Chapter 168 (Patreon)

The world before Sukuna was dyed a searing crimson.

“Over?”

Gojo’s brow furrowed. Something felt wrong.

He accelerated the activation of Red.

“Gojo Satoru, you are strong. But... you have yet to witness the full extent of my power.”

In an instant, Sukuna’s wounds healed.

He crossed the distance between them just before Gojo could unleash Red, appearing directly in front of him.

“Heh.”

“What—?”

Too fast!

Since when could Sukuna move that quickly?

Had he truly been holding back this entire time?

“Relax. I’m only taking back what belongs to me. You have my thanks for bringing it straight to me.”

Sukuna reached through the Infinity and seized his final finger.

“Damn it!”

Gojo immediately adjusted Red’s trajectory and discharged it at point-blank range.

“Too late.”

Without the slightest hesitation, Sukuna swallowed his final finger.

His cursed energy surged.

Sukuna caught Red with one hand. Flesh and blood erupted from his palm and scattered through the air, only to regenerate at once.

Even Red’s destructive force couldn’t keep pace with Sukuna’s Reverse Cursed Technique.

“Tell me, Gojo...”

Sukuna’s smile widened.

“Have you ever seen me at the height of my power?”

Gojo clicked his tongue and shot backward.

Silence.

The entire world seemed to fall still.

Dark clouds gathered above Sukuna, blanketing the sky as the curse feared by the world manifested once more.

Then Sukuna’s body began to change.

A second pair of arms emerged from his torso, while the right side of his face twisted into something hideous and inhuman.

This was Sukuna’s true form.

“Domain Expansion...”

His four hands formed the necessary signs.

“Malevolent Shrine.”

A deep pulse shook the world.

Gojo had already retreated hundreds of meters, yet Sukuna’s Domain swallowed him in an instant.

“You must be joking. I’m eight hundred meters away!”

At full power, Sukuna’s Domain extended across a radius of two kilometers. Every living being within that range would be subjected to tens of thousands of slashes each second.

“Simple Domain!”

Before Gojo could complete the technique, both of his hands were torn apart.

Even so, he managed to deploy Simple Domain at the final moment. Reverse Cursed Technique immediately restored his ruined hands.

“So this is... the true power of the King of Curses.”

Crack.

After holding for only three seconds, fractures began spreading across the Simple Domain.

“Domain Expansion—Unlimited Void!”

The moment Simple Domain shattered, Gojo followed it with Unlimited Void. That seamless transition was the only thing that saved him from being cut apart instantly.

Gojo stared at Sukuna’s overwhelming figure, as imposing as a demon god.

There was no fear in his heart.

Only exhilaration.

“How long has it been...?”

A wild smile appeared on his face.

“Not once since the day I was born have I felt this excited!”

Gojo vanished.

“Sukuna!”

He reappeared directly in front of Sukuna and swept one hand through the air. A crimson wave of repulsive force erupted from him.

Bang!

Caught by the sudden attack, Sukuna was hurled backward. His body crashed into a distant mountain, burying itself deep within the rock.

“The real battle begins now, Gojo Satoru.”

“Dismantle.”

An enormous invisible slash tore open the earth as it raced toward Gojo.

“Excellent!”

The slash struck him head-on and sent him flying.

Even with the Infinity protecting him, a bloody gash appeared across Gojo’s body.

The flat ground below split apart, leaving behind a ravine more than a hundred meters wide. Even the dark clouds overhead were torn apart by the force of the strike.

Several kilometers now separated them, yet neither had left the bounds of Sukuna’s Domain.

Two afterimages invisible to the naked eye collided throughout the sky. Every impact sent another wave of force rolling across the landscape.

“Show me everything you have!”

Sukuna seized Gojo and kicked him away.

A sonic boom erupted as Gojo tore through the air. Had he not used Blue at the final instant to cushion the force, the blow would have left his entire body battered.

He smashed through dozens of stone pillars before finally stopping.

Sukuna followed like a shadow.

He lifted a boulder nearly a hundred meters tall and brought it crashing down.

Gojo shattered the enormous rock with a single punch and burst through the debris, closing the distance between them.

A crimson beam struck Sukuna and hurled him away.

Until now, Gojo had always released Red as a sphere. There had never been any reason to alter its shape. Almost no cursed spirit or cursed technique could survive a direct hit from Red in the first place.

But Sukuna was different.

In his current state, the King of Curses possessed power beyond Gojo’s own.

Gojo would have to alter both the form and activation method of Red in the middle of their battle.

“Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!”

Five colossal masses of stone, each more than a kilometer in diameter, rose behind Gojo. They had been torn from the earth and compressed by Blue’s attractive force.

It almost resembled Chibaku Tensei.

“A meaningless attack.”

Sukuna launched himself from the ground.

With a casual sweep of his hand, invisible slashes cleaved through three of the colossal rocks.

“So you can’t cut through all of them.”

Gojo brought the remaining two down upon Sukuna.

Boom!

The impact alone carried enough force to devastate the surrounding landscape.

At that exact moment, Gojo detonated Blue.

Dozens of invisible slashes spread in every direction, reducing the enormous rocks to fragments and filling the sky with debris.

“Did that make you angry?”

Gojo grinned and formed another Blue in his hand.

Its attraction seized the countless rock fragments surrounding them and dragged them toward Sukuna.

A sharp fragment tore across Sukuna’s cheek.

Sukuna wiped away the blood with one hand. His grin widened until it nearly reached his ears.

“Not bad.”

“It seems my meaningless attack worked rather well.”

Before Gojo could finish speaking, Sukuna vanished.

The shriek of air being torn apart sounded behind him.

“Oh, how frightening.”

Gojo had no time to evade. He could only withstand Sukuna’s slash head-on.

“The game is over. I’ll kill you now.”

“Cleave.”

“Now that is excessive...”

Gojo raised his eyes.

The sky itself was being split apart by an invisible slash. The surrounding air scattered, and the clouds were driven away from its path.

“Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue.”

The invisible slash descended, its pressure alone crushing the surrounding mountains.

“Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.”

Blue and Red converged.

“Hollow Technique: Purple.”

Rumble!

The collision of those two forces gave birth to something entirely new.

A mass of black and white energy expanded rapidly in every direction.

The violent shock wave struck Gojo, and the roar of the raging wind swallowed every other sound.

Yet his entire body remained tense.

Without warning, Sukuna cut straight through the shock wave and charged directly at him.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist!”

Gojo abandoned all restraint.

He raised his cursed energy output to its absolute limit, and the Six Eyes shone with an intensity they had never displayed before.

“I... can see it.”

“You can see it?”

Sukuna paused.

“What exactly can you—”

His eyes narrowed as realization dawned on him.

“You cannot be serious. Gojo Satoru... you can actually see them.”

It was true.

Gojo could now see Sukuna’s slashes—and their forms were perfectly clear to him.

Sukuna casually released several more.

Gojo avoided every one of them with the slightest shifts of his body.

“I already told you.”

Gojo fixed the King of Curses with the unwavering gaze of the Six Eyes.

“Your cursed technique... I can see it.”

The Six Eyes had seen through the slashes of the King of Curses.