Yuki Tsukumo's read on the situation was entirely correct. At the end of the day, Simple Domain was just an emergency stopgap. In the original manga, Yuki had used Simple Domain to counter Kenjaku's Domain Expansion, and within mere seconds, it had been violently stripped away, leaving her defenseless against Kenjaku's sure-hit attack.
But that was Kenjaku!
Tengen himself had explicitly confirmed in the original story that Kenjaku was the only barrier master in the past thousand years who could rival him. Even Satoru Gojo and Ryomen Sukuna were vastly inferior to Kenjaku in that specific discipline.
Kenjaku could shred Yuki's Simple Domain in seconds, but there was no way in hell Yuki was stripping Mahito's Simple Domain that fast!
Mahito laughed loudly. "Long enough!"
Dragging Kirigiri beside him, Mahito charged, his speed exponentially accelerating! He could feel his Cursed Energy Core throbbing violently in his mental landscape, his very breath syncing with its heavy, rhythmic pulse. In this moment, his perception expanded to fill the entire Domain Expansion. Not a single spatial ripple could escape his senses.
He had entered the awakened state of a Black Flash!
Yuki knew exactly how much of a nightmare a Jujutsu Sorcerer became once they hit the zone. And her opponent was the King of Curses, an anomaly unseen in a millennium! Her body drifted backward, light and ethereal as a ghost, but the *Garuda* in her hand fell from the sky with the apocalyptic weight of a world-cleaving broadsword.
Kirigiri possessed the absolute strongest severing capability in the world; even Garuda would be sliced through the moment they clashed. But Garuda didn't give Kirigiri the chance to physically connect. A horrific compression of mass was unleashed alongside the swing, rendering the attack visually indistinguishable from a supreme swordsman firing off a wave of pure sword ki!
Due to the obscene influx of mass, the flying slash acted as a gravity well, violently ripping the surrounding meteors into itself as it flew. The gravity was so intense it began capturing light, turning the flying slash into a void of abyssal black. The atmospheric pressure alone tore open a massive, canyon-like ravine in the earth beneath it as it traveled.
Mid-sprint, Mahito violently snapped his arm up. Kirigiri traced a brutally sharp arc in the air.
*Cleaving Line!*
Kirigiri slammed into the pitch-black flying slash. Mahito felt a jarring recoil, as if he had just struck a solid wall of impenetrable metal. The extreme mass had forcibly solidified the air itself into an unknown substance harder than diamond.
In the original story, Yuki's Virtual Mass was purely offensive—it increased her damage output but didn't grant her enhanced durability. But inside her Domain Expansion, the rules were completely rewritten. Her Virtual Mass could saturate the entirety of creation, behaving exactly like physical, tangible mass.
An attack packing the mass of an entire planet was screaming toward him. This was the true terror of *Star Rage*.
Mahito gripped Kirigiri's hilt with both hands and let out a blood-curdling roar. Driven by his scream, the blade ground forward, forcefully carving its way through the pitch-black slash! A blinding streak of silver ripped out from the darkness as Mahito burst through, riding the momentum of his blade.
Yuki planted her feet and violently swung Garuda again.
Another pitch-black flying slash materialized! But she didn't stop there. Without a fraction of a second's hesitation, she swung again. Three swings! A torrential downpour of black flying slashes materialized, crashing down like a cataclysmic meteor shower.
Mahito briefly glanced at the ground. The floor of the *Sumeru Vajra Karma Wheel* was composed of countless gravitational ripples. These ripples tracked Yuki's movements perfectly, acting like satellites orbiting a planet, constantly shifting to shield and support her.
When the pitch-black flying slashes slammed into the gravitational ripples, there were no deafening explosions. The ripples simply yielded elastically, absorbing the kinetic force and dispersing the impact continuously outward, using the entirety of the barrier to shoulder the burden.
It was eerily silent. It absorbed every ounce of destructive force without a sound.
Mahito instantly understood. This Domain Expansion had been custom-tailored to handle localized, extreme surges in mass. The internal structure was virtually immune to heavy physical trauma, making it arguably the most physically durable Domain Expansion in existence.
It made sense. Only the sturdiest Domain in the world could withstand a slugfest with the biggest stat-check monster in history. Mahito immediately scrapped his backup plan of baiting Yuki into destroying her own barrier from the inside.
Right now, there were only two ways to beat Yuki Tsukumo.
Option One: Wait for the perfect opening, use Kirigiri's *Cleaving Line* to tear a hole in the barrier, and escape. This would force Yuki to drop her Domain, subjecting her to Cursed Technique Burnout. During that window, she wouldn't be able to use *Star Rage*.
He could kill her then.
But that was going to be notoriously difficult. The gravitational ripples on the ground were tethered to her every move, meaning she was likely using them as a seismic radar to track his exact twitches. She had already deduced Kirigiri's ability; there was no way she'd leave him an opening to slip out.
Option Two—
—Bum-rush her. Butcher her face-to-face before his Simple Domain collapsed!
*Was that really a hard choice?*
Mahito threw his head back and laughed maniacally, charging headlong into the meteor shower.
He swung his blade mid-air. Every swing detonated a pitch-black flying slash. He spun violently in the air, Kirigiri forming a localized hurricane of steel that engulfed every incoming projectile.
Yuki's black meteor shower was entirely neutralized by Mahito's blade storm!
Yuki felt a manic thrill igniting in her chest. For the first time, she felt a profound sense of honor in this fight. Battling the King of Curses was violently, purely *fun*. It wasn't fueled by hatred or prejudice—it was the unadulterated ecstasy of a warrior.
She knew the objectively smartest play for the Curse Lord was to bunker down, defend, and use his Tsukumogami to cut a hole in her barrier the moment she overextended. If he committed to that stalling tactic, she would have to wrack her brain to stop him.
The fight would devolve from an explosive brawl into a tedious, tactical war of attrition. Yuki had fully mentally prepared herself for that exact scenario.
But the Lord of Cursed Spirits didn't take the tactical route. He chose a suicidal frontal assault!
Like an unstoppable berserker, there was no hesitation, no retreat in his eyes. He saw only his mortal enemy, locked in a deathmatch.
Yuki felt an almost unbelievable sense of conviction rolling off the Curse Lord. It was stunningly pure. How could she not feel honored fighting an opponent like this? How could her blood not boil?
Yuki's body began to physically heat up. Her Cursed Energy was naturally redlining without her even consciously directing it. Before her brain could even register the command, her body had already finished its final 'warm-up.'
She threw her head back and let out a deafening roar:
"I'm right here, Mahito! BRING! IT! ON!"
A suffocating wave of bloodlust and Cursed Energy saturated every inch of the Domain. Yuki raised both hands high. Suspended between her palms, Garuda began to aggressively rotate. The serpent-like Cursed Tool bit its own tail, forming an Ouroboros. A terrifyingly dense oppressive force violently condensed inwards, forming a pitch-black void at the dead center of Garuda's rotation.
In the original manga, during her deathmatch with Kenjaku, Yuki had eventually realized that after losing the initiative, she couldn't win. So, she removed the limiters on her Cursed Technique, attempting to drag Kenjaku to hell with a suicide attack.
The narration in the manga had described it perfectly:
*[A black hole, possessing both ultra-high density and immense gravity, allows nothing—not even light—to escape. It is said that if the Earth were compressed to the size of a two-centimeter marble, it would create one.]*
*[Whether it be gravity, mass, or time... if you push them to their absolute limits—!]*
A Simulated Black Hole had just materialized at the center of Garuda's Ouroboros ring.
Mahito sprinted across the earth's gravitational ripples. Mid-stride, he lowered Kirigiri to his waist. Unconsciously, his Simple Domain began to shrink.
In the original story, almost everyone who used Simple Domain treated it merely as a temporary shield against Domain Expansions. They had forgotten the true, original purpose of the technique.
The very first time Simple Domain was introduced, it was used by Kyoto's Kasumi Miwa during the Goodwill Event. She stood with her feet apart, the blade at her waist, head bowed toward the hilt. A pulse of Cursed Energy radiated from her, and in her mind's eye, everything outside that 2.25-meter radius was pitch black.
*That* was the most primitive, fundamental form of Simple Domain.
Mahito's limbs were overflowing with Cursed Energy. The hyper-circulation caused his energy to vent aggressively, making it look as though he were cloaked in a blazing aura of blue flame. But the exact microsecond he tucked Kirigiri at his waist, the raging flames vanished. His Cursed Energy transitioned flawlessly from dynamic to static, clinging to his skin with absolute, terrifying precision.
He gripped the hilt, feeling Kirigiri's emotional resonance.
A quiet girl materialized in his mental landscape. She was kneeling beneath a cherry blossom tree, her eyes closed. Countless petals drifted down the wind, settling into her long black hair. She slowly opened her eyes, looked at Mahito, and reached out her hand.
Mahito took it.
Tsumiki Fushiguro had kept her promise. Pressed for time, she had frantically speed-read manga featuring weapon-personification. She started with *Elemental Gelade*, but after a bit of research, pivoted to *Soul Eater*. Eventually, she just stared blankly at Mahito and said:
"Honestly, isn't the Zanpakuto spirit world from *Bleach* perfectly fine?"
Yes, the strongest construction sorcerer in a millennium had given up.
One week simply wasn't enough time. She couldn't fully actualize the experiment of giving a Tsukumogami a physical human form. However, she had provided a crucial piece of advice. If physical personification was impossible, what about mental personification?
It was entirely possible.
It didn't even require diving into a vague "inner sea" of consciousness; there was hard, established Jujutsu theory behind it. The Innate Domain.
This was the concept first introduced by Ryomen Sukuna. It was the deepest recess of a person's mind. Even when Sukuna was reduced to nothing but Cursed Objects, he could still manifest his Innate Domain and aggressively hijack Yuji Itadori's mental landscape.
An ordinary Tsukumogami couldn't possibly possess an Innate Domain. But—Mahito's *Idle Transfiguration* could warp that rule entirely.
It wasn't even that difficult. In truth, he had already cracked the code when he designed his second-generation intelligent Curses through soul modification.
Now, while strictly confined to the mental realm, *Mirokuji Kirigiri* was truly alive. She possessed a human soul's sentience, capable of activating her Cursed Technique autonomously.
Which meant she could also—
—hit a Black Flash.
A lick of black flame violently ignited on Kirigiri's hilt. In the exact same millisecond, black flame erupted from the tip of the blade, racing down the steel.
The world had never witnessed a true, synchronized Fusion Black Flash. A Black Flash was strictly a phenomenon born from the microsecond alignment of a *single* sorcerer's physical strike and Cursed Energy application. No matter how perfectly in sync two fighters were, the best they could achieve was landing independent Black Flashes simultaneously—like Yuji Itadori and Aoi Todo—and even that was a once-in-a-century miracle.
But here, right now, the first Fusion Black Flash in the history of Jujutsu occurred. The Tsukumogami and her wielder were of one mind, their Cursed Energy tethered, triggering the spatial distortion as a single entity!
Mahito abruptly halted. His Simple Domain had compressed to exactly 2.25 meters. The gold standard. Inside Yuki's Domain, a Simple Domain was supposed to be subjected to catastrophic structural pressure, making it violently unstable. Yet, right now, the framework of Mahito's domain was impeccably smooth, melting silently into the fabric of reality.
Mahito had executed the most primordial form of Simple Domain.
A millennium ago, Ashiya Sadatsuna created Simple Domain as the absolute last resort for ordinary sorcerers who could never hope to achieve Domain Expansion. Under those desperate circumstances, the core tenet of Sadatsuna's New Shadow Style was universally understood:
*—With no other choice, push forward without hesitation!*
But right now, Mahito actively overwrote that tenet, stamping his own ideology over it. He whispered to himself:
*—Only with a mind free of distractions can one transcend into the divine.*
High above, Yuki Tsukumo finally hurled the Simulated Black Hole. The entirety of the *Sumeru Vajra Karma Wheel* bowed before the logic-defying mass and density. Yuki shouldn't have used this technique; the pressure was so unimaginably vast that even her own Domain barrier couldn't withstand it.
But she literally couldn't stop herself.
If she wanted to wage an uninhibited, all-out war with Mahito, she had to unleash it! And she fully believed that Mahito wouldn't dodge.
He would face it. He would surpass it. He would break through it. And if he couldn't, he would die. *Come, Mahito! Let me witness it—will you fall here, or will you transcend?!*
The gravitational ripples of the earth finally buckled under the apocalyptic pressure. Countless threads of black distortion erupted from the ground, falling *upward* into the sky like reverse rain, violently drawn into the Simulated Black Hole. The overwhelming pressure was forcing the Domain barrier to cannibalize itself.
Mahito breathed in, then out. His right hand tightened on the hilt.
He closed his eyes. Even with the heavens literally crashing down on him, his mind was as tranquil as a placid sea. His breathing perfectly synchronized with the thrumming of his Cursed Energy Core. The Kirigiri in his hand began to vibrate—not a physical tremor, but the thrum of a soul quickening.
Breath. Cursed Energy. Kirigiri. Absolute resonance.
Mahito drew his blade.
A split second before the swing, Mahito's body had been engulfed in black flames. But the microsecond his arm moved, the flames on his body vanished instantly. Every last drop of Cursed Energy was brutally funneled into Kirigiri's edge. A faint, ghostly black sheen coated the steel.
—*Shinmyoken: Muku-Kushiki*.
The Divine Sword was a legendary technique recorded in the real-world Shinkage-ryu scrolls. The texts claimed this strike reached the realm of gods. *Muku* represented absolute, untainted purity. *Kushiki* represented the void of thought, a state of no-mind.
*Shinmyoken: Muku-Kushiki* was the act of unleashing a divine, transcendent slash from a state of total ego-death.
This slash bypassed time, pierced the mortal realm, crossed the boundary of three thousand crows, and dictated life and death. —It could slaughter a god!
An unprecedented Fusion Black Flash ripped out from Kirigiri's edge. The violent spatial distortion coalesced into a single, pitch-black severing arc. The Simulated Black Hole hung in the air like a void in reality. Suddenly, the oppressive pressure vanished entirely. The cannibalizing Domain, the manic Yuki Tsukumo, and Mahito in his follow-through stance—everything froze.
Dead center of the Simulated Black Hole, a single blade-flash had already passed through.
Yuki was still locked in her throwing posture. She slowly looked down. She was wearing a black crop-top, exposing her midriff. Right across her stomach, a clean, diagonal line of blood spontaneously materialized. If her Cursed Energy hadn't abruptly flatlined, she wouldn't have even noticed she'd been cut.
"I see," Yuki smiled faintly. "I... lost."
The colossal Simulated Black Hole began to collapse inward. The astronomical density, once initiated, couldn't be easily stopped, but Mahito's slash had cleaved it dead-center before it could fully stabilize. It couldn't stop the gravitational pull entirely—matter was still being crushed and sucked in—
But it would never reach critical mass.
With Yuki's Cursed Energy severed, the Fusion Black Flash's space-warping slash obliterated the core of the Simulated Black Hole, forcefully shattering the barrier.
The crimson cosmic void fractured and dissolved like burning paper. A ray of blistering sunlight pierced through the shattered canopy of the Domain. Mahito slowly sheathed his blade. As he stood fully upright and walked forward, the remnants of the Domain Expansion evaporated like a fever dream, revealing the barren desert wastes once more.
Yuki took two steps forward, then suddenly collapsed to her knees. Her Shikigami dropped to the sand.
The slash had struck her abdomen perfectly. That was the exact location of a sorcerer's Cursed Energy Core—the organ responsible for refining Cursed Energy. With it destroyed, she couldn't generate a single drop.
Under normal circumstances, that might not be a death sentence; Reverse Cursed Technique is routed through the brain. As long as the head was intact, Yuki theoretically had the means to heal herself.
But the timing was brutal. She had just dumped every last ounce of her Cursed Energy into forming the Simulated Black Hole. There wasn't a spark of residual energy left in her system. With her Core destroyed, she had zero fuel to jumpstart her RCT. She was completely out of options.
Mahito walked up and stood over her, looking down.
"Well done, Mahito," Yuki praised softly. "You really did walk the ancient path... you shattered my Domain Expansion head-on with a Simple Domain."
A massive geyser of blood abruptly violently erupted from Yuki's waist. Her upper torso slowly slid off her hips, falling backward into the sand, while her legs remained kneeling, frozen like a statue. Blood rapidly soaked the desert floor, spreading like black ink dropped in a clear pond.
*Yuki Tsukumo... is dead?*
Mahito reached out and gently stroked *Mirokuji Kirigiri*. Using his Construction technique, he fabricated a perfectly tailored scabbard for her. The nodachi slid home with a sharp, satisfying *clack*. Maintaining his grip, he drove the sheathed blade point-first into the sand, planting it directly between himself and Yuki's corpse.
He had just landed two consecutive Black Flashes, one of them being a Fusion Black Flash with Kirigiri. He had completely obliterated his limits. If it was right now—if it was this exact moment—he could do it easily.
He let out a soft sigh. "Domain Expansion—"
He formed his hand signs. Though his voice was scarcely louder than a whisper, it resonated through the air like the tolling of a massive temple bell:
"—Dharmadhatu Transmigration: Nirvana Realm."