The night the firstborn heir perished during Kenjaku’s assault was the night the Sugawara Clan’s ironclad hierarchy and common sense were upended at their very foundations.
The perfect sun, born to inherit the Six Eyes, had its neck snapped in the cradle. The deterrent that had sustained the clan’s hegemony evaporated in a single night.
While the panic-stricken elders raged in their helplessness, they eventually discovered Utsugi in a dilapidated branch-house hovel used for storing firewood. He was drenched in gore, his blue eyes shimmering with a cold, unearthly light.
"The Heavens… the Heavens have not yet forsaken the Sugawara!"
From that day forward, Utsugi’s life was irrevocably transformed.
The contemptuous treatment he once endured—dismissed as a mere scrap of branch-blood, a hollow husk devoid of an innate technique—vanished without a trace.
Utsugi was immediately moved to the deepest, most palatial quarters of the main estate. He was draped in the finest hand-woven silks, and delicacies fit for the Clan Head graced his table at every meal.
The stature the clan afforded him was perfectly equal to that of Enju, a boy one year his junior who had been officially designated as the next Clan Head.
Nay, in terms of sheer primal awe, the clan elders feared and venerated Utsugi’s heterodox blue eyes far more than they did the legitimate heir, Enju, who lacked that ocular miracle despite his station.
Then came a certain summer day during Utsugi’s tenth year.
Within the training grounds nestled in the heart of the main estate, the horrific and irrational disparity of talent was being laid bare.
"Kh-ugh…! Cough, Haak…!"
In the center of the vast dojo, the young Enju knelt, coughing up mouthfuls of crimson.
Blood sprayed from his mouth and nose, soaking into the tatami mats. His meticulously embroidered silk robes were already a ruin of sweat and gore. Clutching his head with both hands, Enju’s eyes were so bloodshot the vessels seemed to have ruptured, dyeing the whites a sickening scarlet.
"Young Lord! You must not overexert yourself! Release the technique!"
The elderly sorcerer overseeing the training shouted, his face ashen with terror.
Yet, Enju grit his teeth, refusing to withdraw the hand he held outstretched toward the empty air.
'The Limitless.'
The supreme innate technique of the Sugawara, granted the authority to manipulate the very fabric of space.
Enju was attempting to divide the trajectory of a wooden sword flying toward him into 'infinite' fragments of space, thereby halting its motion. It was a discipline of absolute stasis.
However, for one devoid of the Six Eyes, such a feat was nothing short of hellish torture.
To divide space infinitely meant the brain had to process near-infinite calculations in real-time.
"ARGHHHH!!"
The wooden sword, which had seemed to pause in mid-air, finally tore through the spatial fractures and slammed into Enju’s shoulder.
With a dull thwack, Enju was sent sprawling across the floor. Afflicted by a migraine of agonizing intensity, he thrashed upon the ground, panting like a dying beast.
Observing this wretched spectacle from a corner of the dojo was Utsugi, sitting cross-legged with a look of utter indifference.
"A waste. At the final moment, the composition of your Cursed Energy deviated by a mere tenth, causing the spatial distortion to unravel. Your brain's processing speed simply could not keep pace with the output of your energy."
An evaluation as dry and flavorless as dust.
Utsugi’s gaze—those Six Eyes—held no concern for Enju’s physical suffering. He merely saw the trajectory of the Cursed Energy flowing through Enju, pierced the fundamental form of the technique, and derived the objective truth.
Enju’s shoulders trembled as he lay on the floor.
He staggered to his feet, directing a gaze thick with murderous intent toward Utsugi.
"Shut your mouth… you branch-family dross. What could a creature like you possibly understand?!"
Despite Enju’s venomous roar, Utsugi’s expression remained stagnant.
Ten years of age. A time when other children would be chasing cicadas or frolicking in the fields. But Utsugi, having endured that night of 'Hellish Destruction and Rebirth,' had already transcended the mortal yardstick.
"You ask what I understand?"
Utsugi rose slowly. A weathered wooden sword was gripped in his hand.
"The sound of your blood vessels bursting. The scent of Cursed Energy backflowing and charring your brain. Every margin of error in that process. To me, the bearer of the Six Eyes, those things are clearer than the very rhythm of your breathing."
Utsugi lightly adjusted his grip on the training sword.
In that instant, the air in the dojo warped grotesquely.
Cursed Energy drawn from Utsugi’s core began to coat the wooden surface with absolute efficiency—without a single stray spark of waste, without a thumb’s width of deviation.
The cerulean energy seeped into the very grain of the wood like a rising tide, transmuting a common piece of timber into a blade of such hardness it could cleave steel like curd.
It was the ultimate manipulation: a consumption of Cursed Energy that converged toward zero.
He had perfectly filled the void of having no innate technique by utilizing the Six Eyes to master Cursed Energy control and Taijutsu to their absolute limits.
"Behold. This is the disparity between us."
Utsugi tightened his wrist upon the sword hilt.
Snap.
A minuscule laceration appeared on the back of Utsugi’s hand, a graze from a splinter that had flicked upward from the wood. As a single bead of crimson began to form—
Ssssss—
Accompanied by a wisp of white steam, the blood vanished, and the torn flesh fused perfectly in the blink of an eye.
"Reverse Cursed Technique…!"
The elderly instructor-sorcerer muttered in a trembling voice.
The divine realm, reachable only by a select few elders within the Sugawara Clan after a lifetime of asceticism.
And here stood a ten-year-old child of the branch lineage, using it as naturally as one draws breath, despite possessing no innate technique.
The desperate survival instinct he had mastered to endure the awakening of the Six Eyes at one month old had now evolved into the perfect technique to preserve his physical form.
"……."
Enju watched that overwhelming display, his breath hitching. Although one side of his vision was clouded with blood, the flawless perfection radiating from Utsugi pierced into his consciousness with agonizing clarity.
Utsugi had no Innate Technique. But he possessed the Six Eyes and the Reverse Cursed Technique.
He himself possessed the Sugawara’s mightiest technique. But he lacked the Six Eyes.
'You thief… you who stole my brother’s life and usurped his place.'
Blood dripped from Enju’s clenched fists.
The clan elders treated him as the future head with superficial bows, but Enju was not blind. He knew their eyes were always drifting toward Utsugi. They maintained him as their 'Symbolic Heir' while kneeling before Utsugi as their 'Pragmatic Might.'
"Those eyes… they should have belonged to my elder brother."
Enju spat out a mouthful of blood and snarled like a cornered animal.
"Had my brother lived… a branch-house parasite like you would be tilling fields as a servant for the rest of your days. You merely scavenged an empty seat by luck, yet you dare look down upon me, the legitimate scion?!"
Faced with this torrent of raw inferiority and hatred, Utsugi’s blue eyes remained as still as a stagnant pool.
He did not mirror Enju’s rage, nor did he mock it. He simply spoke the cruel, objective truth.
"If the young lord had lived, I would indeed be tilling the fields. That is a fact."
Utsugi lowered his sword, his voice dry.
"But had he lived, you would have spent your entire life stifled in his shadow—an 'inferior brother' who could not even wield his own technique properly. It was not your brother's talent that made you the heir, Enju. It was your brother’s 'death.'"
"YOU BASTARD!!"
Enju lost all reason. He lunged at Utsugi with blood-slicked hands. It was no longer a structured application of Cursed Energy or a technique—merely the frantic flailing of a child’s desperation.
Utsugi did not dodge.
His Six Eyes read the contraction of Enju’s muscles, the frantic focus of his pupils, and the trajectory of the swinging fist like a slow-moving panorama.
Tak.
Utsugi’s hand snared Enju’s fist with effortless grace, twisting it aside. Using his other foot to trip the charging boy, he redirected Enju’s own momentum, slamming him face-first into the tatami mats.
Thud!!
"Gah…!"
Enju collapsed, the air knocked out of him. It had taken less than a second to subdue him. It was a display of perfectly controlled Taijutsu, performed without a single drop of Cursed Energy enhancement.
The cold shadow of Utsugi’s bamboo hat fell over the prone Enju. Utsugi looked down at the boy, whose eyes were now overflowing with tears of fury, and whispered tonelessly.
"Do not burn your brain attempting to prove yourself with a hollow Limitless. Your 'Legitimate Heir' title is a currency that only carries value outside of this training hall."
Utsugi released him and turned away.
He walked out of the dojo without a backward glance, leaving behind the fallen heir and the trembling, ashen-faced sorcerer.
"If you wish to survive, Enju, then cease your futile struggles and learn to fight according to your station."
The sliding door clicked shut, and Utsugi’s silhouette vanished.
Left alone, Enju clawed at the tatami until his fingers bled, sobbing in silent agony.
That level of precision in Cursed Energy manipulation, which he could never reach even if he coughed blood for a lifetime. That overwhelming genius that treated Reverse Cursed Technique as naturally as breathing.
And above all, those cold, arrogant blue eyes—eyes that did not even harbor the warmth of hatred, but instead looked upon him as if he were nothing more than a pebble on the road.
On that day, the legitimate scion of the Sugawara had a brand of eternal inferiority seared into the marrow of his bones.
The world was fundamentally unfair.
A hollow husk of a Clan Head, and the branch-family heretic who had devoured the core.
Thus, the bizarre and twisted coexistence of these two beasts began to fester within the deepest shadows of Heian-kyo, reeking of blood.
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