Gojo Satoru.
It was a name that made the entire jujutsu world tremble.
He was the first bearer of the Six Eyes born into the Gojo clan in a century, and he also wielded the Gojo clan's inherited technique, Limitless.
By his strength alone, the Gojo clan stood above every other family. By his strength alone, the balance between Curses and jujutsu sorcerers was maintained.
Yet even someone as powerful as him was facing a problem he had not encountered in a long time.
Just as Kenjaku had said, Gojo Satoru was strongest when he was alone.
Companions would become restraints on him. That was true even of fellow jujutsu sorcerers.
And it was even more true in a subway station packed shoulder to shoulder with ordinary humans.
People pressed against one another, shoulder against shoulder, arm against arm, crying out in fear and desperately trying to force their way forward until they became a surging tide of human flesh.
Gojo Satoru had two troublesome techniques. One was Infinite Void. The other was Limitless, which made him impossible to touch.
A method had already been found to overcome the latter.
Domain Amplification, like New Shadow Style, was a kind of Simple Domain. If a proper Domain Expansion was like a cage that forcibly trapped an enemy inside, then Domain Amplification was like water, clinging to the user's body and wrapping only around oneself. It sacrificed the sure-hit effect, but in exchange it could neutralize cursed techniques.
That made it possible to hit Gojo Satoru.
As for the former, this place was packed with people.
The moment Gojo Satoru expanded his Domain, these humans would be trapped between Infinite Void and the Veil and crushed to death.
Amid the sea of people, Gojo Satoru stood in place and stared at Jogo.
Another Special Grade presence appeared. It was a mass of viscous fluid, something like an octopus and something like a sponge, writhing across the ground in pale blue. It was still only a Cursed Womb.
The fear of the ocean: Dagon.
Then there was an enormous python. Its head drooped downward, its cold vertical pupils reflecting Gojo Satoru's figure.
The fear of beasts, an ancient malevolent Cursed Spirit: Snake Head.
Listless, with a scar across his forehead, a strip of black paper over the bridge of his nose, and dressed in traditional Japanese clothing, the young man looked as though he had stepped out of another era.
The eldest of the Death Painting Wombs, a child of Curses and humans: Choso.
"Gojo Satoru, this is just how hypocritical you are."
Jogo laughed wantonly. Steam poured from the volcano on its head, abruptly raising the station's temperature. Its smile was delighted. One hand pressed down on the head of a middle-aged man, and right in front of Gojo Satoru, Jogo began tearing it off little by little.
"Don't come any closer."
"Whether it's your Domain or your cursed techniques, if you use them with this many people around, you—"
Jogo's vision suddenly went dark. A sharp rush of air sounded, and a hand wrapped in deep-blue cursed energy was already pressed against Jogo's head. Gojo Satoru leaned close to its ear, showing a twisted, almost manic grin.
"You bald bastard with weeds growing out of your head. Are you looking down on me?"
He had voluntarily released Limitless!
"Keep running your mouth."
At the same time,
outside Shibuya Station,
the jujutsu sorcerers began to move.
Kira Nanami had openly violated his orders. As a Quasi-Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer, his actions were naturally a signal to everyone else.
They split into three groups. Itadori Yuji, Mei Mei, and Mei Mei's younger brother Ui Ui were responsible for locating the Veil's anchor points. Fushiguro Megumi and Ino stayed outside to protect the communications personnel.
Hoshino Ei... no one knew where Hoshino Ei had run off to. The Zenin group—the Zenin clan head, Zenin Mai, and Kugisaki Nobara—was responsible for entering the Veil and conducting rescues.
Everything seemed to be moving forward in an orderly fashion.
—
Kira Nanami was covered in blood.
Fushiguro Toji was an extremely bad matchup for him.
Compared with others at the same level, Killer Queen's speed had always been one of its weaknesses. Fushiguro Toji was as fast as black lightning. The wind rose and fell, lightning flashed and vanished, and in that instant Fushiguro Toji had already shifted through several positions.
Killer Queen could not touch him, which naturally meant it could not turn him into a bomb.
Sheer Heart Attack was also difficult to use effectively. There were still many Transfigured Humans on the first underground level, and their body temperatures were all higher than Fushiguro Toji's.
Most of Kira Nanami's abilities had been neutralized. All he had left was to meet Fushiguro Toji head-on with cursed techniques and hand-to-hand combat.
The sound of rushing wind mixed with sharp cracks through the air. Dust rose and fell again. Kira Nanami retreated several steps, the knife in his hand turning into a dancing black butterfly as he intercepted Fushiguro Toji's relentless barrage of attacks again and again.
The fists came like an unbroken flow of water, so fast that they could no longer be seen. It was like staring into a thick bank of fog, a fog formed from countless overlapping afterimages.
ORA ORA ORA... For some reason, Kira Nanami seemed to hear that phantom cry ringing in his ears.
Lines assembled in his mind. Kira Nanami's brain measured rapidly, drawing out weak points at extraordinary speed.
Irritation, irritation, irritation...
Irritation!
His fingernails began growing again. The aura of Gojo Satoru's cursed techniques was already rising from the floor below. The battle had clearly begun.
Kira Nanami did not even need to think to understand what the Cursed Spirits intended. They were using hostages to limit Gojo Satoru's strength.
Nothing could happen to Gojo Satoru... absolutely nothing.
They had been colleagues for years, after all. Kira Nanami did feel a sense of camaraderie with him as a colleague. In fact, Kira Nanami had spent his youth together with Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru. Those long years of exorcising Curses together, studying together, fighting together, sweating together, laughing beneath the setting sun... none of that mattered.
What mattered most was that if something happened to Gojo Satoru, his work would be dumped on Kira!
Gojo Satoru was constantly traveling on assignments all over the world, and there was nothing Kira Nanami hated more than business trips!
While that thought ran through his head, Fushiguro Toji's kick was already coming. Kira twisted aside, shifted his footing, and avoided it, only for the leg to change direction midway through the strike. Unable to evade in time, Kira raised one hand to protect the side of his face.
Boom—
As if struck by a shell from a massive anti-aircraft cannon, Kira Nanami was blasted backward by the tremendous force.
"Die."
He was still in the air and had not yet landed when Fushiguro Toji lowered his body slightly and vanished from where he stood. He sprinted along the wall of Shibuya Station, ran up onto the dome, flipped across the ceiling, and appeared directly above Kira Nanami in an instant. After several rotations, his right leg rose high. He drew in a faint breath—
Whoosh—
Then brought his heel down violently.
If the blow landed cleanly, Kira Nanami's spine would be snapped.
Kira Nanami looked up at him, his face as calm as ever.
He had stalled long enough. It was about time.
A pale-blue tank suddenly came crashing in like a thunderbolt, slamming straight into Fushiguro Toji and sending him flying!
Kira Nanami twisted in midair to bleed off the force, then crashed to the ground.
The dust settled.
Only then did the full scene on the first underground level become visible.
Corpses were piled everywhere, corpses upon corpses, flies crawling over them in layer after layer. Most of the bodies had been blown apart at the waist.
From the very beginning, Kira Nanami had been deliberately stalling for time, waiting for Sheer Heart Attack to kill every Transfigured Human on the first underground level.
Boom! The blue skeleton and the black tyrant tore into one another amid the smoke and dust.
If there was anything that countered Fushiguro Toji best, it was Sheer Heart Attack. Its nearly indestructible defense gave Fushiguro Toji's monstrous strength nowhere to gain purchase.
Its only weakness was that it was not fast enough.
But that was enough. Kira Nanami had never expected Sheer Heart Attack to defeat him.
It only needed to keep him occupied. It only needed to hold him for an instant.
"Clouds shift and change; seas become mulberry fields. Past and present."
"All are engraved in amber, unto eternity."
Kira Nanami slowly rose amid the smoke and dust. He spread his hands and brought them together. All ten fingers on both hands bent and extended, his thumbs overlapping, left thumb above the right.
His palms faced each other, leaving a small empty space between them. He aimed that space at the murderous Fushiguro Toji, at that natural-born tyrant.
"Domain Expansion."
The tail of time brushed across every heart. The world changed. Shibuya Station disappeared little by little.
In its place came swaying wind and rain, flashing thunder, that strange pointed tower, and the thousand-year-old Western-style mansion standing in the storm behind Kira Nanami, radiating warm light.
"Yesterday's Divide."
A 0.3-second Domain Expansion!
Draw a blade and sever flowing water—the river of time was cut apart in one stroke. If Done Again blew up a timeline,
then Yesterday's Divide severed one. It split the past from the present, cut apart the long river of time, and prevented causes from the past from interfering with the present ever again.
And this time, the past Kira Nanami chose to sever was
Granny Ogami's seance.
Zenin Toji went completely still in an instant.
In the next instant, the Domain's time limit was already over, and Sheer Heart Attack had charged right up to Zenin Toji's chest.
Carrying overwhelming force and rolling thunder, it
punched straight through his chest.