Chapter 58: The Teaching of Black Flash
"Yami! You really are here!"
A bright, familiar voice rang out through the battered clearing as a pink haired figure burst from the trees at full speed.
Yuji Itadori.
He had originally been rushing to support Megumi Fushiguro, but halfway there, he sensed the violent collision of cursed energy from this direction and immediately changed course. By the time he arrived, the battlefield had already turned into a disaster zone.
Trees were broken.
The ground was cratered.
Kyoto Jujutsu High's students were sprawled all over the place in various states of defeat.
Yuji stopped dead, his eyes nearly falling out of his head.
"What happened here?!"
He looked at Yami, who stood at the center of the clearing with only a slightly disordered shirt and a bit of dust on him, and his expression instantly turned into pure admiration.
"Did you really beat them all by yourself?"
Yami casually brushed the dirt from his sleeve. "Just a little sparring."
"Oi! So this is Sukuna's vessel?"
The moment Aoi Todo saw Yuji, his eyes lit up as though he had discovered another priceless treasure.
His body was battered from the fight with Yami, but his spirit had only grown more manic. Right now, everything he looked at seemed either like a worthy opponent or a future brother.
He stepped forward, pointed dramatically at Yuji, and declared, "Even if you are Yami's companion, there is still one question I must ask."
Yuji blinked. "Huh?"
Todo's expression became grave, as though he were speaking of the most sacred truth in the world.
"What kind of woman is your type?"
Yuji froze for a second, completely unable to keep up with the leap in logic. Still, he answered on instinct.
"If I had to say... probably a tall girl like Jennifer Lawrence."
Silence.
For exactly one breath, the forest went still.
Then two scorching streams of tears erupted from Todo's eyes.
"My brother!!!"
Yuji jumped in shock. "What?!"
Yami closed his eyes.
As expected.
In this world, besides Satoru Gojo's Infinity, the only truly unreasonable law of causality was probably Aoi Todo's ability to create nonexistent memories.
Todo strode over and grabbed Yuji by the shoulders, his expression fierce and sincere.
"Since you possess such noble taste, I cannot stand by and watch you remain this weak!"
He turned and jabbed a thumb toward Yami.
"That monster is different. He is a natural disaster wearing human skin. He cannot be used as a reference."
Yami glanced at him.
Todo either did not notice or intentionally ignored it.
"But you are different!" Todo shouted. "There is enormous power sleeping inside you, and yet you still do not know how to use it properly!"
His expression sharpened.
"Watch closely. What I'm about to show you is the key to becoming truly strong."
Yuji immediately straightened.
Even Yami's gaze narrowed slightly.
Todo inhaled deeply. The cursed energy around him began to surge again, but this time it did not burst outward wildly like before. Instead, it was forcibly compressed toward a single point.
His fist.
The process looked violent, almost unnatural, like trying to force a raging river into the eye of a needle.
"So called cursed energy is not simply something you smear over your body to hit harder or endure more damage," Todo said. "That is crude. Wasteful. Amateurish."
His fist trembled as the cursed energy compressed further and further.
"You make it lag behind your physical strike, then force it to erupt at the exact instant of impact."
He looked at Yuji.
"This is Black Flash."
Boom.
Todo stepped forward and threw a punch into the trunk of a towering tree.
For a fraction of a second, black lightning burst into existence.
The space around his fist visibly twisted.
There was no explosive roar like one would expect from such a strike. Instead, the tree simply disappeared from the point of contact outward. Its trunk did not crack. It did not splinter.
It was pulverized into fine dust.
Yuji's eyes went wide. "That's insane..."
This was Black Flash.
A spatial distortion triggered when cursed energy strikes within 0.000001 seconds of the physical blow. A phenomenon so difficult to control that even veteran sorcerers could never produce it at will.
And yet Todo had done it like he was demonstrating a basic exercise.
He withdrew his fist and turned back with pride blazing on his face.
"Did you see that?"
Yuji nodded like a chick pecking rice. "Yeah!"
"That is the threshold," Todo said. "The point where a sorcerer stops being mediocre."
"Try."
Yuji did not hesitate. He immediately planted his feet, clenched his fist, and began attempting to align the flow of cursed energy with his strikes.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Failure after failure.
The energy either came too early, too late, or bled out inefficiently.
But Yuji did not get frustrated. With every miss, he adjusted. With every failed attempt, his instincts sharpened. As expected of a combat genius, he learned through the body faster than most could learn through thought.
While Todo drilled him with roaring corrections, Yami stood off to the side, watching in silence.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
In his field of vision, Todo's previous strike replayed itself with incredible clarity.
First came the physical sequence, muscle contraction, bone conduction, the snapping transfer of force from waist to shoulder to arm to fist.
Then came the cursed energy, delayed, compressed, and detonated at the instant of contact.
That microscopic gap.
That secondary burst.
That distortion in space.
Though Yami possessed no cursed energy, the principle itself felt familiar to him.
At its core, Black Flash was the ultimate control of force.
And that...
was something Breathing Techniques were built upon.
"So that's how it is," Yami murmured.
Todo glanced over. "Hm?"
Yami ignored him and rested a hand on the hilt of Shiranui.
"The essence of Black Flash is the overlap between the strike and the secondary eruption."
He looked down at his own hand.
"If I have no cursed energy, then I'll replace it with something else."
Thunder Breathing.
Sun Breathing.
Speed and power.
Vacuum and shockwave.
If the blade moved faster than sound, then a pressure rupture would inevitably be created. Normally, the slash and the resulting shockwave would not strike at precisely the same instant.
But what if they did?
What if the speed of the blade, the release of force, and the vacuum shockwave overlapped within the same infinitesimal window?
A purely physical Black Flash.
A strange curve rose at the corner of Yami's lips.
"This move..."
His heart began to accelerate.
Thunder Breathing surged through his body, sharpening his nerves to the limit. At the same time, Sun Breathing fed heat and force into every fiber of his muscles.
His blood raced.
His lungs burned.
His bones trembled faintly under the strain.
Then he drew.
No flourish. No wasted motion. Just a single iai slash.
Hum.
A terrifying blast suddenly split the forest.
A black red slash tore forward, followed by a visible distortion in the air, like space itself had been struck half a beat later by the same attack.
Rumble.
The row of trees ahead vanished in an instant, cleanly severed and blasted apart. Their cross sections were so smooth they shone, their surfaces scorched and half vitrified from the friction and heat.
For a moment, the clearing was silent.
Todo's mouth slowly fell open.
Even Yuji forgot to breathe.
"That..." Todo said at last, voice hoarse with disbelief. "That wasn't cursed energy."
"No."
"That wasn't Black Flash either."
"No."
Todo stared at the ruined tree line, then back at Yami.
"And yet it created a spatial distortion through pure physical force?"
Yami slowly sheathed his blade.
Click.
He looked at his palm thoughtfully.
"The principle is similar. But the timing is too strict."
Just like Black Flash, it was not something that could be reproduced perfectly every single time. The gap was too small. The overlap too exacting.
Even for him, it could not be guaranteed on command.
"Still..." Yami curled his fingers slightly. "The path is open now."
He looked at Todo.
"Thanks."
Todo stood there in silence.
Then, for the first time in a long while, the mighty Aoi Todo felt something almost like embarrassment.
He had been teaching Yuji.
But somehow, Yami had used that teaching to create a completely different monster of a technique in a matter of moments.
Before the atmosphere could grow any stranger, however, a sudden pressure descended from above.
Everyone's expression changed.
The sky, which had been clear just moments ago, rapidly darkened. Thick blackness spread overhead like spilled ink, swallowing the light.
Yuji instinctively stepped back. "What is that...?"
Todo's grin faded.
Yami raised his head and stared at the Curtain spreading across the sky.
It was not an ordinary barrier.
This one carried a clear sense of rejection. Targeted exclusion. Intent.
His eyes sharpened.
"...So it's finally starting."
The playful mood vanished from the clearing.
The exchange event.
The ambushes.
The warm up battles.
All of it had only been the prelude.
Now, the real fight was about to begin.
.....
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