All Things Return!

When Wangchuan heard that form of address.

The corner of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.

"...Brother?"

He repeated the word.

Aoi Todo stood a few steps behind him, hands on his hips, and nodded as though it were only natural.

"Yeah! Brother!"

"Don't you think it suits us?"

"That's what comrades who've fought together should call each other!"

Wangchuan fell silent for a moment.

He opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to correct him: your brother is Yuji Itadori.

Not me.

But after looking at Aoi Todo's face, brimming with enthusiasm and sincerity, he swallowed those words in the end.

"Forget it."

"Let the relationship be wrong. He couldn't be bothered wasting his breath on something like this anyway."

He pulled his hand out of his trouser pocket, flexed his finger joints, then turned his head and tipped his chin toward Aoi Todo.

"Rest here for a bit."

"I'll finish fighting these three in no time."

With that, he was already walking unhurriedly toward the three special grade cursed spirits ahead.

"Huh?!"

"Just now, there wasn't any..."

"But in an instant, he actually gave off such a terrifying aura?"

"He's so strong!"

Aoi Todo stood where he was, watching him approach those three figures radiating terrifying pressure, the light in his eyes growing brighter.

"That's right."

"This is the man who stands shoulder to shoulder with Satoru Gojo."

"I heard back then that this guy had sparred with Satoru Gojo, though hardly anyone saw exactly what happened."

"But supposedly, afterward, Satoru Gojo's assessment of him was something along the lines of 'a terrifying guy.'"

There probably wasn't another person in all of Jujutsu Society who could make that Satoru Gojo call him "a terrifying guy."

Aoi Todo's grin widened.

He folded his arms, his muscles tensing slightly, his gaze following Wangchuan's back as a thought arose in his mind.

"Mr. Wangchuan!"

"Let me see."

"Let me see how powerful your fists are."

"Let me see... just what kind of man could conquer our teacher, Utahime Iori."

Aoi Todo called out to that retreating figure.

"Huh?!"

Wangchuan kept walking, but turned his head and raised an eyebrow.

"If you're too weak, I'll be disappointed."

Aoi Todo's voice carried an undisguised, pure challenge.

"After all, you're the one who, with Ms. Utahime..."

Before he could finish, Wangchuan's steps suddenly paused.

"If Utahime hears you saying that, you're in for a beating."

"Hahaha..."

"It's fine. I'm already used to getting beaten up."

Aoi Todo laughed even louder, looking utterly fearless.

Wangchuan turned back and continued forward, his voice drifting back from ahead.

"Besides, I don't like close-quarters fighting."

"Cursed spirits' blood stinks."

"I don't want a drop of it on my fists."

"And there's no need, either."

He stopped about twenty meters away from the three special grades.

The three special grades had already assumed attacking stances again, dazzling light flashing across the Mirror Cursed Spirit's surface.

The Flesh Cursed Spirit's swollen body writhed slowly, and the Shadow Cursed Spirit's bone blades spread open soundlessly.

Wangchuan didn't look at them.

He lowered his head to look at his left palm, lightly clenching his fist and opening it again, as though feeling the texture of something.

He murmured to himself.

"...I haven't used this since I learned it."

His lips curved slightly, with a touch of pure delight, like a child who had just gotten a new toy.

"I'll practice on you three today."

He raised his left hand, fingers slightly spread, his palm facing forward.

Then he softly uttered four words.

"All Things Return."

The moment those four words fell, it was as though the entire world had been muted.

The air itself seemed to freeze, and then, in the next instant.

An invisible, terrifying force of attraction erupted from the center of Wangchuan's palm.

It was something entirely different from ordinary gravity.

It was as though the direction of down had been redefined for every object in this space.

Every down pointed toward Wangchuan's palm.

From dust and flying insects to broken stone pillars and collapsed roofs, everything collapsed rapidly toward his open hand at the same moment.

They surged toward him, tracing arcs through the air, all converging on that single point.

And the three special grade cursed spirits bore the brunt of it.

The fragments on the Mirror Cursed Spirit's surface shook wildly, producing sharp clattering sounds, but its entire body was sliding irresistibly forward.

The Shadow Cursed Spirit tried to anchor itself by driving its bone blades into the ground.

The Flesh Cursed Spirit was the largest, but its cumbersome body was now being dragged forward, tumbling in an utterly wretched manner.

The human faces on its surface screamed silently, its spasming arms clawing wildly at the air without catching anything.

"Ah... aaaah!!"

"No!"

"Jogo..."

A muffled, terrified roar squeezed out from deep within the Flesh Cursed Spirit's throat.

But that gravitational force soon tore its voice apart in the air.

The three special grade cursed spirits hurtled toward Wangchuan's palm together, their figures beginning to distort and compress less than three meters away from him.

Like a sheet of crumpled paper, their volume shrank rapidly, their cursed energy frantically compressed, crushed, and stripped away.

Yet Aoi Todo, a few steps behind Wangchuan, stood perfectly steady.

"What is this?!"

"So strong!"

He had been ready to dodge or activate his cursed technique, but as that gravitational force passed him, it flowed around him like water around a reef.

It parted smoothly at his sides, having no effect on him whatsoever.

Aoi Todo's mouth fell open and stayed that way for a long while.

The three cursed spirits were finally annihilated completely less than half a meter in front of Wangchuan's palm.

And all the ground of this abandoned Shinto Shrine had been pulled over by that gravitational force, piling around Wangchuan to form a circular depression over twenty meters in diameter.

The ruins were gone.

The shrine buildings were gone.

Only Wangchuan remained standing in the middle of that shallow pit, his left hand slightly open, something lying in his palm.

A withered finger with a dark red sheen.

Sukuna's Finger.

"So this is Sukuna's Finger."

"Tch!"

Wangchuan looked down at the finger in his palm, his expression showing a touch of undisguised disgust.

"...Looks pretty gross."

Wangchuan muttered, turning it over in his palm and examining it again.

"I really wonder."

"How on earth did that guy Yuji Itadori manage to swallow it?"

He shook his head lightly, took a piece of talisman cloth he had prepared beforehand from his pocket, carefully wrapped the finger, and tucked it into his inner pocket.

Just then, the system's voice sounded.

[Killed three special grade cursed spirits]

[Tso Lan Template fusion: 35% → 40%]

"Looks like killing powerful special grade cursed spirits really is the way to go."

"A five-percentage-point increase all at once."

At the same time, power and knowledge slowly welled up.

Just then, hurried footsteps came from behind him.

Aoi Todo ran over in great strides.

His face wore the mixture of shock and wild delight that only appeared after witnessing something taken to its absolute peak, his arms spread wide as his voice roared from his chest.

"So strong!!"

"Wangchuan!!"

"So strong!!!"

He ran up to Wangchuan and slapped both hands onto his shoulders, hard enough to make Wangchuan sway slightly.

"What was that? Was it cursed technique reversal?!"

"Gravity? A black hole?!"

"That move just fried my brain! Three special grades! One move! Gone in one move!"

"Do you know?! I've dreamed of seeing a fight on this level!"

"No, this doesn't even count as a fight! This is domination! Completely one-sided domination!"

"No wonder Satoru Gojo called you a monster!"

The knowledge that had suddenly appeared was already giving him a slight headache, and now Todo was shaking him hard.

It hurt even more.

But he thought to himself.

The essence of cursed technique reversal is reversing polarity, and Tso Lan's gravitational cursed technique is inherently bipolar.

Gravity itself is a unity of "attraction" and "repulsion."

And as the Moon Demon, Tso Lan's authority is to control every form of gravity.

So for him, who possessed Tso Lan's power, the opposite had been in his hands from the very beginning.

He didn't need to forcibly generate an effect through the mathematical trick of negative times negative equals positive.

Because he could simply command gravity: get the hell away!

He leaned back slightly and raised a hand to signal Aoi Todo to calm down.

"All right, all right. Stop shaking me."

Only then did Aoi Todo let go, stepping half a pace back and putting his hands on his hips.

He threw his head back and laughed several times.

"Hahaha!"

"Fantastic! Fantastic! My understanding of jujutsu has improved again."

"Today's mission was worth it!"

"At September's Goodwill Event, I'm definitely going to crush everyone at Tokyo Jujutsu High!"