After his domain shattered, Satoru Gojo entered the cooldown period of cursed technique burnout.
But no matter how he looked at it, that brief interval was far shorter than the time Kamo Xu would spend under Unlimited Void's effects.
By a rough estimate, that brief exposure alone had flooded him with three years' worth of information.
Even with Kamo Xu's strength, there was no way he would regain consciousness within a month.
[Unlimited Void] was that absurdly unfair. Once it hit, even destroying the domain would still leave the rest of the fight a one-sided slaughter.
Satoru Gojo silently watched the man who had fought him...
He closed his eyes and gathered cursed energy, hastening the thaw of his frozen body. Once he could move again... he would have no choice but to exorcise the curse that was Kamo Xu.
He quietly slowed the rate at which he gathered cursed energy. Perhaps he was still struggling inside.
But Satoru Gojo knew that Suguru Geto followed his ideals, while Kamo Xu... clung to his convictions to the bitter end.
Suguru Geto did not simply act on whatever crossed his mind. He hesitated and weighed his choices, as though placing morality and ideals on opposite sides of a scale.
Only when one side outweighed the other would he act.
But Kamo Xu...
He had no such scale.
His thoughts were like words carved into bone with a knife. Once a stroke was made, it would never fade.
No person, no event could change his mind.
Knowing Kamo Xu's temperament, Satoru Gojo could never let such an extremist madman go. He had to kill him with his own hands before he did something foolish!
Drip...
The blood-red ice crystals melted back into blood, falling to the ground and splashing into crimson flowers, like fleeting red spider lilies.
Today... the far shore of the Yellow Springs would welcome someone.
That someone could only be Kamo Xu.
His fingers gradually regained movement. Over those four minutes, most of the ice freezing his body had thawed. Satoru Gojo shifted one side of his body and pulled his feet free of the frozen ground.
Since he had not thawed completely, the movement tore his skin, and blood slowly seeped out.
"Asahi... I'm sorry." Satoru Gojo walked up to Kamo Xu's mutilated body.
He raised his hand... and touched Kamo Xu between the brows.
Squelch!
It was the sound of flesh being pierced. Kamo Xu's brain had been punctured in an instant!
But the hand resting between Kamo Xu's brows had yet to do anything. Satoru Gojo had not caused this!
Startled, Satoru Gojo immediately pulled back half a step.
He stared in shock at Kamo Xu's temple...
A crimson needle protruded there, its tip stained with a little pink brain tissue...
Kamo Xu had pierced his own brain!
Was he killing himself?
No... that wasn't right!
Was that the temporal lobe?
(The temporal lobes, located on either side of the lower brain, primarily process memory, language, hearing, and emotion. Damage to them can cause short-term memory loss, declining memory, tinnitus, speech disorders, emotional instability, irritability, depression, and other problems.)
Was he deliberately damaging his brain to stop it from processing the excess information?
Squelch!
Another needle pierced through his skull and emerged, this time behind Kamo Xu's ear.
No, he was actively purging the excess memories!
Two needles were already visible. Heaven knew what kind of mess he had made inside his brain!
Sure enough, blood suddenly gushed from Kamo Xu's eyes and nose. Deliberately damaging his brain had inflicted another grievous injury on him.
But... for Kamo Xu, who had already used Reverse Cursed Technique unconsciously before, this was an enormous gamble.
He damaged his brain with the smallest possible attacks while healing it with Reverse Cursed Technique.
The information forced into his mind occupied most of his memory, so there was nothing wrong with deleting chunks of it at random.
Even if he accidentally erased his old memories... it hardly mattered to the Kamo Xu of today.
Those sweet memories would only become sugar-coated poison, slowly killing his future self.
Perhaps forgetting was better...
Kamo Xu's eyes moved. They rolled twice before locking onto Satoru Gojo, and after a brief moment of thought, he understood his predicament.
He opened his mouth to say something, but only meaningless syllables came out.
He fell silent, then abruptly slapped his head.
With a bang, he opened his mouth again.
"Ah... ahhh. Mm, that fixed it."
Sure enough, a smack was all a broken thing needed.
The smile still would not leave Kamo Xu's lips. The instant he awoke, he poured the pure positive energy of Reverse Cursed Technique into his shattered body.
Fresh flesh sprouted, and his organs steadily rebuilt themselves.
Injuries that inconceivable should have killed him long ago. Yet the man before him had overcome them in the most insane, absurdly unreasonable way!
"Ah~ What's-your-name, long time no see. You don't look too happy, huh?" Kamo Xu snickered as he watched Satoru Gojo's livid face.
"Surprised?"
"Ever since Suguru Geto left, I knew a day like this might come. You didn't seriously think I spent all those years in a wheelchair doing nothing, did you?"
Satoru Gojo's pupils abruptly contracted. He had already anticipated that he might become my enemy?
Had he placed a binding vow inside his body beforehand, so that the blood deep within his brain would activate the moment I felt any intent to kill him...?
But wasn't that literally a cerebral infarction or a blood clot in the brain?
He was using such a dangerous medical condition as a safeguard against me?
What the fuck was wrong with him?!
Kamo Xu laughed, wildly and deliriously.
He laughed at the look on Satoru Gojo's face, and at his own helplessness.
He had wanted to change his own ending and everyone else's, but in the end, nothing had changed.
He had wanted to take his time experiencing all that life had to offer with his mother after everything ended next year.
He had wanted to listen to her, find a kind, devoted wife, marry, and have children-to quietly live out everything he had never gotten in his previous life.
He had wanted everyone he cherished to live well and grow old alongside him.
But overnight...
Gone~ All gone, hahaha!
His mother was dead, his friend had been executed, and his last remaining friend had broken with him.
His heart hurt so much...
It felt as though an iron pellet had lodged in his throat. He could neither swallow it nor spit it out. Stuck there, it left Kamo Xu unable to breathe...
"Hah..."
He let out a sigh. He had never imagined that disaster would strike one blow after another.
Looking at Satoru Gojo a short distance away, still suffering cursed technique burnout, Kamo Xu did not attack.
He knew that Satoru Gojo could not beat him now...
His Piercing Blood was different from Sukuna's slashes. Without Limitless, Satoru Gojo could not defend against it.
At this moment, he was like a fish on a chopping block-helpless before the knife.
Kamo Xu raised his hand... and pointed at Satoru Gojo.
Blood gathered at his fingertip, naturally aimed at Satoru Gojo's head...
This was the final ending, and the worst outcome.
But in the end, Kamo Xu still did not strike.
He left without delivering Satoru Gojo's final execution.
His mother had told him that she wanted him to be a [jujutsu sorcerer].
Not a [curse user].
Besides, he had worked so hard all this time precisely to keep the people he cherished from dying.
His head really was a mess. Even the smallest thing could set him off.
Kamo Xu, you really don't deserve to be human.
"Wait, Asahi!" Satoru Gojo desperately called after the man turning to leave. "Why are you so obsessed with becoming stronger? Don't you understand yet? [One person's strength] isn't enough!"
"That's because you're [not strong enough]..."
Kamo Xu did not look back. He continued on his way, leaving a sentence that drifted lightly down onto Satoru Gojo's head.
"Things slip beyond your control precisely because you aren't strong enough. Being the strongest isn't the finish line... you can only get stronger, then grow stronger than that!"
Kamo Xu stepped onto a disc formed from blood and left.
Once again, Satoru Gojo could only watch his friend's retreating back... unable to do a thing.
[Kamo Xu was jointly declared a defector by Jujutsu High and Jujutsu Society. However, since he had killed no one, he was only convicted of defection and was not classified as a curse user.] [Volume Two: Night Parade of a Hundred Demons Arc · End]
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