[Night fell over the Zenin clan's estate, smothering the sprawling compound that crouched deep in the mountains.]
[Above the centuries-old complex, where every flagstone reeked of feudal rot and aristocratic arrogance, a handful of pitch-black crows circled in perfect silence, indistinguishable from the darkness itself. Crimson eyes watched everything below.]
[Those were Mei Mei's Black Bird Manipulation. Through shared vision, every detail fed back to you with surgical precision.]
[But what truly let you move through this place, a fortress the jujutsu world regarded as a death trap, as though you owned it, wasn't just the aerial reconnaissance. It was you.]
[Right now, you were less a person than a shadow without warmth.]
[Breath, heartbeat, every last ripple of cursed energy suppressed to absolute zero. Under the passive state of Natural, you had become a draft slipping across the eaves, a specter drifting outside three-dimensional space, undetectable by even the sharpest barrier techniques.]
[More terrifying still was the living map etched into your mind, sharper than anything the current clan head Naobito Zenin himself possessed.]
[You didn't need your eyes. Muscle memory alone let you thread every blind spot, anticipate every trap's placement.]
[You arrived at Naoya Zenin's private quarters...]
[Empty.]
[Expensive incense hung thick in the air, but there was no presence.]
[Not here...]
[Your gaze flickered, and your mind kicked into overdrive.]
[Someone with Naoya's warped narcissism wouldn't go through the trouble of hauling the kid back to the main estate just to leave him unattended. If not here, then the only possibilities were the underground detention cells reserved for internal punishment... or...]
[Before you could finish the thought and redirect your search toward that dark basement, a sensation crawled up your spine.]
[It clung to your back like a bone-deep infection, detonating every last nerve in your body. No footsteps. No flare of cursed energy. This was pure killing intent, the instinct for the cut, honed over decades by a swordsman who had waded through mountains of corpses until the act of killing was as natural as breathing.]
[Your body moved before your brain caught up.]
[Shhhnk!]
[A blade of frost-white light ripped through the corridor's darkness without warning. The strike was so fast it nearly outpaced the human eye, angled with vicious precision straight at the throat you'd hidden in shadow.]
[A hundredth of a second slower and your head would already be rolling across the dusty floorboards.]
[In that fraction of an instant, instinct alone wrenched your body backward into an impossible arc.]
[Rrrrip.]
[The edge kissed your throat as it screamed past. The shearing wind shattered the wooden veranda railing in front of you.]
[With the crisp sound of tearing fabric, the black Jujutsu High uniform split open in a clean line across your chest, the cloth peeling back to reveal taut muscle beneath.]
[The raw physical violence and the killing intent locked onto you shattered the perfect Natural state you'd maintained so long. Your silhouette snapped into full view under the moonlight.]
["Oh? You dodged that."]
[A voice drifted from the shadows at the corridor's bend. Layered with the arrogance and gloom of a man who'd spent a lifetime believing he deserved to stand above everyone else.]
[Ogi Zenin. Brother to the current clan head Naobito. A sorcerer of Special Grade 1 caliber. And, through and through, a wretched human being.]
[He hadn't actually pierced your concealment technique. All those decades of monotonous, obsessive sword practice had forged a kind of blade instinct, and that instinct had caught the barest anomaly in the airflow around the annex.]
[On the principle of kill first and ask questions never, he'd thrown out the strike on a hunch. He hadn't expected to flush out a living, breathing person.]
["Hmph. A rat from Jujutsu High, is it?"]
[He raised the katana slowly, its tip leveled at your throat, the blade refracting a chilling gleam in the moonlight.]
["Same school as that brat Gojo Satoru who doesn't know his place, I take it. Just as ill-mannered, clearly, sneaking into my Zenin estate like a common thief. What are you after?"]
[A beat of silence. His voice dropped, colder now.]
["If you can't give me a satisfactory answer, I'll cut you to pieces and feed you to the dogs right here. Jujutsu High won't have a leg to stand on. Trespassing on the grounds of the Big Three Sorcerer Families is a capital offense."]
[You knew perfectly well that this capital offense wasn't written in any legal code. It was Zenin clan justice, nothing more.]
[Facing the unconcealed killing intent and interrogation of a Special Grade 1 sorcerer, you brushed the wood splinters from your uniform and straightened up.]
[No panic. Not a trace of embarrassment at being caught. You looked at him with a calm so absolute it bordered on condescension, as though you were the one who belonged here.]
["I'm here for someone."]
[Your voice carried clear and even through the silent courtyard.]
["I'm here for Naoya, and for the student he abducted this afternoon like a street thug. I'm taking the boy back. Unharmed."]
[You paused. Your eyes locked onto Ogi's, burning through that cold, sour gaze, and dropped the name like a blade.]
["The boy is Toji Zenin's son."]
["...!"]
[The instant those words, Toji Zenin, hit the air, Ogi's iron-mask composure cracked. A violent twitch rippled across his face, and a vein at his temple leapt.]
["What nonsensical drivel."]
[He snorted, forcing himself back into the posture of a clan elder, trying to paper over the tremor beneath.]
["Naoya may be erratic, but he wouldn't drag some bastard child in off the street. You're a rat cornered and about to die, and this is your play? Slinging mud at the Zenin name to buy time?"]
[That was what his mouth said. Beneath it, a storm was already tearing through him.]
[Ogi Zenin was a deeply calculating, deeply suspicious man. The moment your words landed, his mind had gone into a frenzy.]
[He remembered something. A few days ago, his older brother Naobito had let slip a detail over drinks. That waste of space Toji, the one who'd left the Zenin clan without a drop of cursed energy to his name, had fathered a child. And that child had awakened the Ten Shadows Technique, the treasure the Zenin clan had coveted for centuries.]
[So that's what this is...]
[Given Naoya's twisted ego, the way he styled himself as the only worthy rival to the Ten Shadows, hearing that news would have sent him straight to Tokyo to see for himself. Kidnapping the boy, maybe even trying to destroy him in secret... yes, that was exactly the kind of thing that bastard was capable of.]
[Having pieced together the full picture, Ogi felt no inclination whatsoever to help you or to stop Naoya.]
[Instead, something else surged through him. A poison called envy, corrosive as acid, eating through every organ, dissolving what was left of his reason.]
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Last week's bonus chapters will be uploaded in a few hours. For this week, we'll go with 200 PS per bonus chapter. I'll also try to make the chapters longer so they're worth it :)