The Heian Era—the undisputed golden age of jujutsu.
In this era, both magnificent and monstrous, the worth of a sorcerer was dictated by a mere two constants: an exalted bloodline and the innate cursed technique engraved upon the flesh.
The Sugawara Clan.
Even within this titan of a family, which reigned alongside the Northern Fujiwara as one of the two pillars of the Japanese jujutsu world, that cruel logic held absolute dominion.
Indeed, here, it was far more pervasive and unforgiving.
One late winter’s night, while a ferocious blizzard besieged Heian-kyo before the plum blossoms could even dare to bloom, two male children were born into the Sugawara lineage, separated by a mere heartbeat of time.
One was the legitimate heir, born within the opulent splendor of the main estate’s inner chambers.
The other was a whelp born in a dilapidated annex of a branch family, a place normally reserved for the stacking of firewood.
At their birth, the clan’s obsession fixated solely upon the heir of the main house.
While the presence of an innate technique would not be confirmed until the child grew, the eyes of the main house’s babe already held the azure light that pierced through the very principles of the world: the Six Eyes.
A prodigy born with the Six Eyes after centuries of waiting. The ancient elders of the Sugawara rejoiced, certain that this infant was the perfect vessel destined to bring the clan's secret Limitless technique to full flower.
In contrast, the child of the branch house, born on that same day, was abandoned to utter indifference for the crime of possessing nothing but ordinary, muddy black eyes. The boy was named Utsugi—the "Hollow Tree."
"Doubtless, the clan’s fortune was entirely consumed by the main house to manifest the Six Eyes.”
With that cold declaration from the elders, Utsugi’s existence was relegated to a shadowed corner of the massive Sugawara estate, discarded like refuse.
Yet, none knew the hidden truth.
In truth, Utsugi had also been born with the constitution required to be a vessel for those legendary eyes.
However, the legitimate heir had breached the mother's womb and glimpsed the world’s light a mere hour before Utsugi. Fate had favored the first to arrive. Denied the Six Eyes by that razor-thin margin, Utsugi was left an empty shell, his rightful talents usurped by the mere timing of his birth.
Had the world followed its natural course, Utsugi would have aged and died as a commoner, never once catching even a glimpse of the shadows of jujutsu.
But the Heian Era was no age for the natural order of things.
On a moonless night, barely a month after the two children were born—
Within the inner chambers of the main house, the gears of a conspiracy destined to shake the world began to turn.
Kenjaku, the phantom of the millennium who had lurked in the shadows for centuries, moved to sabotage the merger between Master Tengen and the Star Plasma Vessel.
To prevent the merger and force Tengen to transcend humanity, evolving into a higher-dimensional entity—to witness human transcendence and the pure chaos that lay beyond—Kenjaku viewed the "Six Eyes" and the "Star Plasma Vessel" as obstacles that had to be pruned before they could even sprout.
The heavily guarded barriers of the main house crumbled, and the air grew thick with the stench of blood.
That night, the one-month-old infant who had been the darling of the clan, the bearer of the Six Eyes, became a cold corpse with a snapped neck at the hands of Kenjaku.
At that exact moment.
The great causal chains that bound the principles of the world began to churn violently.
[ During the era of Tengen’s merger, the Star Plasma Vessel and the Six Eyes must inevitably appear. ]
Kenjaku believed he had severed the threads of destiny by slaying the Six Eyes. However, so long as the providence connecting Tengen and the Vessel remained, the Six Eyes was an absolute causal necessity that had to manifest.
That ruthless providence immediately sought a new vessel to fill the void. And the heavy chains of karma lashed out toward the "other original vessel" who had been denied his birthright by a single hour: the hollow tree, Utsugi.
"...”
In the frigid tatami room of the branch annex.
The one-month-old Utsugi lay sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms beneath a tattered quilt.
Suddenly, beneath the infant’s closed eyelids, an eerie blue light pulsed like a heartbeat.
"A... Aaaaagh!!"
Utsugi’s small body jerked upward as if struck by a bolt of lightning.
Before air could even fill his lungs, every physical law of the universe and every scrap of cursed energy data was stripped down to the atomic level and forcibly crammed into the child’s fragile brain.
The friction of wind against the paper doors; the weight of the dust motes drifting in the air; the sound of insects crawling in a forest miles away; the tidal waves of cursed energy that had permeated the earth for millennia.
A tsunami of information that an ordinary sorcerer would take decades to master now ruthlessly bombarded the brain of a babe whose skull had not even fully closed.
"Uaa... Waaaaaaah!!!!"
The cry that finally tore from the infant was no ordinary wail. Tears of blood surged from Utsugi's small eyes. Dark, crimson ichor spilled from his nose and ears, soaking the tatami mats.
"Utsugi?! My child, what is happening! Someone, anyone! Call a physician!"
Woken by the scream, Utsugi’s mother recoiled in horror as she gathered him into her arms, but the child’s body was as scalding as a molten furnace. The massive cursed energy overload triggered by the forced awakening of the Six Eyes was bursting the infant’s cerebral blood vessels and scorching his optic nerves in real-time.
A formless fire raked through his brain—an agony beyond comprehension.
The azure light filling his vision threatened to shred his very soul. The Six Eyes was no blessing; it was a lethal poison poured into an unprepared vessel, a sadistic punishment from the heavens.
He was dying. At this rate, his brain would liquefy and he would perish in less than a minute.
Then, the ultimate instinct of a living being standing at the threshold of the grave manifested.
In that fleeting microsecond, a miraculous chemical reaction occurred deep within Utsugi’s hollow core.
Flash—!
The secret art of colliding negative energy to produce positive life energy.
The pinnacle of jujutsu: the Reverse Cursed Technique.
Born solely from the biological imperative to survive, it activated unconsciously within the one-month-old infant’s body.
Hssssssss—
White steam billowed from Utsugi’s head.
The moment his cerebral vessels burst under the deluge of information from the Six Eyes, the Reverse Cursed Technique forcibly stitched them back together. As his neural pathways charred, it regenerated them. As his eyes threatened to explode, it forced his cells to divide and hold the line.
Destruction and regeneration.
Life and death locked in a ceaseless tug-of-war within the infant’s tiny skull, occurring every 0.0001 seconds.
It was a living hell. The pain did not vanish; rather, the technique ensured he could feel that agony for eternity without the mercy of death.
Utsugi’s small, delicate hands flailed in mid-air before scratching at his own face in a frenzy of pain. Soft skin was shredded, and blood began to ooze.
Through the long night, the wretched cycle of annihilation and rebirth did not cease.
When the infant’s vocal cords tore from his screams, the Reverse Cursed Technique mended them; when he neared the brink of respiratory failure, the sensory overload of the Six Eyes forcibly jolted his brain awake to inject more pain.
Finally, as the long, harrowing night passed and the pale dawn light filtered through the paper screens of the annex—
"...”
Upon the blood-stained tatami, the babe, who had looked as still as death, slowly lifted his eyelids.
The hysterical wailing had stopped. All that escaped his throat was a faint, rasping breath.
And within those slowly opening eyes—
The ordinary black irises of yesterday were gone. In their place dwelt an alien, chilling azure light that saw through the very foundations of existence.
The Six Eyes.
He looked up at the horrified face of his gasping mother. He saw the room thick with the scent of his own blood.
But within the infant Utsugi’s blue gaze, there was no instinctive reach for a mother, nor any residue of the agony he had endured through the night.
His eyes were hauntingly tranquil—utterly indifferent.
It was as if through that infernal night of suffering, every human instinct and emotion a newborn should possess had been surgically excised and incinerated in a corner of his mind.
This was the first tragedy—and the true birth—of the man who would one day be known as the heretic of the Sugawara.
The star born under the warmth of blessing and expectation had been snuffed out before it could even shine.
And from the darkest mire, a late-rising star had desperately clawed its way into the world, opening its cold eyes upon the skies of Heian-kyo.
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