Compared with New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain, which needed the user to stack a bunch of harsh binding conditions on themselves before it would even work, the Big Three Sorcerer Families’ secret art, Falling Blossom Emotion, was much easier to get started with.

No complicated barrier construction. No fiddly setup.

The user simply covered their whole body in cursed energy. The instant an enemy’s guaranteed-hit technique touched them, that cursed energy reacted on its own, deflecting the attack and striking back automatically.

And with Gojo standing right there, Six Eyes open and reading cursed energy flow like a diagram drawn in the air, the so-called secret technique of the Big Three Families might as well have come with step-by-step instructions.

Touma tried it twice. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

That was it.

A ripple of cursed energy spread out from his body. It looked light, almost soft, like petals falling in the wind, but the destructive force packed inside it was very real. In the next breath, the technique had already taken shape.

Complete and stable. No visible flaws.

"Eh? You learned it already? I didn’t even get to show off my dignity as a teacher..."

Gojo puffed his cheeks and muttered to himself, looking genuinely wounded.

Touma ignored the act.

Even after getting Falling Blossom Emotion, he had no intention of changing his original plan. He knew exactly how stupid it was to grab every shiny new technique and spread himself thin. So for now, he would not waste serious time digging into Falling Blossom Emotion’s deeper uses.

On the surface, his frantic push to master New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain looked like a simple attempt to patch up his defenses.

That was only the part people could see.

Underneath it was a much nastier, much more practical plan.

No one understood Touma’s biggest weakness better than Touma himself. His toolkit was large. His ability to replicate techniques was absurdly flexible. But none of that erased one ugly fact: his cursed energy reserves had a limit.

He did not have Gojo’s Six Eyes.

He did not have that ridiculous near-infinite blue mana bar that let Gojo treat efficiency like someone else’s problem.

Touma had to count every expense.

After running through the problem again and again in his head, he kept ending up at the same answer. If he used New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain by himself against a top-class Domain Expansion, just maintaining the barrier clash would eat a huge chunk of his focus and cursed energy. Trying to attack at the same time, or reinforce his defenses, would drag his performance down hard.

Worse, it could leave gaps.

And gaps got people killed.

So until his cursed energy reserves and barrier skill reached the level where he could withstand a top-tier domain alone, Touma came up with a workaround that was bold enough to sound insane.

Panda would cast Simple Domain for him.

If Panda could serve as an external defense station, keeping Simple Domain active and canceling the guaranteed-hit effect, Touma would be free inside the barrier.

No divided focus.

No forced energy split.

One hundred percent of his attention on fighting. One hundred percent of his cursed energy ready to use. And, more importantly, enough room in his head to think instead of desperately holding a shield together.

Because the moment that would decide everything was getting closer.

Touma stood by the window and looked out into the night, his expression unreadable.

He still could not figure out the connection between the mysterious woman who had briefly appeared during the Star Religious Group incident and the thing currently wearing Suguru Geto’s body. The threads were there. He could feel them.

But they were still tangled.

What bothered him even more was the butterfly effect.

He had already changed Jujutsu High’s situation by a ridiculous amount. With so many unknown variables moving around, who could say whether his next step would make him run into that woman earlier than expected?

Unknowns were annoying.

Unknowns also killed the unprepared.

So in Touma’s plans, the woman from the Star Religious Group was placed at the highest threat level. He prepared for her as if she were just as dangerous as the thing inside Geto’s body.

An extinction-level monster.

Nothing less.

Still, he knew very clearly that both New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain and Falling Blossom Emotion were compromises.

Useful compromises, yes. Life-saving ones, maybe.

But compromises all the same.

They existed because he still could not use a true Domain Expansion.

His best hope was that the detailed barrier knowledge he was grinding out through Simple Domain would eventually feed back into his Domain Expansion research. Little by little. One brick at a time. Until the breakthrough came naturally.

---

The next few days at Jujutsu High were quiet.

At least, quiet by sorcerer standards.

Touma worked like a machine with no concept of fatigue, repeating New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain over and over until even breathing felt like part of the training.

Most of the energy he had left went into another brutal project.

Teaching Panda the Simple Domain.

Panda was smart. After enough explanation and practice, it managed to build a rough prototype of the technique through its own understanding.

Touma did not accept it.

In a life-or-death battle, "rough" was just another way to say "dead soon."

Inside the hidden workshop, Touma used the most advanced methods he had and poured in everything he had beaten into himself during training. Every insight into barrier neutralization. Every painful lesson. Every microscopic habit of cursed energy flow that had been carved into his body through repetition.

He carved all of it into Panda’s core cursed energy circuits.

Not one detail was held back.

So the Panda sitting on Touma’s shoulder still looked like a tiny fluffy thing hugging bamboo, harmless enough to make people lower their guard on sight.

Inside that small frame, though, its combat ability and barrier expertise had changed completely since the last simulation.

The difference was night and day.

Under Touma’s spend everything now so you don’t die later philosophy, physical size had stopped being the main limit on Panda’s strength a long time ago.

If anything, that cute harmless appearance had become its best disguise.

The kind that made enemies relax for half a second.

Sometimes half a second was all it took.

---

Time slipped by, one day after another.

Then, deep one night, in the hours when the whole campus felt dead, the familiar voice rose from the depths of Touma’s mind without warning.

[Initiating card draw.]

A faint phantom card appeared in his mindscape, glowing softly as it turned in place. After a short spin, it stopped.

[Congratulations. Card obtained: Novice Electrician [R]]

[Novice Electrician [R]: Under a master’s harsh tutelage and countless electric shocks, you accumulated extensive hands-on experience. Your body has developed a bone-deep memory of electrical stimulation. While this card is equipped, your resistance to electricity-related damage and paralysis effects is increased (increase: 30%).]

Touma looked at the card flickering with pale blue arcs of electricity, then opened his eyes.

Based on what he currently knew, the card did not have an obvious use. He had not run into any enemies with lightning-based Cursed Techniques yet.

Still, the numbers were solid.

A flat thirty percent resistance increase against an entire damage category was nothing to laugh at.

No use right now.

That was fine.

He filed it away with the rest of his growing collection. Somewhere down some unknown timeline, against some unknown enemy, this thing might be the exact card that kept him alive.

Then the mechanical voice spoke again.

[Simulation charge obtained: one.]

"Hah..."

Touma let out a long, slow breath. The stale air left his lungs, and something cold flashed in his eyes.

His voice barely disturbed the room.

"Finally..."

And as if fate had been waiting for that exact second to turn the gears,

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

From a locked drawer in the corner of his room came a muffled vibration. Sharp in the silence.

A phone.

One that had once belonged only to Toji Fushiguro.

It was ringing for the first time in a long while.

Touma stood, crossed the room, unlocked the drawer with a small key, and took out the old handset. It kept buzzing in his palm.

The weak screen light washed over his expressionless face.

His eyes dropped to the number flashing on the display, then to the contact name above it.

He recognized it at once.

Shiu Kong.

Touma did not hesitate. His thumb pressed answer.

In the tiny slice of time it took to bring the phone to his ear, he made several precise adjustments to his throat muscles and vocal cords.

When he spoke, Touma Hayase’s clear, steady voice was gone.

What came out instead was low and lazy, with a cold, rough edge that sounded like it belonged to a man who looked at human life the way most people looked at trash by the roadside.

The voice of the Heavenly Restricted monster.

The voice of Toji Fushiguro.

"Yeah..."