it came to getting something for nothing!
Modern people really did it better!
"But!"
Ryu Ishigori's smile widened.
"Now I'm fired up!!"
Long Xi shattered the ground with one step and slammed straight into Ryu Ishigori.
His fist came down, wrapped in flames.
Boom!
A punch with nothing held back slammed viciously into his crossed arms!
For the first time, Ryu Ishigori was driven back head-on.
His back smashed through a load-bearing wall, making the entire building tilt.
Long Xi chased him, unleashing knee strikes, elbow blows, and bursts of flame in succession, battering him from inside the building onto the roof, then smashing him from the roof into the neighboring subway entrance.
Ryu Ishigori crossed his arms to block the flames, and the ground beneath his feet cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
"Now that's more like it!"
He grinned viciously as Cursed Energy gathered at the top of his head once more!
The blue beam gradually lost its color, turning a blinding white.
"Slush Shockwave!"
Long Xi tried to raise his hands and block it head-on.
But the instant his Cursed Energy-reinforced hands touched the Slush Shockwave, it punched straight through them!
Blood sprayed as the stench of scorched flesh burst into the air.
He gritted his teeth and moved even faster, showing no intention of leaving! Again and again, he dodged Ryu Ishigori's attacks!
Almost there!
The second plan I'd prepared!
The Subway Station!!!
Before you continue