At dusk.
Tokyo, Shinjuku streets.
The originally bustling commercial district now looked like a living hell.
The sky was shrouded by a thick veil of black Cursed Energy, and the blood-red setting sun filtered through the clouds, spilling onto the scarred streets.
The shrill sound of air-raid sirens echoed through the sky.
Ordinary citizens had already been evacuated under the guidance of Assistant Supervisors.
At this moment, the streets were filled with hundreds of Cursed Spirits of various forms. They roared, climbing on the glass curtain walls of skyscrapers, spitting venom and fire.
"Kill all these monkeys! Establish a paradise belonging to Jujutsu Sorcerers!"
A group of Curse Users wearing uniform black outfits and belonging to the Star Religious Group were commanding Cursed Spirits, engaging in a tragic slaughter with the teachers and students of Jujutsu High who had come to suppress them.
"Don't let them cross the defensive line! Exorcise all these monsters!"
Maki brandished her naginata, slicing a Grade 3 Cursed Spirit in two.
Inumaki Toge pulled down his collar and let out a word from his throat: "Burst!" Several Cursed Spirits in front of him instantly self-destructed.
Panda was charging through the chaotic battle.
Just as the battle fell into a stalemate—
Boom!
An extremely dazzling pale blue light pillar descended from the sky. With a destructive momentum that could crush anything in its path, it plowed a vacuum zone several hundred meters long in the area where the Cursed Spirits were most densely packed.
Satoru was suspended in mid-air. He wasn't wearing a blindfold today, nor was he wearing sunglasses. Those Six Eyes looked down coldly at the chaotic battlefield below.
Twelve years of accumulation had made the invincible aura around him increasingly unfathomable.
"Suguru... he doesn't show up himself, just puts a bunch of small fry here to stall for time."
Satoru's gaze penetrated layers of Cursed Energy mist, looking toward the distant direction of Jujutsu High.
"Luring me away?"
He was just about to teleport to Jujutsu High to provide support.
Suddenly—
Buzz!
An extremely subtle yet instinctively hair-raising spatial fluctuation rippled out in the void less than thirty meters away from him.
That wasn't the aura of a Cursed Spirit, nor was it a human sorcerer. It was a kind of energy transcending this dimension, filled with silence and destruction.
Satoru snapped his head around.
On the rooftop of the tallest skyscraper in Shinjuku.
A young man clad in a black trench coat had, at some unknown point, already stood on the railing at the edge of the rooftop.
He had one hand in his pocket, while the other toyed with a coin he had picked up from somewhere.
Those deep, pitch-black eyes were looking down from above at the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons battlefield, which resembled a meat grinder.
"Haven't seen you in over ten years. Your efficiency in disposing of trash has regressed quite a bit, Gojo-sensei."
Satoru's pupils suddenly contracted.
The vision of the Six Eyes was frantically warning him.
Eleven years ago, he couldn't see through this man.
Eleven years later, he still couldn't see through him.
Not only could he not see through him, but he even felt a terrifying sense of pressure from beneath that seemingly calm exterior, as if the man could easily crush the entire world.
"It's you?!" Satoru landed on a nearby rooftop, his gaze locked tightly on Yamada.
"What? Don't recognize me?" Yamada flicked the coin in his hand with his finger.
The coin traced a parabola in mid-air. At the moment the coin fell, the black in Yamada's eyes faded. A pair of pale purple Rinnegan, embedded with six black tomoe, suddenly snapped open in the twilight.
Yamada raised his right hand, fingers splayed, aiming from afar at the army of hundreds of Cursed Spirits continuously pouring out onto the streets below.
Bansho Ten'in!
Boom!!!
A terrifying gravitational field instantly erupted with Yamada's palm as the center.
The stone slabs on the street below, the streetlights, the destroyed cars, and even those hundreds of massive Cursed Spirits, were affected.
"Awooo!"
The Cursed Spirits howled in terror, desperately stabbing their claws into the ground to try and steady themselves, but it was all in vain.
Under the horrified gazes of all the Jujutsu Sorcerers and Curse Users present.
Hundreds of Cursed Spirits, like being caught in a massive invisible vortex, lost control and broke free from gravity, screaming as they rapidly converged and collapsed toward the same point high in the sky.
"What... what the hell is that!" Maki stopped her sword-swinging motion and looked up at the anomaly in the sky, so shocked she couldn't even speak properly.
Shinra Tensei!
At the moment all the Cursed Spirits were forcibly sucked into mid-air and squeezed into a giant ball of flesh.
Yamada's eyes were indifferent, and his wrist suddenly flipped.
In 0.01 seconds, the extreme attraction suddenly reversed into extreme repulsion.
Bang!!!
A silent explosion erupted in mid-air.
That giant ball of flesh squeezed from hundreds of Cursed Spirits didn't even leave behind a drop of flesh and blood. It was completely disintegrated into particle dust flying all over the sky.
One strike, field cleared.
Standing behind the defensive line, Maki gripped her naginata, cold sweat seeping from her forehead.
Panda and Toge stood side by side, not even daring to breathe heavily.
The army of Cursed Spirits that had trapped them in a bitter struggle just a moment ago—so numerous they inspired despair—had vanished into thin air with a mere flick of that black-haired youth's hand.
"Quite the grand display."
Satoru floated in mid-air, his Six Eyes staring intently at Yamada on the rooftop.
Twelve years had passed, and he thought he had reached the pinnacle of power, but the destructive force caused by this man's casual wave still made his heart skip a beat.
That repulsive force was somewhat similar to his Red, but the underlying logic of its operation was completely different.
On the rooftop of the tall building.
Yamada ignored Satoru's gaze and didn't look at the terrified Jujutsu Sorcerers below. Those pale purple Rinnegan, embedded with six tomoe, turned slightly, their vision piercing through layers of night to lock onto the top of a signal tower two kilometers away.
There perched a tiny fly-type Cursed Spirit that almost blended into the night. This Cursed Spirit emitted no hostility, and its Cursed Energy fluctuations were suppressed to the limit. Its compound eyes were faithfully recording everything happening on the Shinjuku battlefield.
"A rat hiding its head but showing its tail."
Yamada sneered and casually raised his right hand, his fingers pointing toward the fly Cursed Spirit from afar.
Bansho Ten'in!
On the signal tower two kilometers away, the space around the fly Cursed Spirit suddenly collapsed.
An irresistible gravitational force instantly crossed the distance, yanking it through the resistance of space and sucking it into Yamada's palm in the blink of an eye.
Yamada gripped the Cursed Spirit, and the ocular power of his Rinnegan followed the faint thread of Cursed Energy connection within it, surging upward like a violent current to hunt down the manipulator behind the scenes.
...
On the outskirts of Tokyo, in a dark basement.
Kenjaku, sitting cross-legged on a futon, suddenly let out a shrill scream.
"Pfft!"
He spat a mouthful of blood onto the low table in front of him, his hands clutching the stitches on his forehead as his eyeballs bulged from the extreme pain.
In that instant, the mental imprint he had attached to the scouting Cursed Spirit was crushed by a force as vast as an abyss. Moreover, that power even followed the mental connection and nearly burned through the brain within this shell.
"Those eyes... what on earth are they?" Kenjaku panted heavily, drenched in cold sweat.
He had lived for over a thousand years, seen countless brilliant Jujutsu Sorcerers, and had twice been defeated by the Six Eyes.
But he swore that even Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses from the golden age of Jujutsu a thousand years ago, definitely didn't possess power that could make one's soul tremble with a single glance.
Purple ripples, black tomoe.
Those weren't human eyes at all!
"That anomaly from the Star Plasma Vessel incident... not only has he not aged, but his power has become even more terrifying." Kenjaku wiped the blood from the corner of his lips, his eyes filled with deep wariness and fear.
Too dangerous.
He had originally planned to fish in troubled waters during tonight's 'Night Parade of a Hundred Demons.'
Once Satoru killed Suguru, he would take the opportunity to seize Suguru's body and claim Cursed Spirit Manipulation, which could devour countless Cursed Spirits, for himself. This was the most central part of his plan to start the Culling Game.
But now, the appearance of that monster had disrupted everything.
"No, I absolutely cannot expose my true self."
Kenjaku gritted his teeth and decisively cut off all Cursed Energy connections with the outside world.
He knew that man's way of doing things all too well.
Twelve years ago, he had single-handedly burned down the Star Religious Group and trampled the Jujutsu Headquarters. If his tracks were discovered today, he would undoubtedly be crushed to dust along with this basement without hesitation.
"Suguru's body... I'll just have to find another opportunity."
Kenjaku stood up and stepped into deeper darkness, hiding himself completely.