Curse Returns: Eight Extraordinary Skills? I lack nothing.

Maki needs a second awakening.

Just like in the original work, under the extreme pressure of a life-or-death crisis, the body and mind are forcibly stimulated to completely liberate the suppressed body.

But it's enough that he knows this himself; there's no need to rush to tell her.

He stood there waiting for Maki to continue.

After a long pause, Maki slowly spoke, each word resounding: "My power is not clean enough, not swift enough, not absolute enough."

Gojo Satoru leaned against a pillar in the corridor, remaining silent, his six pale blue eyes gazing at the night sky through his eye mask.

He was probably calculating the time, figuring out how much time had passed since Maki awakened.

In just one or two months.

Yuuto nodded with satisfaction. Maki's judgment of herself was very accurate; this was a rare level of awareness, and not everyone could see their own flaws.

He gathered his thoughts and slowly said, "Right now, all you have is a superhuman physique, and you can only predict your opponent's movements with your naked eye."

"You are still relying on vision, but vision can be deceiving, misled by fake movements, and interfered with by illusions created by the procedure."

"In truly top-level battles, what you see is often what others want you to see."

"And vision has a fatal problem: what your eyes see is only what has already happened."

He paused for a moment, watching Maki's reaction.

Her brows furrowed slightly, as if she were trying to understand what Yuuto was saying.

Yuuto looked into Maki's eyes and said, slowly and deliberately, "What you're lacking now, I'd call a second awakening."

"Lacks the ability to perceive the essence of curse power beyond the naked eye, and the ability to see through curses."

"It's like you can only rely on your physical body and can't predict the trajectory of the spell."

After Yuuto finished speaking, the training ground was quiet for a few seconds.

Maki did not refute, but simply shook her head slightly: "But sir, even if you know what I lack, you don't know how to fill the gaps or make up for it."

"This is something I can't figure out right now. I know I lack perception, but it's like standing on the edge of a cliff. You know which way to go, and you can clearly see where the path is, but you just can't take the step."

Yuuto reached into his system space and slowly drew out the Kikuichimonji, then said softly:

"Fight me."

Maki was startled when she heard this, then looked up with a sharp gaze.

Without saying a word, she walked to the center of the training field and stood still.

Yu Ren walked with light and steady steps toward the center of the field.

His right fingertips were slightly spread apart, not gripping the knife, but the composure in his movements was a signal in itself, like a silent declaration.

No matter what kind of attack you want to use, I can handle it.

Maki gripped the hilt of the sword, her thumb pressing against the guard. Her goggles were already removed and hung around her neck; she slightly narrowed her long, almond-shaped eyes, her pupils reflecting Yuu's features.

That longsword, which had cleaved through countless cursed spirits and sorcerers in countless battles, that longsword that had accompanied her from the mire of the Zen Institute all the way to the front lines of the Spellcasting Alliance, was now, for the first time tonight, aimed at the breath of Kasuga Yuuto, the fourth seat of the Sword-Wielding Academy.

The sword was not drawn, but a faint, almost imperceptible glint of cold light shimmered in the moonlight, like a venomous snake tentatively flicking its tongue.

"Lord Kasuga, please enlighten me," Maki said.

Yuuto gently beckoned to him and said:

"Attack freely, use your full strength, don't hold back at all."

Gojo Satoru and Fushiguro Megumi stood not far away watching the battle, showing great interest in it.

Chapter 125 Beacon Fire

Zenji Maki gripped the long sword tightly in her hand.

That was a top-tier treasure in the Zen monastery's family archives, a special-grade incantation tool called "Beacon Fire."

The scabbard was jet black, without a single blemish, except for a dark red family crest engraved near the handguard, a testament to the Zen family's centuries-old forging skills.

Its effects are similar to those of the renowned top-grade spell tool, Yu Yun, which is famous throughout the world of sorcery.

The stronger the user, the greater the destructive power of the beacon fire.

And because it is a knife, its sharpness far exceeds expectations.

Each piece in the Seinin family's treasured collection embodies the rich heritage accumulated by this family over thousands of years.

Zenji Naoki, the current head of the Zenji family, a first-class sorcerer, is one of the few people in the Zenji family who retains rationality.

Despite his seemingly unrestrained and carefree demeanor, this old man has a keen eye for people.

His spellcasting technique is a precise manipulation skill that can divide a second into 24 equal parts.

But what enabled him to sit in this position and maintain it for so many years was not the overwhelming force of force, but his keen eye for people and his wisdom to plan and strategize so clearly even in a corrupt and powerful family.

At that time, there was a girl, a girl in the Zen temple who was called the worst student.

A girl with almost no magical power, who was bullied by her family peers, swung her sword again and again on the training ground. Her sweat soaked the ground and then dried it under the scorching sun. The rope wrapped around the handle of the sword was worn through again and again.

What sustains her is not ambition for the world of sorcery, but an extreme, almost obsessive stubbornness.

She was disliked and ostracized by her family, had almost no friends, and her only relative, her younger sister Zhenyi, was a direct descendant of the family.

This girl named Maki is undoubtedly the most hardworking and strongest among her peers, but her physical body seems to be meaningless in the world of magic.

Incantations and spells are everything. In the eyes of the Zen family, she was a mistake that should never have been born.

Maki will never become a sorcerer; at best, she will rely on a few low-level magical artifacts she obtained from her family to barely survive in the lowest levels of combat. But she has not stopped wielding her sword.

The Zhibi man sat at the head of the family council hall, looking at the assessment results of the young members of the clan. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a name in the corner and a string of assessment scores that did not match the ranking at all.

"Those two girls, go to a vocational college," the Zhili people said.

In the Zen temple, this was nothing short of a bombshell.

His original intention was simply to prevent talented children from being buried in endless bullying and infighting, and to suggest that leaving this corrupt environment might offer them room to grow.

But he underestimated Maki.

He has now received far more in return than he expected.

The Naobi took the beacon from the forbidden storehouse and handed it to Maki.

She took it and weighed it in her hand. The scabbard felt substantial and reassuring in her grasp, and the magical energy emanating from the blade was calm and restrained. Maki didn't ask him why.

The Naobi didn't explain, but simply added a sentence.

"You are the new Heaven and Tyrant."

Back in the present, Maki gripped the hilt of the sword, feeling the perfect friction between her palm and the sharkskin rope binding it. The black scabbard gleamed coldly in the moonlight.

Yuuto's hand twitched slightly.

It's not an attack, it's a silent invitation.

come on.

He slightly curled his right index finger—a very subtle signal.

Maki understood.

She shot out like an arrow, cracking the paving stones beneath her feet and sending shards of stone flying.

Fushiguro Megumi frowned; his eyes could no longer keep up with Maki's speed.

Yu Ren simply stood there, his white hair fluttering in the air currents, his clothes billowing behind him.

His gaze remained fixed on Maki, not on her sword, but on her movements.

He was observing the explosive power hidden within this body of a tyrant and a god.

Just as Maki was only three meters away from Yuuto, the ground beneath her feet sank slightly—that was the point of leverage. Using the reaction force from her high-speed sprint, she forcefully twisted her direction of travel to the left, sending gravel flying everywhere, her figure leaving a trail of afterimages in the air.

Feint to the east while attacking in the west.

The scabbard swept across, its target not Yuuto's torso, but his neck.

That strike was swift, ruthless, and precise. This wasn't a friendly sparring match; it was real combat.

Yuuto smiled.

His right foot lifted slightly, not as in defense, but more like a morning stretch. Then the foot landed gently and slowly, the toe touching the ground and stirring up a fine dust, but without making a sound.

At the same time, centered on the point where his foot landed, a Tai Chi diagram slowly unfolded, golden light flowing, with yin and yang fish connected head to tail, rotating slowly under the moonlight. It was the trajectory of Qi, smooth and gentle, without a single sharp edge, as if a stroke of ink left by a deity on rice paper.

Tai Chi symbol.

Yuuto raised his right hand, his palm gently deflecting the incoming sword sheath. It wasn't a parry; there was no dull thud of muscle colliding, nor the clang of metal striking metal. He simply flicked it upwards along with her force—the thunderous strike containing Maki's entire being was easily deflected by this one movement.

Maki's pupils contracted slightly. The feeling in her arm wasn't an impact, but a sense of floating and powerlessness. The force she unleashed seemed to have crashed into a bottomless swamp, swallowed up, dissolved, and scattered.

Then, an invisible force pulled her body diagonally forward, causing her to uncontrollably fall into Yuuto's arms. She couldn't stop, and the guiding force wasn't violent, but precise, like a sophisticated instrument dismantling the tension in every inch of her muscles.

Maki gritted her teeth, stomped her left foot into the ground, forcibly pulling her weight back. At the same time, she switched the scabbard to her left hand, pulled the hilt back, and forcefully broke free from the supple pulling force. Using this momentum, she retreated, leaving a long groove in the gravel, and once again distanced herself from Yuuto.

His breathing became slightly rapid, but it quickly returned to normal.

Fushiguro Megumi frowned even more. He saw clearly Yuuto's movements, the yin-yang symbol, and how Maki's strength was so easily neutralized—but it was precisely because he saw it clearly that he was even more puzzled.

Gojo Satoru's smile deepened. He wasn't unfamiliar with Tai Chi; it was about using softness to overcome hardness and using minimal force to deflect great weight.

Such martial arts techniques are not uncommon in the world of sorcery, but to be able to apply them to such a level, and even to use pure technique to fight against Maki's pure physical strength, is more than just a matter of basic skills.

"Yuto." Gojo Satoru took the lollipop out of his mouth. "What kind of trick did you just use?"

Yuuto's gaze never left Maki; he merely turned his head slightly and spoke as if discussing tonight's cafeteria menu: "Tai Chi."

"Oh?" Gojo Satoru raised an eyebrow.

“Wudang Tai Chi,” Youren said, “intermediate level.”

Gojo Satoru didn't press the matter. He had heard of Wudang Mountain, but the Tai Chi Yuuto used was clearly more than just those soft, limp fitness routines.

Using softness to overcome hardness, and using minimal force to deflect great force—this is the most basic and core concept of Wudang Tai Chi. Borrowing force to strike back doesn't mean a direct confrontation, but rather guiding and neutralizing the opponent's power, turning their attack into one's own.

The harder you hit, the stronger the rebound force becomes; this is the principle of yin and yang transforming into each other.

This kind of body movement and power generation technique requires extremely profound boxing principles as support.