[Note: Extremely Sorry...this chapter was published but later got deleted by mistake (─.─||)]
Chapter 145 — Morning Peacock, Noon Tiger… and When Evening Falls, the Elephant Appears…
The moment Shinsuke spoke, Toji, Maki, and everyone present fixed their gazes on him.
"Eight Gates…? Master's taijutsu… was self-created?"
Maki's eyes widened.
She didn't dare blink.
The martial art Shinsuke taught her and Toji was a system designed only for people with no cursed energy, yet allowed them to fight on equal ground with monsters like Gojo Satoru and Sukuna.
And now—
Master revealed that what they had learned… wasn't even its full form.
It could become stronger.
"Eight gates… meaning eight points to open…"
Toji frowned deeply as he watched Shinsuke's back.
"But he told me before that five was the maximum anyone could ever reach…"
He himself had fully opened four gates, and opening the fifth was like climbing a sheer cliff.
He suspected the fifth might already be his lifetime limit.
Yet now—
Shinsuke admits the technique actually has eight.
"No wonder… even if I reached the fifth, I still wouldn't touch his level."
For the first time, Toji understood why his brother's strength in this taijutsu so vastly surpassed his own.
"Only once in a lifetime, huh?"
Toji let out a thin, mocking laugh.
If a man with no cursed energy saved the entire jujutsu world…
Nothing could be more ironic.
"Come then. Show me."
Sukuna, for the first time, did not strike first.
He waited, thrilled.
He could tell—
This man could still entertain him.
And now that Sukuna had merged with Tengen's body, carved with the immortal technique, he was nearly indestructible. As long as he wasn't forcibly obliterated, he would revive endlessly.
So why rush?
It might be centuries before he met another person this amusing.
Shinsuke walked forward.
With every step, his aura grew heavier.
"Gate of Opening, Open! Gate of Healing, Open! Gate of Life, Open! Gate of Pain, Open! Gate of Limit, Open!"
Five steps. Five gates.
His skin flushed crimson. Boiling life force steamed off him in violent waves.
"Toji, Maki—these are only the first five gates. From here on… this is where the real technique begins."
He took two more steps.
"Gate of View, Open! Gate of Wonder, Open!"
Steam exploded. His blood roared like a tidal wave. The earth beneath him cracked.
His crimson skin was etched with bulging veins as power surged without restraint.
"So this was his previous state…
Meaning that wasn't even close to his limit??"
Everyone stared in disbelief.
From the fifth gate onward, Shinsuke's power wasn't rising—it was doubling, tripling each step.
For the first time, a glimmer of hope flickered in their hearts.
Gojo held his breath, Six Eyes locked onto the unfamiliar, non-cursed energy rushing toward Shinsuke's heart.
This wasn't cursed energy.
It was—something else.
Something overwhelmingly vast.
Red vapor poured out of Shinsuke's skin.
His very blood was burning.
And Sukuna, for the first time, felt pressure.
But he didn't fear—
He laughed.
"Magnificent!
Come—give me everything you have and entertain me!"
Shinsuke crouched slightly, lips twisting into something savage.
"No… From here on— you entertain me."
"Gate of Death, Open!"
BOOOOOOM!!!
The final gate—Death Gate—burst open.
Violent life force erupted skyward like a primordial beast.
A tornado of crimson steam split the cursed-energy clouds apart, tearing a massive hole in the heavens.
Shinsuke's hair and eyebrows turned blood-red, standing on end like a war god descending.
The ground shattered beneath his feet, webbing out for hundreds of meters.
A single push of his legs—
—and he vanished.
In the next instant, he was floating before Sukuna's massive face.
Sukuna's eyes widened with pure joy.
Four hands formed two sets of seals, cursed power surging.
"I will use my strongest power to kill you!"
Two free arms swung, unleashing twin space-severing slashes—
Simultaneously—
"Domain Expansion—"
But before he could complete it—
"Evening Elephant - First Step!"
Shinsuke didn't waste breath.
If he had opened the Death Gate, then hesitation did not exist.
His muscles bulged violently.
His fist drove forward.
KOOOOOOM!!!
The air in front of him was crushed, compacted tenfold, forming a colossal compressed shockwave.
It shattered Sukuna's twin slashes instantly—
And before Sukuna could blink,
the air cannon smashed directly into his chest—
Sukuna couldn't react at all.
Before he realized what happened, three of his arms and his entire left shoulder detonated into a mist of blood, shredded by the violently compressed space that continued hammering through his body.
"Impossible…!?"
In that instant, he felt as if his entire body had been frozen—
No, not his body…
The very space around him had been locked in place, making evasion physically impossible.
But Shinsuke didn't stop.
His figure flickered to Sukuna's flank—
His fist gathered an impossible concentration of life force—
"Second Step!"
Another blow.
Space compressed again—
Even denser, even fiercer.
A second massive cavity exploded open in Sukuna's colossal torso.
The flesh struck by this attack didn't merely tear—it vaporized instantly, leaving not a single trace.
---
Evening Elephant consisted of five consecutive steps, each exponentially more destructive than the last.
Once the first strike landed, escaping the remaining blows was nearly impossible.
Before Sukuna could even track Shinsuke's movements—
The Third Step
—obliterated his entire lower body.
He now had no option but to focus every drop of cursed energy around his head.
As long as the head remained intact, he could regenerate.
No matter how powerful these attacks were…
Surely this man couldn't maintain them indefinitely!
"G-Gulp… S-Sukuna can't fight back…?"
Beside the ruins, Kusakabe slowly pulled himself off the ground.
His expression was the same as the first day he ever saw Shinsuke beat a Special Grade curse senseless—
pure disbelief.
The man who never fit into jujutsu society…
had once again surpassed every limit Kusakabe thought existed.
"This… is taijutsu?"
Gojo Satoru's Six Eyes were fully activated—
He didn't even dare blink.
This…
This was supposed to be taijutsu!?
At this range, at this power, even calling this "superhuman" felt like an understatement.
And the idea that Shinsuke originally prepared this to drag Gojo down with him—
A cold sweat ran down Gojo's spine.
Against a monster like Sukuna,
the question wasn't "Can I win?"
it was "Can I even survive long enough to run?"
If even Sukuna's advanced form could do nothing but take hits, unable to form a domain—
Then Zen'in Shinsuke, in this state…
was no longer a human being.
---
"…Will I ever reach this level?"
Maki trembled, whispering to herself.
As the only disciple her master chose,
could she one day achieve this height?
Could she open all eight gates?
Could she fight gods?
The question shook her to her core.
---