After about three or four kilometers, deep in a low-lying valley completely covered by tall ferns and vines in the island's interior, the guide stopped and pointed to a "mountain" below, camouflaged as a natural rock face, but with faint metallic gleams at its edges.
Genji focused his perception. Indeed, behind the rock face, he could hear a very faint but real mixture of the hum of electricity, some kind of liquid circulation, and... a mixed and distorted residual cursed energy that made him feel slightly uncomfortable.
"It's quite deep," Genji said coldly. He reached out a finger and lightly tapped a knot of vines on the rock face. Indigo cursed energy pierced through like a needle.
Click... crack...
A faint mechanical signal sounded, and a heavy metal door, covered in rock-patterned paint, quietly slid aside, revealing a concrete passageway leading downwards, illuminated by pale white energy-saving lights. The air was cold and dry, smelling of disinfectant and some strange chemical.
Genji didn't hesitate and slipped inside. The shadow ninja followed close behind like his shadow.
The passageway was long, sloping downwards, along cold metal walls, the lights stretching his shadow long and short. The further he went, the stronger the smell of distorted residual cursed energy and chemical potions became, and a hint of... rancid, bloody smell appeared.
Genji's eyes grew cold. This was by no means a research station or a shelter.
At the end of the passageway was a heavy sealed door. The door was unlocked and slightly ajar. Genji pushed it open gently.
The scene behind the door made this god of curses, accustomed to weathering the storms of a thousand years and thinking his heart was as hard as iron, suddenly narrow his pupils!
Inside the door was an extremely vast underground space, with a ceiling height of over ten meters, comparable to several football fields. Pale, shadowless lights illuminated everything, and the horror here.
The space was divided into different zones.
On the left were densely packed transparent tempered glass cabins, like prison cells!
In each cabin was a cursed spirit of various forms, but all were imprisoned, with various pipes and monitoring probes attached to their bodies! From the lowest level, with only a vague outline, to Grade 2, with clear forms and weak cursed energy fluctuations, to at least a few cursed spirits that had clearly reached Grade 1—all were imprisoned here!
They silently roared, pounded against the glass, or were numbed and slowed by the barriers. The intense, painful, and malevolent residual cursed energies from the different cursed spirits accumulated and wandered here, making it disgusting.
On the right were rows of cold metal dissection tables and storage tanks. On some tables that hadn't been completely cleaned, dark red bloodstains remained. In the nearby tanks, soaked in formalin or some special clear liquid, were human severed limbs, internal organs, and some biological tissues clearly non-human and possessing traits of cursed spirits!
Further back were even several large tanks, floating with nearly intact but eviscerated human bodies that had undergone various horrific experimental transformations! Their faces were frozen in expressions of intense pain and fear.
And what most shocked Zen'in Genji was the area in the center of the space.
There stood a dozen huge cylindrical tanks, filled with a pale green nutrient solution. The cylinders were connected to complex life support and monitoring systems. And in these nutrient solutions were indescribably strange beings, floating and sleeping!
Generally, they maintained the outline of a human with a head, torso, and limbs.
However, their skin color was strange: some were dark purple, some were covered in fine scales or keratin. Their limbs were twisted to varying degrees: some fingers were thin as talons, some joints bent backward, and some had broken wings or bone spurs growing from their backs. Even more terrifying were their faces: human features distorted and blurred, some mouths split to the base of their ears, some had compound eye structures, and some had short antennae or a single eye on their foreheads.
At the same time, they emitted a weak magnetic life field belonging to humans, as well as the distorted and unstable cursed energy fluctuations of cursed spirits!
These "beings" floated unconsciously in the nutrient solution, and some of their chests rose and fell regularly, indicating they were still "alive"!
Genji stood at the door, his deep indigo eyes looking at the strange humanoid beings in the cultivation tanks, and for the first time, a flicker of subtle shock and a slight cold anger appeared on his usually calm face.
"This is..."
His voice was low, with an incredible coldness.
"Half-cursed spirits...? No, this is a forbidden experiment attempting to forcibly merge humans with cursed spirits?!"
"Who... would dare to conduct such taboo research that blasphemes life and violates the principles of heaven?!"
---
Genji's memory of the original Jujutsu Kaisen plot was only fragmentary.
Regarding half-cursed spirits, the original plot involved the early Meiji era: Noritoshi Kamo conducted experiments on a woman with a special constitution capable of conceiving cursed spirits, forcing her to become pregnant nine times and undergo abortions, thus creating a painting called the "Cursed Womb: Death Painting" series—composed of nine cursed spirits mixed with human fetuses. The original protagonist, Yuji Itadori, also became a half-cursed spirit after eating six of the Death Paintings, gaining life and physical abilities far surpassing ordinary humans.
And immortality.
Throughout the ages, how many emperors and generals, how many powerful and influential figures, and how many beings standing at the pinnacle of mortal power, had ultimately fallen under the relentless sickle of time. Wealth, power, beauty, knowledge... all seemed pale and powerless in the face of the fear that life would one day end.
The pursuit of immortality is one of the most ancient, most stubborn, and often most mad and sinful desires engraved in the depths of the human soul.
During the Heian period, Genji had seen and dealt with more than one instance of fools trying to extend their lives or pursue immortality through cursed techniques, evil methods, and even blood sacrifices. They either destroyed themselves in perverted experiments, turned into even more terrifying monsters, or... all ended by his own hands.
Cursed spirits, originating from human negative emotions, are pure cursed energy aggregates, energy entities whose "existence" is completely different from the essence of human "life." Humans, with their fragile combination of body and soul, are born to grow, age, and die. This is the cornerstone of the world, part of the cycle.
Forcing them to merge... this is not just blasphemy, but an attempt to distort two completely different foundations of existence. The result is often not the acquisition of the strengths of both, but the birth of "errors" with defects, pain, and extreme instability.
But the "finished products" in these culture tanks before him, though twisted and ugly, emitting a disgusting mixed aura, also possessed a strange and sustained "stability." They were still "alive" and unconsciously receiving nutrient solutions. This meant the experiment wasn't a complete failure; at least, there had been some degree of horrific "success" in "maintaining the existence of a half-cursed spirit form."
Who could be running such a forbidden experiment, hidden underground on an isolated island in the South China Sea?
A name immediately popped into his mind—the Naraku Sect.
The target of their journey. An ancient religion that believed in an "Immortal God" and was rumored to bestow the gift of "immortality" upon the devout.
The rumors of "immortality"... the long-term existential characteristics that "half-cursed spirits" might possess...
Was the "Immortal God" worshipped by Naraku not a real god, but a cunning, special-grade cursed spirit (or entity that had mastered this technology) that had perfected some kind of half-cursed spirit transformation or symbiotic technique, and could bestow this "pseudo-immortality" as a gift to its core believers?
Was this underground experimental base the secret factory of the Naraku Sect for conducting related "gift" research or for mass-producing advanced "immortals" (half-cursed spirit believers)?
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