BANG!

Yuji jerked his head to the side. The dark-red blood line grazed his cheek, and the load-bearing column behind him was bored through, a smooth, clean hole punched straight through concrete. Debris sprayed out and caught him on the forehead, leaving a red welt.

"That fast." Yuji steadied his footing and locked his gaze on the figure at the far end of the corridor, hands pressed together, face drained of color.

Choso. The eldest of the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings.

"I'm sorry about your siblings' deaths, but I don't have time for you right now."

Yuji wiped the grime from his face. Every muscle in his body pulled tight.

"Sorry?" Choso's voice was quiet. It carried a venom that could freeze the air solid.

Choso separated both hands, drawing a high-pressure blood line taut between the palms. "When you killed Kechizu and Eso, did you feel sorry then?"

"Hundred Convergence: Piercing Blood!"

Before the words fully left Choso's mouth, a dark-red pillar of blood tore through the air at supersonic speed, aimed straight at Yuji's face. Too fast. Yuji's gaze locked up. This was not a speed anyone could dodge on reaction alone.

"Eight Gates — First Gate: Gate of Opening!"

BOOM. Deep-green chakra flames erupted from inside Yuji's body. He wrenched his torso by pure force and drove himself sideways by half an inch. The blood line skimmed his shoulder as it shot past and tore away a large chunk of flesh.

"Hss—" Yuji bit down hard and sucked in a sharp breath.

That hurt. The destructive force felt exactly like taking a close-range hit from an anti-materiel sniper rifle. A direct hit would cut him clean in two. He had to close the distance. Yuji pushed off the ground and surged forward like a charging bull, wreathed in green flames.

"Flowing Red Scale." Blood-red markings surfaced at the corners of Choso's eyes.

Choso didn't retreat. Stepping straight into the punch, Choso swung a hand-blade to meet it. Fist and palm collided.

BANG!

Yuji felt a brutally unreasonable strength transmit up from Choso's arm. How? Choso looks so lean, how can the strength be this overwhelming?

"Using blood to reinforce the body." Yuji reached the conclusion instantly.

Before he could pull his hand back, the blood pooled on Choso's palm suddenly detonated, scattering into countless tiny blood needles.

"Supernova!"

Too close. No way to dodge. Yuji had no choice but to cover his face with both arms and take the hit. The blood needles punched into his forearms, then detonated a second time, shredding him bloody. The force sent him flying backward. He tumbled across the floor seven or eight times before grinding to a stop. Formidable. Far more formidable than those two at Yasohachi Bridge.

Yuji dropped to one knee, breathing hard, watching Choso close the distance step by step.

"Is that your last word." Choso raised a hand. Blood beads bristling with pressure condensed again at the fingertips. "Go keep my siblings company in death."

Yuji said nothing. He stared at that single drop of blood on Choso's fingertip. Red. Viscous. Holding an extremely stable shape in open air. That told him Choso's technique didn't just manipulate blood, it could alter density and state of coagulation as well.

Without solving that, there was no way to fight. Every approach ended in an explosion. Any attempt to create distance just made him a target for Piercing Blood. How to break through? Yuji's gaze swept fast across the surroundings. An underground corridor leading to the Fukutoshin Line, walls lined with all kinds of pipes. His eyes stopped on the red fire hydrant in the corner.

Blood coagulation, if it got heavily diluted by water, could it still hold that hardness? Uncertain. But worth trying.

"Die." Choso fired Piercing Blood again.

This time Yuji didn't dodge. He drove one fist hard into the floor, used the rebound to send himself sliding flat along the ground, skimmed the edge of the blood line, and kicked straight into the red fire hydrant.

BOOM!

The thick iron pipe exploded. High-pressure water burst forth like a waterfall and flooded the entire corridor in an instant. Water sprayed everywhere. Before Choso could react, the pressurized torrent drenched Choso to the bone.

"What is this supposed to accomplish?" Choso frowned.

Choso tried to condense the blood at the fingertips again, and found that the beads, previously hard as iron, rapidly dissolved on contact with the flood of plain water, breaking apart into a thin red puddle that ran down to the floor. The blood outside the body could no longer coagulate. Seeing that, the corners of Yuji's mouth split into a wild grin. Got it right.

"Without those annoying projectiles, this is nothing but a straight brawl!"

Yuji pulled in a deep lungful of air thick with water vapor. Cursed Energy surged ferociously through the meridian pathways and flooded out to every limb and bone. Not enough. Gate of Opening alone still wasn't enough to bring Choso down in a single blow. Faster. More explosive.

"Eight Gates — Second Gate: Gate of Rest, open!"

"Third Gate — Gate of Life, open!"

BOOM!

Green steam, several times more violent than before, mixed with the water mist filling the corridor and swallowed Yuji whole in an instant. The muscles across his body visibly swelled. Veins rose under the skin like tree roots. The floor tiles beneath his feet shattered completely.

BANG!

He was gone. Choso's gaze froze. That fast! Had this person been holding back the whole time?

"Flowing Red Scale: Stack!" Choso tried to drive the blood inside to its absolute limit to sharpen visual perception, but it was already too late.

Yuji's face, wreathed in violent steam, had appeared less than ten centimeters away.

"Divergent Fist."

Cursed Energy converged at the leading edge of the fist, and it wasn't finished there. Black sparks detonated without warning. Black Flash! A Black Flash stacked on top of the terrifying physical eruption of the Eight Gates' Third Gate!

BOOM!

The punch landed squarely, full force, right in Choso's chest. Choso didn't even have time to scream. The impact sent Choso flying like a baseball off a bat, crashing straight through three load-bearing walls in succession before sinking deep into the ruins of an underground convenience store. Dust and smoke rained down through the spray of water. Yuji stood breathing hard, blood still dripping from his fist.

Not only Choso's blood. His own too, the skin between his thumb and forefinger had split open from forcing out the Black Flash.

"Done?" Yuji shook out his hand. A dull ache ran through every bone in his right hand.

Even he was startled by the power of that punch. If it weren't for ten thousand squat-jumps every day as his baseline, that arm would probably already be finished. Deep in the ruins, dead silence. Choso lay in the rubble, chest caved deeply inward. Seven or eight ribs broken. Massive internal bleeding.

If Choso were not one of the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings, injuries like these would have meant death many times over. Choso coughed up a large mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of ruptured organs. Vision began to blur. Was this death? I'm sorry, Kechizu. Eso. Your older sibling couldn't avenge you.

Just as Choso was about to close both eyes, an extraordinarily strange sensation surged up from somewhere deep inside. Blood. Choso's own blood, and the blood that boy had left on Choso's chest, in the moment of contact, a powerful, inexplicable Resonance arose between them. A bond reaching from the depths of the soul. Hmmm. A sharp, violent pain erupted deep inside Choso's mind.

A memory that did not exist was forced in. A long wooden table. Kechizu making a huge fuss at the side over a single meatball. Eso, in that revealing outfit, elegantly cradling a soup bowl. And at the other end of the table, the pink-haired boy who had just nearly beaten Choso to death was gripping a large slice of pizza, grinning brightly, waving over.

"Big bro! Come eat already, Kechizu's gonna snatch it all!"

Big bro? Choso's pupils trembled violently. In the memory, Choso reached out and ruffled the boy's hair. The boy was beaming.

"Yuji..."

Choso lay in the ruins with eyes wide open, staring hard at the silhouette in the distance, the one just about to turn and leave. Choso's breathing went ragged. The mind fell into total chaos. Why? Why is this memory inside my head? Why does that person call me their older sibling? Aren't we enemies? No. The bloodline sense of the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings never makes mistakes.

In that moment when their blood mingled, Choso felt it with absolute clarity. That was family. Flesh and blood, connected by the same bloodline! I was actually trying to kill my own younger sibling?

"Wait, wait, " Choso forced down the tearing agony in the chest and squeezed out a hoarse voice.

Yuji heard it and turned around, wariness written across his face, fist clenched tight. "You can still move? Keep fighting and you'll actually die."

"You..." Choso coughed up a mouthful of blood. A trembling hand reached out toward Yuji. The whites of Choso's eyes were shot through with red, voice carrying a profound, lost despair.

"Just who... are you?"

Yuji furrowed his brow, staring at the figure in the rubble as if he were looking at someone who had completely lost his mind.

"Hah? Did the fight knock you stupid? I'm Yuji Itadori."

Bloody tears mixed with dirty water ran from the corners of Choso's eyes. Every trace of killing intent drained away in that instant, replaced by an extreme anguish, the total collapse of everything Choso had believed. If this person is my younger sibling, then all this time I've been desperate to kill him, what was any of that for?

"What have I even... been doing..."

Choso's hand crashed heavily against the ground. Choso fell unconscious. Yuji stared at the motionless figure in the rubble, scratched the back of his head, and looked utterly baffled. He had no time to think it through. Gojo-sensei had been sealed. Master Toji was locked out. He couldn't afford to waste another second here. He had to find the Boundary Marker Choso had been guarding.

➤ Next: Forcibly Swallowed Fingers and the Ocean Disaster Curse