"Um... what should we do now, Suguru?"
Miguel scratched his bald head, looking down at the now silent battlefield below the rooftop, his voice filled with awkwardness.
Just moments ago, he was teasing Rin about his "brain being damaged," but now he was speechless at the sight of the boy killing the Cursed Spirit. Who would have thought that a boy who had just awakened Cursed Energy could kill a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit in such a desperate situation?
Geto Suguru sighed helplessly, his tone a mix of amusement and frustration:
"What else can we do? Do I have to release another Special Grade Cursed Spirit and have him fight again?"
He looked at Rin lying on the ground in the distance, a flicker of complex emotion in his eyes that eventually turned into a soft click of the tongue. "Sigh... Mr. Rin, you really do always bring me surprises."
"Hahaha! If you ask me, why go through all this trouble!" Miguel patted Geto Suguru's shoulder and joked, "Why not just knock him out and carry him back? It'll save you all this agonizing."
"Stop being a Monday morning quarterback." Geto Suguru rolled his eyes at him, but his gloominess came and went quickly. In the blink of an eye, the clouds on his face dissipated, replaced by an irrepressible sense of surprise and anticipation.
"Come on, let's go meet this 'genius little friend.' I'm already a bit impatient to chat with him."
Before he finished speaking, the two figures blurred and leaped from the rooftop like two feathers.
Their toes touched the ground without a sound, and the Cursed Energy around them quietly receded, showing none of the oppressive aura from when they were controlling the Cursed Spirits just moments ago.
In just a moment, they crossed the messy playground and arrived at Rin's side.
Two tall figures cast shadows, blocking the sunlight pouring down from the sky.
Rin's drifting consciousness was awakened by this touch of coolness. He struggled to look up, and in his blurred vision, Geto Suguru's face gradually became clear. It was a face both familiar and strange, but now it wore an unprecedented gentleness.
A warm, soft smile filled the space between Geto Suguru's brows, a gentleness like the setting sun crushed and scattered over his face, slowly falling into Rin's line of sight.
His lips curled slightly, and he spoke in an extremely soft voice with just the right amount of friendliness, as if greeting a friend he hadn't seen in a long time:
"Hello, Mr. Rin."
To Rin, Geto Suguru's expression was almost deliberately perfect. Every muscle movement was precisely controlled—neither overly enthusiastic nor coldly distant. Even the familiarity in his tone was as natural as if they had known each other for a long time, without a hint of stiff pretense.
Rin knew in his heart that this gentleness wasn't an act; from the light in Geto Suguru's eyes, he could see genuine admiration and concern.
It was just that at this moment, Rin no longer had the strength to respond.
The moment he recognized Geto Suguru's silhouette, his taut nerves suddenly relaxed, and all the fatigue and pain rushed in like a tide.
He wanted to say something, but in the end, he only gave Geto Suguru a disdainful roll of his eyes before his vision went dark, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Geto Suguru looked at the unconscious Rin without any surprise on his face.
He slowly crouched down, his fingertips gently brushing over Rin's blood-stained school uniform, his movements as delicate as if he were inspecting a fragile treasure.
Only after confirming that Rin had just fainted from exhaustion and had no fatal injuries did he secretly breathe a sigh of relief, his tone carrying a hint of imperceptible self-reproach:
"For a child, perhaps... we did indeed go a bit too far."
"Hey, hey, hey! Suguru, you can't say it like that!" Miguel immediately leaned in, hurriedly defending himself.
"I've always advocated being 'a bit gentler'! When he wakes up, you have to explain it for me so he doesn't think I'm a bad guy."
Geto Suguru waved his hand, his face full of indifferent composure. "At this point, saying these things is meaningless. It's getting late; we should go."
As he spoke, his mind shifted, and black Cursed Energy suddenly surged from his palm.
"Whoosh—" A giant Cursed Spirit with a huge mouth and four wings suddenly appeared. The flapping of its wings kicked up a gale, yet it didn't even ruffle Rin's hair, clearly a result of Geto Suguru's deliberate control over his Cursed Energy.
Geto Suguru reached out, carefully wrapping his arms around Rin's waist, and with a slight effort, he picked him up in his arms.
His movements were exceptionally gentle, as if he were afraid of breaking the person in his arms, yet his palms held a reassuring strength, steadily supporting Rin's body.
He walked steadily to the side of the Giant Bird Cursed Spirit and gently placed Rin into its wide beak, which was lined with a layer of soft Cursed Energy, enough to protect the sleeping boy.
Once he was sure Rin was lying securely, he whispered to Miguel, "Get ready, let's go."
Miguel wasn't in a hurry to get on. He looked around the messy campus—the broken White Bone Cage, the scattered remains of Cursed Spirits, and the wet blood on the ground—and couldn't help but sigh:
"Sigh, we'll have to hide for a while now. Those people from Jujutsu High will definitely be furious." With that, he also climbed into the giant bird's beak.
The giant bird's wings spread wide, creating a wind that carried the scent of vegetation.
Its talons pushed off the ground, and its body instantly soared. With the acceleration of its wings, it soon shrank to a small dot on the distant horizon, finally merging completely into the clouds and vanishing.
A fierce battle had ended, but the undercurrents of the Jujutsu World were just beginning. The people from Jujutsu High would be busy investigating the truth behind the campus tragedy, while Geto Suguru's group would have to evade pursuit with Rin.
Only the unconscious Rin was temporarily removed from this conflict, falling into a bizarre dreamscape.
In the dream, there was no alternation of day and night, only a bright full moon hanging in the endless sky.
Rin wandered across an unfamiliar plain, aimlessly looking around. As far as the eye could see, there were giant pale green tree roots, twisted and intertwined like a spider's web covering the entire earth, leaving not even an inch of bare soil visible.
In the center of this plain, the source of all the roots, a towering giant tree stood majestically, its full form beyond sight.
Even from a thousand miles away, Rin could still feel its grandeur and boundless vitality. The thick trunk seemed capable of supporting the entire heaven and earth, inspiring an involuntary sense of awe.
"Divine Tree..." Rin murmured. Drawing on his years of experience reading manga and watching anime, he recognized the tree's origin almost instantly. It was the Divine Tree planted by the Otsutsuki Clan in the world of Naruto, also known more commonly as the true form of the "Ten-Tails."
He looked down at his feet, which were stepping in the gaps between the intertwined roots.
After an unknown amount of time, the pale green veins covering the plain suddenly "came to life." Slender rootlets gently wrapped around his ankles, while the thick main roots slowly rose, supporting his body like stairs as they moved toward the Divine Tree at the center of the world.
These roots were exceptionally gentle, like a living river, continuously extending in the direction of the Divine Tree.
Rin didn't panic at all; this wasn't his first time here.
Before transmigrating to the Jujutsu World, he had seen this Divine Tree in his dreams.
Looking at it now, perhaps it was this Divine Tree that had brought him to this strange world. But why him? Why was he here? No one could answer his questions.
In the blink of an eye, the cluster of roots carrying Rin arrived at the foot of the Divine Tree.
The vines wrapped around him slowly loosened, gently placing him beside the thick main root of the Divine Tree before quietly receding and merging back into the veins beneath his feet, as if they had never appeared.
Rin looked up, and the majestic body of the Divine Tree instantly filled his vision. The trunk that reached the heavens was so thick that its end was out of sight, and the bark was covered in ancient patterns as if recording tens of millions of years of time.
Just then, he noticed something unusual. On the massive branches of the Divine Tree, there were dozens of pods woven from roots hanging there.
The pale green vines were dense as a net, layered into oval shapes of varying sizes. From a distance, they looked like prey caught in a spider's web, hanging heavily among the leaves and branches.
"Strange..." Rin frowned. He remembered that when he first came here, there were no such pods on the tree. Could he have remembered incorrectly?
He didn't dwell on it too much. Taking a deep breath, he slowly raised his right hand and gently pressed his palm against the rough trunk of the Divine Tree.
A second later, a familiar warm power surged from his palm into his body. He could clearly feel the "breath" of the Divine Tree, each pulsation gradually synchronizing with his own heartbeat, as if his soul and this ancient tree had completely merged into one.
After confirming his connection with the Divine Tree, Rin turned his gaze once more to the pods hanging on the branches.
With a thought, the root pods hanging among the branches slowly descended under an invisible pull, finally stopping in front of him.
Immediately afterward, the vines wrapping the pod began to slowly loosen and unfurl.
As the vines slid off bit by bit, the contents of the pod were gradually revealed. When the last layer of vines fell, Rin's pupils suddenly contracted. Wrapped inside the pod was the Bone Cursed Spirit he had fought just a short while ago!
The Cursed Spirit's body, having lost its Cursed Energy support, slumped to the ground.