Us

A comfortable king-size bed.

This spawn point really delivered. The feeling of getting a good night's sleep in a hell like the Culling Game was incomparable.

Xia Xia felt as though he was being purified.

Then he opened his eyes and saw several mighty lightning cursed spirits still writhing inside the domain...

He had almost forgotten. Nice as this hotel was, far too many bonus Pokémon lurked here, their howling and wailing ruining his sleep.

"Sword Guard."

He crushed them straight into metal ingots.

But just then, Xia Xia felt something strange. Every sight around him began to feel familiar, as though he had been here countless times before.

[Innate Cursed Technique • Akashic Records]

It automatically searched for information about the surroundings through contact, then effectively compiled and organized it, gathering knowledge on a vast scale as groundwork and ammunition for unleashing a finishing attack later.

He saw people fearing murders in a five-star hotel like this, straight out of a horror movie. They feared the dark corridors, the cramped emergency passages, the flat-screen TV facing the bed, even cameras that might be hidden somewhere, and eyes peering through the peephole outside the door.

Those fears gathered together and became cursed spirits.

These monsters, born from humanity's negative emotions, made people's fears a reality through their own actions.

Dangling from windows, crawling out from under beds, emerging from mirrors, televisions, and peepholes in security doors, they were everywhere, feeding on the sweetness of human fear.

Tearing bodies apart, chewing flesh, sucking out brains, gnawing on organs and bones-cursed spirits were brutal creatures that hunted endlessly, driven by instinct.

The victims' remains were smeared evenly across the walls.

Not even pregnant women and children were spared. Families of three and couples who had merely come for a vacation were trapped forever in their guest rooms by these terrifying monsters, with no trace of life left in them.

Cursed spirits had no mercy.

They had no hearts.

"Those who aren't our kind will never share our hearts."

Smiling, Xia Xia crushed a cursed spirit that fancied it could crawl out of the shower, then delivered his acceptance speech.

He simply could not understand Kenjaku's thinking. Humans were humans, and jujutsu sorcerers could count as humans. But cursed spirits-apart from artificial aberrations like Choso, who might possess some intelligence in a certain sense-were harmful abominations that deserved complete elimination and eradication.

Humans and cursed spirits, lumped together?

Ridiculous!

You aren't even human. What human rights are you talking about?

Am I supposed to apologize to man-eating monsters?

To quote the glorious words of the Commonwealth of Man from my previous life:

"Admit it. You simply cannot stand those grotesque aliens. They are different from us."

"You cannot tolerate disrespect toward the dead. Today, it eats your family's corpses. Tomorrow, it will make food of you. You cannot tolerate living surrounded by creatures no different from the monsters of ancient legends."

"Our emotions cannot connect. Our logic is utterly different. Coexistence? Impossible."

"Now is the time. Let us reclaim our ancestors' tradition, dating back to the moment we first stood united and stepped beyond our beautiful blue planet. That word has vanished from our culture for millions upon millions of years. But I know it will never vanish from our genes."

"From the moment our species descended from the branches to the ground, our fate became inseparable from it."

"Listen, my fellow humans!"

"Our ancestors are calling. They call at Kadesh, between the two rivers, in Egypt, at Changping, at Red Cliffs, at Verdun, at Normandy, on every continent and in every ocean of this planet."

"In Chinese, in English, German, Russian, the common tongue... all human languages converge into that cry: war! War! War!"

"My fellow humans! Now is the time! Activate the war protocols! Deploy the human legions!"

"We shall fight on planets, we shall fight in nebulae, we shall fight in hyperspace. We shall fight wherever we must throughout the universe!"

"We fight for humanity's future, even if we must burn the sea of stars and incinerate the galaxy! Send this message to every alien species that intends to resist!"

"War is upon you!"

All aliens deserve to die. All cursed spirits deserve to die. If you must blame something, curse the fate that made you something other than human.

Let me say it again. You aren't even human. What right do you have to demand human rights from me?

Xia Xia looked at those cursed spirits as though he were looking at corpses.

"How is someone like you any better than a cursed spirit?"

The Grade 1 Cursed Spirit inhabiting the hotel stairwell spat out indignant questions and curses before its death, as Xia Xia snipped off its arthropod limbs one by one.

"You're worse than a cursed spirit!"

What ugly last words. Just what I'd expect from an alien monstrosity. Absorbing knowledge and memories about you makes me sick.

A corpse is talking.

"What a joke! At least I'm human. I'm not a cursed spirit!"

"Remember this. Once a cursed spirit, always a cursed spirit. Filthy, depraved, evil, unclean."

"Sword Guard!"

After crushing the monster alive into a metal ingot and listening to its screams and wails, Xia Xia felt much better. Perhaps the souls of those who had died so horribly had found peace, and the torment of those tragedies seemed to have ended as well.

There's no need to feel guilty.

A truly good cursed spirit would kill itself. Otherwise, it should be like the one Okkotsu keeps, locked down and never going out. As long as it doesn't randomly hiss at people, keeping it close as a pet or livestock seems tolerable.

As for cursed spirits born from jujutsu sorcerers, the moment they abandon their humanity and become monsters, the only mercy we can offer is to send them to their deaths.

Species purism is a virtue.

Without quite meaning to, Xia Xia cleared out the entire hotel.

If he had not shared the feelings of those cursed spirits and their victims, he might not have felt such intense malice toward cursed spirits.

Now only slaughter could extinguish his rage.

What can ease my sorrow? Killing!

Killing.

Ever since I, Xia Xia, entered the game, surveying the Culling Game barriers has taught me only this one word. Humans kill cursed spirits, cursed spirits kill humans, humans kill humans, and cursed spirits kill cursed spirits. All things will eventually meet death, but slaughter endures forever.

Sensing movement downstairs, Xia Xia leaped down.

The king descended from the heavens!

Rising Dragon Fist! Rising Dragon Fist! Rising Dragon Fist!

The king descended from the heavens!

Several wild cursed spirits that darted out of an alley were beaten into a firm, springy mass of unidentified cursed energy, which Xia Xia then condensed into metal ingots with his cursed technique.

Experience-fodder mobs should know their place. You're pathetic, contemptible trash cursed spirits, yet you won't kill yourselves when you see me. That's a provocation.

Information was automatically absorbed.

Well, each of these cursed spirits had its own special trick.

They were born from humanity's fear of alleyways in urban villages. Heaven knew how many urban legends those dark, deep streets and alleys had nurtured. Even as a child, Xia Xia had not dared take shortcuts through those dead ends on his way home from school.

"Um..."

"I don't know who you are, but thank you for helping us. Thank you so much."

Wearing a hood, Yuji Itadori bowed politely, thanking the hero who had descended from the sky.

"No need to thank me. I was just doing my duty."

"For monsters like these, without any intelligence, all I can do is erase them cleanly."

Xia Xia smiled as he looked at that familiar face.

For some reason, although the events of the special simulation had been confined to the simulation, looking at Yuji Itadori brought a peculiar tenderness to his heart.

Yuji is still only fifteen.

Has he already grown this tall? Poor kid. He must have suffered so much alone all these years. Those bastards at the top sentencing him to death, Sukuna using him as a vessel to kill so many people...

These thoughts, which clearly belonged to Itadori Xia Xia's life, flooded his heart all at once. They weighed heavily, yet felt reassuring, as though the human-shaped shell called Xia Xia finally had emotions that could fill his soul.

Xia Xia had never before felt that transmigration was such a wonderful thing. It had actually given a complete orphan like him, who cared only about arguing over fights, such warm thoughts.

He reached out.

Then hesitated and stopped.

"What is it, sir?"

Yuji Itadori sensed no malice from Xia Xia. Seeing the nostalgia and tenderness filling the man's eyes, he did not immediately move to reject him.

"Sorry. Maybe I'm imagining things, but looking at you reminded me of my younger twin brother, who's long gone."

Xia Xia explained with a rather clumsy excuse.

"Maybe you aren't imagining it."

Choso spoke from beside them, then took the initiative to clasp Xia Xia's hand. In that instant, Xia Xia struggled to suppress his murderous intent. After all, Choso was an artificial cursed spirit, or rather, he carried a strong scent of cursed spirit-as an incarnation of the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings, he technically did not count as human. Xia Xia's species purism flared up.

But the memories and knowledge he absorbed from Choso, the knowledge belonging to the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings, those warm feelings about family, those memories of being an older brother...

In that instant, memories that had never existed began to grow.

"Your father and mother had strange stitches on their foreheads too, didn't they, my friend?"

"We're brothers."

Although Choso felt no blood connection whatsoever and could clearly sense Xia Xia's murderous intent and malice toward cursed spirits, at this moment, he still acknowledged him.

Because we're brothers.

There's no mistaking the scent of your soul.

"Is that true, um... big brother?"

Although this Yuji Itadori was not the innocent, adorable child from the simulation, he still inadvertently revealed the same shy smile Xia Xia remembered.

"Yes."

Xia Xia let out a long sigh, a gentle smile appearing on his face that even he could hardly believe.

"We're brothers."

Those few words held a thousand things left unsaid: the longing of a reunion after years apart, the joy of seeing the other grow. That hopeful affection was something only a "big brother" could understand.

"My mother is Kaori Itadori."

"My father is Jin Itadori."

Xia Xia then spoke the names that brought Yuji Itadori's thoughts to a standstill. Such familiar names, the same Itadori surname, the same...

Wait, aren't those my mom and dad?

"That's right. Because we're brothers."

Still smiling, Xia Xia reached out his right hand toward the mentally frozen Yuji Itadori and gently tapped the boy's forehead with his index and middle fingers.

"It's been a long time, Yuji."

"Have you been doing all right on your own these past few years?"

"If you're curious about who I am, just think of me as our father and mother's illegitimate son."