Chapter 1: Mangekyo Sharingan
Sticky, cold, with a sweet, rotten smell, like a shroud soaked in foul blood, it suddenly slapped Toho Hiroshi's face just as he regained consciousness.
The feeling of suffocation didn't come from physical obstruction, but from something deeper, more nauseating, aggressively drilling into every one of his pores.
He gasped, his lungs burning in protest.
The blurry double vision in front of him swayed wildly, and the moment it focused, Toho Hiroshi's pupils constricted, his stomach churning.
What was that thing?
A writhing, expanding mass of flesh, utterly incomprehensible by common sense.
Its surface was covered with crooked, twisted, constantly opening and closing human faces, each screaming silently, as pus-yellow mucus continuously oozed, stretched, and dripped from hollow eye sockets and torn mouths.
Countless limb-like, purple-black tentacles, covered in tumors and scabs, extended from the flesh mass, wildly lashing the dilapidated concrete walls around them, scraping out a grating, ear-splitting sound.
Ugly.
An ugliness beyond words.
It was the kind of extreme hideousness that, with just one glance, would make one's reason scream and flee, and one's stomach completely rebel.
The dual assault on his vision and smell left Toho Hiroshi's mind blank.
Amidst this intense physiological revulsion and dizziness, a burning sensation, a torrent of heat seemingly from the deepest part of his bloodline, erupted without warning from deep within his eyes.
Excruciating pain!
It was as if someone had brutally plunged a red-hot branding iron into his eye sockets, savagely stirring it around!
"Ugh ah—!"
Toho Hiroshi let out an uncontrollable groan of pain, clutching his eyes violently, his body curling up.
Through his fingers, he felt his eyeballs beneath his skin throbbing and deforming wildly, a terrifying power breaking free, asserting its existence.
The burning pain came fiercely and left quickly.
After a few breaths, the pain receded like a tide, replaced by an unprecedented clarity and coolness.
Every detail within his field of vision was crystal clear, even capturing tiny dust motes floating in the air, and the slightest twitch of every human face on that grotesque Cursed Spirit, every trail of mucus.
A sense of absolute control spontaneously arose.
He slowly lowered his hands and blinked.
The world, in his eyes, was already different.
He didn't even need a mirror to "perceive" the strange and powerful six-pointed star pattern that had appeared in his eyes—the Mangekyo Sharingan.
Fragments of unfamiliar memories, along with the power of these eyes, flooded his mind.
Amaterasu, Kagutsuchi, Kamui, Tsukuyomi... The ecstasy lasted only a second.
Because he saw a slimy, foul-smelling tentacle tearing through the air, bringing with it a nauseating stench, smashing down towards his head, its shadow instantly engulfing him.
He couldn't dodge it! It was too fast!
The chill of death choked him even before the Cursed Spirit's stench.
Without even a moment to think, almost by the body's instinct in the face of a fatal threat, those newly awakened eyes locked onto the incoming tentacle.
The focal point of his vision suddenly became scorching hot and distorted.
Whoosh—
A void-like, pitch-black flame, seemingly capable of devouring all light, ignited out of thin air at the tip of that monstrous tentacle.
Silent, yet utterly overbearing.
There was no burning process, no signs of gradual charring or carbonization.
The moment it was touched by the black flame, the Cursed Energy, flesh, and even some more fundamental existence that made up the tentacle were directly obliterated, annihilated.
Hiss!
The front end of the tentacle vanished completely, like a pencil mark erased by an eraser.
The remaining part seemed to suffer extreme pain, twitching violently, shrinking, and thrashing wildly, yet unable to shake off the persistent black flame.
The flame continued to spread upwards, steadfastly reducing everything it touched to nothingness.
The Cursed Spirit's massive, mountain-like body, composed of countless human faces, trembled violently, all faces contorting simultaneously, emitting a sharp, soul-piercing shriek that surpassed the limits of human hearing.
Toho Hiroshi knelt on the ground, gasping heavily, a faint burning pain and emptiness emanating from his eye sockets.
This is Amaterasu?
He looked up, his eyes with their strange, slowly rotating patterns gazing at the grotesque existence silently wailing, gradually disintegrating and annihilating in the pitch-black flames...
"Hey, Geto. It's just a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit. I'm enough by myself, why did you come along?"
A flippant, slightly impatient young voice sounded at the entrance of the abandoned building.
The words abruptly stopped.
Two young figures in black Jujutsu High uniforms appeared at the end of the dilapidated corridor.
The white-haired young man in front was extremely tall, with small round sunglasses perched on his nose, his mouth habitually downturned, wearing an expression of "I'm invincible and very bored."
The black-haired young man behind him had a strange topknot and a prominent fringe over his forehead, looking more composed.
They had tracked the lingering Cursed Energy traces and the brief, yet unusually intense energy fluctuation.
The anticipated scene of ordinary humans struggling or already dead did not appear.
There were no intense sounds of fighting, no desperate screams.
Only silence.
A silence that was almost eerie.
And an indescribable aura of destruction, as if everything was about to be incinerated.
Gojo Satoru's nonchalant expression instantly vanished, his brows furrowing slightly beneath his sunglasses.
Geto Suguru, beside him, also stopped, narrowing his eyes slightly.
In front of them, in the center of the spacious ruined hall.
A black-haired young man, who also appeared young, knelt on the ground, his back looking a bit thin, breathing heavily with his head bowed.
And in front of that black-haired young man, a massive Cursed Spirit with twisted and ferocious Cursed Energy, at least rated as a Grade 1, was enveloped by a pitch-black flame they had never seen before.
The flame burned silently, yet emitted a terrifying, heart-pounding energy.
The Cursed Spirit's colossal body, in that black flame, vanished rapidly, piece by piece, like butter melting in heat; it wasn't carbonization, nor fragmentation, but the most complete annihilation.
Even its remnants were being burned away.
In just a few breaths, that powerful Grade 1 Cursed Spirit was completely reduced to nothingness in the black flame, leaving not a single trace, as if it had never existed.
Only the lingering aura of destruction in the air proved everything that had just happened.
Gojo Satoru's playful cynicism completely disappeared. He suddenly raised a hand and hooked his small sunglasses, which had slid to the tip of his nose, directly off with one finger, revealing a pair of ice-blue eyes, as if containing endless glaciers and sky.
His Rikugan operated efficiently, frantically capturing and analyzing every trace of residual information flow in the air.
He stared intently at the black-haired young man who slowly stood up and turned around.
His gaze immediately met those eyes.
Those were by no means eyes that ordinary people could possess.
Upon a deep crimson base, a strange, symmetrical, slowly rotating black pattern was outlined.
Magnificent, mysterious, yet exuding an ominous and extremely powerful oppressive feeling.
"Wow."
Gojo Satoru let out a short sound, filled with pure surprise and curiosity, "Those eyes are interesting."