A week after the birthday party, Miwa Chisei received a summons from the Jujutsu Higher-Ups.
This was to be expected. After lurking in the shadows and observing her for nearly two years, they were bound to bare their claws eventually.
And as far as Miwa Chisei was concerned, their decision to sit idle for those two years had clearly been a mistake.
"If you don't break an eaglet's wings, do you really expect to tame it into a slave once it takes flight?"
The Jujutsu Higher-Ups' office building was hidden within Lord Tengen's barrier, on another mountainside in the opposite direction from Jujutsu High.
The barriers here were more complex and variable than those at Jujutsu High, but their primary purpose was concealment.
The moment Miwa Chisei stepped into the area, she felt countless eyes watching and scrutinizing her.
The so-called meeting room was more like a hollow, dark interrogation chamber.
Six screened compartments surrounded a flat, circular space in the center. Orange lights glowed inside the compartments, faintly revealing the silhouettes within.
These elusive, anonymous figures at the heart of the higher-ups wielded supreme authority, yet never showed their true identities. They did not even know one another's true faces; all their exchanges took place behind false facades.
Perhaps a jujutsu sorcerer who brushed past you on the street was one of them.
Only Lord Tengen in the Tombs of the Star Corridor could see through Jujutsu Society's games of checks and balances, but that lord cared only about the barriers that maintained the balance and would say nothing more.
Miwa Chisei stood in the spacious, sealed room. Apart from the faint light spilling from the six compartments, there was no other illumination.
The oppressive, solemn atmosphere had already been set.
"Miwa Chisei, we are the central members of