Yuji Itadori.
The true protagonist of Jujutsu Kaisen in every aningful sense, possessing terrifying potential that surpassed even Satoru Gojo and Ryon Sukuna. The one and only top-tier powerhouse in the Jujutsu world.
In the first half of his life, before awakening to Jujutsu, he beca [The Tiger of West Junior High], beating down school tyrants with his fists and punting punks aside with his feet, pulling off a one-man campus power fantasy that made countless girls secretly fall for him.
In the second half of his life, he steadily built himself up and beca the Tiger Emperor, with endless Black Flash in his left hand and full-screen world-cutting slashes in his right. His mysterious farmhouse cooking even scared aliens into retreat.
What a sha, though.
The roughest few months of his life ended up getting turned into Jujutsu Kaisen, where he was forced into the role of so jock just throwing punches all day.
It was not as though Naoya Zenin had never considered finding Yuji Itadori before the original plot began.
If he could start teaching that athlete all kinds of Jujutsu knowledge a year in advance, then with Itadori's growth rate, Ryon Sukuna might well get punched to death in a single blow by the ti of the Shinjuku showdown.
There were just two concerns.
First. That would completely alter the original plotline, making all the information he had as a transmigrator useless. His greatest advantage would disappear on the spot, and after that, without his god's-eye view of the story, he would be stumbling blind.
Second. He had no idea where Yuji Itadori was before the original plot began.
Even a transmigrator could not be omniscient and omnipotent.
The story was currently set right after the end of the Jujutsu Kaisen prequel, and Gege Akutami had never drawn any middle school arc for Yuji Itadori. If he wanted to find [The Tiger of West Junior High] while he was still quietly building himself up, the only option was a large-scale search.
As it happened, Utahi Iori's uninvited visit gave him exactly that chance.
Naoya Zenin had already wanted to improve his relationship with Mai Zenin, so there was no reason he could not agree to Utahi Iori's request. After all, all she wanted was for Mai to grow up healthy at school, which just so happened to align perfectly with his own goal.
Co on.
Who would want Mai returning to the Zenin Clan?
The second she went back ho, that old bastard Ogi Zenin would hack her to death with one swing.
And once Mai Zenin died.
Okay, Maki Zenin would awaken [Heavenly Restriction], and then the entire Zenin Clan would get wiped out.
Then what?
Would that not an he would die too?
So this transmigrator had not been lying at all. It was the pure truth.
Right now, he and Mai Zenin were completely bound together by fate.
To live and die as one.
That was the most accurate way to describe this pair of cousins.
So Naoya Zenin could conveniently do Utahi Iori a favor, and in exchange for helping him search for Yuji Itadori, he would leave Mai Zenin alone and not interfere with her freedom to study at school.
That was the most perfect [Binding Vow].
You ask whether I won or lost?
I made a clean profit.
What troubled him most now, though, was what choice he should make after finding Yuji Itadori.
After thinking it over for a long ti, Naoya Zenin decided it was better not to move recklessly. He would preserve the original plotline and let Satoru Gojo beco Yuji Itadori's teacher. That would also make it easier for him to keep quietly building himself up. Even if Kenjaku really got desperate, he would only go looking for trouble with Gojo, which ant Naoya could keep hiding and steadily developing in peace.
Of course, the most difficult issue was still Ryon Sukuna's resurrection.
Whether Yuji could evolve into the Tiger Emperor depended entirely on Sukuna laying the groundwork for him and effectively installing all sorts of broken upgrades into that athlete.
Even if Naoya could forcefully prevent Sukuna's resurrection, Kenjaku, left with no other option, would simply settle for reviving Sukuna in soone else.
That would actually lead to an even worse situation, because no one knew what kind of disaster an early resurrection of Sukuna might cause.
So Naoya Zenin planned to start collecting Sukuna's fingers as early as possible once he entered Jujutsu High, then feed them to Yuji one by one depending on the situation.
The best-case scenario would be to take the Naruto Uzumaki route.
Ideally, Yuji and Sukuna could coexist like Naruto and the Nine-Tails. After all, they were uncle and nephew, so what overnight grudge could there be between family?
But given Sukuna's brutal personality, that plan was unlikely to work.
So the more realistic ideal outco was for Yuji to grow into the Tiger Emperor ahead of schedule and eventually refine Sukuna completely.
If he could pull that off, then a lot of future trouble would disappear. After that, all he would need to do was resolve the issue with the Zenin twins, and then he could head straight for his happy ending of kicking back and taking it easy.
Playing it safe was the right call.
This transmigrator did not have any grand ambitions. He just wanted to keep his head down, quietly grow stronger, and save a few people along the way when he could. The main priority was simple. Do not screw up, do not die suddenly.
The more top-tier carries on the team, the better.
Seriously, do not count on growing strong enough to save the world in the late ga.
Even soone as strong as Gojo got cut clean in half by Sukuna's world-cutting slash and ended up as two and a half pieces. Guys, that is Gege Akutami's own favorite, and if he really cannot win, he will absolutely start cheating.
There really was such a thing as [the will of heaven] in this world.
Plot armor and plot death were just too powerful.
If there was a chance to play sneaky and survive, then better to do exactly that.
What if he got too cocky and ended up getting crushed by [the will of heaven]?
Wait, and hold on to hope.
Only those who can see through [the will of heaven] are truly strong.
"...But why has there still been no word on Yuji Itadori after all this ti?"
Naoya Zenin had thought that with the reach of Jujutsu High, they would be able to bring that athlete right to him in no ti.
But the result had been far from satisfying.
Not only had he failed to see Yuji's face, even news of him had sunk without a trace. The last lead had completely died in Sendai.
This bizarre situation made the transmigrator's heart sink.
It was not as though he were trying to find soone sowhere deep in China.
This was the much smaller Japan, and he had already provided the na and a whole set of clues, yet Jujutsu High still could not find one high school athlete???
Holy shit.
No wonder Gojo had to work overti every day. How was the Jujutsu World supposed to improve with a bunch of idiots like this ssing around?
The ominous feeling made Naoya Zenin's temples start throbbing.
At last, after a long wait, the phone rang.
"What. Yuji Itadori transferred schools?!"
Naoya Zenin shot right to his feet.
"There are no leads left? Even his grandfather was transferred to another hospital?!"
"Yes."
Kento Nanami answered helplessly from the other end.
"I asked the school. I heard his family ca and handled the paperwork. As for where Yuji Itadori transferred to, even the school does not know."
"His family?"
Naoya Zenin completely lost it on the spot.
No, wait, had Yuji's whole family not died off? Where was this family supposed to have suddenly co from?!
"Yes. I heard that because his only guardian, his grandfather, was hospitalized, Yuji Itadori's mother ca personally to take her son away."
"His mother...?"
Cold sweat instantly began seeping down Naoya Zenin's back.
"What is her na?"
"Kaori Itadori. That is the last lead we have."
When the call ended, the transmigrator nearly blacked out on the spot.
How could this happen?!
Kaori Itadori...
Was that not one of Kenjaku's old identities?!
Why would that thousand-year-old monster deliberately pick up his old body again and co reclaim Yuji Itadori as his son?!
Yes, as terrifying as it sounded...
Yuji Itadori was actually Kenjaku's son.
At the very least, the body called Kaori Itadori had indeed once been Yuji Itadori's biological mother.
Naoya Zenin knew things had gone completely bad.
The butterfly effect.
This was the butterfly effect of stealing Suguru Geto's corpse.
He had never once considered what body Kenjaku had been using before taking over Suguru Geto.
And he had also completely underestimated Kenjaku's intelligence.
The final villain of the original story was not so fixed NPC. He was a thousand-year-old monster with a brain.
After losing Suguru Geto's [Cursed Spirit Manipulation], Kenjaku no longer had the most important key needed to launch the Culling Ga plan, naly, the combat power in his hands was now severely lacking.
But there was no way Kenjaku did not have a backup plan.
And [Yuji Itadori] was another trump card he had spent that long millennium carefully preparing.
The Tiger Emperor Naoya had originally planned to nurture had, through a cruel twist of fate, been snatched away by Kenjaku first.
"Damn it..."
That piece of shit Kenjaku, who abandoned his husband and child, still had the nerve to co claim his own son?!
But Yuji Itadori's transfer was not the real reason this transmigrator felt his heart sink.
He could accept Yuji Itadori becoming a punch-throwing athlete. That was already the direction the story was ant to take. At worst, it just ant Gojo would be headed for the sa bisected ending again.
But what Naoya Zenin absolutely could not accept was the plot developing into this.
What exactly was Kenjaku thinking?
Why had he taken Yuji Itadori away?
If it was just to make him Sukuna's vessel ahead of ti, that was not the end of the world. With Yuji's personality, there was no way he would ever tolerate Sukuna doing evil.
But the biggest problem was that sa personality.
Yuji Itadori was soone who valued family ties imnsely.
Kenjaku was soone with an extrely twisted sense of humor.
If he planned to play the family card with Yuji Itadori and act like a loving mother doting on her son...
Would that not an...that the future Tiger Emperor, the one destined to shake the entire Jujutsu World, was very likely going to beco his enemy?
The mont that thought crossed his mind, the transmigrator felt his legs start to shake.
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