Higashi-Tsu Port District, a battlefield of ruins.
Kashimo Hajime flicked his wrist, thick blood dripping from his fingertips.
The player at his feet lay silent, their twisted body embedded in the cracked asphalt.
"Tch," he muttered, his eyes brimming with bored irritation. "So dull."
He looked up at the grim sky, shrouded by the Dead End Reincarnation Barrier, his voice tinged with a hungry edge. "Nissha… where the hell are you hiding? Come out and fight me already!"
The moment his words faded—
Buzz—!!! A spine-chilling tremor, unlike anything he'd ever felt, swept through all of Higashi-Tsu!
It was as if countless taut strings were plucked at once, letting out a high-pitched wail!
Then came a sharp, ear-piercing—
Crack! Crack-crack-crack!
The sound of a massive glass dome on the verge of shattering! So intense it could stop a heart!
Kashimo's head snapped up, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints.
The translucent barrier wall, glowing with an ominous shimmer, was suddenly covered in countless blinding blue-white cracks!
Each one radiated a cold, pure aura of destruction!
They were countless tiny but deadly slashes of light, appearing out of nowhere, spreading and crisscrossing like a spiderweb across the entire sky!
"What the hell is that?!" Kashimo's muscles tensed, his wild cursed energy exploding instinctively, lightning crackling around him!
A never-before-felt sense of danger hit him like a bucket of ice water!
The next second, his gaze locked onto the center of the densest cracks in the sky.
A figure hovered there.
White hair danced wildly in the chaotic energy currents, black clothes flapping in the wind.
In his right hand, he casually held… something.
No, someone!
A young man in tattered monk robes, his limbs severed at the roots, struggling to regenerate with reverse cursed technique, covered in blood and utterly pathetic!
Kashimo's eyes widened to saucers.
His mouth fell open slightly. He knew that face!
"Kenjaku?!" The mastermind behind a thousand-year conspiracy, who toyed with the entire jujutsu world, someone even Kashimo found unfathomable—Kenjaku?!
And now he was being held up like a torn rag, dangling like garbage?!
The sheer shock of the scene left Kashimo's mind blank for a moment.
He stared at the white-haired young man's cold, indifferent profile in the sky, his raging battle lust replaced by overwhelming awe and doubt.
Who the hell… was this guy?!
Gaio glanced at the blue-white cracks still lingering on the sky. The traces of his blade gleamed like frozen lightning, flickering on the dim barrier wall.
"Nero, you can't destroy this barrier," Kenjaku rasped, blood foaming at his mouth, his ruined throat making his voice sound like a broken bellows. "This barrier is the product of countless years of preparation. Even if you destroy the Higashi-Tsu section, the other barriers will repair it."
He suddenly let out a wheezing laugh, the stumps of his limbs twitching with pale pink sprouts of flesh. "You think this will—"
"Really?" Gaio tilted his head, his white hair falling over his eyes. "Then I'll just destroy all ten of your 'carefully prepared' barrier points at once."
Kenjaku's laughter stopped dead, his regenerating eyeball bulging.
Ten? How did he know the exact number? His intel had shown Nero barely cared about the jujutsu world!
Before he could process it, Gaio's figure blurred into a faint black streak.
The next second, on the rooftop of Higashi-Tsu's tallest hotel, the air warped slightly.
Gaio appeared, tossing Kenjaku aside with a dull thud.
"Guh—!" Kenjaku hit the ground, blood surging, the half-inch stubs of his regenerating fingers bursting apart.
Gaio didn't even glance at him, his left hand reaching out to the side.
Buzz—!
A faint metallic scrape sounded as a katana with a black-wrapped hilt materialized in his hand.
The hilt was a plain matte steel, no cursed seals or glow, the scabbard just simple black wood.
Gaio slid the Enma Blade onto his waist, the blade trembling slightly against his black clothes as if it belonged there. He gripped the hilt, his knuckles tapping lightly on the scabbard.
Clink—
The blade slid half an inch out, and an invisible weight crashed down!
It wasn't a flood of cursed energy but a collapsing gravity, like the heavens flipping upside down, laced with a sharp metallic edge that swept through the entire port district.
Kenjaku's back slammed against the rooftop, cold sweat soaking his tattered robes.
This power was alien—no sickly sweet cursed energy, just a raw, relentless force that crushed everything, more suffocating than the Enma Blade's deathly stillness.
In the ruins, a sorcerer hiding behind a shipping container collapsed to their knees, hands gripping the ground to keep from falling flat.
A special-grade cursed spirit in a dark corner whimpered in pain, its body curling under the pressure.
The Dead End Reincarnation players went pale, some gritting their teeth to stand, but their knees shook uncontrollably, their cursed energy uselessly churning inside them.
"What… what is this?" Kenjaku's voice trembled like a dying candle, his regenerating flesh starting to crack again.
Gaio's hand didn't stop, slowly drawing the blade further.
The silver blade reflected his half-lowered gaze, the oppressive force stretching out like a tightening net.
In the distance, Kashimo charged forward with lightning, only to freeze mid-step, the electricity in his hands crackling wildly, his feet nailed to the ground.
Thump, thump, thump—
Was it someone's heartbeat echoing in the empty ruins, or countless hearts forced to beat in sync under this power?
Gaio looked at Kenjaku's terrified expression, a cold smirk tugging at his lips.
The thrill of toying with his prey made his grip on the hilt loosen slightly—like a cat savoring a mouse's struggle before the kill.
Clink—clang!
The final half-inch of the blade left the scabbard, and the crushing pressure spiked!
The fully revealed blade wasn't dazzling as expected—it looked like junkyard scrap.
The blade was covered in red veins, like dried blood crusted on it, yet faintly glowing with heat.
Kenjaku's pupils shrank, his breath catching.
This? How could this junky blade carry that kind of pressure?
Gaio ignored his shock, flipping the hilt so the blade pointed downward, raising it to his lips.
"Flowing Blade Like Fire," he said lowly, as if speaking to an old friend, "if he moves, burn him to ash."
With a flick of his wrist—
Shunk—!
The red blade sliced through the air, piercing Kenjaku's chest and abdomen, the hilt slamming into the rooftop, pinning him in place!
The cursed energy Kenjaku tried to muster collapsed instantly. Before the pain hit, a searing heat exploded through the blade!
The red veins glowed like red-hot irons branding his organs, leaving him unable to scream, only gasping hoarsely.
The blade trembled slightly, as if answering Gaio's command, the red veins leaking a faint red heatwave, forming a translucent ring of fire around Kenjaku.
Gaio brushed off nonexistent dust from his hands and walked to the edge of the rooftop.
Kenjaku, pinned to the ground, realized his cursed energy was trapped by the blade. Forget regenerating—he couldn't even move a finger without feeling like his veins would burn.
"Kenjaku, weren't you so proud of your thousand-year Dead End Reincarnation plan?"
Gaio stood at the rooftop's edge, his black clothes rustling in the high wind.
He glanced back, his white hair framing eyes cold as ice. "I'll show you that all your schemes are nothing in the face of true power."
Before his words settled, his figure faded into a gray wisp, like smoke carried off by the wind, vanishing from the rooftop.
Kenjaku's eyes darted to where Gaio disappeared—a chance!
He tried to channel cursed energy to break free, but the Flowing Blade Like Fire hummed—
"Arghhh—!"
Kenjaku arched in agony, a scream tearing from his throat!
The blade's red veins blazed, like magma pouring into his veins, his organs wrapped in invisible flames, his soul burning in a furnace!
He collapsed, twitching, veins bulging on his forehead, too weak to even use reverse cursed technique to heal.
The flames seemed alive, flaring the moment he thought of escape, making even thinking a torment.
He gave up.
Kenjaku lay limp, his gaze drifting to the sky.
The blue-white blade marks on the barrier wall lingered, like unhealed wounds on the gray sky. Gaio's words echoed in his mind, his heart pierced again by that fiery blade—
True power?
Could his thousand years of scheming really fall to this monster?
Atop a distant ruin, Kashimo's lightning flickered uneasily, crackling.
He stared at the figure writhing in invisible flames on the rooftop, his wild battle lust drowned by an unprecedented chill.
The aura from that junky blade in Kenjaku's body made his instincts scream—
Untouchable! Unbeatable! A force that burns everything to nothing!
The searing pain tore at Kenjaku's every nerve, reverse cursed technique a futile struggle.
Kenjaku lay on the molten concrete, his regenerating flesh stilled, dead silent. His hollow eyes stared at the sky, his mind churning with fragments of a thousand years—
Wearing different faces, pulling strings behind the curtain;
Toying with the jujutsu world, countless pawns falling in his designed game;
A meticulously woven web, even someone as untamed as Sukuna a planned piece…
A thousand years of flawless schemes, everything under control!
Yet now, nailed to scorching ground by a blade reeking of scrapyard iron, discarded like trash.
His thousand-year confidence, shattered like a clay pot by two blades drawn by a "star"!
"Ha…"
A hoarse, bitter laugh scraped from his throat, laced with blood and despair.
Before the sound faded—
Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish—!!!
The blue-white blade marks crisscrossing the Dead End Reincarnation barrier erupted in blinding light!
The beams, like countless lit lasers, illuminated the Higashi-Tsu ruins so brightly no one could keep their eyes open!
Each crack blazed and hummed, a soul-piercing slicing sound bursting forth!
Crack! Crack-crack—BOOM!!!
A terrifying roar, like the pillars of heaven being crushed by raw force!
A scream, like billions of glass panes shattered at supersonic speed!
The massive barrier wall covering the sky, under the frantic glow of countless light marks, wailed like a glass dome smashed by a giant hammer, collapsing!
Countless jagged, translucent barrier fragments, wrapped in piercing whistles, crashed down like doomsday meteors!
"No… impossible!!!"
Kenjaku's hollow eyes bulged, nearly popping from their sockets!
His bloodshot gaze locked on the collapsing sky wall, his throat rasping like a dying beast, each word dripping with blood: "All ten barriers at once…?! It's only been minutes!!! How could it be this fast?!!!"
His final trump card, the Dead End Reincarnation core barrier network, built over countless years, crumbled into falling wreckage in less than three minutes after that guy's casual words!