It was not often that Kenjaku found himself displeased, not that you could tell by looking at him. He sat relaxed in a quaint coffee shop, sipping his decaf. The owner had served him for free, mistaking Geto's monk attire for him actually being a monk. He would've found the situation more amusing if his mind did not drift every few seconds.
"He was hitting the boundary between our souls!"
He still remembered the horror in Uraume's voice, the tremor underneath the faux anger and rage, her unholy terror. He still found it funny, yet once more, not even a chuckle escaped his lips as he took another sip of his coffee. The door jingled open, its bell ringing as it welcomed new customers. A group of four found their seats close by, their loud discussions, chattering, and sporadic laughter a not so bad distraction.
Carefully laid plans over centuries, and he could count the number of them that had gone right over the past few weeks, starting from when that Shikigami had flipped everything on its head. That was the first change and the beginning of everything. He took another sip, and the door jingled open again, but this time to more familiar, measured footsteps.
Kenjaku dropped his quaint teacup on the saucer and gave his most beautiful smile to the woman who walked in. Dressed in similar robes like him, she could be mistaken for a monk just as he was, if not for the glare she looked at the world with.
Uraume was annoyed, and Kenjaku had an idea why.
"Uraume."
He greeted her with a soft nod, but instead of a reply, she simply dumped her ass in the seat opposite him, picked up his cup of tea, and swallowed the entire liquid in a single gulp before slamming it back down on the saucer and returning to glare at him.
Okay, it seemed like she was more than annoyed.
"How are your soul injuries?" he questioned as he picked up the kettle, his motions fluid, bearing a hint of ritual as he slowly and carefully refilled the cup once more.
"It's better. I can still feel the damage, but it's been healing just fine on its own."
"It would heal even faster if you allowed Mahito to look at you," he replied with a smile that he knew would only serve to annoy the white-haired woman even further, and for a second, he could see the anger come over her before she released it with a calming breath. For someone once known as the Frozen Star, it was all too easy to send her spiraling into anger... He had a feeling it had something to do with the soul damage.
"Like I'd let your mutt touch me with its grotesque hands." She shook her head before returning his smile with a frown of her own. "That's not what I'm here to talk about. Have you heard? Your pawns were slaughtered to a man the night before. The Zenin Clan and the Gojo are having talks of an alliance, and even the Kamo Clan, which you said you had a strong grasp on, is beginning to act out of hand. I heard the heir has started building a power bloc to challenge you."
"Yes, that's what happens when you go after an enemy without complete knowledge of them," Kenjaku replied, turning to stare at the group of strangers that had entered before Uraume. "You were lucky to escape your own hubris mostly intact, but the higher-ups were not so lucky. As for Noritoshi-kun, well. I can always deal with that. "
He spotted Uraume's glare through his peripherals, but remarkably, she kept her temper in check.
"So what now? How do we kill the Shikigami? If killing the boy doesn't kill the Shikigami, then your own plans to capture the boy and use him as a hostage to manipulate the Shikigami for your own ends are completely useless."
"It was always a long shot, so I'm not particularly peeved with that avenue being closed," Kenjaku admitted with a chuckle. "Like I told you from the beginning, leave the Shikigami for Sukuna. I'm sure your lord would enjoy the distraction before Gojo Satoru is undoubtedly freed. Although some of our plans are going to be changed a bit."
Here came the reason why he was displeased. His gaze returned to Uraume, and he steepled his fingers together to focus on her.
"Reaching my dear old friend Tengen and using her to complete the Culling Games... is not going to work anymore."
"Why?"
"Because Tengen has enlisted the aid of the two most dangerous sorcerers present in Japan: Yuki Tsukumo and Yuta Okkotsu. If it was one or the other, I could have risked it, but two of them at once... Even with your help, your soul injury means you're weaker for the time being. Against those two, they would cut you down fast enough to make it a two-on-one fight again, and I know my odds in that kind of fight."
Uraume opened her mouth, ready to argue, before suddenly stilling. After a brief internal debate, she finally nodded in agreement, but Kenjaku could see she was not pleased. However, after the beatdown she had received from the Shikigami, her pride and belief in her overwhelming superiority above the sorcerers of this era had been tarnished.
"So what're you going to do about it?"
Kenjaku finally picked up his teacup once more, bringing it to his lips and blowing gently before taking a careful sip.
"Making Mahito the gamemaster and heart of the ritual was only partially a spontaneous decision. I had taken into consideration what would happen if I were unable to use Tengen to complete the ritual. The ritual is in a strange place right now. If they somehow manage to find Mahito and kill him, the ritual ends, and I'm going to have to wait another couple of centuries or simply try something else. But the longer Mahito lives, the stronger he grows. His presence as the willing fuel, catalyst, and combustion for the ritual is refining him."
He stared at Uraume, a grim smile on his face as he could see her coming to the same realization that he had come to the moment he considered this plan.
"Mahito is evolving as we speak, the deaths in the Culling Game are enriching him, and it is only a matter of time before I won't need the ritual anymore. Once Mahito evolves sufficiently..."
"You can brute-force it then. You'll use him to create... a monster." Uraume's voice was a whisper as she thought it through. "No, not create a monster. You'll turn him into a monster."
Kenjaku's smile widened.
"My ultimate pet project. The grand culmination. A new being, one that would perhaps satisfy my curiosity," he said with a chuckle, leaving out an important part of what this new being would be. A check for Sukuna's presence as well.
"Then what about my lord? What about Sukuna?"
"Oh, don't worry about that. I've always had a plan for that," he said with a chuckle as he stood up. "We're taking a trip, Uraume-san. A trip to the holy mountain of Hida."
__
The holy mountain of Hida, Mount Tateyama, was one of the three holy mountains of Japan, and yet it was open to tourists and would be the last place anyone would consider hiding something.
That was what Tengen had been banking on when she picked this place, Kenjaku reflected as he walked up the trail alongside Uraume. Tengen was smart, with a firm grasp of barriers and concealment, and had known that the most effective way to hide something was by concealing it right under the nose of everybody. It had taken him almost two centuries to look under his own nose.
The mountain was beautiful in the way that all mountains in this part of the country were beautiful, so high it almost kissed the heavens. A nice combination of light and altitude made the vegetation bloom into something that brought tourists to the mountain all year round.
Yet, at the end of the day, the most special thing about the mountain was its scenery and landscape, but that was only if one did not know what to look for.
Kenjaku knew what to look for. He turned off the pathway that most tourists would use and walked at an incline till he hit the pure barrier, but calling it a barrier was a misnomer. A curtain was more accurate because it acted more as an illusory veil than a wall to trap something in.
It was subtle, subtle enough that Uraume, who had been trailing behind him, did not notice it until they were already inside it, which was a testament to Tengen's craft. The Frozen Star noticed the shift a step too late, and her hand moved, ice forming across the limb before she halted in realization that there was no enemy to fight. Instead, they were now in a cave lit by burning torches.
"Relax," Kenjaku said without looking back at her.
"You could have warned me."
"I could have," he agreed with a chuckle. "But I would've missed that look on your face."
Uraume snarled something impolite, but he simply waved her words away with a laugh.
They moved through the interior of the mountain, walking down a cave and following a path that was hidden from the rest of the world. There were dips, twists, and bends that would've made most people lost. The mountain's guts were like the mouth of a monster, but one that Kenjaku was familiar with, and so he led them till they eventually arrived.
The room was not large, but it did not need to be. After all, other than the shamanic talismans for containment spread around the multiple rock outcroppings that came out of the ground like the fangs of a beast, it housed only one other thing. Uraume stopped in the entrance beside him, and he heard her breathing change.
"That's impossible," she said.
Kenjaku smiled, tilting his head to stare back at her. "That word doesn't mean much in this world of ours, Uraume-san."
The withered body of Ryomen Sukuna lay in the center of the chamber, his monstrosity hidden behind the black-and-white monk robes he wore, as well as his headpiece. A thousand-year-old corpse had no reason to look as good as it did. But it had been preserved and mummified, and even with Sukuna's malovent aura absent, the presence of the corpse alone was almost an ache at the root of his gums.
Sukuna looked as big as he remembered, even when seated with crossed legs. His four arms were present and folded across his body. The extra set of eyes were left as gaping holes in his face, and his lips were gone, revealing teeth sharpened by the bones of others.
"Tengen preserved him," Uraume said. She had not moved from her spot, worry, fear, and reverence fighting for dominance.
"There is power in his body," Kenjaku replied to her, then moved into the chamber, his fingers trailing Sukuna's face. "Even dead. Even without his soul in residence. The barrier here is anchored to that power, partially at least. My old friend found it pragmatic." He walked around the body before coming to a stop in front of it, then he crouched.
"People tend to forget that about her, but she is not above doing... unheard of things, or things considered taboo by the rest of the sorcerers of this age."
Uraume finally moved closer, her steps halting as she looked at the body she had served in life. She came to a stop beside him and followed his gaze to Sukuna's hands.
"His fingers," she said.
"Are missing. Yes." Kenjaku stood. "Let's get this over with." Kenjaku reached a hand out to the side, and a black portal came to life, swirling beside him, and out of the portal came the head of a dog, super-large in size, and it swallowed Sukuna's corpse in a single bite.
"We've a Calamity to resurrect."
__
The Tokyo subway tunnels had changed since the Shibuya incident. Some of them had been cleaned up, but the release of curses meant they were still no-go areas, and the deeper one went, the deeper into the station, places where light did not reach. That was where the strongest monsters resided, but these monsters were not curses.
Kenjaku and Uraume slipped past them till they got to where they were headed. They heard it before they saw it, a low organic sound at the threshold of perception.
Bhadump.
It was a heartbeat. The further they walked into the depths of the tunnel, the louder it got, till finally there was a change in the air, a meaty smell. It was not unpleasant, but it was not pleasant either, especially in the damp air of the subway tunnels. They stopped at the entrance of a particular tunnel.
Flesh had grown over the tunnel opening, the same flesh that covered every surface of the room beyond, walls and ceiling and floor all continuous, all the same red, meaty tissue that pulsed with the slow rhythm of something alive. Hands grew at random spots, empty fingers grasping, as did legs, eyes that saw without blinking, and vestigial organs that worked every so often.
The air was charged with cursed energy, making it clear what the room was... a sort of proto-open domain. It seemed like Mahito had learned something from Sukuna's clash with the Shikigami after all.
The grotesque heart in the middle of the chamber stilled for a moment before it began to beat once more and Kenjaku stared at it. It was not quite a heart, in truth. It was somewhere between a heart, a chrysalis, and a cocoon, and it hung from the roof like a womb. Mahito was aware of them.
They came to a stop at the edge.
Kenjaku opened a portal beside him, and the dog spat out Sukuna's mummified body. Before the body even hit the ground, the meaty flesh around the ground instantly shriveled, twisting and moving like a worm that had salt poured on it. Sukuna's body landed on the ground, surrounded by bunched-up red fleshy tissue, too afraid to touch the body.
The cocoon pulsed. Anger? Fear? Sukuna's trauma ran deep; it seemed, even in this half-aware state, Mahito was terrified of the King of Curses.
"Mahito," Kenjaku called out, a soft smile growing on his face, knowing the cursed spirit could hear him.
"I have a task for you. This is Sukuna's true body." He gestured to the body on the floor.
The meaty flesh around the desiccated corpse twisted further in its bid to give the body more distance.
"...and his soul is not in it, at least not enough of it is present to matter. You understand what that means."
The heart-shaped womb beat once more. Kenjaku continued.
"It means he will not kill you for touching it," Kenjaku said pleasantly. "So I want you to reanimate it."
Another pause.
"How is he going to do it? If Sukuna's soul is not present, does that not mean Mahito's technique would be useless on it?" Uraume finally asked the question he knew had been on her mind since. One that even Mahito seemed to share because he pulsed once.
Kenjaku smiled as he smoothed out a wrinkle from his robe; he was always ready to teach.
"As I'm sure you know, the argument remains what comes first. The soul or the body. Mahito here theorizes that the soul comes before the body, and the body molds itself to match the soul. However, I believe the body is the soul, which explains how I inherit the memories of whatever host I use despite the lack of a brain. It also explains Geto's rare ability to influence my body, as shown when we met Gojo Satoru for the first time."
Kenjaku turned to face his willing students with a smile, as he indulged in one of the few things he enjoyed.
"Which brings us to Sukuna. The King of Curses may have split his soul into twenty parts; however, they're not necessarily equal. His body still holds enough soul information to count as a soul, which is why it still holds power." His lecture done, he smiled at his students. "Any other questions?"
Uraume shook her head, and Mahito was incapable of speech, so Kenjaku clapped. "Good, so you can begin now."
The flesh that had pushed away began to move once more, carefully, till a hand formed over it, and reached out to touch the body. Another heartbeat later, and the change started.
Kenjaku enjoyed watching Mahito work ever since he found the cursed spirit. There was a beauty in how he twisted the soul to change the body. Kenjaku had considered the possibility of this plan not working. But he was sure of his theory. Before Mahito's birth, he had been the most familiar with the workings of the soul. He had been the one to teach Sukuna how to divide his soul and turn it into Cursed objects.
Uraume stood beside him and watched as the body changed, twisting and reforming. Atrophied muscles swelled with power and vitality, desiccated skin gained a new glow, brittle bones strengthened and hardened, pink hair sprouted from a shaven and bare head, until finally a four-armed giant lay still on the ground. It was Sukuna as he had been at the beginning of what the world had come to know him for, the Heian Era, except for the absent fingers.
Bhadump.
One final surge of cursed energy later, and the heart in the body beat to match Mahito's womb, and finally, the body let out its first breath.
Kenjaku looked at the empty vessel for a long moment, until Uraume drew his attention by dropping to her feet in subservience at the sight of the true form of her incarnated lord once more.
Kenjaku shook his head at the sight of her before returning his gaze to Sukuna's revived body. An empty vessel waiting to be filled.
"Now all we need to do is find Itadori Yuji."
A/N: Kenjaku's whole lesson on the soul is actually canon. It was a conversation between him and Mahito where he argued against Mahito's theory that a soul came before the body.