On a remote street in West Tokyo City, the rain had long since stopped. The halo of the streetlights reflected a dim yellow glow in the puddles.
Accompanied by a faint ripple of spatial distortion, a pitch-black vortex opened in the air.
Yamada took the first step out, his leather boots making a light splashing sound as they stepped on the accumulated water.
Following him, Yuji, Megumi, and Toji, who was carrying Nobara, stepped out of the vortex one after another.
As soon as they landed, Yuji's tense nerves relaxed. As the adrenaline faded, the sharp pain from his severed arm made him stumble, nearly falling to the ground.
"Hiss! It hurts!"
He clutched his empty left wrist, his face deathly pale.
Earlier in the Eishu Juvenile Detention Center, to fight the Special Grade Cursed Spirit, his hand had been cut off at the root. Although it was crudely bandaged with clothes now, blood was still seeping out.
"Hey, kid, you'll die if you lose too much blood."
Toji casually placed the unconscious Nobara on a roadside bench, turned to glance at Yuji, and grinned.
"If you die now, wouldn't my effort to fish you guys out just now have been in vain?"
Megumi gritted his teeth and stepped forward to support Yuji, immediately taking out his phone. "I'll contact Ijichi-san right away and have him take us to Jujutsu High to see Ieiri-san. Reverse Cursed Technique should be able to save his life. As for the severed hand..."
In this Jujutsu World, except for monsters of Sukuna's level, even Shoko, who is proficient in Reverse Cursed Technique, would find it difficult to regenerate a severed limb out of thin air.
"No need for all that trouble."
Yamada turned around, his gaze falling on Yuji's bloody, severed wrist.
He walked up to Yuji, raised his right hand, and hovered his fingers over the wound. "Endure the itchiness for a bit."
As his voice fell, a green light, almost solidifying, appeared in Yamada's palm.
Yang Release Chakra.
Under the shroud of this green glow representing ultimate vitality, the necrotic muscle tissue at Yuji's wrist quickly sloughed off. Immediately after, a scalp-tingling scene appeared.
The pale white bones, like a tree sprouting branches, extended forward at a visible speed.
Blood vessels, nerves, and muscle fibers followed closely behind, as if countless invisible hands were rapidly weaving them together.
In less than ten seconds, when the green light dissipated, a perfectly intact, new left hand—with skin even fairer than before—miraculously appeared on Yuji's wrist.
"This... how is this possible?!"
Megumi's eyes widened, and his phone fell into a puddle with a "plop."
He stared intently at Yuji's newly grown hand, his worldview suffering an unprecedentedly violent shock.
Regenerating a severed limb? Not reattaching a severed part, but directly growing flesh and bone out of thin air?
"Move it around, see if it works." Yamada pointed at Yuji's newly grown hand.
Yuji blankly raised his left hand, clenched his fist tightly, and then moved his five fingers. There was no sense of sluggishness, it even felt more powerful than before.
"It... it grew back! My hand really grew back! Amazing! Uncle, are you a god?!" Yuji jumped excitedly, his face full of disbelief.
"Uncle?"
Yamada's eye twitched, and his gaze swept over coldly. "Call me by the wrong title again, and I'll chop this hand off again."
Yuji immediately stood at attention, covered his mouth, and shook his head frantically.
Beside them, Megumi was in no mood to pay attention to Yuji's antics.
His gaze moved past Yamada and locked onto the tall man standing in the shadows, idly picking his ear.
The light had been dim in the Eishu Juvenile Detention Center and the situation was too urgent to see clearly. But now, by the light of the streetlamp, Megumi finally saw that face clearly.
That face with a scar at the corner of the mouth, a face he would recognize even if it turned to ash.
"You..."
Megumi's voice trembled, his fists at his sides clenched until his knuckles turned white.
"Why are you here? Weren't you dead long ago?"
Hearing this question, Toji stopped picking his ear. He turned his head and sized up his biological son, who had already grown into a teenager, with a look of casual scrutiny.
"Yo, isn't this Megumi? You've grown quite a bit." Toji crossed his arms, the corner of his lips curling into a mocking arc.
"Dead? You must have listened to that brat Satoru's nonsense. I'm living just fine, I just changed to a generous new boss." He pointed at Yamada.
"You bastard..." Megumi gritted his teeth, anger and confusion rising in his eyes.
He had no good feelings for this biological father who had abandoned him as a child and even intended to sell him to the Zenin clan.
"Stop looking at me with those hateful eyes." Toji sneered and stepped in front of Megumi.
The pressure brought by his massive frame made Megumi instinctively want to summon a shikigami.
But Toji just reached out and unceremoniously ruffled his hair. "Back there, you were so scared by a piece of trash that barely reached the threshold of Special Grade that you couldn't even use your shadows. What kind of garbage have you been learning at that crappy school these past few years?"
Toji's voice was low, filled with merciless disdain. "The Ten Shadows, a Cursed Technique that only appears once every few centuries in the Zenin clan, is being wasted in your hands."
"If you don't want to die too early, stop focusing your mind on that boring sense of justice all day. Go develop the depth of the shadows. Shadows can swallow everything, they aren't just for making a few dogs and birds."
Megumi was stunned.
He thought Toji would mock his weakness or say something cold. But in this seemingly harsh mockery, every sentence hit the bottleneck of his technique development.
"Alright, that's enough catching up." Yamada interrupted the awkward conversation between father and son.
He glanced at Nobara on the bench, who was about to wake up. "Your Jujutsu High Assistant Supervisor is about to find you. Toji, let's go back."
"Coming, Boss."
Toji withdrew his hand, didn't look at Megumi again, and turned to follow Yamada.
Kamui's spatial vortex twisted again, and their figures merged into the black hole, completely disappearing into the night.
"Fushiguro, that scarred uncle... is your father?" Yuji asked cautiously.
"No. I don't have a father like that." Megumi turned away, the emotions in his eyes complex and difficult to discern.
He looked at his hands that had just summoned a shikigami, recalled Toji's words, and fell into a long silence.