A Bizarre Adventure That Begins in Jujutsu Kaisen

This is a story circulating in the Dharavi slum of Mumbai. Stripped of its deliberately exaggerated and fantastical tone, its core is actually chillingly simple.

A couple was forced to move into a makeshift shack made of corrugated iron and old wooden planks due to unemployment and debt.

The couple had a small, thin son who had suffered long-term abuse. He always walked with his shoulders hunched over, like a frightened animal, clinging to the wall.

Despite being fully aware of the boy's situation, Raju, the young man living across the street, always felt that it was "someone else's business."

There are too many things like this in the slums. Everyone is struggling to make ends meet and has no energy to meddle in other people's business.

However, in the boy's heart, this neighbor who was willing to communicate with him normally was perhaps one of the few kind-hearted beings in this corrupt world.

Raju's casual question, "How was your day at school?" might have been the only unintentional greeting the boy heard all day.

That's why—

When a swarm of rats, appearing out of nowhere, killed the boy's parents in the dead of night, the boy, who was lucky enough to notice something was wrong because the rats ate his parents first and attacked him last, escaped covered in blood and stumbled towards the house across the street.

He pounded on the metal door again and again, his fingernails scraping the green paint with a harsh sound. Blood seeped in through the cracks in the door, forming dark red puddles on the concrete floor.

"Uncle Raju... save me..."

However—thinking it was just another of the family's usual noisy commotion, Raju simply rolled over in annoyance.

He worked twelve hours at the textile factory today and was so exhausted that his bones ached.

What business is it of his if the neighbor beats their child? That's their business.

The knocking continued, mixed with suppressed sobs and some unsettling rustling sound of a pack of rodents moving in a group.

Regardless, that's someone else's business.

And so, the boy gradually stopped banging on the door while lying in a pool of blood.

The next day, when the bodies of the family of three were discovered, their flesh had been almost completely eaten away, a truly gruesome sight.

Rats almost never attack living people on their own initiative—but if they do, the slum police will never investigate further.

They would never do something that is thankless and exhausting.

From then on, Raju's nights were filled with rustling sounds.

He had long been accustomed to this; in a place where making a living was so difficult, quietness actually represented something else entirely.

They were either too hungry to speak, or they were holding their breath to listen to the sounds outside.

The sounds of rats scurrying through the walls, the dripping of water from the leaking pipes, and the wind seeping in through the cracks in the broken window were all commonplace.

But everyone has times when they can't sleep, and one day he finally couldn't take it anymore and suddenly flung open the door.

A giant rat, as tall as a man, with a ferocious expression, pounced on him and began to devour him.

It was born in a forgotten corner on the outskirts of the city.

Those perpetually damp basements, abandoned warehouses that never see the light of day, and behind the walls where scratching sounds echo in the dead of night—there are slums where life rots vividly.

What breeds in forgotten corners?

Unseen creatures are gnawing at the foundation.

The residents heard noises late at night but dared not get up to check.

That fear of "not checking," that avoidance of "pretending not to hear," that collective inaction that allowed the cracks to widen and the darkness to grow, incubated the "eating rat."

It was not some powerful emperor.

It is merely a perpetually hungry, perpetually crawling, perpetually on the edge of human sight—the corner you abandon will eventually give rise to something that gnaws at your base.

"It's not an ordinary rat."

When Amit arrived with two foreign dignitaries, the elders of the slums said in their tin shacks.

"They are organized and steal newborn babies, leaving only swaddling clothes covered in drool."

Last week, they dragged away a sick old man, and the next day we found his skeleton in the drain, clean as if it had been burned.

Following the guides assigned by Amit and the slum elders, Theo and Chayou ventured deep into the labyrinthine alleyways of the slum.

Halfway there, when Xia You took "Youyun" out of Chou Bao's mouth, he suddenly realized that Fu Hei Shen Er still had other magical artifacts stored inside.

"Would you like a weapon? Would you prefer a broadsword or a chain?"

"What kind of strange weapon is a chain? I can't handle it. Let's go with a knife."

"The Soul-Releasing Blade is worth 500 million."

Xia You handed Dio a broadsword.

"If used by someone who can observe souls, it can directly ignore the harm that matter can cause to the soul."

Because restoring the soul's form requires knowing its outline, and the resulting wounds usually cannot be healed with reversal spells, it is a highly valuable cursed artifact.

Why do you emphasize value?

"Here's a belated gift for you."

Theo took the broadsword, and after a moment spoke, "...Thank you."

After walking around for almost half an hour, they finally arrived at their destination.

"The trail of filth points underground."

Xia Youjie squatted by an open drainage ditch and retrieved the burrowing spirit that had just completed its exploration mission.

"It's very deep...it might be an air-raid shelter or sewer system left over from the colonial period."

Amit was quite thorough in his actions, having obtained permission from the slum elders in advance.

At this moment, the illegal shacks that had blocked the sewer entrance have all been demolished, revealing the dark, square entrance below.

The iron ladder at the edge was rusted and gleamed a dark red in the dim light of the day.

The group descended the iron ladder, the steps groaning unsettlingly beneath their feet, rusting and peeling away.

After descending about twenty meters, they entered a dark space that had been completely forgotten by the city.

A damp, musty, and indescribably fishy smell wafted over.

A sound came from ahead—not a few dozen, not a few hundred, but the squeaking of thousands upon thousands of rats, a sound that sent chills down your spine.

The sound echoed in the enclosed underground space, layer upon layer, as if the entire underground was writhing.

Theo glanced at Amit, who was pale-faced beside him, and pointed upwards: "You can go up now. Remember to disperse the crowd."

The scene that follows is not suitable for bystanders; we will not be distracted in protecting you.

Amit opened his mouth, but in the end he only bowed deeply, turned around and staggered up the iron ladder.

He knew he would only be a burden here, and he was even more aware that these two Grandmasters had no obligation to protect his safety.

"Let's go see the 'Rat King'."

Tens of thousands of rats gathered into a surging black wave, their rustling sounds filling the entire space like a tide.

In the center of the wave, a deformed figure crouched: it had a torso similar to a human's, but a huge rat's head on its head, and a thick, python-like tail trailing behind it.

Its "throne" is made up of countless bones, among which one can see tiny infant skeletons.

The "Eating Rat King" is not a huge creature; its size is similar to that of an adult male, but it appears small due to its perpetually hunched posture.

Its skin is a dirty grayish-black, not dry fur, but a moist, sticky, exposed skin that looks like it has just crawled out of the depths of a sewer. Its surface is sparsely covered with festering dark red patches and constantly oozes a thin, cursed, turbid liquid.

Its face is very strange and ugly.

There are no eyes; the eye sockets are two smooth, inwardly recessed slits, as if someone had pressed wet mud into them with their fingers.

It has no ears, and the sides of its head are just coin-sized holes with irregularly torn edges.

Its "sight" and "hearing" rely entirely on the power of magic to perceive, but it will still consciously turn its head as if it is "seeing" and "hearing".

That empty yet focused posture is more terrifying than any fierce gaze.

Its snout is sharp, and when it is slightly open, it reveals two rows of dense, inwardly curved, cone-shaped teeth.

The teeth were not pure white, but yellowish, the color of old bone, with black, decaying matter always stuck between them—any human being who saw them would instinctively feel that "it shouldn't be investigated further."

Its limbs are slender, but its claws are exceptionally well-developed.

Its five claws resemble five slightly curved, rusty iron hooks, with nodular growths at the knuckles, leaving fine scratches on the ground with each movement.

Its tail is particularly distinctive—not the slender, bare tail of a rodent, but a thick, scale-covered tail with a mallet-like tip that makes a rustling sound as it is dragged.

When it's still, it looks like a pile of wet garbage abandoned in a corner.

When in motion, it resembles sewage itself, flowing along the ground, clinging to walls, and hanging from the ceiling, its movement unhindered.

Sir Isaac Newton must be turning in his grave.

At this moment, "Eating Rat King" stopped moving, hanging upside down on the ceiling, and slowly raised its eyeless face to face the intruder.