Chapter 60: Hanami Descends
"Get back!"
Megumi Fushiguro's voice cracked through the forest as his hands flew through a string of seals.
"Divine Dog: Totality!"
The black and white Divine Dogs fused in a burst of cursed energy, their two bodies collapsing into one. In the next instant, a massive jet black wolf landed before the group, claws gouging trenches into the earth as it bared its fangs at the enemy ahead.
No one had time to breathe.
The forest had changed.
The once dense and lively woods now felt like something malignant and awake. Vines writhed over the ground like enormous serpents, roots bulged beneath the soil as though some giant beast were crawling just beneath the surface, and every tree seemed to lean inward, silent and hungry.
At the center of that warped greenery, a tall figure stepped out from the shadows.
Its skin resembled pale, dead wood. White cloth wrapped around one shoulder. Where eyes should have been, twisted branches jutted outward like horns grown by the forest itself. With each step it took, flowers and weeds burst from the ground under its feet.
Yet there was nothing gentle about it.
Nothing alive.
This was not growth. It was plunder. It was nature gone rabid, devouring every scrap of life around it and forcing the world to bloom at its command.
Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
Hanami.
Kamo Noritoshi felt a chill break across his spine.
"This is… a Special Grade?"
Cold sweat ran down his temple.
As the heir to one of the Big Three Families, he had seen more of the jujutsu world than most students ever would. He knew what power looked like. He knew what pressure felt like.
But Hanami was different.
Standing before it, he felt something deeper than fear.
It was instinct.
The terror of prey standing before a predator far above it in the natural order.
"Do not freeze up!"
Toge Inumaki suddenly yanked down his collar, exposing the cursed markings at the corners of his mouth.
"Don't move!"
Cursed Speech erupted from his throat like a command carved into reality itself.
Hanami's footsteps halted.
For a single moment, the impossible actually seemed possible.
Then the backlash hit.
Toge's body jerked violently. Blood sprayed from his mouth, and he staggered where he stood, nearly collapsing.
"Cough… cough…"
"Toge!"
Megumi's expression changed at once.
Just two words.
Just enough to stop Hanami for an instant.
And Toge had already suffered severe recoil.
The meaning was obvious.
Their cursed energy and Hanami's were not even remotely on the same level.
Kamo grit his teeth and crushed a blood pouch in his hand.
"Blood Manipulation: Convergence, Piercing Blood!"
A blood arrow compressed to the absolute limit screamed through the air toward Hanami's head, moving so fast it broke the sound barrier.
It should have pierced steel.
Hanami merely lifted a hand.
Pfft.
The blood projectile struck its palm and burst apart into a red flower.
It did not even break the skin.
A strange voice entered their minds directly.
No sound.
No spoken language.
Only intent.
"Humans… are fragile."
Hanami lowered its hand and looked at them with terrible calm, like a gardener judging weeds that had grown where they did not belong.
"The forest grieves."
"The earth weeps."
"For the future of this planet, humanity must be erased."
Rumble.
The cursed energy around it surged.
The surrounding trees twisted violently, and in the next breath countless gigantic wooden spikes exploded from the ground and descended from above, filling the air like a rain of spears.
"Dammit!"
Megumi's heart sank.
His hands moved on instinct, already reaching toward the next shikigami he could summon. If necessary, he would call Max Elephant and force a defensive opening.
Before he could act, a shadow burst past him.
Maki Zenin.
Playful Cloud whistled through the air in her hands, and she smashed the nearest descending spike to splinters with one brutal swing.
Crack.
The special grade cursed tool lived up to its reputation. The blow shattered the wooden spear instantly.
But only one.
The rest kept coming.
"Senpai!"
Megumi shouted as Divine Dog: Totality lunged forward, tearing into the vines surging from the ground. Toge, pale and trembling, forced himself to stand. Kamo gritted his teeth and drew more blood. Maki planted her feet and swung again.
The four of them were pushed together, back to back, barely holding the line.
And the realization came to all of them at once.
This thing was not merely Special Grade.
Whether it was total cursed energy, physical pressure, or the sheer scale of its presence, Hanami stood far beyond what they had imagined when they heard those words.
It had not even started fighting seriously.
It was only manipulating plants.
And already they were being driven to the edge of death.
Maki's breath came hard and uneven as she tightened her grip on Playful Cloud.
So this was the gap.
She had trained until her bones felt like they would split. She had fought, bled, and clawed her way forward with nothing but her own strength. She had sworn she would prove the Zenin family wrong.
And yet before a true monster, she still felt small.
"We need to retreat," Megumi said through clenched teeth, his mind racing. "Or hold out until Gojo sensei breaks through."
His eyes flicked toward the Curtain rejecting Satoru Gojo. It was still there, trapping them with Hanami.
No.
There was no retreat.
Only survival.
Or victory.
Hanami seemed to grow tired of watching them struggle.
Its left arm slowly rose. From the shoulder wrapped in white cloth, a strange bud unfurled, opening into a grotesque flower.
An enormous quantity of cursed energy began to gather.
The air thinned.
The forest fell silent.
Kamo's eyes widened. "It's charging something big!"
If that attack landed, they would not survive.
"Run!" he shouted.
Toge's throat burned like it had been torn open, but he still forced cursed speech through the blood in his mouth.
He would stop it.
Even if it destroyed his voice.
But Hanami moved first.
Its arm came down.
Boom!
The ground exploded.
Enormous roots burst upward like dragons rising from the underworld, twisting together into a crushing wave of wood and death that devoured the students' field of vision in an instant.
There was nowhere to run.
Nowhere to dodge.
Only destruction.
Megumi's eyes sharpened with despair. His hand sank into his shadow.
If this was how it ended, then he would call it.
The forbidden shikigami.
Even if it killed him too, he would drag this monster down with him.
Then—
Step.
Step.
Step.
A quiet sound crossed the battlefield.
Not loud.
Not forceful.
Yet somehow, amidst the screams of roots and the thunder of collapsing earth, those footsteps sounded with absolute clarity.
They landed like drops of water falling into a silent pond.
Then a figure appeared in front of them.
A simple black Jujutsu High uniform.
Black hair stirred by the violent wind.
A hand resting lightly on a sheathed sword.
He did not form seals.
He did not shout.
He did not even fully draw the blade.
Yet the instant he stood there, the atmosphere changed.
Yami.
"Yami!"
Megumi's voice came out half as relief, half as disbelief.
Maki stared.
Toge stared.
Even Hanami's movement seemed to slow for the first time.
Yami's eyes were closed.
His breathing deepened.
Total Concentration: Water Breathing.
In that instant, his presence vanished.
Not literally.
But in everyone's perception, the young man before them ceased to feel like a person standing on the battlefield.
Instead, what spread out from him was something vast and bottomless.
A silent sea under a moonless sky.
No waves.
No splashing current.
No visible violence.
Only stillness so complete it was terrifying.
Water Breathing, Eleventh Form.
Dead Calm.
Clang.
The sound of the blade leaving the sheath was no louder than a drop of water falling into the deep.
No one saw him swing.
No one saw the path of the strike.
And yet in the next instant, every root, every vine, every fragment of cursed energy that entered the three meter radius around him vanished.
Not cut apart.
Not blasted away.
Erased.
As though the moment they entered that silent sea, the attack itself had been denied existence.
The forest fell still.
The roaring roots were gone.
The twisted vines were gone.
The crushing cursed energy impact was gone.
Only a few severed leaves drifted downward through the quiet air.
The battlefield, moments ago on the verge of absolute destruction, was now silent enough to hear breathing.
Yami stood exactly where he had begun.
His hand still rested on the hilt.
As though he had never moved at all.
Then he slowly raised his head.
His red eyes met Hanami's faceless stare.
And a faint curve touched the corner of his mouth.
"It's a little noisy," he said.
His voice was soft.
Almost polite.
Then his gaze sharpened.
"Could you be quieter?"
He paused.
"Weed."
.....
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