One day ago, Kyoto, Japan.
Utahime Iori was walking down the street, mentally chewing over the intelligence she had received from Satoru Gojo.
It was during the Kyoto Goodwill Event. While the students were busy beating the living daylights out of each other, Gojo had sought her out during the intermission, a cheerful smile plastered on his face as he told her:
There is a spy in either the Tokyo or Kyoto school.
It hadn't been phrased as a question, nor as a mere possibility. It was a definitive statement. There *is* a spy. Gojo had told her that he would handle the Tokyo side, but he desperately needed intelligence from Kyoto. Thus, he asked for Utahime's help to root out the Kyoto mole.
Despite her immense disdain for Satoru Gojo, her actions betrayed her complaints as she reluctantly accepted the mission. After all, this was a matter of grave importance; she had no valid reason to refuse.
And she had marked her very first target: Yoshinobu Gakuganji.
He was the Principal of Kyoto Jujutsu High. Unlike normal schools, these institutions for training sorcerers operated under the guise of regular high schools, even handing out standard diplomas. In reality, they were fully-fledged supernatural military academies, and the Principal was an undisputed heavyweight in Jujutsu society.
Gakuganji was hailed as the vanguard of the conservative faction. One step higher, and you were looking at the Jujutsu Headquarters itself.
Someone in his position theoretically wouldn't be tempted by Cursed Spirits. But Gakuganji had one decisive weakness that made him highly suspect in Utahime's eyes—he was simply too old.
Gakuganji was an old man with a face buried under deep wrinkles, sagging eyebrows, and a beard groomed into a goatee resting on his chest. He was entirely bald, without a single strand of white hair left on his head. He was a stubborn old fossil who strictly adhered to rules that the modern world had deemed obsolete decades ago.
Would an old man wielding that much practical power long for an immortality entirely devoid of side effects? Utahime guessed he absolutely would.
Don't give her that naive nonsense about his political power already peaking, making him immune to a curse's seduction. Utahime was Gojo's senior, older than him by a year. She had genuinely lived through the era before Gojo Satoru had completely steamrolled Jujutsu society. She knew exactly how bottomless the depravity of those conservative bastards truly was.
Utahime could practically envision the sheer, violent shift in color on that old man's face the moment he laid eyes on Kinji Hakari and the young dragon resting on his shoulder. She wasn't a micro-expression master, nor could she read a man's soul just by looking at him, but an emotional upheaval that severe would be plain as day.
Which was exactly why Utahime investigated him first!
...Unfortunately, she turned up absolutely nothing.
"So, was my guess wrong?" Utahime muttered to herself. "If not him, then who? It couldn't be one of the students, right? But... that doesn't make sense. Immortality is indeed incredible, and when the students learned that Kinji Hakari had achieved it, every single one of them looked awestruck. But none of them seemed genuinely tempted by it."
Utahime perfectly understood the psychology of the students. They were too young. They still looked toward the future with bursting anticipation, supremely confident in their ability to smash through any obstacle. Time had yet to carve its cruel scars into their flesh. To them, immortality was merely a fascinating novelty, not a desperate yearning.
The students shouldn't have been seduced. No, there had to be someone else.
As Utahime was lost in thought, she suddenly detected the faint fluctuation of a Cursed Spirit.
She instinctively snapped her head toward the opposite side of the street. She remembered the layout of this block—across the way was a children's park, usually commandeered by a horde of energetic kids while the local housewives chatted leisurely on the benches, passing a relaxed afternoon.
Standing right at the edge of that children's park, staring blankly ahead, was a young girl.
She was dressed in a pale cherry-blossom outfit resembling a shrine maiden's attire. A deep crimson, almost purple sash was tied around her waist, accented by a prominent ribbon, and her feet were clad in deerskin high-heeled boots. She had light-colored long hair, gathered at the back of her head and bound into a ponytail by a massive bow.
Yet, resting in the pale, delicate palm extending from her kimono sleeve was a long katana that violently clashed with the girl's aesthetic. The scabbard was completely unadorned, and even the hilt featured a plain, oval-shaped handguard. A weapon like that would almost universally be dismissed as a high-quality cosplay prop. Paired with her outfit, it was likely the only reason a passing patrol officer hadn't already stopped her for questioning.
But Utahime possessed the acute sensitivity of a sorcerer, and she immediately realized the terrifying truth—this young girl was not human.
A Cursed Spirit... but her degree of "humanization" was impossibly high.
Because Cursed Spirits were the literal manifestation of curses, it was practically impossible for one to take a flawless human form. Even if they did, it was strictly a localized mimicry used solely to lure in human prey.
Some Cursed Spirits could even mimic human speech, parroting the exact phrases their victims desperately wanted to hear. But the Cursed Spirit itself possessed zero actual intellect; it was merely deploying mechanical, instinctual lures.
But this girl was completely different. Utahime could sharply sense that *it*... could genuinely be referred to as a *'she'*. Furthermore, she possessed a tangible, physical body. Ordinary people could see her.
"..."
Utahime had to admit, she was terrified.
A highly "humanized" Cursed Spirit with a tangible, physical body. In all her knowledge, there was only one such entity in existence. The Lord of Cursed Spirits, Mahito.
But something was wrong. Rumors explicitly stated that Mahito possessed a male exterior. So who exactly was this girl?
Suddenly, the girl turned her head. Those previously vacant eyes abruptly sharpened with the predatory intensity of a hawk, locking directly onto Utahime's gaze.
Utahime's heart skipped a beat, and she instantly shifted her weight, readying herself for combat. She desperately didn't want to start a fight here. It was the middle of the evening rush hour; the streets were packed with pedestrians. If a battle erupted here, God only knew how many innocent civilians would be slaughtered as collateral damage.
She wasn't the type of Jujutsu Sorcerer whose hands would be fatally tied by the presence of civilians, but if she could minimize casualties, she absolutely wouldn't provoke a Cursed Spirit intentionally.
To her surprise, the girl merely stared at her for a few seconds before turning her head back, resuming her blank, vacant stare at the children's park.
Utahime followed the girl's line of sight into the park. It was a perfectly mundane scene. A few housewives were whispering by the benches, occasionally letting out soft chuckles, while a few kids played in the sandbox or swung on the swings.
*Is she planning to attack them?* Utahime forced her mind to run through standard Cursed Spirit behavioral profiles, but looking at the girl's profoundly vacant, airheaded expression, she found it incredibly difficult to imagine her orchestrating a massacre.
Utahime immediately realized the truth—
—This was a newly manifested, highly intelligent Cursed Spirit.
Staring at the girl, Utahime felt a massive, reckless surge of temptation.
She wanted to make contact. Opportunities like this were astronomically rare. The entire Jujutsu world was currently tearing the country apart looking for traces of Mahito, and right here, right in front of her face, was a massive, glaring clue simply standing on the sidewalk. If she backed down now out of concern for her own safety, who knew if such a golden opportunity would ever present itself again.
Of course, she wasn't going to charge in blindly. She immediately reached for her phone, planning to fire off a quick text. To who? Satoru Gojo, obviously!
Send it to her direct superior, Principal Gakuganji? *Yeah, right.* The old fossil hadn't fully cleared his suspicion yet.
And then she realized... her text wouldn't send.
*—Run!*
Utahime made a split-second decision and instantly retreated. Before breaking line of sight, she threw one last glance at the girl. She was still standing there, completely unmoving, staring blankly at the park. A seed of doubt sprouted in Utahime's mind:
*Could this... not be a trap meant to lure me in?*
*Then why is my phone jammed? Or rather, is this just a passive defense mechanism? Because these newborn, intelligent Cursed Spirits are terrified of being discovered by Jujutsu society, so their very presence inherently scrambles electronic signals?*
*That... is highly probable.*
Utahime had already retreated roughly twenty meters. She pulled out her phone again and saw there was still zero signal. Looking back, she saw that the girl had finally retracted her gaze from the park, turned around, and was preparing to leave.
*—Are we just going to pass like ships in the night?* Utahime froze.
It seemed her deduction was spot-on. Jamming electronic signals was likely a mandatory precaution these intelligent Cursed Spirits took whenever they went out. It wasn't hard to understand. It was 2018. The vast majority of Curse Users had been systematically exterminated by Satoru Gojo, and the number of Jujutsu Sorcerers patrolling the streets was drastically lower than in the past.
What intelligent Cursed Spirits feared wasn't randomly bumping into a sorcerer on patrol. What they truly feared was being accidentally caught on camera, allowing the sorcerers to track their movements.
Utahime's breathing hitched.
She knew that if she genuinely ignored the girl and continued walking away, she would almost certainly be perfectly safe. The moment the signal interference vanished, she could instantly call Gojo, drop the problem entirely in his lap, and be done with it. It was the absolute safest play.
But if she did that, by the time Gojo arrived, God only knew where the girl would have vanished to. If intelligent Cursed Spirits were thorough enough to prepare localized signal jammers, they had almost certainly factored Gojo's Six Eyes into their escape protocols.
*Damn it! The whole goddamn world knows about your Six Eyes! You couldn't hide it even if you tried! Gojo's massive ego is genuinely going to get people killed!*
A highly dangerous thought carved its way to the forefront of Utahime's mind: *I have to make contact with her!*
Besides, she had a backup plan. She was, for all intents and purposes, Gojo's spy. She had established a protocol with him: she was to check in every three days. After all, her investigation targeted the highest echelons of the Jujutsu Headquarters; if the higher-ups decided to silence her, Gojo needed to know she had been murdered.
When she accepted the mission to investigate the Kyoto sorcerers, she had already made peace with the very real possibility of her death. And her death would unconditionally trigger Gojo's horrific retaliation.
Even though Satoru Gojo was a completely shameless bastard in her eyes... at the very least, she trusted him to avenge her.
Having reasoned through every angle, Utahime took two deep breaths to steady her racing heart and began typing furiously. She drafted a message containing highly classified codes and encrypted intel, saving it locally to her drafts. Then, without a shred of hesitation, she tossed her phone onto the pavement and began tailing the girl.
The phone was equipped with a GPS tracker and heavily reinforced with Cursed Energy. Given a three-day window, Utahime was absolutely confident that, even if she died, Gojo could easily track the phone using the Six Eyes. If she returned safely, it wouldn't matter. If she didn't, the encrypted drafts on the phone would provide Gojo with more than enough actionable intel.
As for the possibility of some random civilian picking it up to pawn or swapping the SIM card? Utahime sneered. If Satoru Gojo managed to lose track of a GPS-enabled phone actively radiating a cursed signature, he could completely forget about revolutionizing Jujutsu society and just go be a bandit king in the mountains!
*It's just my life, isn't it?* Utahime steeled her resolve. *I already dared to investigate Principal Gakuganji. Like hell a mere Cursed Spirit is going to make me back down!* With her resolve cemented, she decisively closed the distance.
She made absolutely zero effort to mask her approach, and the girl, naturally, noticed her immediately.
The girl stopped walking and stood by the curb, katana resting passively in her hand, watching Utahime quietly. Only now did Utahime get a clear look at the girl's face. Her skin was flawless porcelain, her bangs swept over her forehead, framing a painfully innocent face that couldn't possibly belong to anyone older than fifteen. She radiated an aura of overwhelming purity and grace.
Utahime braced herself. "Hello, I'm—"
"I am not going to be an idol," the girl interrupted, her voice perfectly serene. "I am not going to appear on variety shows. I cannot sing, and I have no interest in vocal training. My family is not with me at the moment. If you wish to speak with them, please just hand me your business card. If my family is interested in allowing me to participate in your activities, they will contact you proactively."
Her voice was impossibly clear and clean, like the chiming of a mountain spring.
Utahime blanked. *She... thinks I'm a talent scout?*
And judging by that impeccably rehearsed rejection, this was far from the first time she had been scouted on the streets.
Suddenly, it clicked in Utahime's brain. She had completely bypassed evaluating the girl's appearance because she had immediately identified her as a Cursed Spirit. But taking a step back, the girl's aesthetics and aura were genuinely otherworldly. Especially when standing perfectly still by the roadside, she exuded a quiet, breathtaking elegance. She was absolute premium idol material!
Utahime's mouth twitched, but she immediately realized this was a golden opportunity. The girl hadn't suspected her true identity in the slightest. This meant she could effortlessly extract vital intelligence without raising any alarms.
*Isn't this going... incredibly smoothly?!*
Utahime could barely suppress the triumphant smirk trying to form on her lips. *Excellent. Perfect! Now, to unleash my silver tongue...!*
"We could just start by being friends... Do you have a phone? We could exchange emails." She instinctively reached into her handbag to pull out her phone, but before her fingers even breached the fabric, her entire body went rigid.
*Crap! I just threw my phone on the ground!*
The girl watched her quietly, then suddenly let out a soft sigh.
She murmured to herself, "I see. So I have been recognized."
A horrific, skin-crawling sensation instantly washed over Utahime. It felt as though the concentrated malice of the entire world was suddenly wrapping around her throat. The girl was still just standing there, doing absolutely nothing, yet Utahime felt as if a thousand razor-sharp blades were already pressed flush against her skin. A terrifyingly thin, concentrated layer of Cursed Energy had already completely engulfed her.
Her instincts screamed at her: *If this girl wills it, I will die in the next microsecond.*
Utahime forced the words out of her paralyzed throat, "This is... the secret technique of the New Shadow Style... Simple Domain. How... how do you know it?"
"My master is Mr. Ashiya Sadatsuna," the girl replied faintly.
*The legendary swordsman who founded the New Shadow Style a thousand years ago?!* Utahime desperately regulated her breathing to reign in her spiraling panic. She didn't even entertain the thought of resisting. Trapped at point-blank range against a master swordsman who could instantly deploy a Simple Domain, her chances of survival were mathematically zero.
Besides, she had already made peace with dying.
The only thing she couldn't wrap her head around was—
"How did you suddenly see right through me?" Utahime couldn't stop herself from asking.
"You didn't immediately pull out a business card. Instead, you asked for my phone number," the girl replied, her tone perfectly tranquil. "Every single talent scout I've ever encountered produces a business card first. Only frivolous men trying to flirt ask directly for my number or email... and you, are not a frivolous man trying to flirt."
*So it wasn't some deep deductive reasoning, just pure empirical experience!* Utahime felt utterly numb.
She sighed heavily. "Fine. I admit defeat. So, what are you going to do? Are you going to kill me?"
It was meant as a self-deprecating joke. In reality, her neck was already bracing for the agonizing sensation of a blade severing her spine.
But to her utter shock, the girl looked genuinely bewildered. "I... I don't know."
Utahime froze. "You don't know?"
"I've never been discovered by a Jujutsu Sorcerer before. Master always told us that our aura is practically indistinguishable from a normal human's. Only an exceptionally outstanding Jujutsu Sorcerer could possibly notice us," the girl explained with earnest honesty. "That's exactly why I didn't immediately classify you as a Jujutsu Sorcerer. Because running into an exceptionally outstanding sorcerer on the street is incredibly rare."
It was indeed incredibly rare. Currently, the bulk of active patrols were handled by Grade 3 and Grade 4 sorcerers. In certain districts, they didn't even bother sending sorcerers, dispatching Auxiliary Managers instead.
Partially, this was due to a severe manpower shortage. But primarily, the near-total extinction of Curse Users meant that the remaining Jujutsu Sorcerers had grown fundamentally complacent compared to the blood-soaked eras of the past.
Nowadays, the vast majority of Cursed Spirit outbreaks weren't discovered by patrolling sorcerers or Auxiliary Managers; they were called in by regular police officers. Once the police confirmed a supernatural incident, they contacted Jujutsu Headquarters, who then assigned the mission to an active sorcerer.
Given this operational climate, even if a sorcerer locked eyes with this girl, they likely wouldn't register her as a Cursed Spirit. Consequently, the girl's internal protocol simply hadn't accounted for an encounter with a competent Jujutsu Sorcerer.
Understanding this didn't make Utahime feel relieved about still breathing; it filled her with sheer terror. She stared intently into the girl's eyes, demanding sternly, "Why didn't you kill me immediately?"
The girl tilted her head, genuinely curious. "Do you desperately wish to die?"
"I do not wish to die," Utahime replied with deadly seriousness. "But you are a Curse. The moment I discovered you, your absolute first instinct should have been a surge of overwhelming malice, driving you to slaughter me to eliminate a threat. Yet you hesitated. You didn't immediately want to kill me. That is completely wrong."
The girl didn't answer right away. Instead, she asked hesitantly, "Are you... trying to probe me for intelligence?"
*Yes! Obviously I am!* Utahime's stoic facade was crumbling rapidly. *How can someone this powerful be such an absolute airhead?!*
Utahime suddenly felt a bizarre, totally inappropriate surge of guilt, as if she were actively scamming a mentally challenged child.
"Should I... should I answer your question?" the girl asked, her voice laced with genuine uncertainty.
*Are you seriously asking me that?!* Utahime's sense of guilt multiplied exponentially. But... what the hell was a little guilt compared to top-tier intel?!
Utahime immediately seized the opening. "Look, you're obviously not just going to let me walk away, right? Since that's the case, even if you are going to kill me, you should at least let me die with clarity, a ghost in the know. It is the most fundamental respect a samurai owes the opponent they are about to execute."
It was a blatant, bald-faced lie. Samurai had absolutely no such protocol. But Utahime was fiercely betting that this airheaded girl would swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
The girl bought it instantly, nodding thoughtfully. "I see. I understand now."
Before Utahime could even begin to internally celebrate her masterful manipulation, the girl followed up:
"Then I won't answer your question."
Utahime was gobsmacked. "Wait, you won't even let me die a knowing ghost?! Where is your samurai spirit?!"
"Because I'm not going to kill you," the girl replied, looking at Utahime as if she were the slow one. "Since I'm not going to kill you, why on earth would I give you intelligence?"
"You... you aren't going to kill me?" Utahime didn't feel a shred of relief at having her life spared. Instead, she felt as though her fundamental understanding of reality was violently collapsing.
"We do not kill casually. We are the guardians of humanity," the girl stated with absolute, unshakable conviction.
Utahime couldn't hold it in anymore. "You are a *Cursed Spirit*, and you're standing there telling me you're humanity's guardian? Is your brain entirely fried?!"
"Why shouldn't I be?" the girl asked, genuinely perplexed. "Cursed Spirits are born from the curses bred by humanity. In other words, if humanity goes extinct, Cursed Spirits will also go extinct. Given that undeniable fact, shouldn't the very first priority of any rational Cursed Spirit be to fiercely protect humanity?"
Utahime was struck dumb.
The logic was technically flawless. But... *you're a Cursed Spirit!*
"All Cursed Spirits share a universal trait: the more powerful the Cursed Spirit, the denser the concentration of curses required to birth it. Only an overwhelming, hyper-dense accumulation of Cursed Energy can give birth to a Special Grade Cursed Spirit. That is fundamental knowledge even a Jujutsu Sorcerer should possess."
The girl stared intently at Utahime, resembling a stern, top-of-the-class honors student meticulously breaking down a basic math equation for a hopelessly dense slacker.
Utahime felt a stampede of a million 'WTFs' galloping across the vast, empty plains of her mind.
*You are a Cursed Spirit! And you're lecturing a teacher from Kyoto Jujutsu High! On the most fundamental basics of Jujutsu theory?!*
This was an utterly absurd spectacle Utahime couldn't have conjured in her wildest fever dreams.
"Therefore, to maintain the power and prosperity of Cursed Spirits, shouldn't our absolute top priority be to safeguard the human population? To ensure human civilization flourishes and advances, allowing humans to breed and generate exponentially more Cursed Energy?" the girl reasoned flawlessly. "After all, the Cursed Energy of a single human, no matter how potent, can rarely birth even a Grade 4 Cursed Spirit. But if a million humans, ten million humans, or the entire hundred million citizens of this nation generate Cursed Energy simultaneously... giving birth to Special Grade Cursed Spirits becomes effortless."
Utahime froze. A terrifying, spine-chilling conclusion suddenly crystallized in her mind.
And the girl cheerfully voiced that exact conclusion:
"Therefore, it is proven—"
"—The prosperity of humanity is the absolute prosperity of Cursed Spirits."
"Cursed Spirits are the species that most fervently desires humanity's eternal, immortal survival. We are humanity's ultimate, innate guardians, and we are the only entities that will absolutely never betray the human race."
"That is simply common sense."
Utahime was utterly, completely speechless.
"Well then, since you're so eager to learn about our situation, let's do this," the girl concluded, bobbing her head slightly as a pristine smile bloomed on her face.
Utahime swallowed hard, her heart hammering violently against her ribs. An incredibly ominous premonition washed over her.
"What... what are you planning to do?"
"I am going to take you to see Master," the girl's smile was pure and radiant, yet in Utahime's eyes, it was the grinning visage of a demonic horror.
She said, "We are going to see—Lord Mahito."