Time is the most ruthless wheel.
It rolled over the sword-glints and clashes of the Taisho era, and it rolled over the streets of Shinjuku at the start of the millennium.
Spring went and autumn came, winter departed and summer arrived.
In the blink of an eye, eleven years passed like a fleeting shadow.
During these eleven years, Yamada's life was calm. He did not interfere in any conflicts of the Jujutsu World again.
Aside from occasionally returning to the miniature divine realm to spend a few days with Shinobu, he spent his time wandering the outside world with Toji.
Just as he had predicted back then, Kenjaku had gone completely silent.
For a full eleven years, not a single clue about the stitches had appeared in the black market.
And during these eleven years, the Jujutsu World had undergone earth-shattering changes.
Satoru naturally became a teacher at Jujutsu High, and under the title of 'the strongest,' he became the existence that gave the old geezers at the top the biggest headaches yet left them completely helpless.
As for Suguru...
In the end, he still couldn't escape the trickery of fate.
Despite the Star Plasma Vessel surviving, the influence of Yuki combined with witnessing Haibara Yu's sacrifice caused a massive change in his mindset.
Of course, the final trigger was when Suguru was on a mission in a remote village and witnessed two young twin girls with Cursed Energy talent being tortured and imprisoned as monsters by the ignorant villagers.
At that moment, his ideology completely collapsed. He slaughtered one hundred and twelve ordinary people in that village, defected from Jujutsu High, and became the most evil Curse User wanted by the Jujutsu Headquarters.
He then took over the remnants of the Star Religious Group, gathered a group of Curse Users, and began plotting his mad grand design to 'create a world only for Jujutsu Sorcerers.'
Everything seemed to have returned to the established track of the original story under some invisible corrective force.
Over ten years, many things can change.
For instance, flip phones on the street have been replaced by smart touchscreens, and Satoru has transformed from that arrogant high school boy into a delinquent teacher who wears a black blindfold all day.
But inside the underground training room of that luxury villa in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, some things remained exactly the same.
Boom!
Accompanied by a deafening muffled thud, a quasi-Special Grade Cursed Spirit, with a body like a mountain of flesh, had half its torso blown apart by a powerful whip-kick from Toji.
The foul-smelling purple blood of the Cursed Spirit didn't even have time to splash before it turned into bits of flying ash in the air.
"The three-hundredth one."
Toji was shirtless, the centipede-like scar on his chest twisting with the rise and fall of his muscles.
He wiped the hot sweat from his forehead and turned to look at Yamada, who was sitting on a high platform.
"Boss. In the past six months, the refresh rate of Cursed Spirits has been ridiculously high. Of the exorcism commissions I take from the black market, I used to encounter at most one or two Grade 1s a month. Now, I can run into a quasi-Special Grade just going out to buy a pack of cigarettes. Those guys hiding in the shadows seem to be deliberately spreading curses."
Yamada didn't say anything. He was currently checking the system panel floating in his mind.
[Dimension Points: 502,890]
Over these dozen or so years, although he hadn't actively interfered with the main plot of the Jujutsu World, he and Toji would "sweep for goods" in deep mountains, old forests, or abandoned hospitals while wandering around.
Whether it was those naturally formed wild Cursed Spirits or the malevolent spirits raised by Curse Users, as long as they crossed their path, they were all converted into Dimension Points.
Five hundred thousand points—this was a massive number sufficient to make his combat power undergo another qualitative leap.
Yamada closed the panel and stood up. "Chaos is gradually rising, which proves the good show is about to begin. You keep practicing here, I'm going back to the divine realm for a period of secluded training."
He snapped his fingers, and a diamond-shaped portal woven from starlight silently opened in the air. Yamada stepped through it.
...
Miniature Divine Domain.
Shinobu was in a distant laboratory refining toxin samples from newly collected Special Grade Cursed Spirits. She was so focused that she didn't even notice Yamada's return.
Yamada didn't disturb her, instead heading straight to the summit of a towering peak in the center of the divine realm. He sat cross-legged on a flat boulder, surrounded by fierce, howling winds.
It was time to break through his current combat power bottleneck.
'System. Consume 200,000 dimension points to upgrade the current template to the 'Six Paths Power Period'.'
[Ding! Command confirmed!]
[Deducting 200,000 Dimension Points...]
[Template advancement initiated—Target: Sasuke (Six Paths Power Period)!]
Boom!
A terrifying energy descended from the void without warning, frantically surging into Yamada's body.
Yamada let out a low, muffled groan.
This wasn't pain, but a form of sublimation and expansion at the soul level.
The Chakra in his body, which was originally a preliminary fusion of Yin Release and Yang Release, began to undergo an earth-shattering transformation upon contact with this Six Paths power.
The two extreme energies of Yin and Yang were no longer simply intertwined. They were forcibly crushed and reorganized by a higher-dimensional law, finally condensing into a gray-black substantive energy—the prototype of a Truth-Seeking Orb.
But he didn't stop there.
In the original Naruto series, Sasuke only received the "Yin Power" bestowed by the Sage of Six Paths. His left eye activated the six-tomoe Rinnegan, while his right eye remained the Eternal Mangekyo.
This state of Yin-Yang imbalance, while powerful, was not truly perfect. To achieve true perfection, one must possess the "Yang Power" source that is equivalent to the "Yin Power"—which is Asura's Chakra.
'System, deduct another 100,000 Dimension points to exchange for the 'Asura Chakra Source' and force the fusion.'
Yamada growled in his mind.
[Ding! Deducting 100,000 Dimension Points!]
[Asura Chakra Source fusion beginning! Yin and Yang as one! All of creation!]
Accompanied by this notification, another massive energy, filled with endless vitality, suddenly exploded from Yamada's abdomen.
Indra's ultimate Yin and Asura's ultimate Yang—these two types of fated power that had been entangled for a millennium—finally achieved an ultimate fusion without any rejection within Yamada's body, which had been perfectly adapted by the system.
Buzz!
Far away in the laboratory, Shinobu felt the earth shake. Startled, she pushed open the window and looked toward the mountain peak.
Atop the summit, a pillar of light shot up from the ground, piercing straight into the clouds.
In the center of the light pillar.
Yamada slowly opened his eyes.
His originally deep black pupils had been replaced by an eerie and mysterious pale purple.
Concentric circle patterns, spreading like ripples on water, covered the entire eyeball. And upon these ripples, six black tomoe were embedded in both the left and right eyes, rotating slowly at a constant frequency.
Dual-eye six-tomoe Rinnegan!
This was the ultimate ocular technique in the truest sense, transcending Kekkei Genkai and birthed from the extreme fusion of Yin and Yang.
Yamada raised his hands.
Behind him, six black spheres the size of fists, so deep and dark they seemed capable of swallowing all light, appeared out of nowhere and floated quietly around his back.
Truth-Seeking Orbs.
The power of all creation, formed by the fusion of all seven nature transformations of Yin, Yang, and the five elements. They can transform into the world's strongest defense or become weapons that can destroy all matter and even souls.
In this Jujutsu Kaisen world that lacked a Senjutsu system, the Truth-Seeking Orbs were an absolute rule of erasure that could not be touched or defended against.
Not only that, Yamada could clearly feel the exclusive ocular techniques inherent to the Rinnegan—Amenotejikara, Chibaku Tensei, Shinra Tensei, Bansho Ten'in—were now engraved deep in his mind like instinct.
"This is the true domain of the gods."
Yamada clenched his fist, feeling the terrifyingly immense power within his body.
The six tomoe in the depths of his eyes stopped rotating, and his pupils returned to their usual pitch black. The Truth-Seeking Orbs behind him also vanished into his body at his thought.
His power was restrained.
Right now, standing there, he looked like an ordinary person without the slightest fluctuation of Cursed Energy.
But if he wished, a single thought could completely overturn the balance of this world.
Yamada leapt down from the boulder, and in a flash of movement, he had already returned to the front of the laboratory.
"Yamada! What happened to that mountain just now? Was there an earthquake?" Shinobu walked out quickly holding a stack of clipboards, her eyes full of worry.
"It's nothing, just a breakthrough. The commotion was a bit loud."
Yamada reached out and ruffled her hair, his gaze passing over her shoulder to look at the electronic screen outside the lab that simulated real-world time.
The time on the screen showed: December 24, 2017.
Seeing this date, the corners of Yamada's lips curled into a meaningful arc.
He remembered very clearly. In the trajectory of the original story, today was the day the defected Suguru launched the "Night Parade of a Hundred Demons," releasing thousands of Cursed Spirits into Shinjuku, Tokyo, and Kyoto simultaneously, attempting to use them to stall the main forces of Jujutsu High while he infiltrated the school to seize the Special Grade Cursed Spirit Rika.
This was also the climax of the Jujutsu Kaisen prequel, Jujutsu Kaisen 0.
More importantly, it was the key moment for Kenjaku, the brain who had been dormant for a thousand years, to prepare to reap the benefits and seize Suguru's body.
"It seems my power up ended just in time."
Yamada turned and walked toward the star gate anchor point of the divine realm. "Shinobu, don't cook tonight. I'm going out to watch a big show and, while I'm at it, catch a rat that's been hiding for over a decade."
"Be careful."