It stopped.
That enormous mouth slowly split open, revealing a pitch-black throat with no bottom in sight. Sauce dripped from its lips, gouging little pits in the ground.
"...I'm going to eat you."
Wangchuan fell silent for two seconds.
He raised a hand to cover his nose and fanned the air in front of him with the other, his voice emerging muffled behind his palm.
"Hey, hey, hey."
"Don't rush to eat me. Before you start throwing accusations around, let me clear something up."
He lowered his hand, his expression as serious as a student raising his hand in class.
"I've known since I was little how much toil goes into every grain."
"I never leave a single grain of rice in my bowl. I even wipe the sauce off my plate with a steamed bun and eat that."
"That whole routine doesn't work on me."
He paused, then added another remark.
"And you seriously reek."
"I can smell that sour stink from ten meters away. Could you stand farther away when you talk?"
The cursed spirit's enormous mouth slowly closed for a moment, then opened again.
Its voice grew deeper, carrying a gurgle as though it were digesting something.
"Human excuses are meaningless. Your guilt has long since become part of my body..."
"Then your body really is disgusting," Wangchuan remarked without a change of expression.
The cursed spirit's enormous mouth suddenly stretched open to its limit.
"I'll eat you!"
Before its voice faded, a torrent carrying countless putrid scraps came crashing down on Wangchuan, blotting out everything overhead.
The impact was powerful enough to uproot the supporting pillars of the entire floor.
Wangchuan stood where he was without so much as lifting his eyelids.
The torrent abruptly veered away about half a meter from his body.
Silver ripples of gravity spread silently around him. Every attack changed direction in unison, as though striking a curved mirror.
Boom!!
The putrid torrent swept past his side and slammed into the floor behind him.
Tiles were peeled up like sheets of paper. Chunks of concrete scattered everywhere. The escalator's handrail was severed through the middle, and twisted metal spun several times through the air before finally clattering to the ground.
A hole several meters across had been blasted through the floor between the first and second stories, its edges jagged and its rebar exposed as dust spread through the air.
Wangchuan stood in midair.
His feet were off the ground, his shirt hem fluttering slightly as he hovered at the edge of the newly destroyed floor.
Not a single hair was out of place.
"It's useless."
He looked down at the bloated mass of cursed spirit below, a lazy curve to his lips, as though speaking to a disobedient pet.
"Those little attacks of yours..."
He raised his hand, brought his fingers together, and casually swept it to the side.
The movement was effortless, as though he were shooing away a fly.
But the spirit's massive body suddenly hurtled sideways, as though an invisible train had struck him head-on.
Its body, piled together from food waste, traced an enormous arc through the air.
Crash!
With a crash, it smashed through the side wall of the mall's second floor.
Bricks and stone shattered, a large section of wall collapsed, and Hōzō's body continued flying outward.
It knocked down two lampposts in succession before finally slamming into the parking lot, crushing a black sedan completely flat.
Wangchuan's hand was still raised in midair.
He drew it back and scratched the back of his head, looking at the hole smashed through the wall as he muttered to himself.
"...Uh, they won't make me pay for that, will they?"
Heavy, sticky noises came from beyond the hole in the wall.
The cursed spirit slowly climbed out of the flattened wreckage of the sedan, its enormous mouth skewed to one side as sauce seeped continuously from the split.
It did not howl in pain. Instead, it went quiet.
Those unseen eyes fixed intently on Wangchuan hovering in midair.
It was assessing him.
This human... no.
This thing wasn't an ordinary jujutsu sorcerer.
It had felt that power just now.
It remained silent for several seconds.
Then that crooked mouth slowly split open, producing a sound somewhere between chewing and a low chuckle.
"I'll eat you!"
"Greedy human!"
Its body began to swell.
The rotten vegetable leaves, lumps of grease, and moldy grains of rice began writhing as though alive, piling up and compressing layer upon layer as dark red steam seeped from the surface.
The concentration of cursed energy throughout the mall surged, and the air grew thick and scorching.
Wangchuan's previously languid expression tightened slightly.
He felt it.
That familiar sensation of space being forced open by cursed energy, as though an invisible hand were tearing a hole in reality and filling it with a different set of rules.
"...Oh?"
His brow lifted.
The next second, dark red light exploded outward from the special grade cursed spirit, instantly engulfing the sky above the entire parking lot.
The scene before Wangchuan changed.
The mall, the lampposts, and the flattened sedan all vanished.
In their place was an endless expanse of dark red space.
Beneath his feet was boiling, bubbling broth.
The deep red soup churned, a thick layer of grease floating on its surface. Each bursting bubble released a choking, pungent odor.
Countless pairs of enormous chopsticks hung overhead, each one thicker than a human arm.
They crisscrossed in midair, their ends coated in sticky broth, swaying slowly like the feelers of some predator.
A domain.
Wangchuan stood above the boiling soup, his feet hovering about an inch above it. The scalding, oily broth failed to touch the soles of his shoes.
He surveyed his surroundings, then looked down at the churning broth beneath him, with its floating scraps of unknown origin. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
"Didn't see that coming."
"You can even open a domain."
"...Your domain certainly suits that sour stink of yours."
He raised his head and looked at the bloated figure in the center of the domain, swollen until it occupied almost half the space.
There was no fear in his tone, nor even much wariness. Instead, it held a little surprise and excitement.
Meanwhile.
Outside the domain.
Behind a floor-to-ceiling window on the mall's seventh floor, a figure in dark monk's robes stood quietly.
Suguru Geto held his hands folded in front of him, his eyelids lowered.
A dark red, spherical, irregularly shaped luminous mass was slowly expanding, like an enormous, pulsating stomach.
That was Hōzō's domain.
From the outside, the entire second-floor area of the mall had been completely swallowed by that dark red sphere.
The corners of Suguru Geto's mouth curved upward slightly.
"So the domain has expanded..."
He murmured to himself, his tone composed, as though watching a game of chess unfold.
"Although Hōzō is only a special grade cursed spirit formed from food waste, with limited intelligence..."
"Its domain, Full Belly Hell: Three Thousand Food Cauldrons, still ranks among the more troublesome domains of all special grade cursed spirits."
"Anyone inside it experiences an unprecedented sense of fullness."
"That fullness isn't psychological suggestion. It's real, physical filling."
"The stomach fills, the intestines stretch, and the internal organs tear from excessive expansion."
"Even an opponent like Gojo... would find himself in trouble if he couldn't kill the domain's master before its rules took effect."
He paused, his gaze passing through the window to settle on the slowly pulsating dark red sphere.
"...Wangchuan. How will you respond?"
Suguru Geto's eyes held a quiet, almost expectant curiosity.
"...It really does make me curious."
"How much use will that gravity-manipulating sorcery of yours be inside a rule-based domain like this?"
"Well, it should be gravity, right? That's what the information Mimiko and the others gathered said."
Wind blew in through a gap in the window, stirring the strands of hair hanging over his shoulder.
His lips still held that composed curve.
Meanwhile, inside the domain.
Wangchuan stood on a chopstick.
The domain's rules had already begun taking effect.
He felt a faint sensation in his stomach, as though something were slowly expanding inside it.
The sensation was not intense, but it was certainly happening.
It was as though some invisible substance were being poured into his stomach at an extremely slow rate.
But he did not panic.
He looked down at the boiling surface of the soup.
Then he looked up at the enormous chopsticks whirling and flying through the air, growing ever denser.
Then he pulled his hands out of his pockets and flexed his finger joints, producing several crisp cracks.
"A domain, huh..."
His voice carried that rare note of genuine interest.
"All right. Then I'll get a little serious."
His gaze settled on the enormous shadow deep within the domain, and the curve of his lips deepened a fraction.
"I hope this imperial banquet of yours..."
"Can fill me up a little."
Before you continue