The Shibuya Incident, Part 39

With yet another person he cherished torn away, Yuji hurls himself at Mahito in a fury. When rage alone fails him just as it had once before, he calls to mind the way Nanami carried himself and chooses calm over wrath, determined to show himself a real jujutsu sorcerer instead of flailing blindly.

Yuji charges for revenge, and Mahito flicks a small transfigured human toward him, reshaping it so spikes jut from its head. Yuji evades, but the curse uses the creature to get behind him and prime Soul Multiplicity, a technique that merges two or more souls. The soul's refusal of that fusion sets off Body Repel, which Mahito channels to vomit out a clustered mass of transfigured humans. He looses a long beast that lunges to bite Yuji, who seizes its teeth and arrests the attack, only for Mahito to erupt from its maw and connect with a right straight that tears Yuji's face open, his knuckle warped into a blunt square weapon. Then Mahito brings forth a likeness of Junpei's face, drives his free hand into it to mutilate it, and insists that the two of them are one and the same, claiming Yuji cannot win until he accepts it.

Yuji clears the blood to halt the bleeding, baring a long scar, and lets cursed energy stream calmly from his palms as Nanami's voice steadies him. Mahito loads his own fists with energy and, reasoning that simply keeping his body tough is what Yuji expects, decides instead to leave his soul's form untouched while bolstering himself with pure cursed energy to skewer Yuji's heart in a single thrust. His fist meets only empty air, for Yuji has already disappeared from view. Tapping into Taido Martial Arts, Yuji performs Knee Release to erase his opening motion, sinking low through knees, hips, and shoulders to reach Mahito's feet and slam a Manji Kick into his face. A follow-up front kick drives the curse back before Mahito reshapes one arm into a spiked vine that forces space between them, granting that the technique impressed him and announcing round two.

This chapter corresponds to Episode 42 of the anime and ran in Weekly Shonen Jump issue 41 of 2020. It marks the turning point where Yuji stops fighting on pure emotion and channels the steadiness Nanami modeled for him. The author's note also corrected a wording error from a previous chapter regarding what Sukuna's Dismantle affects.