Mahito stared at the woman in front of him.
She lay on the hospital bed with her eyes tightly closed, her long black hair spread across the pillow.
It was noon, and the sunlight from the window shone on her face.
That face seemed to be frozen in time; she was a high school student when she lost consciousness, and although three years had passed, her appearance remained unchanged.
Mahito looked down at the medical record bearing her name.
[Tsumiki Fushiguro]
Kenjaku looked at her and smiled.
"Very good, it seems the Incarnation Ritual I set up hasn't been interfered with."
"That's right, in this world, I don't think anyone except Master Tengen himself would be able to discover it."
"A barrier has been placed on her body; someone must be protecting her remotely."
"If the barrier is removed, the caster will immediately know that something has happened here."
"I'm not sure who set this barrier."
"The worst-case scenario is that Satoru Gojo set it himself."
"After all, with Satoru Gojo's sentimental personality, it's possible he personally set the barrier to put his students' minds at ease," Kenjaku explained with a smile.
Uraume reached out and lightly brushed the woman's forehead, causing a cursed pattern to appear on her skin.
"My task is complete."
Kenjaku made a gesture of invitation.
"Mahito, the rest is up to you."
Mahito lightly touched Tsumiki Fushiguro's forehead and activated his Cursed Technique—Idle Transfiguration.
Suddenly, Tsumiki Fushiguro's eyelids began to twitch, and the heart rate monitor beside her started beeping.
Kenjaku casually touched the heart rate monitor.
A silent impact of Cursed Energy was launched, and the sound immediately vanished.
The cursed pattern on Tsumiki Fushiguro's forehead vanished like mist.
Kenjaku's eyes widened slightly, staring unblinkingly at the scene before him.
This was the ability he had been looking forward to.
Granting an incarnated sorcerer a perfect rebirth was something that even Kenjaku himself could not achieve.
In the original timeline, only Mahito possessed this ability.
Before this, vessels for incarnation could only be selected and subjected to three years of continuous transformation.
That is, until Kenjaku backstabbed Mahito, absorbed his technique, and awakened the souls inside all the vessels at once.
But now, Mahito possessed a stronger Idle Transfiguration than he did in the original timeline; he would only execute it more flawlessly.
Tsumiki Fushiguro slowly opened her eyes and stared blankly ahead.
Mahito withdrew his hand, frowning in thought.
Kenjaku impatiently took a step forward.
He looked at Tsumiki Fushiguro, who had remained silent for a long time, and greeted her.
"Should I call you Miss Fushiguro now, or Miss Yorozu?"
Tsumiki Fushiguro then snapped out of her daze.
She tilted her head and looked at Kenjaku, remaining silent for two or three seconds before speaking slowly.
"It's you, Kenjaku."
"You kept the Binding Vow between us and let me be resurrected in the future."
Kenjaku's pupils contracted, and he smiled.
"It seems it's Miss Yorozu."
Tsumiki Fushiguro smiled.
"Since I have already been resurrected in the modern age, just call me 'Fushiguro'."
"As expected," Kenjaku sighed.
"I was just thinking, if it were really Miss Yorozu herself who came from ancient times to the modern era, your first sentence wouldn't be to greet me, but to impatiently ask about Lord Sukuna's situation."
"Mahito, your Idle Transfiguration is a bit too perfect."
In front of people who lacked a fanatical devotion to Ryomen Sukuna, Kenjaku would normally call him "Ryomen Sukuna" or "Sukuna."
But when he met someone who harbored a heartfelt faith in him, he would immediately change his form of address to "Lord Sukuna."
"I didn't expect your so-called incarnation to actually be such a thing," Mahito said slowly.
"So all the incarnated sorcerers you prepared... are actually reincarnations."
Over the past thousand years, Kenjaku had forged Binding Vows with many outstanding Jujutsu Sorcerers to resurrect them in the future.
Most sorcerers found this incredible; even though they stood at the peak of their era, "resurrection" was still an unfathomable concept.
Let alone Kenjaku, even Mahito, whose Cursed Technique essentially revolved around soul manipulation, couldn't perform a true resurrection, could he?
So, what exactly was the true nature of Kenjaku's resurrection?
The example of Yuji Itadori in the original timeline actually hinted at Kenjaku's method of resurrection.
Yuji Itadori's past life was the twin brother eaten by Ryomen Sukuna.
Ryomen Sukuna could even directly use his brother's Innate Technique, which was the Fire Arrow he used in his final battle against Jogo in the original timeline.
This meant that on a soul level, Ryomen Sukuna and his brother had actually merged into one, which was also why Sukuna could use Yuji Itadori as a vessel.
Kenjaku did the exact same thing with the other ancient sorcerers.
He found the modern reincarnations of those ancient sorcerers and awakened them one by one through special rituals.
Although they shared the same soul, because they had gone through the cycle of reincarnation, the world recognized them as extremely similar but fundamentally different people, thus requiring adjustment.
This was the real reason why Tsumiki Fushiguro never woke up.
This actually explains why in the original timeline, after Yorozu woke up, she claimed she could receive Tsumiki Fushiguro's memories and emotions from her brain without any side effects.
She could even live as Tsumiki Fushiguro without any sense of incongruity if she so desired.
It was because they were originally the same person!
Mahito's original idea was to resurrect the ancient sorcerer Yorozu as a Half-Cursed Spirit.
This would mean extracting her from Tsumiki Fushiguro's body and creating another vessel for her to inhabit, just like Mahito's current state.
Compared to using a vessel for incarnation, Mahito believed this was a true resurrection, far more perfect than the so-called incarnation process.
Because no matter how suitable a vessel was, it could never be truly perfect.
In the final battle of the original timeline, even with Ryomen Sukuna's technique, didn't he fail to completely suppress Megumi Fushiguro's soul?
The so-called incarnation process could not achieve a truly perfect resurrection.
But when Mahito actually got his hands on the ritual, he discovered the truth behind the incarnations; honestly, he was stunned.
The incarnation was actually a reincarnation... what a genius idea.
This was exactly as Kenjaku had promised—truly a "perfect revival."
It couldn't have been more perfect!
Because their souls were actually one, even though Megumi Fushiguro had begged Gojo-sensei for help and Satoru Gojo had indeed done his best to save her, Tsumiki Fushiguro still wouldn't wake up.
Fundamentally, she wasn't sick at all; she was simply recalling ancient memories.
As those memories resurfaced, her body also restored itself to its ancient physical state.
Just as the fastest way to recover from an injury is to sleep, Tsumiki Fushiguro used a coma as her means of restoration.
Mahito had once discussed the issue of incarnations with Kenjaku.
At the time, he truly believed Kenjaku's method of adjusting vessels was through years of micro-alterations to prepare the body for the ancient sorcerer's perfect revival.
It wasn't until this moment that Mahito realized how naive he had been.
One could only say, as expected of Kenjaku—you had to be impressed.
Mahito hadn't expected this, so when he used Idle Transfiguration and couldn't locate Yorozu's soul, he realized something was wrong.
Then, he faced a choice.
Should he erase Tsumiki Fushiguro's will and graft Yorozu's onto it to achieve the ancient sorcerer's resurrection, just like in the original timeline?
Or should he erase the ancient sorcerer Yorozu's will, discarding her memories and emotions as impurities, and wake Tsumiki Fushiguro from her slumber?
Mahito chose a third option.
Yorozu's memories as an ancient being fully resurfaced, and she perfectly inherited Tsumiki Fushiguro's emotions and will.
The benefit was that Tsumiki Fushiguro would be easier to get along with and not as unhinged as Yorozu.
She would also perfectly inherit Yorozu's Domain Expansion and be able to flawlessly replicate her Construction Technique, making her almost identical to Yorozu herself in combat.
The downside was—
For Mahito, there was no downside.
Because when he woke Tsumiki Fushiguro, he had already planted a Thought Steel Seal in her mind.
Since it was applied before she woke up, even Tsumiki Fushiguro herself didn't notice it.
Of course, for Uraume, who longed for more cards to play, the downside was enormous.
Kenjaku sighed, "This is bad."
"Miss Yorozu... no, Miss Fushiguro, are you still fanatically devoted to Lord Sukuna?"
"Or have your feelings for Lord Sukuna faded to the point where you don't want him revived in the modern era?"
"I'm not sure."
Tsumiki Fushiguro raised her hand slightly, looking at her palm, and spoke slowly.
"To me, Yorozu's life feels like an immersive movie."
"I can empathize with everything Yorozu felt and understand why she was so obsessed with Lord Sukuna."
"When you ask me if I want to revive Lord Sukuna, Yorozu screams in my ear like a ghost."
"But my reason tells me that if Lord Sukuna is revived in this era, it will only bring calamity."
Kenjaku looked at Tsumiki Fushiguro blankly and spoke helplessly.
"Perfect indeed, far too perfect."
"Mahito, your Cursed Technique is beyond my imagination."
"You can actually link souls from the past and future together to achieve a form of time travel."
"This is something even I couldn't have fathomed. How on earth did you do it?"
"It's not as hard as you think; I simply organized the soul's information," Mahito said.
"It was simpler than I expected, probably because my ability to fine-tune souls is already refined enough."
Mahito wasn't lying; it really was just a matter of fine-tuning.