Following the faint trail left by Jade Dog White, the three finally found their target in the deepest part of the Youth Palace's third floor—the "Planetarium," a hall with a massive spherical dome designed to project the stars of the universe.
However, hope instantly froze into ice.
In the center of the hall, near the mechanical device simulating celestial movements, three corpses lay scattered. Two men and one woman, dressed in staff or volunteer uniforms of the Youth Palace, their bodies were twisted, their expressions frozen in extreme fear and pain. Their eyes were wide with terror but had lost all luster. Their skin had an unnatural grayish hue, and their bodies were shriveled, as if all life force and moisture had been drained in an instant, leaving only a layer of wrinkled skin draped over bones.
The time of death was likely very recent. Ultimately, they were too late.
The lightness on Yuji Itadori's face and his previous fighting spirit vanished in an instant. He looked blankly at the three corpses dying in agony, his fists slowly clenching, his nails digging deep into his palms. He remembered his grandfather's words and his original intention for becoming a sorcerer.
"At the very least..." Itadori's voice was a bit dry. He stepped forward and looked at the bodies. "At least take their remains back. For their families... an explanation, a place to say goodbye." He knew the standard practice in the jujutsu world for such incidents was concealment and cleanup, but he couldn't accept these innocent victims just "disappearing" into some report or barrier technique.
"No."
Megumi Fushiguro's calm voice interrupted him.
The boy with the hedgehog-like hair stood a little further away, his gaze scanning the bodies and warily surveying the eerily empty spherical hall, his brows furrowed.
"There's no point in taking them, and the risk is too great. Their bodies are heavily eroded by the cursed spirit's energy and could even become a medium for it to locate us or activate some technique. The safest and standard practice is to hand them over to the 'window's' logistics force for cleanup."
"But!" Itadori turned, displeasure on his face. "They were people too! Just..."
"Rules are rules, Itadori," Megumi Fushiguro's voice was resolute, his gaze flashing towards Itadori like lightning. "In a place like this, any unnecessary kindness or burden could get us killed, and even endanger more people. Did you forget our mission priorities? Confirm survivor status, mark the cursed womb, and evacuate! Now that the survivors are confirmed deceased and the mission objective has changed, we should leave immediately."
Their argument had barely begun—
Sudden change!
"Huh?!"
Nobara Kugisaki, standing slightly apart and a bit distracted by their quarrel, suddenly felt the ground beneath her feet vanish! It wasn't a collapse; the small patch of earth she stood on instantly lost all "substance," becoming as smooth as a mirror and as bottomless as water!
"What—?!"
Kugisaki only managed a short exclamation before she lost her footing and fell without resistance! The "water surface" didn't even ripple; it just quietly swallowed her, astonishingly fast!
"Kugisaki!!" Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro snapped to attention simultaneously and lunged towards where Kugisaki had disappeared!
Itadori's hand almost touched the tip of Kugisaki's flying hair, and Megumi Fushiguro's shadow rapidly spread to ensnare her, but both were too slow!
Plop.
Like a stone thrown into a deep pool, after a soft sound of entering the water, Kugisaki's figure completely vanished into the spot, which had reverted to ordinary ground, as if she had never existed. Only a faint spatial distortion lingered in the air where she had just stood.
"Kugisaki!!" Itadori's eyes nearly blazed. He punched the floor in frustration, shattering the special tiles, but found no passage or crack.
Megumi Fushiguro's heart sank. The situation he feared most had occurred. This was definitely not an ordinary cursed spirit's ability!
The next moment, as both were stunned by Kugisaki's sudden disappearance and trying to process and search—
The surrounding scene twisted like a shattered kaleidoscope, brutally warped, turned, and then reassembled!
This was no longer the futuristic Planetarium. Massive stone walls, cold, rough, and dusty, replaced smooth alloy and glass. Stone pillars without visible tops loomed in the darkness, adorned with indescribable reliefs of pain and blasphemy. The ground was uneven black rock, dark red, fishy-smelling viscous liquid flowing through the cracks. The air was heavy and foul, filled with despair, hatred, and a certain malevolence.
A domain.
And this domain was already stabilized!
"A domain... damn it!" Megumi Fushiguro gritted his teeth, cold sweat beading on his forehead. He immediately understood. "This cursed womb... no, this cursed spirit definitely isn't just 'waiting to hatch'! It's mastered a domain prototype, and is even capable of performing such small-scale, precise forced teleportation and spatial transformation! It's been playing with us! A serious intelligence failure!"
This was not a simple "cursed womb" waiting for a high-level sorcerer to exorcise, but a mature special-grade cursed spirit, already possessing great intelligence, capable of setting traps and partially utilizing domain power! The information provided by Ijichi and the higher-ups was either severely delayed and erroneous, or it was...
A cold, piercing thought slithered into Megumi Fushiguro's mind like a venomous snake, instantly chilling him to the bone, as if falling into an ice cavern.
Just as he and Itadori were shocked by the abrupt environmental changes and the truth about the domain—
A silent, tall, thin, and tattered figure in a black robe appeared less than a meter behind them, out of nowhere.
No surge of cursed energy as a precursor, no sound of moving wind. It simply "existed" there.
However, the moment its existence was perceived—
BOOM—!!!
An indescribable, majestic malevolence, coercion, and pure "powerful" concept, like an invisible tsunami, crashed onto the backs of Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro! This was not a restless aura comparable to a Grade 2 cursed spirit, but a more violent, profound, and substantive terror that seemed compressed from the absolute fear and despair of countless living beings, refined into a certain "concept"!
The short hairs on Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro's bodies instantly stood on end! Their hearts felt like they were gripped by a cold hand, nearly stopping! Their blood seemed to freeze, and the flow of their cursed energy instantly stagnated!
A special-grade cursed spirit! And definitely not one that had just barely reached that rank!
This was completely unlike any cursed spirit they had faced before, including Grade 1 ones! It was like the gap between a paramecium and a human—a fundamental crushing of life levels!
Itadori's survival instinct and superhuman reaction speed saved him at that moment.
The moment the terrifying aura reached him, he didn't even have time to think—his body reacted before his consciousness—run! Get away from the deadly source behind him!
"Haah—!!!"
A beastly roar tore from Itadori's throat. His leg muscles bulged to their limit, and the hard black rock ground beneath his feet exploded! With the terrifying physical strength of a Heavenly Restriction user, he resisted the paralysis caused by the overwhelming coercion, his body shooting forward with nearly teleportation speed, like an electromagnetic projectile!
In an instant, he had opened a distance of over twenty meters from the figure behind him!
Megumi Fushiguro didn't have Itadori's freakish instantaneous explosive power. As Itadori moved, he also tried to dodge, but he was a beat slower. He only had time to pour his cursed energy into defense and attempt to summon a shikigami—
A slender hand, covered in tattered black strips of fabric, dead gray skin, and sharp, knife-like nails, easily pierced through the hastily condensed curse energy defense as if through tissue paper, and was firmly imprinted on the back of his heart!
Cough—!
Megumi Fushiguro was struck hard, blood spurting from his mouth, his body thrown forward like a broken kite! He could clearly feel the cold, deathly still, and powerful cursed energy of "decay" and "ending," like a highly toxic root, instantly invade his body, frantically destroying his vitality and cursed energy circuits!
Fushiguro's eyes flashed with severity. In mid-air, enduring the intense pain of internal displacement and the weakness of plummeting cursed energy, he barely managed to form a hand seal.
"Round Deer!"
A soft, warm, green light of life flickered beneath him, and the graceful, sacred form of the healing shikigami, Round Deer, appeared in a flash. Pure positive energy, like a sweet spring, instantly surged into Megumi Fushiguro's body, stabilizing the rapidly deteriorating wounds, dispelling some of the cold curse energy, allowing him to barely regain some mobility, stumbling to the ground without losing consciousness immediately.
Itadori landed in the distance, watching Megumi Fushiguro get wounded, then snapped his head around, glaring at the black-robed figure that was slowly turning.
Megumi Fushiguro clutched his painful chest, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, looked at the black-robed cursed spirit standing still, seeming not to be in a hurry to pursue, but merely "watching" them with some indifferent gaze, and recalled the misinformation—the suddenly formed domain and the trap that had accurately split them up... A cold, clear answer, like a poisoned ice pick, pierced through all his luck.
"The higher-ups... those damn old bastards..." Megumi Fushiguro's voice was low and hoarse, filled with uncontrollable anger and coldness.
Itadori might not have a deep understanding of the filth of the higher-ups, having just entered the jujutsu world. But Megumi Fushiguro, as the nominal future head of the Zen'in clan, one of the Three Great Families, had faced it since childhood. He knew all too well the dirty, shameless things the immortal old men at the Jujutsu Headquarters could do for power, interests, so-called "balance," and to "eliminate unstable factors"!
Get rid of both Sukuna's vessel and the modern successor of the Ten Shadows Technique at the same time?
What a perfect "accident"!
This happened during a special-grade cursed spirit incident. The two of them were "unfortunately" killed, their bodies gone without a trace. This would not only eliminate Itadori—a "time bomb" of the King of Curses hidden inside him—but also erase him, Zen'in-born but aligned with Satoru Gojo and perhaps uncontrollable. Kill two birds with one stone, and perfectly pin the blame on a "cursed spirit rampage" and a "mission accident."
Even Kugisaki's sudden disappearance could be part of the plan, to separate them and break them one by one, or she was just an insignificant sacrifice.
"To maintain their shaky power and absurd rules... they really will stop at nothing!" Megumi Fushiguro's heart was ice-cold. He had doubted the details and information of this mission before, but he hadn't expected the enemy's killing intent to be so resolute, their methods so despicable, to directly use a real, dangerous special-grade cursed spirit as the butcher!
"Fushiguro! What now?!" Itadori's voice rang out. He also sensed something was wrong. The oppressive feeling the cursed spirit gave him was too strong, and the other side clearly had the wisdom and calmness of a predator toying with its prey. Kugisaki was missing, Fushiguro was injured, a powerful enemy was at hand, and the domain was sealed off... a desperate situation!
Megumi Fushiguro took a deep breath, suppressed the surging blood and anger, forcing himself to think calmly.
He glanced at the special-grade cursed spirit, silently standing in the distance, as if savoring their despair—it had a humanoid silhouette, dressed in a tattered black robe, its face hidden in the shadow of its hood, only the pale skin of its lower face and a straight, lipless mouth revealed. The power of "deathly stillness" and "decay" contained in that strike reminded him of a rare cursed energy attribute mentioned by Lord Zen'in Genji.
Escape? In another domain, it was practically impossible. Unless the domain was destroyed, they were turtles in a jar.
Fight? Head-on against a mature special-grade cursed spirit, in their current state, their chance of winning was slim, and they could be killed in an instant.
There was only one last option, not a solution, but the final trump card a successor of the Ten Shadows Technique could use to die together when cornered.
"Itadori…" Megumi Fushiguro's voice was unusually calm, but carried a desperate determination. "Listen, what I'm about to do is very dangerous. For you, for me, for both of us."
He whispered quickly, not taking his eyes off the cursed spirit, which seemed to be watching them rather than attacking (further confirming its high intelligence). "I'm going to initiate the ritual to summon 'Mahoraga'."
Itadori's pupils narrowed. He had heard Gojo-sensei and Fushiguro mention that Mahoraga was the strongest shikigami of the Ten Shadows Technique, the final trial, and the subjugation process was extremely dangerous.
"But it's not to subdue it," Megumi Fushiguro continued, speaking very fast. "I will 'hide' in the deepest part of the shadow space for the ritual. I will designate this special-grade cursed spirit as the target of the subjugation ceremony. You won't be considered a participant because you're not a hostile target of the 'shikigami.' So once Mahoraga appears, it will automatically lock onto the strongest existence in this domain—which is this special-grade cursed spirit."
"They will fight. Although Mahoraga has a special affinity for attacking cursed spirits, the backlash from this special-grade cursed spirit's resistance will likely kill you."
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