In an instant, terrifying killing intent stabbed toward him like a needlepoint.
Zen'in Ogi was trembling with rage, the veins on his forehead bulging visibly.
As one of the strongest contenders for the previous clan head position, Naoya's uncle in name, and a special grade-one sorcerer who had inherited Blazing Courage, one of the Zen'in clan's oldest and most orthodox inherited techniques, Zen'in Ogi ranked among the finest talents in the entire jujutsu world.
If Naobito Zen'in was the light of the family, then Ogi was its shadow.
And yet, at a gathering this important, someone had actually dared to provoke him openly with such arrogant words?
Shing—!
In one smooth motion, Ogi's katana left its sheath. The next instant, he blurred forward and pressed the blade hard against Naoya Zen'in's neck.
In his sharp eyes burned pitch-black killing intent.
"Naoya. If your uncle wanted to kill you right now, it would not even take a second."
Ogi was not exaggerating.
All he had to do was press the edge a little farther down, and Naoya Zen'in's haughty head would hit the floor in an instant.
Even a second was more than enough.
The transmigrator could already feel it—that creeping chill along his skin, the unmistakable reality of death.
He had made a mistake earlier.
Naoya Zen'in would never show weakness.
Even toward his uncle, Zen'in Ogi, he would not yield an inch.
So his intended line had failed the system's judgment, and been rewritten into a reply more befitting this villain boss's character.
After all, without that kind of wild, untamed arrogance, how could Naoya Zen'in have ended up getting turned into endless parody videos and posthumously mocked a thousand times over by the fandom?
The transmigrator now understood his situation even more clearly.
If he did even one thing wrong, said even one wrong sentence, he could die for it on the spot.
That was the fate of a villain destined to die.
Seriously?
Why couldn't conversations with other people work like a game and pop up three dialogue options for him to choose from? He was about to black out here.
At this point, Naoya no longer had the energy to complain.
Instead, his mind became calmer and calmer.
No.
Not calm.
What emerged was an icy, almost mechanical rationality.
The pressure of imminent death did not bring him panic, but detachment.
As if he were a player outside the screen, observing the current situation from a third-person perspective and calculating the optimal solution.
The greatest card in his hand right now was his knowledge of the Jujutsu Kaisen plot.
And his knowledge of just how miserably and grotesquely Naoya Zen'in would die.
Ogi looked ready to kill him now, but in the original story, he was still technically on the same side as Naoya.
At the very least, according to the original plot, Naoya was not supposed to die by Ogi's hand.
The old man was just extremely traditional and cared deeply about saving face. Normally, if Naoya mouthed off a little, Ogi could pretend not to hear it. But with so many important Kyoto jujutsu figures present at this meeting, being publicly embarrassed by his own nephew would make it very hard for him to hold his head up later.
Put simply, Ogi was the type who could be softened, but never cowed.
Which meant the solution to the current predicament was already obvious—
"...Then cut me down. If Uncle truly wants to kill me."
At death's doorstep, Naoya Zen'in still urged his own execution with arrogant calm.
"What?"
Ogi's pupils shrank violently. Reflected in his eyes was the faint upward curve at the blond young man's lips.
Even with a katana pressed to his throat, he could still smile?
His nephew had never been this sort of person.
Ogi had watched Naoya grow up from childhood.
As Naobito Zen'in's youngest son, born late in life, and inheritor of the same Projection Sorcery as his father, Naoya had grown up showered in affection as a genius. That indulgence had twisted him into an arrogant, self-important young master—a flower raised in a greenhouse, one who had barely seen the blood and storms of the jujutsu world.
And so Ogi knew very well that beneath all that bluster, this nephew of his was actually a soft coward who had never experienced true danger. If real peril ever came, he should have shown fear and panic...
So how could he be smiling arrogantly at a moment like this?
Had he already seen through the fact that Ogi would not actually go through with it?
"Uncle, as your nephew, I'm actually worried for your safety."
Naoya Zen'in did not waver in the slightest.
On the contrary, he tipped his neck back slightly and pushed his throat even closer to the blade, letting the sharp edge slice into his skin and draw a slow line of blood.
"I imagine that if Satoru were ever truly driven into rebellion, then the first one to die would be my worthless uncle. Wouldn't it?"
—That absolutely should not have sounded like something Naoya Zen'in would say.
That arrogant, rude, contemptuous young aristocrat was actually speaking in a tone of concern for his uncle?
Wasn't he supposed to fear humiliation more than anything?
How could he possibly wear an expression so utterly beyond life and death in front of so many eyes?
"Naoya... wh-what exactly are you trying to do? What are you even saying—?"
"Uncle, can't even hold your sword steady anymore?"
Naoya did not answer Ogi's question. He merely picked at his ear with his little finger and spoke in an utterly flat tone.
Ogi abruptly lowered his eyes.
The blade, once held taut, had slipped without him realizing it, moving slightly away from Naoya's neck.
That seemingly unremarkable sentence had struck like a needle, bursting apart all of Ogi's dignity.
He had never seen Naoya Zen'in like this before.
Ogi stared blankly at his nephew, wariness still in his eyes, but unable to conceal a certain wavering he refused to admit.
His appearance and voice had not changed at all, yet the old man found himself feeling something difficult to describe—
fear.
As though everything about him had already been seen through, as though he were a caged canary whose courage to flap its wings and flee was being stripped away bit by bit.
"Naoya. Tell us what you think."
Naobito Zen'in kept drinking heavily.
It was as if he had not seen the touching little scene between uncle and nephew just now at all. He simply went on drinking alone.
"Old man, my view is simple."
Naoya Zen'in accepted the towel a servant handed him, gently wiped the bead of blood from his neck, and let that frivolous smile curl once more at the edge of his lips.
"The Gojo and Zen'in clans have always been hereditary enemies. If we keep pressuring the jujutsu higher-ups, I'm afraid the result will be the exact opposite of what we want. After all, when Toji tried to kill Gojo Satoru and disrupted the Star Plasma Vessel's assimilation with Tengen... Satoru still hasn't settled that score with us."
The moment Naoya brought up that old incident, even Naobito—who had been focused on drinking the whole time—stopped.
Wiping the liquor from his mouth, the old man said in a lower voice, "Naoya, Toji had already left the Zen'in clan by then. That matter had nothing to do with us."
"If that's the argument, then didn't Suguru Geto also leave Jujutsu High long ago?"
Naoya shrugged.
"And yet even now, the jujutsu world still insists that Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru remained closely connected. Everyone believes they harbored thoughts of rebellion together. Geto has now been personally killed by Gojo Satoru. But Toji? Was Toji personally killed by you, old man?"
Naobito's brows knit.
Everyone present knew the answer.
That had been Toji Zen'in—Toji awakened as the Heavenly Tyrant. Personally kill him?
Destroying the Zen'in clan would have been a trivial matter for him.
But Toji had not done that. He had chosen instead to leave the Zen'in clan and marry into the Fushiguro family.
And precisely because he had done that, the Zen'in clan was not pursued by the jujutsu higher-ups afterward.
But if Gojo Satoru ever chose to press the issue, Naobito knew full well that he himself would not escape death.
Because he had privately made contact with Toji Zen'in many times.
He had even bought Toji's son, Megumi Fushiguro.
It was only because Gojo Satoru had been magnanimous and simply taken Megumi away afterward, rather than reporting the matter to the higher-ups, that nothing had come of it.
That was also why, in recent years, Naobito had lowered his pride and tried to ease relations with the Gojo clan, unwilling to let the Zen'in and Gojo families remain forever estranged as they had in the past.
So when he had heard everyone around him clamoring earlier about getting rid of Gojo Satoru, the current head of the Zen'in clan had not stated any position at all. He had simply kept drinking, unwilling to keep talking to a pack of idiots.
What particularly gratified Naobito, though, was that his own son, Naoya Zen'in, seemed to have inherited the same outlook, showing a clear willingness to improve relations with Gojo Satoru.
"Naoya, I understand your thinking. Blindly pursuing Gojo Satoru's guilt is not a wise move."
Though Naobito voiced his approval, his tone changed in the next breath—
"But Geto Suguru's Night Parade of a Hundred Demons was unleashed in Kyoto too. Gojo Satoru only focused on handling the curses in Shinjuku. Kyoto is the sacred ground of jujutsu—surely we can't keep swallowing losses in silence? We ought to secure some benefit for ourselves too, shouldn't we?"
Suguru Geto had engineered the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons in order to seize the special grade cursed spirit Rika Orimoto.
That Night Parade had unleashed an unprecedented number of cursed spirits in both Kyoto and Shinjuku, causing massive casualties.
And yet Gojo Satoru had not dealt with the curses in time, instead getting tied up on the battlefield by a sorcerer from Africa.
Wasn't that absurd?
Wasn't that blatant dereliction of duty?
No wonder people claimed Gojo Satoru had colluded with Geto Suguru. He was the strongest of the modern age, and yet he had actually been stalled by a foreign sorcerer?
"So if we're going to act, then we must secure the greatest possible advantage—"
Naoya Zen'in drew a deep breath.
"Geto Suguru's corpse, along with the large number of cursed spirits he left behind, should be handed over to Kyoto for processing."
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