Curse Return: Infinity

Within the abyssal depths of the spiraling path.

Footsteps echoed through the hollowed stone walls, emphasizing the vast emptiness and eerie silence of the place.

Minamoto Sōjun had once again returned to the Palace of Fallen Stars. He had temporarily set aside his contemplations about Tengen's evolution and was now analyzing the latter's soul.

The two worked in tandem.

Tengen busied himself with constructing barriers to delay his evolution as much as possible—time was running out.

Minamoto stood nearby.

In his mental domain, Tengen's soul appeared to be lying beneath a massive tree on a smooth grassy field. The soul gazed up at the endless starry sky, where countless stars twinkled, almost as if they were staring back at him.

"Have you heard of a 'memory USB drive'?" Minamoto asked, snapping out of his thoughts with an excited expression. "It's a concept where a person's memories and consciousness are copied into a USB drive and can be retrieved via a neural interface when needed, allowing the restoration of one's sense of self."

"??"

Tengen responded with a face full of question marks.

Minamoto suddenly felt like he was trying to teach a village elder how to use a smartphone.

He rephrased his explanation: "The soul is intrinsically tied to the body—both are essential for life. Our current challenge is figuring out how to bypass the immortality technique and separate the body from the soul."

He continued, "The term 'soul' is too broad—it encompasses the mind, will, memory, and consciousness. We can extract only the most critical part and let the rest evolve with the body. Once the evolution is complete, we reintegrate this part back into the body to regain one's sense of self."

Minamoto circled around Tengen as he explained, "The tricky part will be reintegrating the extracted portion into the evolved part. The method and timing will be crucial, and that's where you'll need to take the lead."

"...This is difficult," Tengen muttered after a moment of deep thought. "I can't predict the direction of evolution. I don't know what my body and soul will become after the process, and I'm not confident in finding myself amidst the unknown."

As expected, Minamoto found this challenging. The biggest hurdle was Tengen's overly cautious nature.

"At worst, we could consider abandoning the flesh and ascending with barriers," Minamoto proposed as a last resort.

"Using the barrier as a substitute for the body?"

"Yes. If all else fails, abandon everything else and store the extracted consciousness in the barrier. Isn't your Buddhist philosophy centered on spiritual refinement? The body is merely a raft to cross the river. Once ashore, the raft is no longer needed."

Tengen felt speechless at such a blatant misuse of Buddhist analogies, but he couldn't deny its feasibility. "If things are truly out of control, then separating the consciousness ahead of time—no, targeting only the consciousness—would indeed simplify the operation significantly…"

Tengen murmured to himself.

"All that's left is to find a suitable new vessel for the consciousness. This way, you could even transcend the technique and achieve immortality," Minamoto pressed on, exploiting Tengen's wavering resolve.

"The out-of-control body and fragmented soul can be left to me to handle… With the millennium-old dilemma solved, the balance of the Jujutsu world remains intact. It's truly a cause for celebration."

This scenario resembled the classic riddle: "How do you fit an elephant into a refrigerator?"

Most people's first reaction is that the elephant is far too large, and even if it were reduced to minced meat, it wouldn't fit. They become trapped in this line of thought.

In reality, the steps are simple: open the refrigerator, put the elephant inside, and close the door.

Human thinking is often limited by predefined constraints. A household refrigerator usually has a capacity of about 100 liters, so people instinctively confine themselves to this limit. The riddle, however, never specified the size of the elephant or the refrigerator.

Returning to the current problem, it boiled down to how to extract the consciousness, preserve it externally, and reintegrate it into the soul at the right moment. Even if reintegration failed, the only concern would be how to sustain it externally.

Minamoto's unorthodox thinking never confined itself to one approach. If one method failed, there were always alternatives.

For instance, he could use his own technique to completely assimilate Tengen, leaving his consciousness intact and rendering evolution irrelevant. Of course, Tengen would never agree to such a method. No one would willingly entrust their life and death to another unless absolutely necessary.

Alternatively, Minamoto could partially assimilate Tengen and, during the evolution prompted by his technique, interfere using his own. By leveraging the conflict between techniques and Tengen's self-will, it might be possible to steer the evolution's direction.

There were countless possibilities; it all depended on Tengen's choice.

But regardless of the method, developing a practical and reliable solution would inevitably require experimenting on Tengen himself.

Minamoto didn't rush, giving Tengen ample time to deliberate.

A few days later, Tengen finally made his decision.

At such a critical juncture, he had still hesitated for days, squandering precious time. Minamoto found his indecision exasperating.

In the end, Tengen chose to create a "memory USB drive."

Minamoto was finally able to dive deep into his experiments on Tengen.

Tengen's millennia-old soul and body proved resilient, but even he began to falter under repeated trials.

"How about learning the Reverse Cursed Technique first?"

Extracting without replenishing—it would wear out even the toughest being.

Minamoto exited the Palace of Fallen Stars.

Cursed energy in the Jujutsu world is negative energy, typically expressed through the addition of negative values. This negative energy is oriented toward offense and is unsuitable for healing.

However, if negative energy is multiplied by negative energy, the result is positive energy due to the principle of "negative times negative equals positive."

This is the essence of the Reverse Cursed Technique.

Positive energy can be used for physical recovery, but it requires an extraordinarily refined level of cursed energy manipulation.

Few in the sorcerer community can achieve this. Even Satoru Gojo only partially mastered it—he can heal himself but not others.

Minamoto's precision with cursed energy was, of course, unparalleled. He had already grasped the mathematical principle of "negative times negative equals positive."

What truly eluded him was the concept of "positive" itself.

Positive and negative were merely human constructs; cursed energy inherently lacked such distinctions.

He knew how to add. He knew how to multiply.

But the "1" in (-1) * (-1) = 1—what exactly was this concept of "1"?

Understanding cursed energy too well had, ironically, left him unable to comprehend such a narrow definition.

His next step: consult either Gojo Satoru… or Shoko Ieiri.

Once he saw it with his own eyes, he could integrate it seamlessly into his own approach.

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