Chapter 1354

Just thinking that her body would be scorched by an unextinguishable flame for a thousand years, Sigong Huiye felt a chill run down her spine.

She could not even imagine what kind of torment that would be; after all, for her, the greatest heat torture at present was simply forty-degree summer heat plus the student council room's long-unmaintained air conditioning—even that was enough to make them melt.

Even if it were just a single reincarnation, a span of thousands of years would be a death by a thousand cuts to one's will.

——

"..."

"Ka'esilan'na gritted their teeth but didn't say a word."

"Bai'e stared fixedly at him: 'Your indifference chills my heart. To you, they are merely insignificant footnotes?'"

"My sorrow has never faded." Ka'esilan'na turned around, saying, "On the contrary, the twelve sparks added to my person have made the fire in my heart unprecedentedly fierce... I engrave this world with 'wrath'. As long as I keep burning, they have never left."

"Perhaps it's already too late." Bai'e gritted their teeth and said word by word, "But you're right. Wrath, here and now, is the only weapon I can rely on. So..."

"——Draw your sword, executioner! I will make you realize that your greatest mistake was leaving me!"

With the sound of the sword blade piercing flesh, Bai'e collapsed into a pool of golden blood, lifeless.

……

"After that, he raised his sword and attacked…… then Ka'esilan'na killed themselves."

"On that day, who fell beneath the sword, remaining in the past; and who went forward to the future, I can no longer recall."

"I only remember a dung beetle, hiding in a shadow beyond my peripheral vision, futilely pushing a stone ball…… climbing up, falling down; climbing up, falling down; climbing up, falling down..."

If the worm's freedom lies only in deciding how to push the round stone—sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes pausing on a not-so-steep slope to lean against the stone and rest—but its choice cannot change the essence of 'futility': the stone will always roll down the slope, and the worm will always return to the slope's starting point, beginning anew.

After that, in each cycle, when I reach this place, the burning sky always casts a shadow of its trajectory. It reaches near the peak at the fourth moment of dusk, and falls back to the starting point in the first fifteen seconds of the next gate.

Then, all my efforts in this cycle will also vanish into thin air at the same moment.

—

Jujutsu Kaisen

"Despair."

Besides that word, Itadori could find no other vocabulary to describe Bai'e's current mood.

If he were to replace Bai'e… would he choose to give up?

Itadori's Adam's apple rolled up and down, he swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his heart thump-thumped. He suddenly realized this was only the first eternal recurrence, yet he already had the thought of giving up.

Thirty-odd million cycles of reincarnation… for a human with normal reason and emotion, it is already nearly an infinite timescale; any thought of 'giving up' will be like a crack in the ice, no matter how tiny at first, ultimately leading to disastrous consequences.

"Exactly like Sisyphus." Shoko took a deep sigh, "Sisyphus angered the gods and was sentenced to eternal torment. Day after day, year after year, he must push the boulder up the hill, and each time the boulder reaches the summit, it rolls back down to the valley, an eternal cycle, eternal futility."

"Damn… I really want to beat those high-and-mighty gods." Itadori slammed his fist with a "smack."

This is Bai'e's predicament. Even wielding the power of 'Destruction', Bai'e, this 'play actor', cannot harm Laigushi at all. He can only futilely battle the Heichi data spawned from the scepter, but these data can never be fully eradicated.

So, he cannot give up, nor can he break through his limitation as 'data'; he can only endure the pain of the fire seed burning his body, struggling forward in torment...

Just thinking of the excessive words he had once said to the fire-stealer, Itadori felt a surge of bitterness in his heart, wishing he could slap himself hard twice.

He never imagined that the fire-stealer, who looked like a villain, was actually the true 'burdened-world' bearer of Wengfalosi.

—

>>> Eternal Recurrence #1: Subject Kaesilan Na successfully persuaded the twelve golden heirs to recover twelve fire seeds via nonviolent means. Upon inspection, this overreach visit had no substantive impact on the experiment's progress.

>>> The twelve golden heirs strictly followed the experiment's original design sequence, their life cycles ending normally one after another, being loaded into the buffer. Subject Kaesilan Na rolled back the computation process, and detected abnormal fluctuations in the subject's cognitive function.

>>> Administrator comment: First catastrophic failure.

>>> Eternal Recurrence #2: Subject Kaesilan adopted a strategy similar to Eternal Recurrence #1, with no substantive impact on the experiment's progress.

>>> The twelve golden heirs' life cycles ended normally in sequence, Subject Kaesilan Na rolled back the computation process.

>>> Eternal Recurrence #3: Subject Kaesilan Na's strategy underwent a slight adjustment, increasing the weight of the 'avoid past comrades' sacrifice' decision. Upon inspection, this adjustment had no substantive impact on the experiment's progress.

>>> The twelve golden heirs' life cycles ended normally in sequence, Subject Kaesilan Na rolled back the computation process.

>>> Eternal Recurrence #15: Subject Kaesilan Na for the first time attempted to decompile Heichi to achieve privilege escalation, performing an overreach authorization operation on specific targets represented by the twelve golden heirs.

>>> The twelve golden heirs' life cycles ended normally in sequence, Subject Kaesilan Na rolled back the computation process.

>>> Eternal Recurrence #42: Subject Kaesilan Na's 11th attack on the scepter's core layer failed. Noted that the 'avoid past comrades' sacrifice' decision weight shows a slight downward trend.

>>> The twelve golden heirs' life cycles ended normally in sequence, Subject Kaesilan Na rolled back the computation process.

>>> Eternal Recurrence #133: Based on a comprehensive observation of Eternal Recurrences #83 through #133, it is believed that Subject Kaesilan Na's strategy is gradually approaching that of Eternal Recurrence #42. Noted the overfitting risk, the subject's cognitive function may potentially be impaired.

>>> Administrator comment: This undoubtedly helps greatly strengthen the Iron Tomb's 'destruction' tendency, as expected. Ignored, continue observation.