Self-Sacrificing Bodhisattva

Cursed energy burned in the meeting room like two different flames.

Ren's power crushed Number One's in both quantity and quality. Anyone with eyes could see it. This was not a duel between equals. It was closer to a cat watching a mouse run, not killing it yet because the chase had become interesting.

"Do I really have to go this far?"

Sweat covered Number One's back.

This was the center of Jujutsu Headquarters. The symbolic heart of the institution that claimed to govern the jujutsu world. Yet Ren had walked in with Toji and Nanami as if rules had no weight before him at all.

If he fought Ren directly, he would die.

That thought had appeared the moment Ren entered. The man who had once acted as Number One with arrogance now found himself cornered in his own highest chamber.

"What are you waiting for, human?"

The sealed curse's voice echoed in his mind.

"Accept my gift, and you may have a chance to kill him. This is your only chance. Ren Zenin has already exceeded the limits of what you can imagine. Unless those old ghosts in human society are willing to act, you will die today."

The voice remained clean and calm. There was no seductive sweetness, no obvious lure. Every word sounded sincere.

That sincerity was the strangest part.

Number One had pursued authority and power for most of his life. He had distrusted everyone because distrust kept people alive in his position. Yet this voice, a cursed spirit's voice, somehow made him feel a long-forgotten trace of trust.

"Do I really..."

He muttered to himself.

Ren watched him with faint amusement, as if he had found a new toy.

The pale eyes narrowed. One finger lifted slightly.

The Sovereign Wind Array turned beneath Ren's feet.

Time, space, direction, fortune, misfortune, all of it rippled inside the room. Blue light linked around him like threads of a star field. It made him look less like a sorcerer standing in a meeting room and more like the center of a private world.

"Mr. Chairman," Ren said, "you should listen to him."

Number One froze.

The curse sealed inside the relic also fell silent.

Its power should have crossed dimensions and entered Number One's mind directly. No matter how sharp a sorcerer's cursed energy perception was, they should not have been able to know it was speaking.

Ren raised three fingers.

"Three seconds."

His voice lost its laziness.

"You have three seconds to decide whether to accept that thing's power. That is all the patience I have."

"Three."

Number One's throat tightened.

"Two."

"Choose!" the curse said. "Wait longer, and it will be too late."

"I accept your power!" Number One shouted. "Whatever the price is, I accept it!"

"One."

Ren disappeared.

Space rippled, and his body emerged from the void. Starlight seemed to gather in his hand.

"Heaven Position - Star River."

In the space of a breath, radiance flooded the chamber. The strike carried a sense of the world overturning, a river of stars flowing backward under Ren's fist.

Number One was swallowed by the light.

The blast tore through the meeting room. Ren landed without a smile, interest growing in his eyes. Beneath that star river, something was breaking through.

A thread of blue energy slipped out.

It did not explode. It did not roar.

It simply began to eat the star river.

The blue light consumed the attack piece by piece until Number One's figure appeared again.

His body had changed.

The short elder grew taller. Yellowed skin fell away like dry mud, revealing smooth flesh beneath. Silver hair darkened until it looked ink-black. A man in his seventies or eighties had become a young man in his early twenties.

His muddy eyes turned clear and black and white, like those of a newborn.

Ren opened his arms slightly.

"Welcome back to the world."

His eyes carried a rare trace of caution. His tone, however, remained loose.

"How does it feel to return after a thousand years?"

"Cursed spirit."

Number One, or the thing inside Number One, twisted his neck and looked out the window with distant eyes.

"To be accurate," he said, "fifteen hundred years."

His voice had changed completely. It was calm and upright, enough to make listeners feel at peace against their will.

"A full fifteen hundred years."

He sat down cross-legged on the floor and studied Ren. Blue energy moved at the corners of his eyes.

"Did you exorcise Falsehood and Yadha?"

"Strictly speaking, Yadha ate Falsehood," Ren said. "If not for the binding vow I set on myself, I could let you meet Yadha too."

To raise Sovereign Wind Array's progress, Ren had placed another restriction on himself: he would rely on Sovereign Wind Array and avoid using his other Absolute Techniques unless necessary.

"So he escaped Falsehood's shadow and became his complete self." The bodhisattva-like curse gave a quiet sigh. "A pity. Even death has an end before time."

Then he looked at Ren with meaning.

"As for binding vows, you carry more than one."

Ren's smile thinned.

"Bearing so many vows and still remaining this strong. In my era, you would have been qualified to be called Crowned Jade."

"Crowned Jade?" Ren asked. "What's that supposed to be?"

The curse lifted a finger. Blue cursed energy gathered at its tip, changing from illusion into substance. A piece of blue-green jade appeared between its fingers.

"Jade was once the symbol of authority. Among jade, the crowned piece stood above the rest. In the earliest ruling classes, that title marked those who stood above ordinary power."

The jade cracked in his hand.

"The strongest sorcerers of those ancient days were sometimes called Crowned Jade."

Powder slipped between his fingers.

"I learned something new," Ren said.

The Sovereign Wind Array turned slowly. In this room, time and space already lay inside his calculation.

"Your cursed technique is dangerous," the curse said. "Too dangerous for this world. Time and space should be beyond human reach. Yet your technique twists both."

He stood.

An ancient aura spread from his body.

Ren felt as if a pair of eyes were staring at him from beyond an immeasurable distance. Not across a room. Across time.

"Time," Ren said softly.

The rules of the Sovereign Wind Array trembled.

This curse controlled time.

Death represented the end. Falsehood represented deception. Yadha had represented the fear of death and self-erasure. Those were fears tied to human emotion.

Time was different.

People hated time without always knowing they hated it. They hated it when it passed too slowly, when it passed too quickly, when it took people away, when it refused to stop, when it left them with regret. Every small complaint, every prayer for an era to end, every grief over years lost, flowed toward the same invisible rule.

Time belonged to no one.

Ren remembered scattered records he had read while researching old spirits and the origin of Gates.

During an old age of war, a dying general had received a silent bodhisattva who descended from nowhere. The general lived. War continued. Wherever the bodhisattva passed, bones regained flesh and men refused death. People called it a god and built statues for it. They said its believers did not die.

"Self-Sacrificing Bodhisattva."

Light flashed in Ren's eyes.

The curse's merciful face remained unchanged.

"Fifteen hundred years ago, some people called me that. Call me what you like. Bodhisattva, Buddha, god. Those labels are meaningless."

"So this body is yours now?"

Ren stretched as if his patience had finally run out.

The array moved under his toe.

Space rippled.

"Mind-Wandering Spirit."

His body vanished and appeared before Number One in the same instant. His fist rose, power twisting the air around it. Black lightning cracked through the void.

"I promised him," the curse said evenly, raising one hand. "After you die, his body will return to him."

Their fists collided.

The force shook the room. Cracks spread through the walls. For the first time in a long while, Ren felt something meet him head-on.

His lazy expression disappeared.

Excitement replaced it.

He had been bored for too long.

Divine Forge, Six Vaults Devourer, Spirit Dominion, Sovereign Wind Array. With four Absolute Techniques, he had grown so strong that even Death on Curse Island had struggled to stir real battle intent in him.

Ten years from now, perhaps a fully matured Satoru Gojo could make him feel challenged again. The current Gojo, even with power that touched nothingness, was still not enough.

Ren had thought boredom would continue.

Then this fist arrived.

He had found something amusing.

"Game time," Ren said, a smile drawing across his face.

His pale eyes sharpened.

"Try to entertain me, god."

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