Within the jujutsu world, there was an unspoken rule that every practitioner had to obey.
A sorcerer could only be killed by another sorcerer.
Whether they were jujutsu sorcerers who exorcised curses or curse users who walked crooked paths, no matter how bitterly the two sides fought, both were still bound to preserve the secrecy of jujutsu itself—that is, ordinary people were forbidden from coming into contact with the jujutsu world.
In the past, there had been more than a few cases where curse users hired ordinary assassins with money to eliminate enemy sorcerers.
And sorcerers were by no means all-powerful.
Most of them were still flesh-and-blood humans in the end, so how could they possibly withstand the cannons and firearms of modern civilization?
But the outcome was not, in fact, that the times had changed.
Sorcerers killed by ordinary people would, without exception, fall into becoming cursed spirits.
Cursed energy itself came from the negative emotions overflowing from ordinary humans. If a sorcerer died to something other than jujutsu, the cursed energy left in their body would spiral completely out of control, transforming them into inhuman monsters that would then wreak havoc upon the jujutsu world.
And so, over time, the jujutsu world began to place extraordinary importance on how the bodies of sorcerers were handled—especially the corpses of powerful ones.
Suguru Geto had been a special grade sorcerer to begin with, and on top of that, his Cursed Spirit Manipulation had devoured a vast number of curses. The cursed energy still lingering in his body was unimaginably immense.
Although he had died at Gojo Satoru's hands, to be safe, the usual practice in jujutsu society would be to cremate a powerful special grade sorcerer like him.
—Of course, that was only under normal circumstances.
Because Suguru Geto possessed Cursed Spirit Manipulation, a technique that might appear only once in a thousand years, his corpse had immense value for anatomical study.
Cursed Spirit Manipulation could fundamentally change the way sorcerers exorcised curses. Faced with a technique that monstrous, there was no need to say more: any sorcerer would want to study it. It was like slicing up Einstein's brain—every sorcerer would love nothing more than to mince Geto's corpse to pieces and take it out for a little research whenever they had free time.
As a transmigrator who knew the plot by heart, Naoya Zen'in already understood something else as well. Although Gojo usually acted like a complete lunatic and gave off the aura of a social terrorist, deep down he was still a man born of old aristocratic stock. He cared a great deal about burial rites. Visiting the grave on the anniversary, offering incense, murmuring a prayer in front of the tomb—those things all came naturally to someone like him.
So although Gojo Satoru had killed Suguru Geto, he could not bear to see his old friend's remains desecrated. In the end, he secretly chose to bury the body himself, so that he could still visit and pay his respects someday.
And afterward, Geto's corpse was secretly stolen away by Kenjaku, who then used his brain-swapping technique to take over Geto's body—thus accomplishing the crucial step that allowed the mastermind's thousand-year scheme to finally begin in earnest.
But Naoya Zen'in was different.
Inside him now was the soul of a modern man.
People setting off firecrackers at tomb-sweeping festivals could easily start mountain fires, after all.
And burial wasted land resources. Those were outdated customs that ought to be abandoned.
So the transmigrator decided to leave Gojo's dear friend behind as a neat little urn of ashes.
Which meant—
if Suguru Geto was successfully cremated, then Jujutsu Kaisen might as well be renamed Maybe Next Time, Jujutsu Battle.
"...Suguru Geto's corpse, hm?"
Naobito Zen'in's brow twitched.
As the current head of the Zen'in clan and the strongest grade-one sorcerer recognized by the jujutsu world, he naturally understood what his son was aiming at.
Innate techniques were etched into the body from birth.
Suguru Geto was dead, but Cursed Spirit Manipulation was still carved into his flesh.
Although there had never yet been a precedent in the jujutsu world for copying an innate technique, that did not mean it would remain impossible forever.
If the Zen'in clan could seize control of Geto's corpse and unravel the secrets of Cursed Spirit Manipulation before anyone else, then reclaiming the top position among the Big Three Families would be as easy as drinking water.
Still... openly desecrating a corpse like that was a bit unseemly, wasn't it?
The old man stroked his chin and cast a sidelong glance around, only to find that the other major figures of Kyoto's jujutsu world had all changed expression after hearing Naoya's proposal and had already begun murmuring among themselves.
The Kamo clan head, in particular, looked especially shaken.
He stared fixedly at Naoya Zen'in, who sat there looking perfectly at ease, as though he had never imagined anyone would dare suggest something so brazen.
True enough.
Naobito found that he understood them completely.
After all, as members of the exalted Big Three Families, these old men all cared about their reputations. At their age, they had begun worrying about how posterity would judge them.
How could they be like the younger generation below them, each one itching to make a name for themselves and rise to fame in the jujutsu world?
And besides, Naoya had always been young and reckless. Look at him now—did his face show even the slightest trace of shame while discussing such a thing?
Shameless.
How had he ended up fathering such a shameless son?
Honestly... was this not exactly what he himself had been like in his youth?
"Ahem..."
Naobito coughed a few times, quieting the chatter around him.
"Although Suguru Geto came from Tokyo, his identity is highly sensitive, and Gojo Satoru's relationship with him remains suspiciously ambiguous. Kyoto, as the sacred center of jujutsu, has a duty as an impartial third party to supervise their conduct."
"In my view... the handling of Suguru Geto's corpse, along with the great number of curses he left behind, really should be left to us."
The moment Naobito made the call, the people around him immediately voiced their approval.
"I think the Zen'in clan head has made an excellent point. If Suguru Geto had been born in Kyoto and studied jujutsu at our school here from the beginning, I doubt he would have fallen into heresy at all!"
"What are the people of Kanto like? I think we all know. Cold, detached, lacking all sense of human warmth. Even the way they use jujutsu feels harsher and more frightening than the sorcerers here in Kyoto."
"Heh, people in Tokyo will dump sushi straight onto the table before eating it. What kind of class do you expect from those out-of-town sorcerers?"
Naoya Zen'in's proposal was very quickly passed in full.
Kyoto, as the sacred heartland of jujutsu, had always looked down on Tokyo's sorcerers to begin with.
And in recent years Tokyo had only flourished more and more. Gojo Satoru had even specifically gone there to become a teacher, causing the center of development in the jujutsu world to tilt heavily toward Tokyo.
So when it came to seizing Suguru Geto's corpse, along with that enormous reserve of curse-related resources, the old Kyoto sorcerers were more than happy to support it with both hands and feet.
The transmigrator secretly let out a long breath of relief.
He had not expected things to go this smoothly. That part really had caught him off guard.
It seemed that although Naoya Zen'in was a rotten bastard, that did not change the fact that he had been born into exactly the right family. This pampered young Kyoto noble really did have absurdly good starting conditions.
As the meeting descended into increasingly gleeful regional trash-talk, it finally came to a close amid laughter and good cheer.
Naoya Zen'in did not linger.
After all, given the original Naoya's personality, he would never have stayed behind to bow and scrape before these Kyoto powerhouses or go around currying favor.
The transmigrator still had far too many things to do next.
As a villain with very few days left to live, if he dared relax even for a moment, then his head really might roll.
Dealing with Suguru Geto's corpse was only something he had done along the way.
What Naoya Zen'in truly needed to think about now was how to deal with the next Heavenly Tyrant of the new generation—so that when the time came, his cousin might show mercy and spare his life.
Yet just as the transmigrator walked against the flow of the crowd and left the hall with a heavy mind, he failed to notice that one person in the stream of people had suddenly stopped and turned to stare at his departing figure, a cold killing intent spreading toward the back of his neck.
"Naoya Zen'in... hm?"
The man's lips curled faintly, while beneath the fringe of hair on his forehead there lay a grotesque seam.
"I thought you were nothing remarkable, but it seems you were merely hiding your edge behind restraint. As expected of the next head of the Zen'in clan. Gojo Satoru's excessive brilliance nearly made me overlook you—forget that you, too, belong to the same generation as him."
Kenjaku tapped a finger lightly against his hollow forehead and showed a somewhat helpless smile.
"Hm... this makes things a little troublesome. If I can't obtain Suguru Geto's body, then many things simply can't be done."
"But precisely because of that, staying alive becomes all the more interesting."
"If even outstanding men like you find every step difficult, then how could lesser creatures like me ever expect life to go smoothly?"
After giving Naoya Zen'in one last, lingering look, Kenjaku slipped back into the crowd and vanished into the flow of people.
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