"Waaah! Waaah!"
His tiny face stinging from the sudden assault, Gojo Satoru—currently nothing more than a fragile human infant—wailed in pain.
Watching this, an utterly "innocent" smile crept onto Mirai's wrinkled newborn face.
My foolish little otouto, Mirai joked internally. No need to thank me. I am simply doing my duty as your older brother to ensure your childhood is thoroughly character-building.
Since the moment of their birth, the clan elders had been treated to a front-row seat of Mirai's bizarre, miraculous behavior. They had all silently agreed that this child would likely emerge as the superior twin. If all went according to plan, the Gojo clan's future was impossibly bright.
But fate is a fickle mistress. Naturally, an anomaly occurred.
The results of the infants' innate technique appraisals were finally in. Just as in the original timeline, Gojo Satoru had awakened the Gojo clan's revered inherited technique: The Limitless.
The Six Eyes combined with the Limitless—this was the absolute gold standard for a Gojo Clan Head, a universally recognized recipe for unrivaled supremacy in the jujutsu world.
With such immense potential concentrated in the younger twin, the elders assumed the scales of fate had settled. Given the curse of twins sharing potential, they fully expected that Mirai, despite his early displays of intellect, would likely not awaken a functional innate technique at all.
But the technique that Mirai awakened was—
"The Ten Shadows Technique?!" "What?!" "How is this possible?!" "How could the Kirin of our Gojo clan awaken the prized inheritance of the Zenin clan?!"
Staring at the inky, pitch-black silhouettes that seemed to writhe and pulse within Mirai's shadow, the Great Elder suddenly felt his grip on reality slipping.
Did a Gojo cheat with a Zenin, or did a Zenin secretly marry into our clan?! But Satoru's flawless awakening of the Limitless proved the Gojo blood ran pure. What in the world had happened?
The Second Elder, clinging to a shred of rationality, marched over to the delivery bed to interrogate the exhausted mother of the six-eyed anomalies.
"Mafuyu, what on earth have you done?" he demanded, his voice trembling. "What is the meaning of the elder boy's technique?"
Still reeling from the shock of her children's impossible talents, the exhausted mother flinched as if struck. The sheer weight of the accusation suffocated her. Faced with the Second Elder's glaring suspicion, her pale face crumpled, and she burst into frantic tears.
"I—I don't know!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry! Please believe me, I am innocent! I have never betrayed the Gojo clan! Wuwuwu!"
"You—you... sigh." Looking down at the weeping woman who had just birthed two six-eyed deities for the clan—an unparalleled merit that far outweighed any perceived slight—the Second Elder could only let out a helpless breath.
The suffocating pressure and moral panic were too much for Mafuyu's fragile, post-partum state. Overwhelmed by misplaced guilt, her body's defense mechanisms kicked in, and she slipped into a deep, merciful unconsciousness.
(It would only be discovered much later through deep genealogical tracing: generations ago, a Gojo ancestor possessing no cursed energy had desired a normal life, changing her identity to live as an ordinary human. Her bloodline eventually crossed with a similarly talentless Zenin exile, slowly weaving the dormant genetics together over decades until they culminated in Mafuyu.)
While the mother slept, Mirai's fate hung in the balance.
The Gojo elders paced the room like ants on a hot skillet, locked in a heated, desperate debate over whether the elder twin should be kept or exiled.
The majority argued fiercely to keep him. He possessed the Six Eyes, after all! And the Ten Shadows Technique was historically the only power capable of rivaling the Limitless. Even if the twin curse severely restricted his cursed energy output, the sheer processing power and 360-degree absolute vision granted by the Six Eyes would guarantee his status as a powerhouse.
A Grade 1 sorcerer was an absolute certainty. If he was talented enough to grasp the Reverse Cursed Technique in the future, he could easily reach Special Grade! He could become a monster capable of pummeling curses into submission with pure martial arts alone!
As for the old superstition that twins were a terrible omen? Feudal dregs! Absolute nonsense! It was the modern era; how could the Gojo clan still cling to such archaic beliefs? The moment twin Six Eyes were born, the old rules had been shattered!
But a dissenting voice cut through the clamor.
The Great Elder stood firm, insisting that Mirai be sent away. He wasn't blinded by the immediate allure of a second powerhouse; he was looking at the precarious political landscape of the jujutsu world.
"Ah, ba, ba, ba!" You stubborn old geezer! Mirai babbled from the cold tatami mat, his tiny, wrinkled arms struggling to prop up his head. I'm just as overpowered as he is, why are you trying to kick me out?!
Though no one could understand his infant babbling, the Second Elder's heart melted at Mirai's spirited display.
He looked at the Great Elder with hesitation. "This child possesses the Six Eyes and the Zenin clan's Ten Shadows. His potential is immeasurable. Isn't it a tragic waste to cast him aside? We could train him to wield the shadows for the Gojo clan..."
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!" the Great Elder barked, rejecting the notion without a second thought.
"The Zenin clan will never allow it, and frankly, neither should we! If we keep him out of sheer greed, the moment the Zenins discover a Gojo wielding their most sacred technique, it will trigger an all-out blood feud! Need I remind you how fiercely the Great Three Families guard their inherited techniques?"
The Great Elder swept his stern gaze across the room. "If a war breaks out between our two clans, the resulting chaos will tear the jujutsu world apart. The disadvantages far outweigh the benefits. Only by quietly resolving this anomaly now can we guarantee Satoru the peaceful environment he needs to become the strongest Gojo Clan Head in history."
"The heavens blessing us with the Six Eyes and the Limitless is enough. If we gorge ourselves on this unprecedented greed, we will inevitably choke on the consequences!"
Silence descended upon the delivery room. The tension was so thick you could hear a pin drop.
After a long, agonizing pause, the Second Elder looked down at Mirai, who was currently gnawing on the hem of his trousers. He sighed in defeat. He understood the Great Elder's cold logic. Knowing the right path and walking it were two entirely different things.
This is why I was never fit to be the Clan Head, the Second Elder mocked himself internally.
"Who is in favor of my proposal?" the Great Elder asked softly. "And who opposes?"
The other elders lowered their heads in grim silence.
Seeing this, the Great Elder nodded, his face carved from stone. "Musashi. Take the elder child into your custody. Keep him entirely out of sight while we deliberate on where to send him."
"Yes, Great Elder!"
A scarred, middle-aged servant stepped forward, reaching down to scoop Mirai off the floor.
But the heartbreaking scene of the infant being carried away never came to pass.
The elders watched in stunned silence as Musashi strained, his face flushing crimson with exertion. He was pushing with all his might, yet his massive hands were hovering exactly one inch away from Mirai's body—completely paralyzed by an unseen force.
The elders gasped. The neutral Limitless?! Infinity?! No! It couldn't be! The speculation was instantly crushed. They could all sense it: there was absolutely zero cursed energy fluctuating around Mirai. He wasn't using jujutsu at all!
In truth, what was happening was only visible to a Stand User.
Hovering protectively over Mirai was a towering, silver-gray female figure. A scarlet, V-shaped energy core glowed intensely on her chest, and two brilliant, oval-shaped golden eyes burned like beacons on her head.
With effortless grace, she had intercepted the servant's rough hands, her grip clamping down on his wrists with the crushing force of a hydraulic press.
It was the sudden awakening of Mirai's Stand: Lexus.
Stand Power, old man! "If you think you can kidnap this young master so easily, you're 20,000 years too early!"
A terrifyingly smug smirk—one perfectly befitting a reincarnated sovereign—bloomed on Mirai's tiny, wrinkled face. His majestic blue eyes glanced upward, curiously admiring the slender, silver-clad figure of his Stand.
She totally looks like a feminine, youth-model of Ultraman Nexus, Mirai noted in awe. I wonder if a Stand feels hard like armor or soft?
Mirai was thoroughly distracted by his own curiosity.
But from the perspective of the terrified elders in the room? They couldn't see the silver giant. All they saw was an impossibly powerful infant, radiating zero cursed energy, halting a grown man in his tracks while staring them down with a pair of chilling, glowing blue eyes.
It felt as though the Grim Reaper himself was gazing at them from the cradle.
Every single elder in the Gojo clan shuddered.