Jujutsu Kaisen: I have everything I need now!

Chapter 120 Incubation

Kugizaki's resonance mapping took nearly forty minutes.

She knelt on one knee on the cracked asphalt road, holding three fragments of familiar crystals in her left hand and tapping the ground with an iron nail in her right.

Each time it was tapped, the fragments trembled slightly.

The resonant waves spread out from the surface of the fragments, through the road surface, through the soil, through the rock layers soaked by seawater, and probed downwards layer by layer.

Kugizaki's forehead was covered in sweat, and his brows were furrowed tightly.

Thirty seconds later, she changed direction and continued knocking.

December 1st crouched five meters away, her right palm facing down, pressed against the ground. The concealed power of the snake talisman transformed into an extremely thin line of perception, slowly moving along the outer shell of the cocoon.

Kugizaki used resonance to draw the outline on top, and he used a snake to calibrate the position below.

Two completely different detection methods are piecing together the same map.

"Alright."

Kugizaki stood up, her knees covered in grayish-white powder. She stuffed the fragments back into the sealed bag and picked up a nail, drawing an oval on the ground.

It's a long strip running from northeast to southwest.

"The major axis is about 120 meters, and the minor axis is about 80 meters. The error is no more than 10 meters."

Zhenyi followed the lookout and walked over, glancing at the pattern on the ground.

"A football field."

Kugizaki threw away the bent nail and stretched his wrist.

"More than that. This cocoon is at least five meters thick, and the entire surface of the shell is made of that coral rock material. My resonance disappeared as soon as I tried to penetrate it; I couldn't even hear the echo."

On the first day of December, he stood up and stomped his feet twice to wake up his numb calves.

One hundred and twenty by eighty. Thirty meters underground. A shell five meters thick.

He silently calculated the volume without saying a word.

"December." Fu Hei's voice came from around the street corner.

He walked very lightly, his shadow shrinking into a narrow line at his feet.

"The unknown area at the bottom of the well has shrunk back again."

On the first day of December, he looked at him.

“This time I didn’t let it go down,” Fuhei said. “I just kept it sensing on the surface. When it received feedback from the 30-meter-high shell, it immediately darted back into the shadows.”

A near-Special Grade Shikigami instinctively rejected something that hadn't even hatched yet.

On the first day of December, he turned and walked toward the makeshift tent set up on the side of the street. The canvas rustled in the sea breeze, and on a folding table inside lay thermal prints from Yi Gu, the edges of the papers already damp with moisture.

He picked up the top one.

The energy density of the geothermal transport line from the Mariana Trench to Okinawa has increased by 17 percent in the past six hours.

Bazaar is accelerating the infusion.

"Tiger Talisman".

Zhenyi followed into the tent, her voice low.

On the first day of December, he put down the thermal image and rested his hands on the edge of the table.

He knew what she was talking about.

The Tiger Talisman was used to harmonize and neutralize. During the incident at Fushan Bay, he used it to withstand the full force of Basha's Water Law.

"The cocoon's outer shell is a combination of the laws of earth and water, and the Tiger Talisman can disrupt the balance between them. If I find the seam—"

"You have to touch the shell," Zhenyi interrupted him.

"Yes. Thirty meters."

The dragon talisman can blast open a passage. But a thermal explosion is like setting off fireworks within the demon's perception range.

The rabbit talisman can penetrate at extremely high speeds. However, with its current level of liberation, it is not yet capable of traversing such a thick layer of ground in one go.

I closed my eyes briefly on the first day of December.

"Monkey Talisman. Material Transformation—transforming rock layers into air, one by one."

"how long?"

"It will take about four hours."

Zhenyi picked up the thermal image and looked at it again.

"It increased by 17% in six hours. At this rate, it will fill the cocoon—"

—

"Thirty-six to forty-eight hours."

The tent's canvas curtain was lifted, and Huzhang crawled in. His hair was a mess, like a bird's nest, and his face was smeared with gray blood. He took a couple of breaths before speaking.

"The eastern outpost has been cleared; seventeen enemies. Four more than yesterday."

He pulled a sealed bag from his pocket, which contained several pieces the size of a fingernail.

"There are three different ones. After they were broken, the fragments burrowed into the soil by themselves."

"Drill?"

"You can't even step on it." Itari gestured with his hand, "It's broken into such a small piece but it's still moving. Kugizaki told me to step on it, but it stubbornly pushed its way out from beside the sole of my shoe and crawled into a crack in the pavement."

On December 1st, he took the sealed bag and squeezed the fragments through the plastic.

It is hard and has extremely fine textures on its surface.

It is made of the same material as the cocoon's outer shell.

The crystallization of the familiars is not a mutation—it's the cocoon recycling materials. Every familiar killed on the ground becomes nourishment for the cocoon after death.

The more they fight, the faster the cocoons grow.

On the first day of December, the sealed bag was returned.

"Tell Kugizaki and Fushiguro that from now on, all fragments of the Familia must be collected. Seal their cursed power and forbid them from touching the soil."

Not a single piece can be missed.

Tiger Stick took the bag, turned around and ran.

Outside the tent, it was already dark. The Okinawan sunset turned the sea into a dark orange hue, and in the distance, several leaning power poles stood on the beach, their wires dangling into the water, sparking from the waves.

On the first day of the twelfth month, he went out and stood in the middle of the street.

The pulse beneath my feet continues.

"Thump."

"Thump."

The communicator in the tent suddenly rang.

The sound of Yi Gu came from the speaker, with a distinct urgency.

"An anomaly has been detected in the waters south of Okinawa. The sea temperature has dropped by six degrees Celsius in the past twenty minutes. The affected area is the entire sea area from the southern coast to Naha Port."

On the first day of December, he returned to the tent and pressed the call button.

"Natural cooling?"

"No. The heat was drawn away." Yigu paused for a moment, "but the source of the fluctuations is not in the Mariana Islands."

"In Okinawa."

There was a two-second silence on the communicator. Then, a burst of rapid keyboard clicks.

"—The cocoon." Yigu's voice was low. "It has begun to feed itself."

"The previous thirty-six to forty-eight hours..."

"Invalid!"

The sound of the second bone is dry and hoarse.

"At most eighteen hours."

No one spoke inside the tent.

Zhenyi quietly placed her hand on the Black Queen, which was leaning against the table.

Eighteen hours.

Four hours is not enough time to dig a tunnel. Even if the monkey talisman continues to transform, the cocoon may have already cracked by the time the 30-meter tunnel is dug through.

On the first day of December, I released the call button.

He looked down at the oval that Kugizaki had drawn on the ground. The sea breeze had faded the lines, but the shape remained.

The major axis is 120 meters and the minor axis is 80 meters.

An ellipse. Not a perfect circle.

If the stress distribution inside the shell is uniform, the shape should be a perfect circle. An ellipse indicates that the stress at both ends of the major axis is different, which is the weakest point of the structure.

On the first day of December, he squatted down and touched the northeast end of the oval with his fingertip.

"I'm not digging anymore."

Zhenyi looked at him.

"The snake talisman burrowed into the ground, following the outer shell to find the connection between the laws of earth and water. The tiger talisman poured its dissolving power along the gap."

He stood up.

"The imbalance of power has caused the source of water to leak out. Basha must either abandon incubation to patch this hole."

"Or hatch them earlier."

"Any outcome is better than being passively attacked 18 hours later," December said. "At least Gojo Satoru hasn't left yet. Before his South American clone goes berserk, he can get back to Asia in four hours."

The sea breeze blew into the tent, making the thermal imaging printouts on the table rustle.

The pulse under my feet started throbbing again.

It's a point heavier than before.

On the first day of December, I stepped out of my tent and stood on the darkened street. In the distance, a thin layer of white mist was condensing on the sea, a product of the sudden drop in temperature. From the direction of the fishing port, I could vaguely hear someone shouting something, but the sound was torn apart by the wind.

He turned around and faced the direction of the tent.

"Everyone, gather!"

The white fog had reached up to our knees.

The four people stood in the open space in front of the tent, and no one spoke.

On the first day of December, he folded the blueprint twice and stuffed it into his pocket, then glanced at the blueprint in front of him.

The skin on the right knuckle of the hawk was worn raw, the waist bag of the hawk was bulging with sealed bags, and the dark shadow of the hawk was pressed against the sole of his foot without moving.

"The plan has changed."

Huzhang looked up at him.

"I went straight down, found the gap between the two laws on the shell, and poured the [Tiger] talisman into it. Once the shell cracked, Basha could either go back to defend and repair the hole or hatch ahead of time. Either way, it was better than waiting idly for eighteen hours."

66

Kugizaki tucked his hair behind his ears.

"Are you going down alone?"

"I can go down by myself. Too many people will only be a distraction for me."

"I'm asking," Kugizaki stared at him, "how did you get up here if something happened?"

He didn't respond to that on the first day of the twelfth month.

"Things on the ground are more important. Itadori, you and Kugizaki continue to block the debris recovery area, expanding it to two hundred meters outside the perimeter."

Not a single fragment can be allowed to fall into the soil.

Huzhang nodded without asking why.

"Fu Hei".

"Um."

"Your ugly shikigami repels ugly things below thirty meters. But conversely, it reacts very sensitively to that shell of ugliness. After I go down, you stay on the ground and sense it. Notify me immediately if there are any changes in the shell's state."

"clear."

"Mayi."

The grating sound of a gun being cocked came from behind the tent.

Zhenyi carried the Black Queen gun around the perimeter, the ugly scope already calibrated and hanging from the barrel. Before December 1st could finish speaking, she headed straight for the fishing port.

Take three steps, then stop for a moment.

See you later.

He didn't turn around.

December 1st watched her ugly figure disappear into the white mist, and only looked away after two seconds.

"Let's begin."

Zhazhang and Kugizaki ran towards the ruins to the east. Fukuro gave him one last look, then turned and walked to the center of the elliptical marker line, sat cross-legged, and placed his hands on his shadow.

The streets suddenly seemed deserted.

On the first day of December, he walked to the "ugly" marker at the northeast end of the ellipse and squatted down.

White mist surged in from all directions, and the temperature continued to drop. His breath condensed into white, and every breath he inhaled carried a fishy smell.

He placed his palm on the cracked, ugly pavement.

[Snake] Spell activated.

five meters.

Gravel, dry mud, and broken, ugly sewer pipes.

ten meters.

The rock strata began to become complete. The grayish-white limestone had coral fragments embedded in its crevices.

Fifteen meters.

The first sign of something amiss appeared.

The rock strata's texture becomes unnatural. Limestone should have a randomly fractured, layered structure, but from this depth onward, all the cracks bend in the same direction—downward, towards the cocoon-like structure.

Twenty meters.

Seawater seeped in along the cracks in the rocks, but not from the coast; it surged upwards from below. The mercury in the water carried a very faint thermal pulse, occurring every three seconds, perfectly synchronized with the intense, pulsating sensation in the soles of the feet.

Twenty-five meters.

An invisible pressure instantly pressed down on him.

The perception line began to deform. The originally straight, ugly line was twisted into a spiral shape, and every meter it went down required twice the output of the Ugly Serpent Curse.

He continued pushing downwards.

Twenty-eight meters.

The ugly aura of the Water Law emerged from the ugly gaps in the Earth Law.

The two forces converge at this depth.

Thirty meters.

The surface of the complete ugly shell. The moment the sensory line touched the ugly shell, a metallic rusty smell filled the ugly shell's nostrils.

He closed his ugly eyes and rapidly rotated them beneath his eyelids, groping along the surface of the shell inch by inch. The laws of earth and water were woven together seamlessly in most areas, but directly beneath the ugly figure at the northeastern end of the ellipse—

Gaps.

The two rules do not fully mesh here.

The power of the [Zha] curse surged forth instantly, flowing downwards through the channel opened by the [She] curse.

To reconcile; to resolve.

The moment the curse touched the crack, the ugly patterns on the shell surface stopped wriggling.

It felt like something had detected a foreign object.

one second.

two seconds.

Suddenly, the ground trembled.

Fu Heichou's voice came through the communicator, very low.

"The shikigami is acting strangely."

three seconds.

Four seconds.

The crack had grown from the width of a hair to the thickness of a little finger. The law of water began to seep out from the crack, and the seepage was accelerating.

Five seconds.

Let's fight back.

A surge of Tiger Heaven's fury, enveloped in the violent, high-pressure energy of the water's origin, crashed straight down along the earth's vein transmission lines.

On the first day of the twelfth month, Chou's body jerked backward, as if he had been punched from thirty meters underground. He knelt on one knee on the road, his palm pressed firmly against the ground.

[Snake] The curse of the snake opened up an ugly road, but under the impact of high pressure, one-third of it broke.

He increased the output of the Zha Fa Zhou Kui. The power of harmony and the source of the Kui water that Basha recharged collided at the gap, and the two forces twisted into a crazy vortex on the shell.

Then, spiderweb-like cracks began to appear on the surface of the shell, and the essence of water seeped out from each crack. The force of the Basha Blade's counterattack was too great; the high-pressure essence of water that poured back not only failed to plug the gaps, but also shattered the entire shell's connecting structure into pieces.

Just then, a half-meter-wide crack appeared in the ugly pavement beneath his feet.

A dark blue, ugly light shone up from the depths of the crack.

On the first day of the twelfth month, he stood up and took two steps back.

The road surface continued to crack, with asphalt chunks rolling to both sides, revealing the ugly rock layer underneath, which was soaked in blue light.

"Landslide in the northeast area!"

'

"The ground is cracking!"

"The shadow is out of control. My ugly shadow is—"

'

The three channels collided, turning into a noisy, ugly cacophony.

Then cut it all off.

"roar..

'

Suddenly, a long howl came from underground.

The white mist vanished instantly amidst the long howl, only to surge back in ten times faster.

There was nothing visible on the sea surface.

The communicator is still unable to communicate.

The building in the fishing port stopped tilting. It didn't collapse.

On the first day of the twelfth month, he exhaled a foul breath reeking of blood and straightened his body. He glanced down at the ugly cracks beneath his feet, where the blue light continued to expand, but the ugly disintegration of his cocoon-like outer shell did not stop.

The two outcomes he anticipated did not occur.

It's the third possibility.

The ugly thing inside the shell is actively tearing it open.