In an instant, a terrifying killing intent stabbed toward him like the tip of a needle.
Ogi Zenin trembled with rage, the veins on his forehead bulging uncontrollably.
As one of the strongest contenders for the previous Clan Head position, Naoya Zenin's nominal uncle, and a Special Grade 1 Sorcerer who had inherited the Zenin Clan's oldest orthodox hereditary technique, [Blazing Courage], Ogi Zenin was outstanding even by the standards of the entire jujutsu world.
If Naobito Zenin was the clan's light, then Ogi Zenin was its shadow.
And yet, at a mont like this, soone had actually dared to provoke and humiliate him so brazenly in public?
"Shing—!!!"
With a lift of his hand, the katana at Ogi Zenin's waist was out of its sheath. In the next instant, he flashed forward and held it hard against Naoya Zenin's neck.
Pitch-black killing intent burned in those sharp eyes.
"Naoya, if your uncle wanted to kill you right now, it wouldn't even take a second."
Ogi Zenin was not exaggerating.
He only needed to press the edge down a little further, and Naoya Zenin's proud head would hit the floor in an instant.
Even one second was already too much.
The transmigrator could already feel it. That icy sensation crawling across his skin, bringing with it the unmistakable reality of death.
He had made a mistake earlier.
Naoya Zenin would never show weakness.
Even if the other party was his uncle, Ogi Zenin, he would not give him an ounce of respect.
So his response had failed the check and been forcibly rewritten by the system into sothing more fitting for this villain boss.
After all, if he did not have this untad attitude, how could Naoya Zenin end up getting -ed into death edits by the internet a million tis over even after he died?
The transmigrator now understood his situation even more clearly.
One wrong move, one wrong sentence, and he could die for nothing.
That was the inevitable end of a villain.
Co on, man.
Why couldn't conversations work like a ga and just pop up three dialogue options for ? I'm actually going to black out here.
By this point, Naoya Zenin was no longer complaining.
Instead, his mind had beco calr and calr.
No.
Not calm.
What had surfaced instead was an extrely cold kind of rationality.
The pressure of standing on the brink of death did not bring Naoya Zenin panic, but a detached indifference.
It was like he was a player outside the screen, watching the current situation from a third-person perspective and thinking through the optimal solution.
His biggest advantage right now was his grasp of the Jujutsu Kaisen plot.
And his knowledge of just how miserably and grotesquely Naoya Zenin would die.
Ogi Zenin looked like he wanted to kill him right now, but in the original story, he was more or less on the sa side.
At the very least, according to the original plot, Naoya Zenin was not supposed to die at Ogi Zenin's hands.
It was just that this old man was extrely old-fashioned and had always cared a great deal about appearances. Under normal circumstances, he would have ignored a few barbed remarks from Naoya Zenin. But this eting was attended by major figures from Kyoto's jujutsu world. If Naoya humiliated him in public here, Ogi Zenin would have a hard ti showing his face afterward.
Put simply, Ogi Zenin was a stubborn old bastard who responded to softness, not force.
That ant the solution to the current situation was already obvious.
"...Go ahead and cut down, if Uncle really wants to kill ."
Even at the edge of death, Naoya Zenin still urged his own demise with arrogance.
"What?"
Ogi Zenin's pupils constricted violently, his eyes reflecting the slight curve at the corner of the handso blond man's lips.
Even with a katana pressed to his throat, he could still smile?
His nephew had never been this sort of person.
Ogi Zenin had watched Naoya Zenin grow up since childhood.
As Naobito Zenin's late-born youngest son, and soone who had inherited the sa [Projection Sorcery] as his father, the genius Naoya Zenin had grown up spoiled and doted on by everyone. That indulgence had shaped him into an arrogant, self-important man. He was a flower raised in a greenhouse, a heaven-favored child who had hardly known any of the bloody storms of the jujutsu world.
That was why Ogi Zenin knew very well that, deep down, this nephew of his was actually a soft coward who had never seen much real hardship. If he ever truly ran into danger, he ought to show fear and panic.
So how could he be smiling arrogantly at a ti like this?
Had he already seen through the fact that Ogi Zenin would not truly go through with it?
"Uncle, as your own nephew, I'm actually worried about your safety instead."
Naoya Zenin's attitude did not waver in the slightest.
If anything, he tilted his head back a little farther, pressing his throat even closer to the blade and letting the sharp edge cut into his skin, blood slowly running down.
"I think that if Satoru were really pushed all the way into rebellion, then the first one to die would be my useless uncle, wouldn't it?"
This was absolutely not how Naoya Zenin should have acted.
That arrogant, ill-mannered, self-important young nobleman was actually speaking to his uncle in a tone of concern?
Wasn't he supposed to be the one most afraid of losing face, most afraid of being humiliated?
How could he possibly show an expression like this in front of everyone, as if he had already cast life and death aside?
"Naoya... y-you, what exactly are you trying to do? What are you even saying...?"
"Uncle, can't even hold your sword steady anymore?"
Naoya Zenin did not answer Ogi Zenin's question. He rely picked at his ear with his little finger and said it flatly.
Ogi Zenin abruptly lowered his head to look.
At so point, the sword that had been held taut had slipped down slightly, pulling away from Naoya Zenin's neck.
That plain, unremarkable sentence had been like a needle, viciously puncturing all of Ogi Zenin's authority.
He had never seen Naoya Zenin like this before.
Ogi Zenin stared blankly at his nephew, wariness still lingering in his eyes, but unable to hide a flicker of sothing he refused to admit.
His face and voice had not changed at all, and yet the old man vaguely felt sothing indescribable.
Fear.
It was as if everything about him had been seen through, like a canary raised in a cage, with even the courage to flap its wings and escape being slowly drained away.
"Naoya, tell us what you're thinking."
Naobito Zenin kept drinking deeply.
It was as though he had not seen that warm little scene of uncle-nephew affection just now at all, and simply went on drinking by himself.
"Dad, my thinking is simple."
Naoya Zenin took the towel handed to him by a servant and lightly wiped the beads of blood from his neck, that frivolous smile curling again at the corner of his lips.
"The Gojo Clan and the Zenin Clan have always been hereditary enemies. If we keep pressuring the jujutsu higher-ups, it'll probably only backfire. Back then, Toji stabbed Satoru Gojo and disrupted the Star Plasma Vessel's assimilation with Tengen. Satoru still hasn't settled that score with us."
The mont Naoya Zenin brought up that old incident, even Naobito Zenin, who had been focused on drinking the whole ti, stopped.
The old man wiped the liquor from the corner of his mouth and said in a lower voice, "Naoya, Toji had already left the Zenin Clan back then. That matter had nothing to do with us in the first place, did it?"
"If that's how we're putting it, then didn't Suguru Geto leave Jujutsu High too?"
Naoya Zenin shrugged.
"And yet even now, doesn't the jujutsu world still insist that Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto remained closely connected? Everybody thinks they planned rebellion together. Suguru Geto was killed by Satoru Gojo himself. But what about Toji? Dad, was Toji killed by your own hand?"
Naobito Zenin frowned.
Everyone there knew the answer perfectly well.
That was Toji Zenin, awakened with Heavenly Restriction. Kill him with your own hands?
Destroying the Zenin Clan would have been effortless for him.
But Toji did not do that. He chose to leave the Zenin Clan and marry into the Fushiguro family.
And it was precisely because Toji had done that that the Zenin Clan was not pursued by the jujutsu higher-ups afterward.
But if Satoru Gojo ever really decided to pursue the matter, Naobito Zenin knew there was no way he would escape death.
Because he had privately been in contact with Toji Zenin more than once.
He had even bought his son, gumi Fushiguro.
It was only because Satoru Gojo had been magnanimous that afterward he simply took gumi Fushiguro away and did not report it to the jujutsu higher-ups.
That was also why, in recent years, Naobito Zenin had decided to lower himself and try to ease relations with the Gojo Clan. He did not want the Zenin Clan and the Gojo Clan to remain forever at odds, cut off from each other like in the past.
That was why, earlier, when the people below him had all been talking about getting rid of Satoru Gojo, the current head of the Zenin Clan had not expressed any opinion at all. He had simply drunk alone, unwilling to keep talking to this bunch of idiots.
What pleased Naobito Zenin in particular, however, was that his own son, Naoya Zenin, actually seed to have inherited the sa outlook and was showing a willingness to get on good terms with Satoru Gojo.
"Naoya, I understand what you're thinking. Blindly pursuing Satoru Gojo's guilt isn't a wise move."
Naobito Zenin acknowledged it aloud, but then his tone shifted in the very next mont.
"But Suguru Geto's Night Parade of a Hundred Demons was launched in Kyoto too, and Satoru Gojo only bothered dealing with the cursed spirits in Shinjuku. Kyoto is the sacred ground of jujutsu, so we can't just keep swallowing losses in silence, can we? We ought to win so benefits for ourselves too."
Suguru Geto had orchestrated an incident, the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, in order to seize the Special Grade Cursed Spirit Rika Orimoto.
The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons released an unprecedented number of cursed spirits into Kyoto and Tokyo's Shinjuku, causing massive casualties.
And yet Satoru Gojo did not deal with the cursed spirits in ti. Instead, he was held up on the battlefield by a sorcerer from Africa.
Wasn't that ridiculous?
Wasn't that negligence?
No wonder people said Satoru Gojo had been colluding with Suguru Geto. After all, he was Satoru Gojo, the strongest of the modern age, and yet he was sohow held back by a foreign sorcerer?
"So we have to secure the greatest possible benefit."
Naoya Zenin took a deep breath.
"Suguru Geto's corpse, along with the large number of cursed spirits he left behind, should be handled by us in Kyoto."
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