Chapter 123 - Yuji vs. Aoi Todo

The fist caught him on the chin. His teeth clacked together. Yuji Itadori staggered back five steps and crashed through a tree trunk as thick as a man's forearm. He spat blood, raised a hand, and wiped the mud off his face. Ahead, Aoi Todo stood bare-chested, his pectorals rising and falling.

"Too slow." Aoi Todo walked forward.

Yuji Itadori said nothing. He watched Aoi Todo's feet. The man's base was rock-solid, every step clean and without waste. Left foot advanced half a pace. Aoi Todo threw a punch. A probing jab. Yuji Itadori slipped his head to the side and drove a right uppercut at Aoi Todo's chin.

Aoi Todo pressed his left forearm down, absorbed the blow, and in the same motion pivoted an elbow strike straight into Yuji Itadori's temple. Yuji Itadori ducked and stepped back. The whole exchange was over in under two seconds. Yuji Itadori breathed hard.

The guy's power had a strange penetrating quality to it, something that went through you rather than just hitting you. Blocking it straight would crack bone. He needed that move.

"Eight Gates Released Formation — Gate of Rest, open!"

Every muscle in Yuji Itadori's body pulled taut. Veins rose from his neck all the way to the backs of his hands. Green energy steam poured off him. The exhaustion inside his body vanished in an instant, his cells forced into a higher gear. He kicked off the ground. The dead leaves scattered in the blast of air. Aoi Todo's eye twitched. Nobody in front of him.

Wind, right side. Aoi Todo brought his arm up. A dull, heavy impact. Aoi Todo slid two meters to the left, his feet cutting two deep grooves through the mud. His arm had gone numb. That force was wrong. The kid hadn't hit anywhere near that hard before. His physical density and explosive power had completely changed. Aoi Todo grinned.

The two of them crashed back into each other. Fist for fist. Leg for leg. Yuji Itadori dropped any pretense of defense. Eat a punch, throw a punch back. With the green vapor wrapped around him, his durability climbed in a straight line. The Gate of Rest didn't just bring power. It brought terrifying recovery speed. Bruises from incoming blows faded within seconds.

"Eight Gates Released Formation." Aoi Todo deflected Yuji's straight punch and drove a knee into his gut. "This is the secret technique Toji-senpai passed down to you?"

Yuji Itadori folded, coughed twice, and straightened back up.

"Yes!" Yuji Itadori wiped his mouth. "Master Toji is the strongest!"

Aoi Todo's eyes lit up. The Taijutsu the Jujutsu Headquarters higher-ups had dismissed as crude and barbaric, it held this kind of unparalleled potential. This kid had only been training for how long, and his physical output already put most Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerers to shame. If he kept going.

"Good." Aoi Todo's voice boomed across the trees. "Then, Best Friend! I'll bring out something real to match your passion."

Aoi Todo brought both hands together. Clap. Clean and sharp. The right hook Yuji Itadori had been winding up hit nothing but air. The massive man in front of him was gone. A rotting, moss-covered log sat where he'd been, right in the path of Yuji's fist. Wind rushed at the back of his head. No time to react. His skull took a full kick.

He pitched forward and ate a mouthful of mud. Before he could push himself up, Clap. Yuji Itadori was face-down in a puddle. Aoi Todo stood to his right and put a boot into his ribs. Clap. Clap. The sound kept echoing through the trees. Yuji Itadori couldn't get his bearings. Left, right, above. Aoi Todo's position never stopped shifting.

The rocks on the ground, the branches, all of it swapping places with him.

"My Cursed Technique. Boogie Woogie."

Aoi Todo stood on a branch overhead, looking down at Yuji in the dirt. "Clap my hands, and I swap the positions of any two targets carrying enough Cursed Energy. Myself, you, a rock — doesn't matter."

Yuji Itadori got to his feet and shook his head to clear it. He understood it fine. His body just couldn't keep up. The moment the clap sounded, his line of sight snapped shut. His entire attack rhythm fell apart. Clap. Aoi Todo behind him. Yuji Itadori spun and threw a spinning back kick. Nothing there. Aoi Todo smiled. He hadn't swapped at all. Just clapped his hands.

A large foot drove into Yuji Itadori's chest. Yuji Itadori flew back and cracked into a tree trunk.

"The clap is the trigger. But clapping doesn't mean I have to activate the technique."

Aoi Todo walked toward him. "You rely too much on your eyes, Best Friend. Your Taijutsu is strong. But your understanding of Cursed Energy is too shallow. What do you think it is — gasoline in an engine?"

Yuji Itadori got to his feet, threw a punch, and drove his knuckles into a rock.

"Isn't it?" he asked.

"Wrong." Aoi Todo clapped and reappeared on the branch. "Your whole body has meridian channels. Cursed Energy doesn't simply travel from your stomach to your fist. That creates a delay. True Cursed Energy control means every single cell in your body is breathing at once."

Aoi Todo pressed a finger to his abdomen.

"The Cursed Energy you're putting out right now is dead water squeezed through a pipe. If you want to hit Black Flash, you need to make the water come alive."

Yuji Itadori went still. Black Flash. Gojo-sensei had said something close to this yesterday, down in the basement. Don't just crush Cursed Energy through with anger. Find the friction that comes naturally, the way water finds its own path. Meridian channels. Cells. Yuji Itadori closed his eyes. He had to scatter his Cursed Energy first. Then pull it all together in a single instant.

Aoi Todo watched him. Fast learner. Time to add some heat. Aoi Todo dropped from the branch. Cursed Energy converged along his arm. He compressed it as far as it would go. He didn't use this often. It was hard on the body. But he wanted to find this kid's ceiling. Yuji Itadori kept his eyes shut. He felt the pressure of Todo's fist moving through the air.

At the same time, he searched inside himself for the meridian channels of the Eight Gates Released Formation. Wide, open roads. Spread the Cursed Energy across all of them evenly. Stop piling everything onto the fist. The third valve. Gate of Life. The furthest he could currently push it. When he'd fought the Special Grade before, he'd opened it for one minute and then gone down.

Aoi Todo's fist arrived at his face. Yuji Itadori opened his eyes.

"Eight Gates Released Formation — Third Gate, Gate of Life, open!"

The green vapor thickened and spread outward in a visible wave. The mud beneath his feet was pressed down half an inch by a force without shape. Yuji Itadori didn't dodge. He drew his right arm back. Cursed Energy poured through the thick meridian channels carved open by the Eight Gates Released Formation, rushing to his knuckles in almost no time at all. No resistance. No lag.

They threw their punches at the same moment. Every nerve in Aoi Todo's body screamed. Warning. His brain was firing signals as fast as it could. Don't take this. Take this and you're dead, or worse. In one split instant, Aoi Todo slapped his left hand down onto the back of his right. Clap.

Aoi Todo swapped positions with a Low-Grade Cursed Spirit that happened to be passing nearby. Yuji Itadori's fist drove into the Low-Grade Cursed Spirit. Black light flared across his knuckles. Space warped. Visibly. With the naked eye.

BOOM.

Aoi Todo stood ten meters back, staring at what was in front of him, cold sweat already running down his face. That Low-Grade Cursed Spirit had been obliterated. Not killed. Obliterated. And it wasn't just the Cursed Spirit. In front of Yuji Itadori, in a wide fan-shaped arc, for dozens of meters out, every tree, every patch of grass, every inch of soil was simply gone.

A semicircular crater sat in the earth, half a meter deep. At the edges, the cut ends of the trees were perfectly smooth. Hiss. This wasn't right. An ordinary Black Flash didn't do this. Didn't come anywhere close to this kind of physical destruction. This was what happened when raw physical power got stacked directly on top of Black Flash.

The Taijutsu Toji-senpai invented, combined with the highest-level striking technique the Jujutsu World had ever produced. A monster. Aoi Todo swallowed. Yuji Itadori stood at the edge of the crater, still holding his punching stance. The green vapor drained away. His legs buckled. He dropped to his knees and gasped for air.

His right arm hung at his side, completely limp. The strike had badly torn the muscles. He'd missed. His body had tilted slightly at the last moment, just outside his control. Even if Aoi Todo hadn't used Boogie Woogie, he wouldn't have landed it clean. Footsteps. Aoi Todo walked up and stood over him.

"I lost, Todo-senpai." Yuji Itadori scratched the back of his head. "You've got way more real experience than me. That last hit, if I hadn't opened the Gate of Life, I couldn't have touched you at all."

Aoi Todo said nothing. He was looking at the crater. He'd won on experience and his Cursed Technique. But this kid was a monster. Aoi Todo crouched down and looked Yuji Itadori straight in the eyes.

"You didn't lose to a technique. You lost to time."

"Best Friend. You're on the right path."

"You're pretty decent for a muscle freak, you know that?" Yuji Itadori put his left hand on the ground and pushed himself back to his feet.

"One thing."

Aoi Todo rubbed his palms together slowly.

"That Eight Gates Released Formation."

He kept his eyes on Yuji Itadori. "I want to learn it. What do you think, would Toji-senpai be willing to teach me?"

➤ Next: The Switched Cursed Spirit