Chapter 171: Water Breathing, Eleventh Form: Dead Calm
Clang!
The sound of a blade rang out, clear enough to pierce the soul.
At the exact moment Kento Nanami closed his eyes and prepared for death, that sound exploded beside his ears without warning.
There was no earth shaking blast.
No blinding flash.
Nanami only felt the terrifying pressure that had been crushing down on him vanish.
It was like a violent hurricane had slammed into an invisible wall and gone still all at once.
"Water Breathing, Eleventh Form."
A low, cold voice echoed through the ruins.
"Dead Calm."
Hum.
The moment those words fell, visible ripples spread through the air less than half a meter in front of Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara.
Like water disturbed by a single drop.
Then a miracle descended.
The massive bone spears, filled with the full malice of a Semi Special Grade Cursed Spirit, had been only centimeters from Nanami's forehead.
The instant they touched the invisible ripples, they broke apart.
No resistance.
No sound.
The bone spears, hard enough to pierce through rock, disintegrated together with the poisonous miasma wrapped around them, turning into fine dust that scattered through the air.
The violent battlefield fell into absolute silence.
Every Cursed Technique attack that entered that invisible range had been erased.
"This…"
Nanami slowly opened his eyes.
His blood stained gaze trembled with shock that words could not describe.
He was not dead.
The gates of hell had been forced shut in front of him.
And standing before him and Haibara was a figure that was not especially broad, yet somehow seemed capable of holding up the entire sky.
Yami.
At this moment, Yami's condition was terrible.
His black Tokyo Jujutsu High uniform had been torn to rags by violent wind and the heat caused by moving at extreme speed. Sparks still clung to the burned edges of the fabric.
He did not turn around.
He only stood there, gasping heavily.
His chest rose and fell like a bellows pushed to its limit.
White steam poured continuously from his body.
It was the result of excessive body heat after forcing his physical potential far past its safe limits.
Even his right hand, the hand holding Shiranui, trembled faintly from torn muscle fibers.
A two hundred kilometer dash against death.
He had truly shattered fate in the final second before the Grim Reaper's scythe fell.
"Sorry."
Yami's voice was hoarse from exhaustion and dehydration.
But the firmness in it immediately smoothed away the fear in the two youths' hearts.
"I'm late."
The moment Haibara heard that familiar voice, the boy who had kept smiling even in the face of certain death finally lost control.
"Yami sensei…"
The broken half of his sword slipped from his hand.
His eyes reddened.
Tears the size of beans mixed with the blood on his face and poured down like a broken dam.
He was not crying because of fear.
He was crying because, inside endless darkness, he had finally seen a ray of light strong enough to scatter everything.
It was the relief of surviving disaster.
It was also pure, unreserved admiration for the man before him.
Clang.
The blunt sword in Nanami's hand, still carrying the last traces of his Cursed Energy, fell weakly to the ground.
His whole body seemed to lose strength at once.
He slumped in the pool of blood and stared blankly at Yami's back, which was shrouded in rising steam.
A few minutes ago, Nanami had hated this rotten Jujutsu World.
He hated the high and mighty higher ups.
He thought there was no such thing as a savior in this world, and that Jujutsu Sorcerers were nothing more than cursed consumables.
But now.
Looking at the man who had disobeyed orders and pushed his body to the edge of collapse just to save them, the cold wall of despair and numbness that had formed in Nanami's heart cracked apart.
For the first time, a faint light appeared in his usually indifferent eyes.
As long as this person is here…
Nanami silently told himself.
The sky will not fall.
Roar!
A roar filled with rage and irritation broke the silence of the ruins.
The mutated Earth Deity Cursed Spirit stared at Yami.
It could not understand why its fatal attack had vanished.
But it could sense something.
This intruding human gave off an aura it hated.
Those two were its prey.
It would not allow anyone to snatch prey from its own territory.
Rumble!
The entire mountain began to shake.
The mutated Earth Deity's massive body reared up. Negative emotions and Cursed Energy within several kilometers began rushing into it at a terrifying speed.
It wanted to release an even more violent, indiscriminate attack.
It wanted to erase these three humans together with the mountain itself.
Facing pressure that would make any Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer despair, Yami merely straightened slowly.
He raised his left hand and wiped away the blood at the corner of his mouth.
The next second, the calm presence of Water Breathing disappeared completely.
What replaced it was destructive heat, fierce enough to set the world ablaze.
Sizzle.
The moss and soil beneath Yami's feet were scorched black the instant they touched that heat.
The Demon Slayer Mark on the left side of his forehead burned bright red, magnificent as flame, shining with unprecedented intensity beneath his rage.
"You touched my students."
Yami turned his head slightly.
In his deep red pupils, there was no human emotion.
That gaze was cold and majestic, like a god looking down from the heavens at an insect about to be crushed.
His fingers closed around Shiranui.
At that moment, inside his mind, the system's cold and solemn prompt drowned out the surrounding roars.
[Ding! Extreme protective will and physical overload detected. Tsugikuni Yoriichi template synchronization breakthrough.]
[Current synchronization: 46 percent.]
[Reward: Stamina slightly restored. Total Concentration Breathing efficiency increased.]
Hum.
As the system's voice fell, a warm current surged through Yami's muscles, which had already reached their limit and begun tearing.
The white steam rising from his body did not scatter.
Instead, it spun inward as if guided by some invisible force, condensing into a faint, ethereal golden radiance around him.
His right hand, which had been trembling moments ago, became steady as stone.
The mutated Earth Deity Cursed Spirit, arrogant only seconds earlier, suddenly froze.
Inside its ghostly green eyes, a clear emotion appeared.
One it had never felt in the hundreds of years since its birth.
Fear.
Pure fear from the depths of its soul.
The moment Yami's aura changed, the roles of hunter and prey had completely reversed.
....
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