Accompanied by a faint spatial ripple—one so subtle that even the Six Eyes could barely detect it.
In a derelict, unfinished building several kilometers away from the Jujutsu High battlefield, a pitch-black crack in space suddenly tore open in midair!
Splat.
A brain covered in bizarre stitches, still oozing black blood, tumbled pathetically out of the rift.
It slammed heavily onto the dusty, rubble-strewn concrete floor with a sickening thud.
"Damn it... Damn it all!"
A screeching, twisted roar, sounding like a vengeful ghost, erupted from the mouth located on Kenjaku's brain.
The voice was filled with undisguised terror and a bone-deep, agonizing pain!
"That monster... Yoru, that goddamn monster!"
Kenjaku writhed frantically on the ground, trying to dampen the horrific agony that felt as if his very soul were being charred by a raging fire.
He had lived for a thousand years!
He had crossed countless eras, occupied innumerable powerful bodies, and toyed with the fates of countless sorcerers!
But he swore he had never been this close to absolute death in his entire existence!
Had he not decisively abandoned the body he had only recently acquired at the final second—even sacrificing an arm of his soul as bait—he would have been finished.
His thousand-year-old brain, along with his wicked soul, would have likely been evaporated into cosmic dust by Yoru's Bright Red Nichirin Sword and its divine flames!
That terrifying power capable of directly severing the threads of causality.
It was the ultimate nemesis for any curse user who relied on soul transfers and body-snatching to survive!
"Unforgivable... Absolutely unforgivable!"
Madness flickered in Kenjaku's eyes, which were filled with ultimate malice.
Enduring the tearing sensation deep within his soul, he struggled to bounce up from the ground.
His already hideous true form was now extremely withered, and even the cursed seals on its surface had grown dull.
"However..."
"No matter how much you calculate, no matter how strong you are."
"The final victor will still be me!"
A manic smile suddenly surfaced on Kenjaku's twisted face.
Though he had been heavily wounded by Yoru and had even lost the arm carrying a Special Grade Cursed Tool...
At the very moment he activated his spatial technique to flee the battlefield...
His venomous eyes, which had lurked in the shadows for a millennium, had keenly snatched the only fatal flaw in Suguru Geto's fake defection plan!
And that was—
Rika Orimoto's exorcism ritual!
Hum!
Kenjaku's main body suddenly emitted a faint light.
Immediately after, a mass of pure black cursed energy—so thick it made the surrounding air feel viscous—slowly emerged from beneath his form.
If Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto were here, their jaws would have hit the floor!
Because this mass of black cursed energy, which Kenjaku was shielding so fiercely...
Was none other than the leftover remains of the Special Grade Vengeful Cursed Spirit, Rika Orimoto, at the very moment her soul moved on—a force that could rival the total cursed energy output of all of Jujutsu High...
A terrifying husk!
"Hahahahaha!"
Looking at the mass of Special Grade cursed energy he had successfully stolen and stabilized, Kenjaku let out a hysterical, almost neurotic laugh.
"Suguru Geto, oh Suguru Geto... Your ten-year performance was truly magnificent."
"You successfully fooled everyone; you even almost blinded me."
"But you missed one thing in all your calculations!"
"The moment the real Rika Orimoto's soul was liberated, that husk of hers—which carried endless curses and negative emotions—fell into an extremely brief state of being masterless!"
And Kenjaku.
This mad scientist who had spent a thousand years researching the relationship between the soul and the body.
The instant he escaped Yoru's lethal blade, he had unhesitatingly thrown out the Special Grade Cursed Object he had prepared for centuries—
The Soul Container!
In the absolute split-second of Rika's soul ascending.
He had successfully contained and stolen that massive cursed energy husk for himself!
"Thanks to this perfect vessel..."
Under the nourishment of that black cursed energy, not only did the wounds on Kenjaku's soul begin to heal at a visible rate...
But even his withered aura began to skyrocket at an alarming speed!
"The final piece of my thousand-year plan..."
"Is finally complete!!!"
Boom—!
Accompanied by Kenjaku's hysterical laughter.
A despair-inducing pressure—ten, a hundred times more terrifying than when he released the tide of cursed spirits earlier—erupted from the abandoned building, tearing through the clouds in the sky!
This pressure didn't just contain Kenjaku's thousand-year-old stench of decay.
It was laced with Rika Orimoto's unique, Special Grade curse that could make any sorcerer's soul tremble!
Back at the ruins of Jujutsu High.
Yoru, Satoru Gojo, and Suguru Geto, who had just breathed a sigh of relief, sensed the terrifying pulse coming from the distant horizon at almost the exact same time!
"This aura..."
Suguru Geto's face, already pale from excessive blood loss, instantly turned hideous.
He stared fixedly in the direction of the aura, true terror flashing in his narrow, fox-like eyes for the first time.
"Is that Rika's cursed energy?!"
"How is that possible?! Rika should have been exorcised and moved on!"
Satoru Gojo also snapped his blindfold down, his Eyes of the Blue Sky erupting with a piercing blue light in the night.
He intensely analyzed the distant energy fluctuations, his expression becoming more solemn than ever before.
"No... that isn't Rika's soul."
"That is..."
"A Special Grade husk composed entirely of pure cursed energy!"
Gojo grit his teeth, his usually arrogant and unbridled eyes now filled with deep wariness.
"That goddamn brain... in the moment he fled, he used the gap in the exorcism to forcibly steal the power Rika left behind!"
"I was careless..."
Yoru gripped the Shiranui, which had reverted to its broken-blade state, his brow furrowed tightly.
He knew all too well what the Special Grade Vengeful Cursed Spirit Rika Orimoto meant in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
She was the terrifying entity known as the Queen of Curses!
And her most core, most game-breaking ability—an ultimate cheat that even Gojo's Six Eyes couldn't fully replicate—was...
Mimicry!
"Hahaha!"
As if to confirm Yoru's suspicion.
From the distant abandoned building, Kenjaku's manic laughter echoed across the Tokyo night sky like rolling thunder!
"Yoru! Satoru Gojo! Suguru Geto!"
"You three idiots who call yourselves the strongest!"
"Why don't you have a good taste of the ultimate despair you personally delivered into my hands!"
"Buzz—!"
Along with Kenjaku's incredibly arrogant declaration.
Under the utterly shocked gazes of Yoru, Gojo, and Geto...
Over a dozen distinct, even fundamentally conflicting, terrifying cursed technique fluctuations erupted simultaneously in the distant night sky!
"Spatial Distortion!"
"Time Dilation!"
"Gravity Field!"
"Teleportation!"
In an instant!
After obtaining the Mimicry ability from Rika's husk, Kenjaku recklessly unleashed the top-tier techniques he had recorded over a thousand years by occupying countless bodies.
He released and merged them in an extremely crude, even destructive manner!
Rumble—!
Supported by Rika's massive, bottomless pool of cursed energy, these techniques that should have been impossible to coexist...
Instantly triggered a space-time explosion so violent that the very laws of heaven and earth shrieked!
A visible, eerie purple-black torrent of space-time turbulence, like a world-ending super tsunami...
Swept out frantically in all directions from the abandoned building!
Wherever it passed, whether it was hardened reinforced concrete or dust particles in the air...
Even light and time itself were instantly distorted and torn into primal nothingness by the unstoppable turbulence!
"This is bad!"
Gojo's pupils shrank. Before he could even think...
The cursed energy within him exploded, instantly propping up a Limitless defensive barrier emitting a piercing blue light in front of the three of them!
"Bang—!"
That insanely violent space-time turbulence, like an ancient colossus slamming into a wall...
Heavily battered Gojo's Limitless barrier!
Crackle...
Even the absolute defense of Limitless...
Faced with this turbulence merged from countless laws of physics, it actually let out an ear-piercing sound of fracturing!
Gojo let out a muffled groan as a trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth.
His feet plowed two deep furrows into the ground as he was forcibly pushed back eighteen meters by the horrific impact!
"Is this guy... insane?!"
Suguru Geto stared fixedly at the ruins that had been reduced to absolute nothingness, his eyes filled with unbelievable shock.
"Detonating so many techniques at once... isn't he afraid of being caught in the blast himself?!"
"Of course he isn't afraid."
Yoru stood behind Gojo, his deep red eyes staring into the depths of the turbulence, his voice freezing cold.
"Because this space-time turbulence is the very thing he's using to escape our tracking and pursuit..."
"The perfect escape technique!"
Sure enough.
While Yoru, Gojo, and Geto were pinned down by the space-time turbulence that even Limitless couldn't fully withstand...
In the center of the void that had turned to pure chaos.
Kenjaku's hideous brain let out an arrogant, mocking sneer.
"Yoru, I'll remember this strike."
"I'll take this husk of Rika's without hesitation."
"With Mimicry, my thousand-year plan has finally reached its perfect moment!"
"I'll let you live a little longer. When my ultimate game officially begins..."
"I'll let you witness the birth of a new world with your own eyes!"
"Swish—!"
As Kenjaku's malicious echoes slowly faded into the night sky...
His ugly brain silently merged into the void, riding the unstoppable space-time turbulence.
He vanished without a trace!
Back on the ruins of Jujutsu High, Yoru, Gojo, and Geto looked at the night sky, which had returned to a dead calm.
Everyone's expression was grim to the extreme.
They had let the enemy escape to strike again!
This thousand-year-old fox had not only escaped right under their noses...
But he had even stolen the most terrifying cheat in this world!
Mimicry!
It had become the core support for him to initiate the Culling Game.
With this thousand-year-old demon pulling the strings, how perilous and hopeless would the future of the jujutsu world become?!
An ultimate catastrophe, far more terrifying than the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons and concerning the fate of all humanity...
Had quietly begun.
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