Chapter Summaries

Li Shunchen secured the Kamo Clan’s political support by becoming the young heir’s teacher, giving him control over the Jujutsu Society’s leadership. After gaining a new mechanical-analysis ability, he continued investigating Cursed Corpses and training while his efforts to analyze Tengen’s barrier stalled.

• Li Shunchen accepted the Kamo Clan Head’s deal and began teaching the clan’s young heir basic Blood Manipulation techniques.
• The Kamo Clan abandoned its neutral stance and aligned with the Zenin Clan and Li Shunchen, leaving the unaffiliated conservatives politically powerless.
• Li Shunchen gained the Mechanical Disassembly Intuition card, which let him perceive and dismantle mechanical structures, including Cursed Corpses.
• Li Shunchen recognized that the card could reveal the internal structures and weaknesses of unfamiliar Cursed Corpses, including ones secretly developed by the Higher-Ups.
• Li Shunchen made little progress analyzing Tengen’s Assimilation Barrier Technique but devoted the stalled research effort to combat training.

The narrator trained their swordsmanship against four clones in Ālaya Consciousness, refining their combat abilities through endless analysis. They realized that their dependence on constant calculation and Time Perception Expansion prevented them from reaching the pure, thoughtless state needed to land Black Flash.

• The narrator transformed into a cursed spirit in Ālaya Consciousness and created four clones to spar against using Simple Domain and New Shadow Style’s automatic counterattacks.
• The narrator’s swordsmanship and the clones’ counterattacks continually improved, while Time Perception Expansion let them analyze each exchange from five perspectives.
• The narrator struggled to reproduce Black Flash and discussed it with Satoru Gojo and Kento Nanami, who described it as a phenomenon beyond conscious control and a result of absolute concentration.
• The narrator recalled landing Black Flash against Toji Fushiguro and, in a past simulation, against Suguru Geto after focusing entirely on striking or killing them.
• The narrator recognized that their constant calculations and reliance on Time Perception Expansion had made it impossible to empty their mind, even during the fight against four special grade cursed spirits and Kenjaku in the Sewer.

The narrator secretly protected Yuta Okkotsu and Rika Orimoto during childhood, reasoning that keeping Rika alive could prevent Yuta from creating the Queen of Curses. The narrator also rejected relying on Rika’s immense power as a solution to the deeper ambitions driving their plans, and the children’s growth continued as expected.

• The narrator sent a Great Sage to shadow Yuta Okkotsu and Rika Orimoto, eliminate nearby low-level cursed spirits, and guard them against likely accidents.
• The narrator judged that Rika Orimoto’s survival was key to preventing Yuta Okkotsu’s grief from awakening the power that would turn her into the Queen of Curses.
• The narrator planned to limit direct protection to the children’s formative years, expecting education and maturity to help Yuta process grief without cursing Rika.
• The narrator recalled coveting the Queen of Curses’ vast cursed energy but concluded that an outsider could not use it and that raw power could not fulfill their ultimate ambition.
• The Great Sage’s monitoring showed that Yuta Okkotsu and Rika Orimoto continued to grow according to the narrator’s plans.

Li Shunchen inspected the conservatives’ failed attempt to create a fully independent cursed corpse, dismantled it with ease, and judged their manufacturing precision inadequate. As he prepared to leave, its creator asked whether a ready-made substitute could replace the three soul cores.

• Li Shunchen visited the conservatives’ Underground Workshop and examined their two-meter-tall gorilla cursed corpse.
• The Cursed Corpse Creation sorcerer explained how he had struggled to reproduce Li Shunchen’s theory after witnessing Great Sage.
• The gorilla cursed corpse attacked Li Shunchen, who caught its blow, tore off its arm, and stopped its cores with a precise strike.
• Li Shunchen dismantled the cursed corpse’s armor and inspected its crude cores before telling the sorcerer to give up if that was the limit of their precision.
• The Cursed Corpse Creation sorcerer asked Li Shunchen whether a ready-made substitute could drive the cursed corpse instead of artificially engraved soul cores.

Li Shunchen discovered that the cursed corpse maker wanted to use living human souls as cores for independent cursed corpses and violently stopped him. He exposed the plan to the higher-ups, who dismissed and confined the maker, but Li Shunchen remained unsure whether they would secretly resume the experiments.

• The cursed corpse maker argued that living human souls could power and control the bodies of independent cursed corpses.
• Li Shunchen realized the maker intended to use human souls, struck him, and demanded to know whether the higher-ups had already begun the experiments.
• The cursed corpse maker said the higher-ups feared the experiments would fail and leave them with uncontrollable creations.
• Li Shunchen crushed the maker’s hands and used Reverse Cursed Technique to heal them while leaving their nerves permanently damaged.
• Li Shunchen exposed the plan to the higher-ups, who stripped the maker of his positions and placed him under psychiatric supervision.
• Li Shunchen resolved to insist on legitimate research, though he feared the higher-ups might pursue the forbidden experiments in secret.

Li Shunchen continued monitoring cursed corpse research while pushing himself through slow barrier training, and Jujutsu High’s student numbers fell as the Great Sages prevented tragedies. In 2012, he drew a minor card and found no sign of Mahito, whose soul-altering technique he hoped to use to eliminate cursed energy; he remained convinced that his power and sacrifices were still insufficient.

• Li Shunchen suspended plans to create more Great Sages and mobilized the Three Great Families, Mei Mei, and the Great Sages to monitor anyone capable of making cursed corpses.
• Li Shunchen kept training barrier techniques and delegated routine lessons and patrols to the Great Sages as fewer students enrolled at Jujutsu High.
• Li Shunchen drew the Absolute Grip Ratchet card in 2012 and stored it away because it offered little value to his fighting style.
• The Three Great Families continued investigating human-soul experiments, while the higher-ups restricted their research to legitimate cursed corpse technology; no one found evidence of Mahito or bizarre human transformations.
• Li Shunchen planned to capture Mahito and test whether his soul-altering technique could remove humanity’s ability to generate cursed energy, while recognizing the many risks and unresolved problems.
• Li Shunchen recalled the crippled sorcerer’s warning that success required sacrifice and concluded that his efforts and power were still far from enough.

Li Shunchen and Suguru Geto developed a cursed-spirit reconnaissance network to address threats hidden beneath Japan’s apparent peace. As the project began testing, Li Shunchen confronted the network’s dependence on Geto and drew an SSR card that turned the body into an instinct-driven killing machine.

• Li Shunchen drew the N-rank Pore Physical Lockdown card and added it to his collection.
• Worried about concealed threats, Li Shunchen asked Suguru Geto to help create a nationwide cursed-spirit surveillance network.
• After Geto explained that Grade 2 cursed spirits were too scarce for broad coverage, Li Shunchen proposed patrol groups of low-grade spirits that could report incidents to nearby Great Sages or assistant supervisors.
• Geto agreed to test the revised network in districts around Tokyo, while Li Shunchen privately worried that the system would have no successor after Geto.
• After a year of testing, Li Shunchen drew the SSR Reptilian Brain Takeover Mode card, which granted bodily control to his most primitive instincts.

Li Shunchen considered his new Reptilian Brain Takeover Mode Card while secretly expanding his and Suguru Geto’s cursed-spirit warning network. Yuki Tsukumo showed him evidence that foreign forces were building metal bodies powered by human brains, revealing that the cursed-corpse idea he thought he had contained had spread overseas.

• Li Shunchen examined the risks and potential of the Reptilian Brain Takeover Mode Card, which could let him fight through instinct when thought itself became a liability.
• Li Shunchen and Suguru Geto continued secretly building a low-level cursed spirit early-warning network covering Tokyo and Kyoto, while he avoided drawing the attention of suspected cursed-corpse experimenters.
• Yuki Tsukumo visited Li Shunchen at Jujutsu High and showed him a photograph of an unconscious Japanese prisoner surrounded by foreign doctors in a secret facility.
• Yuki Tsukumo showed Li Shunchen a battlefield photograph of a destroyed child-sized metal humanoid, from whose head militants had retrieved cooked human brain tissue.
• Yuki Tsukumo explained that Middle Eastern militants called the machines Steel Brains and that the metal bodies displayed extraordinary strength and agility, then asked Li Shunchen what he thought.

Li Shunchen analyzed how foreign powers had turned living human brains into crude cursed-corpse weapons and blamed his decision to kill Kenjaku for setting the disaster in motion. Yuki Tsukumo tried to reassure him, but he concluded the timeline was doomed and broke into a bitter, hysterical laugh.

• Li Shunchen examined the battlefield photographs and deduced how foreign researchers were mass-producing cursed-corpse weapons using living human brains.
• Li Shunchen traced the global spread of cursed-energy weapons back to his decision to kill Kenjaku, which unleashed the Million-Demon Night Parade and exposed Jujutsu to the world.
• Yuki Tsukumo argued that the disaster and foreign powers' greed were not entirely Li Shunchen's fault, and defended the lives his cursed-corpse project had saved in Japan.
• Li Shunchen realized Yuki did not know he had caused the Million-Demon Night Parade and judged that the timeline would descend into an even greater catastrophe.
• Li Shunchen questioned whether his efforts to save people had made him the world's greatest evil, then wondered if public hatred might create a Special Grade Cursed Spirit embodying him.
• Li Shunchen laughed bitterly beneath Yuki Tsukumo's startled gaze.

Li Shunchen weighed how to respond after the Steel Brain project was used in combat and concluded that direct violence or diplomacy could worsen the threat. He began coordinating measures to protect Japanese people and curb the project, while leaving Yuki Tsukumo stunned by his bleak insistence that they could not save everyone.

• Li Shunchen rejected armed intervention and high-level diplomacy, deciding instead to cut off the supply of Japanese people used as experimental materials.
• Yuki Tsukumo understood that restricting access to Japanese test subjects could slow the Steel Brain research, but Li Shunchen warned that the perpetrators might seek victims elsewhere.
• Li Shunchen refused Yuki Tsukumo's offer to help, telling her that neither of them could save everyone and that her combat strength would not solve the political crisis.
• Yuki Tsukumo said Li Shunchen had changed as he began calling Conservative Faction Higher-Ups and secret Cabinet contacts to alert the government.
• Li Shunchen planned nationwide alerts, counterespionage and anti-smuggling patrols, stronger civilian safeguards, and operations with Mei Mei and Shiu Kong against foreign brokers.
• Li Shunchen checked on the Cursed Corpse Maker, found him mentally broken and isolated, and continued his efforts as he faced the wider threat of human greed and international power struggles.

Li Shunchen spent 2015 tightening Japan’s defenses against the overseas exploitation of cursed energy, while Satoru Gojo traveled abroad and returned with evidence of the Steel Brain experiments. Seeing a brain removed from a living person, Li Shunchen recognized it as the bloody consequence of his own past decisions.

• Li Shunchen expanded the Great Sage surveillance network and added covert cursed-energy screening to overseas travel, sharply reducing the export of human experimental subjects from Japan.
• At the start of 2015, Li Shunchen drew Blink-Synchronized Entry [SR] and considered how it could combine with his existing abilities, while noting that Satoru Gojo’s Six Eyes could counter it.
• Satoru Gojo asked to travel overseas to investigate the Steel Brain experiments, and Li Shunchen reluctantly agreed after warning him not to reveal his power to ordinary people.
• A week later, Satoru Gojo returned from a Middle Eastern war zone with a brain preserved in a container, which he had found in an abandoned laboratory bunker.
• Li Shunchen examined the mutilated brain and realized that his decisions, including killing Kenjaku and spreading the independent cursed corpse method, had helped lead to the experiments.

At the start of 2016, Li Shunchen drew a card that enhanced survival but offered little combat use, then began teaching his new disciple Noritoshi Kamo advanced applications of Blood Manipulation. He left Noritoshi shaken after demonstrating how aerosolized blood could infiltrate and lethally control an opponent from within.

• Li Shunchen drew Extreme Gastric Acid Degradation [N] and stored the survival-focused ability in his card collection.
• Kinji Hakari, Kirara Hoshi, and Noritoshi Kamo enrolled at Tokyo Jujutsu High, with Noritoshi joining because Li Shunchen was his master.
• Noritoshi explained that he stored extra blood in blood bags to compensate for Blood Manipulation's heavy blood consumption, but Li Shunchen said that weakness came from how users employed the technique.
• Li Shunchen asked Noritoshi to reconsider what counted as blood, then stretched a small blood bead into an invisible aerosol.
• Li Shunchen revealed that Noritoshi had inhaled the blood particles and used them to threaten his heart and blood vessels, showing how the technique could kill from inside the body.
• Li Shunchen released Noritoshi and explained that microscopic blood control could bypass defenses more effectively than a conventional Piercing Blood attack.

Li Shunchen taught Noritoshi Kamo how to manipulate blood into a microscopic mist, then learned that foreign operatives had trapped and burned Great Sage while exploiting his drive to protect people. Great Sage escaped with them but was left questioning whether he had done the right thing, and Li Shunchen could not answer him.

• Li Shunchen demonstrated microscopic blood manipulation to Noritoshi Kamo and judged that mastering it could make him a formidable assassin.
• A badly burned Great Sage returned to Li Shunchen’s underground workshop and explained that he had entered a burning apartment to rescue people trapped inside.
• The trapped people had greedily restrained Great Sage and threatened to accuse him of causing the fire unless he let them dismantle him.
• Great Sage forced his way out with them, but falling debris and their resistance burned them, and they falsely blamed him before witnesses.
• Li Shunchen realized foreign forces had staged the trap to test Great Sage and damage his public standing, while an accompanying assistant supervisor helped preserve the truth.
• Great Sage asked Li Shunchen whether he had done wrong by resisting, but Li Shunchen fell silent, unable to answer.

Li Shunchen suppressed the foreign plot against the Great Sages, reflected on the burden of protecting others, and welcomed new students as the years passed. In 2018, he brought Yuji Itadori to Jujutsu High after Yuji chose to become a sorcerer, then received news of a volcano-headed cursed spirit.

• Li Shunchen had Mei Mei investigate the probe against the Great Sages and concluded foreign extremists had orchestrated it, then told the Great Sages to trust their instincts if another incident crossed the line.
• Li Shunchen decided not to create more fully independent cursed corpses, and in 2017 he welcomed Toge Inumaki and Maki Zenin to Tokyo Jujutsu High, assigning Panda to show them around.
• Li Shunchen watched the peaceful timeline continue as Tsumiki Fushiguro remained safe and Suguru Geto avoided his original fate, then ordered his allies and the Great Sages to search for Mahito and three other special grade cursed spirits.
• Li Shunchen traveled to Sendai in spring 2018 and offered Yuji Itadori the choice between ordinary life and becoming a jujutsu sorcerer at Jujutsu High.
• Yuji Itadori chose to become a sorcerer so he could help more people, and Li Shunchen soon received news about the volcano-headed cursed spirit.

The narrator ambushed the four special grade cursed spirits and used the Sword of Extermination and Cursed Spirit Manipulation to capture Jogo and Hanami. The chapter left Dagon on the verge of transforming as he raged over his companions.

• The narrator found Mahito, Jogo, Hanami, and Dagon gathered beneath a remote volcano and decided to capture them for Suguru Geto.
• The narrator ambushed the group, cut Jogo apart with Mahoraga's Sword of Extermination, and swallowed his Cursed Spirit Bead to subjugate him.
• The narrator used the weakened Jogo as a shield, then forced him to expand Coffin of the Iron Mountain and trap the group inside his domain.
• The narrator interrupted Hanami's Feast of Light Sea by severing its flower-bud core, then captured and swallowed Hanami.
• Dagon erupted with cursed energy and roared at the narrator for what had happened to Jogo and Hanami.

Dagon emerged from his cocoon and unleashed his Domain Expansion, but the narrator used Jogo’s domain to suppress its sure-hit and killed Dagon with the Soul Liberation Blade. Mahito’s feigned surrender ended in a failed ambush, and the chapter left him decapitated as the narrator struck back.

• Dagon completed his transformation and expanded Horizon of the Captivating Skandha, clashing with Jogo’s Coffin of the Iron Mountain.
• The narrator summoned Hanami to guard Mahito, then used equipped Cards and New Shadow Style: Iaijutsu: Oborozuki to rush through Dagon’s Death Swarm.
• The narrator cut Dagon into pieces, absorbed him with Cursed Spirit Manipulation, and watched both domains collapse.
• Mahito pretended to surrender, but lunged at the narrator when they came within range.
• The narrator dodged Mahito’s attack and severed both his hands with the Soul Liberation Blade, then struck him again as his vision spun away.

After subduing four Special Grade Cursed Spirits, Li Shunchen studied Mahito’s Idle Transfiguration and transferred the spirits to Suguru Geto. Geto noticed that Li Shunchen had not aged, prompting Li to reflect that immortality might be a cruel curse as he left the conversation unresolved.

• Li Shunchen analyzed Jogo, Hanami, and Dagon’s Cursed Techniques, then used Idle Transfiguration on himself and perceived the layered souls that made up his being.
• Li Shunchen went to Suguru Geto and handed over the four subdued Special Grade Cursed Spirits, which Geto swallowed into his collection.
• Suguru Geto wondered how Li Shunchen had defeated the four spirits without switching away from Cursed Spirit Manipulation and asked how strong he had become.
• Suguru Geto noticed Li Shunchen had not aged and joked that he might be an immortal Cursed Spirit.
• Li Shunchen remembered that the Forever Seventeen Card had kept his body fixed at age seventeen and said that living forever would be a vicious curse compared with a swift death.

The narrator studied Idle Transfiguration, carefully mapping souls and practicing on animals while refusing to experiment on innocent people or prisoners. After discovering that Great Sage’s layered soul mirrored their own, they decided to hunt ancient sorcerers inhabiting modern bodies and attempt to restore those bodies to their original owners.

• The narrator trained Megumi Fushiguro, Yuji Itadori, and Nobara Kugisaki while relying on Great Sage to help instruct them.
• The narrator touched Jujutsu High acquaintances and Panda to study souls, finding that Panda’s soul existed inside his constructed body without reshaping it.
• The narrator examined Great Sage and found that his three overlapping cores reproduced the narrator’s layered soul, leading them to understand Great Sage as their offspring rather than a perfect copy.
• The narrator set a rule against altering innocent human souls and practiced Idle Transfiguration first on poultry, fish, and then monkeys.
• The narrator rejected using death-row inmates as experimental subjects and chose ancient incarnated sorcerers as targets instead.
• The narrator resolved to separate the ancient sorcerers’ souls from their stolen bodies and return control to the original owners, even if the attempt killed them both.

The narrator investigated unregistered sorcerers to find ancient sorcerers revived through incarnation and confronted a swordsman whom Great Sage identified as an unusual target. After the swordsman attacked, the narrator used spatial techniques and the Soul Liberation Blade to disarm and capture him alive.

• The narrator organized a nationwide investigation, assigning ordinary information gathering to broad networks and in-person verification to Grade 1 or Special Grade 1 sorcerers.
• Megumi Fushiguro, Noritoshi Kamo, and Satoru Gojo passed the narrator’s instructions to their respective clans, while Great Sage was designated for uncertain cases.
• Great Sage located an incarnated man at a remote kendo dojo but could not detect any Cursed Energy, so the narrator went to investigate.
• The narrator confirmed the man was an ancient incarnation and confronted him; the swordsman drew his Samurai Sword and challenged the narrator to a fight.
• The swordsman charged, but the narrator folded space with Cursed Technique Reversal and used the Soul Liberation Blade to cut off both of his arms.
• The narrator seized the wounded swordsman by the neck and lifted him into the air.

After discovering that the original host of an ancient swordsman had been irreversibly erased, you destroyed the swordsman’s soul and sought another incarnated sorcerer to study. At a Tokyo sumo hall, you confronted San'dai Rokujūyon, who had taken over a body just to wrestle, and crushed his head into the dohyō.

• You used Idle Transfiguration to examine the swordsman’s soul and found only remnants of the original host, whose consciousness had been destroyed.
• The swordsman mocked your accusation and declared he had returned to wield his blade, so you tore apart his soul and killed him.
• You decided to collect more cases of incarnated sorcerers before risking an attempt to deal with Ryomen Sukuna inside Itadori.
• You located San'dai Rokujūyon at a Tokyo sumo hall and entered the evacuated building to confront him.
• San'dai Rokujūyon activated a barrier for a sumo match and admitted he had taken over another person’s body because people lived for sumo.
• You struck San'dai Rokujūyon before he could resist and pinned his head into the blood-soaked dohyō.