Rowan paid no attention to Nurarihyon grinding his teeth in hatred beside him. He carefully examined Hagoromo-Gitsune's memories, refusing to overlook even the slightest clue.
His goal was to find Abe no Seimei's whereabouts.
Before long, he learned something from Hagoromo-Gitsune's memories.
Abe no Seimei was not dead.
That was also why Hagoromo-Gitsune had never been obsessed with giving birth to Abe no Seimei again. Her son had never died in the first place, so there was no need for him to be reborn.
As for why Abe no Seimei had not died, that story began with a jujutsu sorcerer.
A thousand years ago, a special jujutsu sorcerer was born in Heian-kyo.
Her name was Tengen.
Yes, the same Tengen from Jujutsu Kaisen who had survived from ancient times all the way to the modern era.
In Jujutsu Kaisen, Tengen was a legendary figure in the jujutsu world. She possessed a technique that allowed her to continually evolve and used Star Plasma Vessels to prolong her life.
People called her Master Tengen, regarding her with both reverence and fear.
Her appearance constantly changed through evolution. Sometimes she was male, and sometimes female, but she always possessed a transcendent air.
Her jujutsu abilities were extremely powerful. She could easily oppose Special Grade cursed spirits and sorcerers, and could even deploy an incomplete Domain Expansion.
Tengen's Immortality Technique allowed her to recover quickly after suffering severe injuries and even reconstruct her body.
At the same time, she was a key figure driving the plot of Jujutsu Kaisen.
She was known as an all-knowing sorcerer because she could gather all kinds of information through the barriers she had reinforced.
Her true form was a higher-dimensional existence that had merged with heaven and earth, both corporeal and incorporeal, resembling a cursed spirit more than a human.
That sounded extremely impressive, didn't it?
But in this world, Tengen's status was not nearly so lofty.
Because jujutsu sorcerers had actually been invented by Abe no Seimei.
That was right. In this crossover world, Abe no Seimei had created jujutsu sorcerers.
As everyone knew, Abe no Seimei was an onmyoji. However, onmyoji studied an extremely broad range of subjects, and becoming a qualified onmyoji was not easy.
The profession demanded far too much talent.
Some people needed only a few short years to become competent onmyoji.
Others spent their entire lives studying until their hair turned white, yet still failed to become one.
Therefore, in order to allow more people to gain the ability to fight demons, monsters, ghosts, and spirits, Abe no Seimei racked his brain and created the profession of jujutsu sorcerer, teaching humans to extract cursed energy from their negative emotions.
That eventually developed into the jujutsu sorcerers of the modern era.
The birth of jujutsu sorcerers allowed more humans to master supernatural powers, resulting in a glorious tradition that lasted a thousand years.
Tengen was one of Abe no Seimei's earliest experimental subjects after he created the profession.
After becoming a jujutsu sorcerer, Tengen awakened the Immortality Technique.
Abe no Seimei witnessed the technique, learned it, and improved it through a series of modifications, becoming a human who could survive without relying on so-called Star Plasma Vessels.
However, as a price, he had to use yokai to extend his life.
At first, Abe no Seimei only needed to absorb the lifespan of one yokai every hundred years to survive.
But as time passed, the rate at which he needed to absorb yokai grew increasingly rapid.
It went from once every hundred years to once every fifty years, then thirty years, twenty years, and eventually one yokai every single year.
But this world had more yokai than anyone could count. Forget one per year—even ten per year would not have mattered.
The real problem was not how many yokai Abe no Seimei absorbed.
The problem was that after absorbing too many yokai, the balance between his humanity and yokai nature was destroyed.
As the son of a fox yokai, Abe no Seimei had been born a half-yokai, possessing both human and yokai nature. But as he absorbed more and more yokai, his yokai nature gradually began suppressing his humanity.
This also caused Abe no Seimei's way of thinking to become increasingly similar to that of a yokai.
After noticing this, Abe no Seimei decided to absorb some humans to preserve his humanity.
However, he was unwilling to harm kind and virtuous people. After considerable thought, he deliberately targeted only despicable human scum.
But it was precisely this action that caused Abe no Seimei to lose all faith in humanity.
After all, some humans behaved even worse than yokai and were not even worthy of being called human.
Thus, several hundred years ago, Abe no Seimei completely abandoned humanity. He found Hagoromo-Gitsune and proposed exterminating the entire human race to establish a world inhabited only by yokai.
When Hagoromo-Gitsune first heard her son's request, she was greatly shocked.
The demand was simply too horrifying.
Exterminating all humanity was far too extreme.
But Abe no Seimei was her son.
For the sake of fulfilling her son's request, Hagoromo-Gitsune ultimately decided to act.
Then, unsurprisingly, she was stopped.
Those who opposed Hagoromo-Gitsune were not limited to human onmyoji and jujutsu sorcerers. Even some yokai traveled thousands of miles from across Japan to stop her.
The most outstanding among them was Nurarihyon.
Those yokai had all been born from human legends and supernatural tales. Without humans, they would become like water without a source and could disappear at any moment.
Therefore, for their own sake and for the sake of their future, they charged at Hagoromo-Gitsune without hesitation.
That battle was extraordinarily brutal.
The entirety of Kyoto became a battlefield, with countless humans and yokai slaughtering one another.
Compared with that battle, today's conflict was practically child's play.
It was not even worth mentioning.
Faced with wave after wave of humans throwing themselves into battle, Hagoromo-Gitsune steadily lost ground.
But she was not worried.
Her beloved son, Abe no Seimei, had not yet acted.
Hagoromo-Gitsune firmly believed that the moment Abe no Seimei intervened, he would certainly reverse the course of the battle.
Yet interestingly enough, Abe no Seimei never appeared.
Even after Hagoromo-Gitsune was defeated and Nurarihyon seized the title of Lord of Pandemonium, Abe no Seimei still did nothing.
That was also the reason Hagoromo-Gitsune lost.
After the defeated Hagoromo-Gitsune was executed, she could not understand why.
Fifty years later, she reincarnated with Abe no Seimei's assistance.
When Hagoromo-Gitsune questioned her beloved son about why he had not intervened and had instead watched her be killed, Abe no Seimei told her that it was not that he had done nothing.
He had been stopped.
"Someone was actually capable of stopping you?"
Hagoromo-Gitsune was astonished. In her eyes, her beloved son was one of the most powerful beings in the entire world.
She found it difficult to imagine that anyone could stop him.
Abe no Seimei calmly said, "The ones who stopped me were Tengen and the Six Eyes."
Only then did Hagoromo-Gitsune learn that after Abe no Seimei obtained the Immortality Technique from Tengen, he had not killed her.
At that time, Abe no Seimei had not yet fallen, and Tengen was his disciple.
Naturally, he would not kill her.
Instead, he devoted himself to cultivating her.
However, the two eventually parted ways because of differences in ideology.
When Abe no Seimei attempted to use Hagoromo-Gitsune to exterminate humanity, Tengen appeared and brought the Six Eyes of that generation to stop him.
As someone who had also lived for several centuries, Tengen could not defeat Abe no Seimei.
However, together with the Six Eyes, she sacrificed her life to hold him back for a period of time.
By the time Abe no Seimei killed Tengen and the Six Eyes, Hagoromo-Gitsune had not only been defeated, but also beheaded.
Thus, the first plan to exterminate humanity ended in failure.
This also caused Abe no Seimei to realize something.
Perhaps the world was not as terrible as he had imagined.
Perhaps humanity was not beyond salvation.
As a result, Abe no Seimei decided to continue observing humanity, and the extermination plan was shelved.
Hagoromo-Gitsune did not particularly care.
Whether her son wanted to exterminate humanity or protect it made no difference to her.
Whatever Abe no Seimei wished to do, she would support him.
After that, several centuries passed.
Not long ago, Abe no Seimei suddenly sought out Hagoromo-Gitsune once again. He told her that he had lost faith in humanity for a second time and wished to resume the plan to exterminate humans and establish a yokai world.
Although Hagoromo-Gitsune was surprised, she still agreed and actively began preparing for the plan.
Rowan, on the other hand, was utterly confused.
What exactly was Abe no Seimei doing?
One moment he wanted to exterminate humanity, the next he no longer wanted to, and then he suddenly wanted to exterminate humanity again.
He was far too indecisive.
He did not resemble a powerful expert with an unwavering will at all.
Instead, he seemed like a hesitant and irresolute person.
Seriously, was Abe no Seimei in this world really this absurd?
More importantly, would an indecisive person truly attempt to exterminate humanity?
Rowan frowned as a thought occurred to him.
During Abe no Seimei's battle against Tengen and the Six Eyes, had they really done nothing more than delay him for a little while?
Could Abe no Seimei have been severely injured?
Although the theory sounded somewhat far-fetched, it was not impossible.
After all, both Tengen and the Six Eyes stood at the pinnacle of power in Jujutsu Kaisen.
The Six Eyes of that era might not have been as powerful as Gojo Satoru, but he would still have undoubtedly been a top-class expert.
If the two had genuinely sacrificed their lives, perhaps they really could have inflicted severe injuries upon Abe no Seimei.
That would also explain why Abe no Seimei had needed an entire fifty years after Hagoromo-Gitsune's death before helping her reincarnate and return to the world.
If that were true, then was it possible that during the following centuries, Abe no Seimei never fully recovered to his peak condition and had been recuperating all along?
That would be why he suspended the plan to exterminate humanity.
Not long ago, Abe no Seimei's injuries had finally healed, so he impatiently resumed his plan.
In Rowan's opinion, this explanation was far more reasonable than Abe no Seimei simply being hesitant and indecisive.
As for why Abe no Seimei had not told Hagoromo-Gitsune the truth, it was naturally because he feared the information might leak.
Although Hagoromo-Gitsune herself would most likely never betray him, this world was not lacking in techniques capable of reading memories.
Therefore, for his own safety, Abe no Seimei chose to conceal the truth and instead gave Hagoromo-Gitsune another explanation to fool her.
There was another reason Rowan reached this conclusion.
It was because of what Abe no Seimei did next.
After reviving Hagoromo-Gitsune, he did something.
~~~
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