A surreal man walked between the boundary of mortality and immortality once. A tale of a prince who stood in the palace filled with nothing but pleasure, where everything had been granted unto him upon a silver platter. Gilded ivory flanked him from all sides as he stood in the most satisfactory world one could find themselves. Never was it enough. Never was it the land where the lotus flower could bloom in all certainty.

Veiled in pleasure, he understood pleasure was a veil. Dissatisfied, he stood up from his throne and enabled the Great Renunciation, to wander the land without the gardens of self-indulgence pampering him until eternity's end. The Catur-nimitta was all he needed to be witness to enable his Prajñā to reach greater heights.

His estrangement to a false paradise had now been unfettered.

To a new land he would walk, no longer across silken carpet, marble ground, or hanging chandeliers, but across soil, grass, and dirt; for a new discovery of himself. Through a world of Māra, he must find himself. Toiling evermore in struggles or floundering evermore in pleasures, neither would assimilate his mind, for he had found the Madhyamā-pratipad where existence became clear to him.

Many times did he fall. Many times did he suffer. Still did he seek the utmost purpose life had granted him, and still did he succeed through boundaries of asceticism and rolling clouds of uncertainty. A realization had been achieved, and so, therefore, his journey had been completed.

But, what of somebody else?

Once upon a shattered realm.

Rain a tribute to the land. Land a tribute to the skies. Mortals a tribute to the gods. The valley moistened with a morning dew flittered with life. Fowlbeasts, burdenbeasts, and all the myriad were scattered across the landscape with their own pursuit of survival. Blades of grass stood tall with droplets caressing their body, swayed by the wind, and trampled by the feet of those larger. Or, perhaps, something else.

A single foot stomped them, clothed in black ethereal sandals made for the art of combat, before it lifted from the blades. Supposedly released from the pressure, the grass hadn't wilted or shown any signs of bending, with moisture still clinging to their form as inseparable lovers; and a small piece of nature moving on as it should be.

Traced upward from the martial arts sandals were loose white pants of surpassing sublimity, fluttering in the passing zephyr of the east, along with the continuous movements of its bearer's traversal. Up further was a Stygian spandex shirt, and a white haori adorned with an ebony scarf by the neck, all encompassing a white-haired man who completed the entire display as its centrifuge—its focal point.

"Huh." A low voice escaped him as his steps moved with uncertainty, right hand casually held to the back of his neck as he continued to scratch it. Upon further inspection with his porcelain face casually darting across nature's womb, he released another sound. "Huh?"

Scrunched his face was as he picked up the pace of his analysis, twin sapphire orbs encompassing skies underneath becoming far more scrutinizing as he made sense of the sight before him. Gojo Satoru, the Second Strongest Sorcerer as per the King of Curses' rebuke—in the form of a slash which severed the world—couldn't find himself forming a truly coherent answer at what he was currently bestowed to.

He settled on what he could currently discern at the moment.

No Cursed Energy surrounded him. The only modicum he could sense was held deep in his body, circulating and cycling as it always had been.

His body was fine. No longer was it split in two and snapped like a chocolate bar, bleeding at its severed seams and draining his life with the constancy of pain.

Something foreign, yet still related to Cursed Energy, encompassed him. Whatever the hell it was, it was sickening and almost made him feel as if his body had been hijacked. Still, it wasn't hijacked in any way he knew, and whatever the hell it was, it didn't seem to be doing anything bad.

Symbiotic, almost? Could that be the right description he could give it? Well, whatever. It was almost troubling to him, but in his current state, even with his divine eyes, he could barely encapsulate what the problem was. Such a problem really needed more time for his mind to digest over and develop a clear-cut answer for. But for now? What was currently crystal vivid to him?

"A whole different world." He couldn't help but chuckle, the lower-half of his palm pressed against his forehead. "From Shinjuku to…what is this?" More theories surfaced his brain as his neurons fired off, attempting to come up with more valid explanations for the foreign circumfix that was this new land.

A different part of the world? Invalid. Cursed Energy, especially with the Six Eyes, could be seen and felt with enough clarity to turn a normally-functioning man into an epileptic mass of flesh experiencing a seizure on the ground.

A specialized Domain Expansion? If he was currently in a Domain Expansion, why the heck would he be placed in a Domain Expansion like this in the first place? Did anybody possess a Domain Expansion like this? No. Nobody did. Too random, and too little sense to be made of it.

A delusion of the mind? Plausible. He was hallucinating an airport not too long ago, being all lovey-dovey with the friends conjured up in his mind. Or… maybe, it was the actual afterlife that he was sent to before, and he had been torn away from it and into this… new… world…

…Okay, straight back to the theory of being sent to another world, huh?

Satoru continued on his journey with a short stride, seldom uncomfortable at the lack of Cursed Energy, but he kept his mind open and positive. Being sent to a different world? That meant the opening of an infinite amount of possibilities, hadn't it? He didn't exist, his identity was unfounded, and nothing was there to press down endlessly on his Neutral Limitless: Infinity.

His students… eh… they could probably handle Ryomen Sukuna.

So…?

"Woohoo! A new world!" Satoru yelled out, arms outstretched as he embraced the cloud-filtered sunlight shining down on him. Fowlbeasts flew up from the abrupt sound wave of his shout, exiting the trees and causing leaves to flick about. "My own personal isekai, is this how it's going?" He smiled to himself, rubbing his chin with his eyes closed.

Before his mood dropped. "…Seems kinda boring, doesn't it?"

He glanced around again.

The sun was still in the sky, but he could tell he had been trudging through the landscape for hours. He could have flown up in the sky and rapidly teleported all across the area using an application of Blue, but he needed time to regather his thoughts and make sense of the environment.

"What isn't boring, though?" The smile which defied impermanence still stuck to his lips never broke, as he stared upward and to the sky. "That interesting mountain off in the distance." He placed his hands on his hips, haori twisting at the motion. Speaking to himself had become an unneeded habit recently.

From what he could tell from the grass and trees, he was still in some part of Asia, perhaps even China. However, due to the lack of Cursed Energy, he had come to postulate that it must be some alternate version of his world's own. It was furthermore backed up by the fact that the plants and greenery surrounding him did not exist back in his world.

Although they looked similar to some that he knew, a more… atomic observation was all he needed to know that they held enough minute differences to make forged passports to look like military-grade spy tools.

Where was he again?

Right, the mountain off in the distance.

Clouds surrounded the edge of its peak. Satoru's eyes drank the imposing monolith in all of its sedimentary glory, frosted wisps surrounding it in tenuous ways he couldn't help but appreciate. What blew all the natural sights away however, was the sheer unnaturalness that emanated from it. Like a barrier of sorts, one that his Six Eyes of all things was having a difficult time comprehending.

From what he could understand? It was reality bending in some way. Cursed Techniques could produce a similar result of "bending reality" if it was really specialized or some Binding Vow was imposed to create such a phenomenon. But at the same time, was what he was witnessing related to Cursed Techniques or Cursed Energy in any way, shape, or form?

Absolutely not.

It was beyond his understanding at the moment, and it made him even more curious. To explore whatever Pandora's Box had presented him, to delve further in whatever strange event this new world had conjured up for him. Was it a Niyati that had presented itself in front of him? Daring him to traverse the unknowable and discover a brand new Mārga?

Probably not, but he'd be damned if he didn't say he was tantalized!

Hours upon hours of contemplating his current predicament had vanished at the antiquity of the sight before him. Satoru's form started to lift off the ground as he hovered, an aura of Cursed Energy becoming more prominent around him. A previous plan had been made to discover civilization by pathing teleportations across the wilderness he was in, from rivers to mountaintops, to valleys and to the skies; but an impulsive desire—a Taṇhā—had overcome him.

A clasp of his hands—

Then he vanished.

Ling laid perched atop the wooden balcony of a mountainside, glancing out to the boundless horizon encompassing the sky and its falsity. She ignored such aspects and focused her eyes in a close, attempting to find even a modicum of inspiration in the rather stilted air she had found herself in. Very likely she was to find one, for she had done so with relative ease, far more ease than she had been in the past eon.

There it was. Immaterial, but she could grasp it in her mind's eye, dashing across her head like a pirouette and dancing up an inspiration with its peppered steps. A set of words and topics flowed from her mind to her blue draconic tail, moving so that the furred ends dipped itself in an inkstone before shifting elsewhere. The natural movements found the furred end drifting across parchments of empty scrolls, writing ancient Yanese characters with seasoned ease.

The dreams conjured were now jotted down. A bell tolled traditionality as she continued to formulate the scattered pond of ink picked up into what she desired. The calligraphy was all that the sky desired, and the material was all which the land could want.

"On which side did I wake up today?" Ling mused to herself, still laid in a voluptuous posture, chin perched atop her palm. "Can my dreams remember me? Or, had they already forgotten me?" She felt the wind brush past her cheek, the chilly air of the self-regulated landscape feeling… different. "No need to tell myself a pleasant lie, I wouldn't forget which side I slept on." She chuckled to herself, glancing at the gourd by her side.

Her body didn't separate from the wood as she whisked the object, and with a simple motion, took a swig of the contents inside. It was rejuvenating, the action completed as she continued to write with her tail. When she lowered the gourd after receiving her fill, she glanced elsewhere, curiosity suddenly developing.

"My? A visitor?" She held her right hand—the one holding the gourd—with its backhand facing up, chin drifting just above it. It was an abrupt feeling, as something was practically attempting to… bash its way into the vicinity.

The presence? It felt as empty as an infinite void.

It felt as if the mountain around her was quaking for a moment, but she didn't mind it. She continued to write, write, and write. Occasionally, her lips would find respite at the open parabola of her opened gourd, all while she waited for the loud "guest" that was making their way through.

"And there he is." Ling flicked her hand in the air cyclically, the last bits of ink drafted upon the scroll she had been writing, and the bottom of the ground having been reached. "An eternity divided in an hour." She glanced up, amused at the arrival not too far away.

To be precise, right in front of her, standing at the wooden railings.

"Hah~! Sheesh! That took way too long!" A rambunctious man, robed in white, dressed in white, and by the sky he was an encompassed white—save for his eyes. He glanced around. "Now, where am… oh? Hello?" Until his gaze settled on her, hand shading the sunlight which wasn't leaking through. "I didn't expect somebody else to be here."

"My, my, there's no need to be so loud. Loudness, at times, can be hollow," Ling humored him, voice falling like cherry blossoms down the mountain. "I wouldn't have expected another to arrive, either."

Something seemed to have clicked in the white-haired man's mind, as he brought himself back and snapped his fingers. "Oh! You're the one who set up that "barrier," weren't you?" He then squatted down, curiously glancing at her.

An interesting man he was.

Ling smiled, hand reached outward, index finger with the rest of her fingers curled. She watched him blink owlishly as her hand reached to him, and to his forehead, touching it. Touching him. His mouth was now barely agape.

"Surprised?" she asked, a petaled voice a playful flutter. watching his delicate eyes fully fixate itself on her. "Why, yes, I was the one who had constituted what you had found the locomotive through."

The response she provided seemed to have escaped him, as his widened eyes continued to find no closure.

A/N: Very experimental. But as I have been with all my fics? FUCK IT, WE BALL!

Hopefully the beginning isn't skewered with countless grammar mistakes considering how fast I brush through the first chapters I write for my fics.

Leave a comment if you're on Ao3 or Wattpad, or a review if you're on FFnet. I have NO IDEA where I'm taking this aside from obvious Buddhist inspirations.

Yes, this is a rewrite of "Throughout Heaven and Terra," because… well, it's my first ever work. It has NOT aged well in my book.