After wrapping up a few things,
Sōjun Minamoto looked over at Riko Amanai.
"Which Barrier do you want to go to?"
"Sendai! I want to go to Sendai!" she answered quickly.
Sōjun Minamoto nodded and told her to stand at the center of the shrine. A ring of light flared beneath her feet, and in the next instant, she appeared back home in Sendai.
Once Riko Amanai was gone, only Sōjun Minamoto remained in the shrine.
He glanced around, then returned to the top of the nine-tiered platform and sat on the stone throne. Propping his chin on one hand, he gazed at the ten surrounding screens—each showing a different Barrier.
One screen stood out slightly more. Riko Amanai's figure appeared on it—it was the Sendai Barrier's monitoring view.
Yuta Okkotsu was there too.
Kenjaku, for reasons unknown, had also entered.
A few powerful ancient sorcerers were active inside as well.
Mahito had been assigned to the Sendai Barrier too.
A true gathering of elites.
Sōjun Minamoto looked away.
He hadn't followed the original plan, and he wasn't the least bit concerned that this new Culling Game would spiral out of control.
It had been a while since the Barriers formed, but no sorcerer had yet reached their limit.
Only two or three Special Grades had emerged.
He had subtly guided them, and they instinctively remained within their original Barriers.
Now wasn't the right time for them to surface. Releasing them one by one into the world would trigger the balance mechanism's counterforce, giving the system time to respond.
More Special Grades were needed. More sorcerers.
Eventually, he'd even create the chance for the Higher-Ups to locate Satoru Gojo and release him...
He stared out at the black sea beyond the sky. The signs were becoming clearer.
Almost there.
...
A few days later, the cursed energy inside the Barriers had grown even thicker. When it hit a certain threshold, the stars across the sky trembled in unison.
From north to south, all the Barriers linked into a single line. The ends of the line connected with Jujutsu High—or more precisely, with the White Bone Tree.
Inside the shrine, Sōjun Minamoto felt it—the spiritual field had formed.
Large patches of stars on the Barriers turned black, flickered twice, then vanished.
In their place, clusters of luminous white stars emerged, maintaining a precarious balance.
Outside the Shrine Domain, the Black Sea had already risen overhead.
Sōjun Minamoto paid it no mind. He stood and stepped into the non-physical world.
A vast blue sea stretched before him—endless, yet to him, it was no more than a shallow pool.
After all, it was part of his own cursed energy and fully under his control.
He looked up. The sky of the non-physical world had changed dramatically.
Most of the once-blank stars were now etched with cursed techniques, dense with texture and depth.
Darkness gathered into a vast expanse, gradually merging with the blue sea below.
Sky and ocean touched, birthing a thick, gray mist.
"—Inhale."
Sōjun Minamoto reached the mountain's peak, the place where sea and sky met.
He drew a deep breath. Wind roared. The gray mist swirled and poured into him.
All the cursed energy nodes within him ignited. His entire body lit up with a radiant glow.
His chest swelled—higher and higher—until it suddenly burst open.
The non-physical world quaked.
From the rupture surged a fog of gray crystal, nearly tangible. It spread out instantly, then quickly condensed into a humanoid shape.
Countless glimmers of light flickered within the foggy form.
The sky pressed down. The sea surged upward.
The gray fog deepened—and the figure turned into a statue of solid gray crystal.
"Hooo————"
The statue unraveled along a single axis, spreading out to fill the sky's summit and the earth's base. It pressed tightly against the edges of the non-physical world, compressing both Cursed Energy and Blessing Energy.
Sōjun Minamoto matched the world's rhythm, synchronizing his breathing with it. The fusion between Cursed Energy and Blessing Energy suddenly accelerated.
More gray mist surged forth, and with it, the pressure intensified.
It spread, thick and choking, enveloping all living beings around it and casting them into a state of stillness.
The world seemed to return to its origin—back to how it had been before Sōjun Minamoto arrived.
He maintained this suspended state as his thoughts crashed together in a flurry.
He wasn't just doing this to hasten the growth of his own strength. It was also a pre-battle self-check—measures taken to prevent future missteps.
His technique, Cursed Energy, body, and even part of his soul, had all originated from the Present World.
Even the techniques and curses he later assimilated had their roots in the Present World.
Plundering them was necessary—weakening the power of the physical world.
But he had to ask himself: would those things still carry the imprint of the Present World? And if so, could they backfire on him?
Though staying in the non-physical world shielded him from the outside, he'd have to return eventually.
And when that time came, he didn't want to regret having ignored what seemed like a small detail.
Techniques are born from the heart, and so they can reflect a person's very nature.
So then—what is perfect control?
It's the absolute desire to dominate what is one's own.
That's why everything that enters the non-physical world must be burned through layers of imprinting—stamped with his own will.
First filtered through humans in the Present World, passed through groups and reversed in turn.
When it comes to curses, those born of humans are always the deepest, stripping power from the heavens and handing it to mankind.
This was a natural reversal—from innate to acquired.
Then came purification through the Ten Great Barriers.
Then initial assimilation by the White Bone Tree.
And finally, absorption by the Star Eye.
He and I became one.
But even that wasn't the end.
Ultimately, perfect control still partly belonged to the heavens. It might sound like Sōjun Minamoto had a persecution complex, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something might go wrong.
So, no amount of caution was too much.
It only cost a little time.
After assimilation through the Star Eye, the final step remained—the Domain.
The starry non-physical world was his Domain.
Within a Domain, techniques are enhanced, their control surpassing perfection itself—erasing any lingering traces of the Present World.
Even if something from the Present once matched that level of perfection, it had only been a matter of mutual influence.
But now, at a level beyond perfection, even that influence had been wholly erased.
By the time of this moment, Sōjun Minamoto had been undergoing purification in the non-physical world for nearly a thousand years.
In the Present World, only seven days had passed.
He had kept his Domain active for a thousand years.
It was absolutely monstrous.
The breathing of the gray mist grew slower, heavier.
The black and blue began to wither.
The gray mist filled the world entirely.
Gradually, the world began to reshape—growing more and more human in form.
Mountains and stones rose like a dense forest, forming intricate links.
The original peaks climbed higher still, as if trying to connect heaven and earth.
Mountains and stones arranged themselves in two opposing rows, forming twelve looping pairs...
The blue sea spread into countless tributaries, flowing through the gray mist.
They trickled and surged, weaving a dense and complex web of veins and branches.
The boundary of the non-physical world slowly contracted, compressing the gray mist tighter and tighter...
Cold. Shuddering.
Sōjun Minamoto opened his eyes.
He was surrounded by pitch darkness.
There was no sense of up or down, no movement, no pain.
No light, no sound, no temperature.
Only his consciousness remained crystal clear.
Nearly two and a half years had passed in the non-physical world.
Seven days in the Present World.
It felt like he'd had a long, dreamless sleep.
But now there was a problem—he couldn't find the Present World.
Or rather, he could. It was just… very far away.
He could sense his clone, and through that, triangulate the Present World's location.
He realized then that the bond between clones was deeper than he'd expected.
He'd known they could sense each other across vast distances, but this was more than that.
Even separated by two entirely different worlds—by infinite distances—they could still feel one another.
He began walking in a single direction through the darkness.
All around him, black lightning deeper than a Black Flash crackled—slamming into him, or maybe he was the one walking into it.
It didn't hurt.
He kept mental track of time, unhurried, placing one steady step after another—drawing closer and closer to the Present World.