This was divine punishment

Gales howled past his ears. Releasing cursed energy at full power left him unable to maintain his body temperature. The biting cold in midair was like steel blades scraping bone, tearing at Kamo Xu's skin piece by piece.

It hurts. It's cold...

But faster. Please, just a little faster!

The wind blew his normally unruly, unmanageable hair completely loose, sending every strand streaming backward. It felt awful, but Kamo Xu had no time to care.

Soon, he spotted a black sedan...

At a thought, the disc of blood automatically descended.

He slammed into the ground, leaving a deep crater.

He staggered out of the crater, without even time to heal himself with Reverse Cursed Technique. One look chilled his heart...

The car door had been torn off by tremendous force and lay forlornly to one side. Kamo Xu clung to the doorway and looked inside.

Blood...

There was only a driver and an accompanying servant inside.

Both were dead. Something had gnawed on their corpses, and their organs lay scattered across the ground.

Where's Mom?

Kamo Xu's teeth chattered as he stiffly looked around. Soon, he spotted blood in a shadowy corner.

It looked as though something had been dragged in there...

Swallowing hard, Kamo Xu struggled toward it, one step at a time...

Crunch. Crack!

Chewing... Kamo Xu's eyes widened, his pupils instantly shrinking to pinpoints!

Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a hideous monster. It had purple skin and disheveled hair, with compound eyes all over its head glancing wildly around. Its arms were thick, its sharp fingertips gleaming coldly. Right now, it held a thigh impaled on its claws, tearing into it bite by bite.

Its teeth ground the bones to pieces. There was no doubt-it was a monster...

A cursed spirit? No... a transfigured human!

Kamo Xu recognized what it was. Mahito had already appeared, and Kenjaku probably had too. Suguru Geto was in danger...

But...

His gaze remained fixed on the transfigured human's legs. A blanket was caught between the distorted flesh...

Exactly like the one draped over his mother's legs yesterday...?

"Ah... ah! AAAAAAH!" Kamo Xu had never imagined he could scream so loudly, or that, despite having lived two lives, he could lose control like this.

It was as though his ability to speak had suddenly regressed. He could only cry out meaningless sounds. As if his spine had been ripped out, his body crumpled limply to its knees.

His mouth hung open. His screams had emptied his lungs, and suffocation swept over him, yet he could not breathe.

It felt as though a pair of hands had clamped around his throat. With his abilities, he should have been able to make his body breathe with ease...

But he did not dare...

He could no longer tell whether he was dreaming or truly standing in hell...

That transfigured human is... no, no! Impossible! It isn't!

Kamo Xu struggled, only to fall hard. Only then did he remember that his rapid descent had left him injured.

The commotion finally drew the transfigured human's attention. It swallowed the flesh in its mouth, its blood-red maw making it look like a beast that devoured raw meat and drank blood.

If only it really had been some beast Kamo Xu did not know. But it was not!

"Little Asahi... find a nice... girl... get married..."

Hearing that mumble, Kamo Xu stared at the monster in disbelief... It really was...

The monster approached Kamo Xu, but he made no attempt to move. He simply sat there, stunned.

"Be happy... eat... eat properly..."

The words came in broken fragments. Kamo Xu knew this was Mahito's twisted idea of fun: deliberately making the creatures he transfigured repeat their greatest wishes or regrets from before...

The monster reached him, slashed open Kamo Xu's abdomen with its claws, and pulled out his intestines, stuffing them into its mouth to chew...

"Little... Asahi..."

He knew perfectly well that she was no longer herself...

The monster pinned Kamo Xu in its embrace. One claw plunged into his eye socket and crushed an eyeball, while the other hand tore open his back, broke his bones, and pulled out his organs...

"[Become... a remarkable sorcerer.]"

Kamo Xu remained silent, letting the transfigured human tear apart his increasingly shattered body.

He wrapped both arms around the monster. This was the first time he had ever willingly embraced his mother...

He had always wanted to escape before. Now, he could only search for the warmth of days past in this twisted, deformed monster...

The sun set.

Its lingering light no longer favored the ill-fated pair. Darkness enveloped them...

Only when the streetlights came on did Kamo Xu emerge, covered in blood... alone.

His remaining eye stared blankly at the patches of light on the ground. Dragging his ruined body, he walked out of the shadows... one step at a time...

Blood flowed down his body. That should never have happened.

Kamo Xu's blood was fused with his soul. With a single thought, he could control it however he wished.

But... where was his soul?

His only anchor in this world was gone...

Just like that, so easily, without any explanation... gone?

The tiny bit of happiness he had finally gathered after so much hardship...

Why... what right did they have?

Mahito...

Mahito...

Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito Mahito!!!!!!

His blood gradually boiled. His emotions erupted, and his murderous intent, like an inextinguishable flame, became a blazing sun that would burn everything in the wake of this tragedy.

Blinding, searing, incinerating anything that came near!

Every cursed spirit... must die!

Kamo Xu kept his head lowered, but raised his left hand...

His ring finger and little finger remained curled into a fist, while his thumb, index finger, and middle finger pointed skyward.

[Domain Expansion-Desire-Sloth Truth-Seeking Vortex]

Suddenly, a trace of crimson appeared at his fingertips. More and more gathered, until surface tension could no longer contain it. A sea of blood, laden with cursed energy, gushed between his fingers and surged across all of Kyoto!

This was a domain... a domain that was not fully enclosed, nothing more than an unfinished creation...

Yet the spreading sea of blood was terrifying. Blood surged and crashed, turning buildings into towering reefs and coating the roads in a bloody film. As the blood struck, a crimson mist gradually rose.

All of Kyoto was swiftly engulfed by that ocean!

Everywhere anyone looked, there was only blinding red...

"What happened? Is this... blood?"

"Wait, something's wrong. Domain Expansion?"

"This range... no, whose domain is this? Have they gone mad? Are they trying to kill us too?"

Even as they spoke, the domain's effect swept over them, and its sure-hit cursed technique activated!

Everyone felt a gaze suddenly settle on them. After a brief examination, it swiftly moved away. Yet that fleeting instant, that mere moment of scrutiny...

Left every one of them drenched in cold sweat!

What kind of monster was this? A single glance had felt like being cut to pieces.

That resentment, that grief and hatred, that overwhelming killing intent!

Who on earth was it!?

"Mr. Nanami!" A boy looked fearfully at the man beside him, dressed in a suit and tie. It was Kento Nanami.

He looked just as bewildered, but that brief contact had instantly confirmed one thing: his senior, Kamo, was here!

But had he not been assigned to Jujutsu High? Why had he come to Kyoto?

And this domain...

The gaze suspended high above vanished. Everything touched by the blood was divided into two categories.

[Human] and [Nonhuman].

[Humans] were subjected to the cursed technique's sure-hit effect. If the domain's caster wished, every person within range would be attacked by Kamo Xu's blood at the same instant.

This was-[Strangulation].

[Nonhumans] were much simpler, broadly encompassing cursed spirits, cursed objects, transfigured creatures, and all creatures without human form.

On top of the sure-hit effect, those species were granted an additional touch. The instant contact was made, the blood within them could never again be separated from Kamo Xu.

It was a blessing, a gift, a benediction!

This was-[Embrace].

And the scrutiny of that gaze served only to prevent unnecessary slaughter.

If I killed anyone who didn't need to die, Mom would be sad...

With that... the domain took effect!

Splurt!

In an instant, Kyoto's cursed spirits and blood-bearing cursed objects were pierced by the blood inside their own bodies!

Most died on the spot. A small number of stronger ones still resisted, but how could Kamo Xu possibly give this scum a chance to survive!

He turned the hand forming his domain's sign, and his three fingers instantly changed direction, pointing toward the ground.

This was... divine punishment.

Something eerie happened!

The monsters' blood seemed to suddenly evaporate into vapor, taking immense amounts of heat with it and instantly freezing those cursed spirits!

Cursed spirits that had been brimming with life a second before now crashed helplessly to the ground, shattering into dust...

Like fireworks bursting against the ground, the cursed spirits shattered one after another. Their eerie yet pleasing cracks formed a symphony belonging only to the strong.

That thoroughly terrified many onlookers. They hugged their arms around themselves, trying to regain a little warmth as they continued to retreat.

Fortunately, no additional rules had been imposed at the domain's boundary. After stepping outside, Kento Nanami surmised that it was an open Domain Expansion, exchanging the absence of a boundary and unrestricted entry and exit for its vast coverage.

But this range was simply...

He glanced down at the trails of blood still flowing and slowly expanding, then loudly ordered his juniors to keep retreating. They would leave this place to Kamo Xu to deal with and let him clear out the remaining cursed spirits.

Kyoto was purged clean.