Mahito swung Kirigiri, aiming directly for Gojo Satoru's forehead—the physiological center of his Innate Technique! He was still maintaining the output of Star Rage, turning every single strike into a comet-level extinction event. Paired with Kirigiri's absolute property to sever gods and buddhas, the invincible Limitless offered zero resistance. It was cleanly cleaved through, and then—half of Gojo Satoru's head was violently shorn off.
Gojo's skull skyrocketed into the air, taking his brain with it! But the flight lasted only a fraction of a millisecond before the catastrophic storm of virtual mass devoured his severed head. Without even a microsecond to struggle, Gojo's Six Eyes were pulverized by the kinetic hurricane. Every organ above his neck was crushed into microscopic dust; not even a trace of blood or gore remained.
Yet, the one whose face drastically warped in shock was Mahito!
Maintaining Star Rage, Mahito knew exactly how much destructive yield he was outputting. Every swing packed the kinetic force of a literal meteor strike. Furthermore, he had just infused the strike with a Double Fusion Black Flash. He could cleanly bisect an actual meteor right now, let alone a frail human body.
Even though Gojo's head had indeed vanished without a trace, his body from the neck down was completely intact. What did that mean? Mahito instantly formulated the answer:
Gojo Satoru had predicted his brain would be blown off and had proactively established a Binding Vow!
He utilized a Binding Vow to funnel all his defensive power into preserving his body below the neck from the meteor-level shockwave. He had pre-programmed his body's muscular responses *before* his head was pulverized into dust. Gojo had already experienced the Shinmyoken sword draw once. From that single exchange, he knew that if they traded blows simultaneously, he couldn't possibly outspeed the Muku-Kushiki strike. Therefore, he intentionally let his brain be severed so his body could autonomously execute the counterattack.
A flesh-for-flesh exchange!
*THUD.*
The headless Gojo thrust his fully charged fist forward, violently smashing into Mahito's waist—the exact location of his Cursed Energy Core. Mahito was simultaneously running Star Rage and Inverse, but the fist, wrapped in the dark sparks of a Black Flash, completely shattered Inverse's upper threshold and cleanly punched through Mahito's torso.
—BLACK! FLASH!
Gojo Satoru possessed the highest Cursed Energy efficiency on the planet. His Six Eyes guaranteed that 1 unit of Cursed Energy could yield an output of 10,000 or more. Because of this, even if only a microscopic drop of Cursed Energy remained in his body, he could execute logic-defying Cursed Energy cycles and techniques.
And in this split second, he had converged every last drop of Cursed Energy circulating within his headless body into his fist, pushing the Limitless to an unprecedented zenith. In the original manga's extra pages, Gojo once stated that he wasn't the record holder for consecutive Black Flashes. It wasn't because he was incapable of chaining them—
—It was because there wasn't a single target alive that could survive more than one Black Flash from him!
Exactly like right now! *BOOM!*
It was just a simple, singular punch, but Mahito's body was instantly blown into two separate pieces, cleanly bisected at the waist. The Black Flash didn't just shatter the virtual mass of Star Rage and the absolute defense of Inverse; the residual kinetic force violently penetrated through Mahito's back, extending infinitely into the horizon until it struck something unseen, triggering a distant, echoing sonic boom.
Under the effects of Star Rage, Mahito's physical density was already absurd, practically rivaling Halley's Comet. Add his Cursed Energy reinforcement and the defensive layer of Inverse, and it was safe to say he was actually *tougher* than Halley's Comet! Yet Gojo Satoru's desperate, dying Black Flash still blew him in half.
It was an absolute pipe dream—like saying if Halley's Comet actually fell to Earth, Gojo Satoru could just roundhouse kick it back into orbit. Actually, maybe he really could. After all, if a pre-prime Ryomen Sukuna could casually slice apart Jogo's 50-meter Maximum: Meteor with a single Dismantle, then Gojo—the only bastard capable of rivaling the King of Curses—could absolutely do the same!
*How ridiculously sturdy was Sukuna's body to tank multiple Black Flashes from Gojo and still casually heal it off with RCT?* Mahito finally grasped the terrifying, suffocating pressure of the original series' absolute ceiling.
This was the headless Gojo's final strike. As the Black Flash dispersed, his body began to plummet toward the earth. Driven by instinct, Mahito wanted to pursue. Even as just a floating upper torso, his cognitive functions weren't severed, and he could still swing his sword.
But before he could, a horrifying physiological anomaly erupted from Gojo's stump.
From the severed cross-section of his neck, jagged bones began to freely rapidly grow. Bundles of nerves and thick blood vessels coiled violently around the fresh bone structure, followed by the rapid generation of muscle tissue. Mahito reflexively swung Kirigiri, but before the blade could connect, the headless Gojo abruptly vanished into thin air. Without a brain to issue the command, the Mid-air Double Jump triggered completely autonomously.
Mahito instantly understood. It was a pre-programmed Mid-air Double Jump! Back in high school, Gojo had successfully programmed his Reverse Cursed Technique to automatically heal his brain and torso if damaged. Now, he had calculated that Mahito would try to pursue him mid-regeneration, so he established an autonomic reflex: *If pursued, immediately execute Mid-air Double Jump to evade.*
Mahito realized Gojo had intentionally targeted his torso to force a choice:
Option One: Naturally disengage and recover. Unlike Gojo, Mahito didn't have the Six Eyes; his Cursed Energy efficiency was drastically lower. He needed the Cursed Energy Core in his waist to extract power. Yes, Gojo lacked a brain and couldn't use his Innate Technique, but his pre-programmed RCT was still firing on all cylinders, regenerating his head at a terrifying speed. They could both back off, heal, and reset the board.
Option Two: Fuck the reset. We've pushed it this far, who cares about a breather? Are you looking down on me? Right here, right now, I'm taking the opening and butchering you!
Did he even need to think about it? *I! WANT! IT! ALL!*
Throughout the entire battle, Gojo hadn't noticed Idle Transfiguration because Mahito hadn't sustained a single lethal injury! Mahito had perfectly shielded himself behind the Jogo Armor and Inverse. In Gojo's eyes, Mahito was likely relying on Reverse Cursed Technique or raw Cursed Spirit regeneration to heal, just like he did.
The public rumor mill had branded Mahito's technique as the power to 'force evolution.' Judging purely by the name and superficial effects, it didn't seem related to biological healing. Sure, there was the Rice Shower incident, but twisting someone's gender and rapidly regenerating obliterated tissue were two completely different concepts, especially under Jujutsu logic.
And as for the massacre at the Zen'in Clan? Everyone who saw Mahito physically reconstruct his body was already dead!
The only ones who knew Idle Transfiguration could perfectly heal flesh were Kinji Hakari and Kirara Hoshi. But while Hakari might casually chat about Mahito's personality and hobbies, he would never leak the core mechanics of his Innate Technique. As for Kirara, Hakari hadn't brought her back to Tokyo Jujutsu High at all.
At this absolute critical juncture, Gojo Satoru had committed the fatal sin of relying on empirical assumptions. He miscalculated!
Here it comes—the long-awaited Idle Transfiguration!
Mahito's lower half regenerated at a horrifying speed, completely eclipsing the rate of Gojo's cranial reconstruction. He even had the luxury of using the Construction technique to instantly recreate his hakama pants.
While his lower body was still violently knitting itself together, he reached out with one hand and grasped the empty air. A theatrical curtain materialized in his grip. Without a second's hesitation, he whipped the curtain around, enveloping his entire body.
The next instant, he appeared directly beside the headless Gojo Satoru. Teleportation!
But he wasn't done. Mahito formed a one-handed mudra and chanted, his voice tolling like a massive brass bell: "Domain Expansion: Dharmadhatu Transmigration: Nirvana Realm!"
Mahito remembered their brief chat after the initial Domain clash. Gojo had arrogantly claimed that even if his brain and torso were destroyed simultaneously, he had a way to perfectly resurrect himself. Seeing it now, Gojo wasn't bluffing; he had legitimately prepared for this exact scenario.
But not even Gojo Satoru could have predicted this sequence of events. If destroying his brain and torso simultaneously couldn't kill this monster, then Mahito would just crush him with a Domain Expansion!
Even with an autonomic Mid-air Double Jump, Gojo couldn't outrun the deployment speed of a Domain. The second the Nirvana Realm enclosed him, Gojo—stripped of all countermeasures—would decisively lose. Mahito would caress his soul, engrave a Thought Imprint into his consciousness, and completely monopolize every secret of the Six Eyes and the Limitless.
—*I win!*
Gojo, whose skull had only just begun to form its base, suddenly vanished.
Mahito's pupils violently quaked in shock. That wasn't a Mid-air Double Jump. That was absolute spatial compression. It was Gojo's Limitless!
*The Limitless activated?!* —*Fuck, I fell for it!*
That bastard had mathematically calculated that Mahito would forego standard RCT healing in favor of aggressively pursuing him. When Mahito saw the autonomic double jump and the missing brain, he was guaranteed to assume Gojo was entirely defenseless but highly evasive. At that exact moment, Mahito's options were severely limited.
He could either drop a massive Star Rage nuke, but judging by Gojo's ability to double jump without a brain, a non-direct hit wouldn't secure the kill. And landing a direct hit on a teleporting target was near impossible.
Or... he could just pop his Domain Expansion.
But Domain Expansions carried a lethal drawback: they drained an astronomical amount of Cursed Energy. In the original timeline, after fighting Kokichi Muta, Mahito explicitly stated he needed ten full days to recover enough Cursed Energy for another Domain.
The current Mahito, possessing Kinji Hakari's infinite Cursed Energy vessel, was infinitely superior to his canon counterpart. Even if he completely bottomed out his reserves one millisecond, he would instantly top them off the next. But there was a catch—Mahito's waist and abdomen had just been annihilated by Gojo's fist. He had temporarily lost his Cursed Energy Core.
Right now, Mahito wasn't a pure Cursed Spirit; he was a Half-Cursed Spirit. He actually possessed a localized Cursed Energy Core. In fact, being a Half-Curse was the only reason he could perfectly emulate Hakari's infinite Cursed Energy; the biological composition of a pure Curse and a human were too fundamentally different to replicate the Hakari loophole otherwise.
Which meant, if he fully committed to Domain Expansion at this exact moment, even Mahito would suffer total Cursed Energy depletion!
*Fuck, thank god Idle Transfiguration lets me heal passively while attacking.* If he had played by standard sorcery rules, Gojo would have successfully baited him into Cursed Energy bankruptcy. *This absolute bastard is just as battle-crazed as I am, yet he's still laying multi-layered psychological traps while completely unhinged? What kind of terrifying combat intuition is that?!*
Gojo manifested in the ruined valley below. By now, his brain had completely finished regenerating. It turned out he hadn't regenerated his head sequentially from bottom to top; instead, he had forcibly connected his spinal nerve clusters directly to his frontal lobe first! He prioritized the instantaneous reconstruction of his Innate Technique above all other biology, betting everything on the fact that Mahito would chase him.
Gojo's skull finally finished encasing his brain. The Six Eyes snapped open, staring up at the sky with an exhilarated grin. "Mahito, you really are a cat."
Mahito aborted the Domain deployment, free-falling from the sky and landing on the opposite end of the shattered valley.
He clicked his tongue. "Is this the gap in our combat experience? I had an overwhelming tactical advantage, and you were legitimately caught off guard, yet you systematically dismantled every single trap I laid, right up to the end."
"Which means you're completely out of tricks, right?"
Hearing the question, Mahito started laughing. "Looks like my traps really did a number on you. You've got actual PTSD now."
PTSD—Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Gojo had leaped blindly into almost every pitfall Mahito had dug during this fight. Even someone as carefree and arrogant as Gojo Satoru was now hyper-vigilant against any of Mahito's reality-bending maneuvers.
Gojo couldn't help but ask, "How the hell did you pull that off? In that microsecond, you managed to use Reverse Cursed Technique to rebuild your Cursed Energy Core while simultaneously preparing a Domain Expansion without a shred of hesitation?"
As expected, Gojo completely failed to factor in Idle Transfiguration. He had legitimately miscalculated.
*But even with that miscalculation, this man still escaped death! What a horrifying level of paranoia. Why the fuck didn't you have this level of paranoia when fighting Sukuna?!*
"How did *you* use Reverse Cursed Technique without an Innate Technique?" Mahito countered. "All techniques require the Innate Technique as a conduit. Yet with your Innate Technique literally blown to dust, you still managed to run RCT to heal yourself, flawlessly reconstructing your own brain?"
If anyone else had asked that question, Gojo would have just laughed arrogantly and said, *That's just how incredible I am. Your only job is to try and keep up with my shadow.*
But this was Mahito. The Mahito who had pushed him to the absolute brink.
It felt as if a kindred spirit had finally scratched an itch Gojo couldn't reach. He declared proudly, "Cursed Energy is negative energy. It can reinforce the flesh, but it can't regenerate it. So, you multiply negative with negative to generate positive energy. That's Reverse Cursed Technique. For normal people, understanding stops there. But anyone who studies medicine will realize the deeper applications."
"Medicine?"
"Exactly, medicine!" Gojo smirked. "It's basic medical trivia. The human heart is the central organ connecting the body's entire circulatory system. At its core, Reverse Cursed Technique doesn't strictly need a 'technique'—it needs Positive Energy. So, by utilizing the heart as an ultra-compact, localized 'Domain' to temporarily store Positive Energy, I can instantly pump that energy to any damaged sector of my body the moment I take a lethal hit!"
Ironically, in the Jujutsu world, the heart was considered far less vital than the brain or the abdomen. It was highly counterintuitive, but destroying a sorcerer's heart rarely guaranteed a kill. Compared to the brain (Innate Technique) and stomach (CE Core), the heart was barely a secondary target, so sorcerers rarely aimed for it.
This was exactly why Ryomen Sukuna had casually ripped his own heart out at the juvenile detention center. To absolute masters of Reverse Cursed Technique, a heart was just an accessory.
Mahito immediately grasped the implication, his eyes narrowing in thought. "Conversely, even if your heart is destroyed, the Innate Technique in your brain remains fully functional. It's a double-layered failsafe. As long as your brain and heart aren't destroyed simultaneously, you're unkillable!"
No wonder Gojo had confidently claimed that having his brain and abdomen destroyed simultaneously wouldn't kill him. He had a third failsafe: his heart!
Wait. Mahito's eyes widened. "Aside from the heart, the human stomach is a vital organ that breaks down and distributes nutrients throughout the body. The stomach can also act as a Positive Energy storage unit! And the spine—the spinal cord is a structural pillar traversing the entire human nervous system."
*A fourth failsafe? A fifth? No, there's even more!*
Gojo nodded enthusiastically, genuinely impressed. "As expected of you. You get it instantly! Any organ capable of distributing energy to the limbs and bones can be weaponized as a Positive Energy battery. Of course, this requires an absurd mastery of Barrier Techniques, because you're essentially treating your own internal organs as Simple Domains. Obviously, my barrier proficiency is off the charts."
The 'Simple Domain' Gojo mentioned wasn't the martial arts technique of the New Shadow Style, but the naturally occurring, biological 'domains' inherent to human anatomy.
Mahito understood completely.
"That's not something you can pull off just by having the Six Eyes. That's a perfect marriage of academic brilliance and raw imagination," Mahito marveled. "Gojo Satoru, even if you were stripped of the Six Eyes and the Limitless, you would still stand at the absolute pinnacle. I am deeply convinced of that."
Gojo beamed with absolute arrogance. "Of course I would. Who the hell do you think I am?"
Mahito realized that accomplishing this required an unfathomable understanding of both Barrier Techniques and human biological domains. But even with the theoretical knowledge, executing it required an inhuman level of Cursed Energy manipulation. Extracting Cursed Energy from the gut and funneling it through the frontal lobe to cast a technique was instinctual; Gojo's method was a highly unnatural, incredibly complex learned behavior.
No wonder other Jujutsu Sorcerers looked at Gojo like he was an alien when they learned he could simultaneously heal his burnt-out technique while maintaining high-speed combat. To them, it sounded like an absolute pipe dream.
It wasn't like Kinji Hakari's infinite Cursed Energy either. Hakari's RCT triggered entirely automatically, whereas Gojo had to consciously pilot his.
Because it truly was a pipe dream. Without the Six Eyes, even if you understood the theory, mimicking it was virtually impossible. No wonder even the absolute ceiling of the verse, Ryomen Sukuna, didn't figure out how to heal technique burnout until he watched Gojo Satoru do it right in front of him.
Exactly—Sukuna only realized technique burnout could be healed *after* Gojo showed him the blueprint. Before that, even Sukuna hadn't conceptualized it.
In terms of pure imagination and innate genius, Gojo Satoru surpassed Ryomen Sukuna!
Mahito stared deeply at Gojo, his voice eerily calm.
"My Innate Technique is called Idle Transfiguration."
*Showing One's Cards—Technique Disclosure!*
Gojo held his breath, listening intently to Mahito's technique disclosure.
"Since the moment I was born, I could peer directly into the souls of humans and Cursed Spirits. By physically touching them, I can transfigure their souls. I discovered that the soul and the flesh are flawlessly integrated—they are one and the same. Therefore, as long as I reshape the soul, the physical flesh will be forcibly dragged along to match its new shape."
Gojo's mind fired at lightspeed, instantly deducing how Mahito could regenerate his body while simultaneously casting a Domain Expansion without possessing Gojo's hyper-advanced RCT mechanics:
"So as long as you lock the structural integrity of your soul, no matter how badly your physical flesh is mutilated, it will automatically reconstruct itself using Cursed Energy! You were originally a Cursed Spirit, meaning you aren't bound by the biological limitations of Reverse Cursed Technique. Even though you aren't a pure Curse right now, your physical vessel perfectly conforms to your soul. Therefore, as long as your soul isn't destroyed, you are invincible!"
Mahito smiled proudly. "Looks like you understand. However, that information is already obsolete."
"Obsolete?"
"Exactly. Obsolete," Mahito grinned. "Because just now, you personally catalyzed my ultimate evolution."
Gojo blinked, stunned. "What?"
Mahito casually leaned Kirigiri against his shoulder and formed a hand seal with both hands. His fingers intertwined in a posture eerily reminiscent of a Buddha sitting atop a lotus flower.
It was the Katsuma Mudra—the Lotus seal. The exact hand sign Gojo Satoru used.
Gojo's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He recognized that seal instantly. It was the mudra for his Hollow Technique: Purple!
"I owe you my gratitude, Satoru." Mahito's voice boomed with the majestic, terrifying weight of a divine deity. "You allowed my soul and flesh to achieve absolute, perfect unity. Right here, right now!"
*Hollow Technique: Soul Creation Dragon Spirit Body.*
"This is the final round, Satoru!"