[The reason you had not worked your way up from "Lord Tengen, are you aware of Kenjaku's existence?" and instead thrown out the explosive revelation "I killed Kenjaku" was itself an extraordinarily lethal test of this omniscient, omnipotent barrier administrator.]
[If Tengen showed any confusion upon hearing those words, or asked, "Who is Kenjaku?" it would prove she knew nothing of the undercurrents spanning a thousand years. But if she did not, it would point to some profoundly chilling truth.]
["..."]
[As you had expected, Tengen did not display even the slightest surprise.]
[The pure white space fell into a long, suffocating silence.]
[You watched the withered apparition before you coldly, not knowing what she was thinking at that moment.]
[Was she drawing on the sensory network of her barriers across Japan to determine whether you spoke the truth?]
[Or was she secretly calculating how the strength displayed by your young body could possibly have bridged a thousand-year gulf to kill that schemer?]
[Only after a long while did Tengen's aged, androgynous voice echo through the space again as she slowly asked her question.]
["Was this also... a judgment and action you made based on that 'future' you glimpsed?"]
[Clearly, she harbored no doubts about the fact that "Kenjaku was dead."]
[Or perhaps the rampage of a million Cursed Spirits a few days earlier, triggered by your killing of Kenjaku, had already been enough to prove your words true to the master of these barriers.]
[You pushed your glasses up your nose, kept both hands in your pockets, and answered her in a leisurely tone, as though telling someone else's story.]
["In the future I could clearly see, she was the one who secretly guided and directed the man named Toji Fushiguro, taking advantage of a moment when Satoru Gojo,