The afternoon sunlight lazily spread across the abandoned lot.
The building’s shadow cut a sharp boundary through the light, leaving one half bright and the other dark.
While waiting for Nobara and Yuji to finish their assessment, Gojo and the other two found somewhere to sit and quietly wait.
They gave the only relatively comfortable stone bench to the injured Megumi.
Gojo sat directly on the slightly dirty ground without the slightest concern.
With Limitless protecting him, his clothes obviously wouldn’t get dirty anyway, so he had nothing to worry about.
Jin crouched on top of a nearby wall with a cigarette in his mouth.
One leg was bent with his foot planted on the wall, while the other hung down.
He didn’t have Limitless and had no interest in sitting on the ground.
At least the top of the wall was somewhat cleaner.
Gojo raised his head and looked up at him with a slight smile.
“Nanami told me about your previous mission.
You handled it beautifully.”
Jin took the cigarette from his lips and exhaled a cloud of white smoke.
The smoke dispersed in the air, translucent beneath the sunlight.
“It was all right.
Compared to dealing with ugly, stupid cursed spirits, dealing with curse users is a lot better.”
The corner of his mouth twitched upward as he raised his golden eyes toward the clear distant sky.
“At least they look presentable.
You don’t have to see so many disgusting things.”
Jin lifted the hand holding the cigarette.
Through the gaps between his fingers, he looked at the sky, which appeared slightly dim beneath the veil of smoke.
“It’s still comparing two cesspits, but the slightly cleaner one is always easier on the mood.”
Amused by the analogy, Gojo’s shoulders shook as he laughed.
“Hahaha.
That’s certainly an unusual way of looking at it.”
“A lot of people would rather fight a high-grade cursed spirit than fight a curse user.”
“The difference in intelligence between the two is huge, and the risk of dying increases several times over.”
Megumi suddenly paused upon hearing that.
He looked up at Gojo with a slight frown.
“Wait.
The assessment mission you gave Jin before was to deal with curse users?”
Gojo turned toward him.
Beneath the black blindfold, the upward curve of his eyebrows was faintly visible.
“Yes.
And on his very first mission, he killed a Grade 1 curse user!”
Megumi’s gaze slowly shifted toward Jin and remained on him for two seconds, surprise appearing in his eyes.
A Grade 1 curse user was by no means a nobody, even within the entire jujutsu world.
Jin finished the last drag of his cigarette and crushed the butt out between his fingers, his voice casual.
“It doesn’t really matter.
As long as I don’t voluntarily cancel elementalization, neither cursed spirits nor humans can hurt me.”
Instead of widening, the smile on Gojo’s face faded slightly.
He raised one hand and pressed a finger against the edge of his forehead, as though recalling something from long ago.
“Jujutsu isn’t that simple.”
Gojo’s voice dropped half a tone, carrying a rare seriousness.
“No technique is omnipotent.
Don’t get too full of yourself.”
He lowered his hand and looked at his open palm.
“You’ll suffer badly if you do.
I know that from personal experience.”
Jin knew exactly what Gojo was referring to.
In fact, he’d said what he did specifically to steer the conversation toward this topic.
“Even Limitless can be bypassed?”
Gojo leaned back against the wall and lightly nodded.
“There are all kinds of cursed tools in this world.
Some of them possess the ability to nullify cursed techniques.”
He raised one finger.
“That’s the first method.”
Then Gojo raised a second finger.
“As for the conventional jujutsu method of dealing with supposedly ‘invincible’ abilities like Limitless and your elementalization, there’s another way.”
“By consuming a massive amount of cursed energy, you project your innate technique into reality and use barrier techniques to form a clearly defined boundary, creating a sealed space that belongs entirely to you.”
He opened his palm, then closed it again.
“You imbue that space with your technique and gain a guaranteed-hit, guaranteed-kill effect.”
“That is the pinnacle of jujutsu—Domain Expansion.”
Megumi quietly added,
“Sorcerers or cursed spirits capable of that are considered Special Grade.”
Jin fell silent for a moment, as though digesting the information.
Two or three seconds later, he asked,
“So what I’m missing is either Domain Expansion itself, or an ability that lets me fight against domains, right?”
“That’s right.
You’re asking about methods for countering domains, aren’t you?”
Gojo looked up at him, as though he’d seen straight through his thoughts.
“There are three in total: Simple Domain, Falling Blossom Emotion, and Hollow Wicker Basket, which was commonly used by ancient sorcerers.”
“You can think of Simple Domain as an improved version of Hollow Wicker Basket with better performance.
As for Falling Blossom Emotion…”
He paused, the corner of his mouth rising.
“That’s the secret art passed down through the Big Three Sorcerer Families I mentioned earlier.”
Megumi had been listening quietly, but when he heard the words “Falling Blossom Emotion,” his expression clearly changed.
He looked toward Gojo with slightly raised eyebrows and surprise in his voice.
“A secret anti-domain technique of the Big Three Families?
This is the first time I’ve heard of it.”
Gojo shrugged casually.
“That’s normal.
Each of the Big Three Families has a few good things they keep hidden.”
After putting all this information together, Jin suddenly smiled.
He knew how to use that Low-Interest Loan Opportunity now!
Jin lowered his head toward Gojo, afternoon light reflected in his golden eyes.
“If I obtain Falling Blossom Emotion from the Zenin clan, then I can ask you for guidance, right?”
Gojo kept both hands in his pockets.
Hearing that, he tilted his head.
“If you get authorization, of course.”
A faint nostalgic smile appeared on his lips, and his tone became light.
“Come to think of it, I learned it when I was a kid.”
“But after learning Domain Expansion, I hardly ever used it anymore.”
There was a catch to learning New Shadow Style: Simple Domain—the head of the New Shadow Style could drain the user’s lifespan.
Hollow Wicker Basket required maintaining a hand sign with both hands after deploying it, and there were basically no channels through which to learn it at present anyway.
If he didn’t learn New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain, then he’d have to comprehend Simple Domain by himself, which would carry an extremely high learning cost.
Of the three methods for countering domains, Falling Blossom Emotion was actually the best option.
Jin hadn’t originally planned to learn an anti-domain technique this early.
But since his identity apparently had some connection to the Zenin clan…
Maybe he could pay some price in exchange for Falling Blossom Emotion.
As for why he didn’t simply learn it from Gojo?
A secret art as important as Falling Blossom Emotion absolutely came with a Binding Vow forbidding outsiders from teaching it.
Even Gojo couldn’t escape that restriction.
After all, it wasn’t his personal technique.
It belonged to the Gojo clan behind him.
Crash!
The sharp sound of shattering glass cut off the conversation between the three.
Ripples spread across the mottled wall, and the next moment, a massive dark shadow violently burst out of the building.
All three looked upward at the sound.
Megumi immediately stood, raised both hands, and began forming a hand sign.
“I’ll kill it.”
Gojo remained seated on the ground and stopped him.
“Wait.”
This was already the second time Gojo had stopped Megumi today.
This Jailbird Megumi was a little too Western.
No wonder he was the legendary Suicide King—whenever he didn’t know what to do, his first solution was always violence!
Jin had no intention of making a move either.
He simply watched quietly.
According to the way the plot should develop next…
This weak cursed spirit, Grade 3 at best, would soon be killed by Nobara with the Straw Doll Technique.
But after noticing that the cursed spirit’s limbs were completely intact and that there were no missing parts anywhere on its body, Jin frowned slightly.
The cursed spirit waved its four short, thin limbs in midair before gravity caught hold of it and it fell directly toward Jin’s position.