Chapter 62: The Nemesis of Vegetation
Hanami moved first.
The roar that tore out of it did not sound human. It sounded old, buried, dragged up from somewhere deep beneath soil and roots and bones. The ground answered at once. Cracks raced outward, dirt burst apart, and thick roots erupted from below like giant snakes breaking through a grave.
They came from every direction.
Each one was wider than a man's torso, armored in dense bark and lined with hooked thorns. They did not lash wildly. They hunted. They twisted toward Yami with clear, murderous intent, closing off every angle until the whole clearing looked ready to swallow him whole.
"Yami! Move!"
Maki took half a step forward on instinct, Playful Cloud tightening in her hands, but Kamo caught her arm hard enough to stop her.
"Don't!" His voice shook despite himself. "If you go in now, you'll die for nothing!"
He was right, and that only made it worse.
Because Yami still had not moved.
He stood with one hand resting on the hilt at his waist, body relaxed, shoulders loose, eyes fixed on the storm of roots rushing at him. There was no panic in him. No visible tension. Just a slow inhale that seemed to pull the heat out of the air around them.
Total Concentration. Sun Breathing.
The first thing they noticed was not light.
It was temperature.
The clearing grew hotter with startling speed. The leaves nearest to Yami curled at the edges. Dry bark gave off faint popping sounds. The air around him wavered, like heat rising off a road in midsummer.
Then came the ring of steel.
A short, clean sound.
Shiranui slid free, and a red gleam flickered across the field.
What happened next made every witness go still.
The roots did not reach him.
Not really.
The moment they entered the space around him, they began to fail. Their violent motion faltered. The glossy green life within them vanished. Bark blackened and split. Moisture hissed away in steam. What had been thick, living wood turned brittle and dead in the span of a breath.
Hanami froze.
It felt it too.
Its roots were not merely being cut. They were being ruined from the inside, life burned out of them so completely that even cursed energy could not force them back into growth.
The severed ends did not ooze sap.
They charred.
For the first time since stepping into the exchange event, Hanami felt something close to shock.
Yami lifted his gaze.
The sea of roots filled his eyes, yet his expression did not change.
"Your plants are afraid," he said.
His voice was quiet, but the words carried.
Hanami felt them more than heard them.
"They know what is standing in front of them."
Yami took one step.
The heat around him sharpened.
"The sun is up."
Then he vanished.
Maki's eyes widened. Megumi, watching from behind the line of ruined roots, almost thought he had imagined it. One moment Yami was there. The next, the clearing held only afterimages. Several figures moved through the writhing roots at once, each one faintly blurred by the heat, each one just a little too late to be pinned down.
Sun Breathing: Third Form: Raging Sun.
Hanami snarled and forced more roots up from the ground, sweeping them across the battlefield in a dense, indiscriminate crush. It did not care what it destroyed anymore. It only wanted that human dead.
But the roots kept missing.
They smashed through afterimages. They tore up earth. They shredded air and bark and old stone.
None of them found flesh.
By the time Hanami realized which one was real, Yami was already at its flank.
There was no flashy wind up.
No dramatic shout.
Only a compact turn of the hips, a line of steel, and a slash so clean it barely seemed real.
Shiranui passed through Hanami's left arm.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the limb split open.
The cut was smooth. Too smooth. It looked less like damage and more like something essential had simply been removed from the body. A beat later, pain hit.
Hanami screamed.
It was sharp, raw, almost animal.
Its hand flew to the wound, but the flesh there was not recovering. The edges of the cut glowed with a fierce, dry heat. The cursed energy rushing to mend the damage only burned away faster, chewed apart by a power Hanami did not understand and could not suppress.
Plants lived by the sun.
Plants also died by it.
Too much heat. Too much light. Too much force.
Yami's blade had not just wounded Hanami. It had struck the part of it that belonged to the forest itself.
Hanami stumbled back, clutching the ruined arm, and for the first time its composure cracked.
This was wrong.
This human had no cursed energy. Hanami had confirmed it again and again. No cursed energy, no technique, no domain. By every law the jujutsu world obeyed, he should not have been able to do this.
And yet the pain was real.
Worse than pain.
It was suppression. A kind of absolute hostility, like the world itself had chosen a side.
Hanami looked at the boy holding the black blade and felt an impossible thought surface in its mind.
Predator.
Not prey.
Predator.
Yami lowered his sword slightly, the tip angled toward the ground. Heat shimmered around the blade. The air between them bent faintly, and the grass beneath his feet had already begun to brown.
He flicked the edge once, a small, almost absent gesture.
Then he looked at Hanami the way one might look at a dangerous animal that had already shown its weakness.
No contempt.
No excitement.
Just finality.
"Do you want to keep going?"
Hanami did not answer.
It could not.
Because the boy in front of it had already given the answer for both of them.
Yami raised the blade a fraction.
The motion was so slight it almost seemed careless.
"The next strike," he said, "will take your head."
…..
Check out my newly released fanfic on my second account: FanficLord02
I Became a Demon Sword and Traveled the Anime Worlds