Chapter 151

Having surrendered her cursed energy in the wake of Mai's death, Maki Zenin now wields raw physical power that mirrors Toji Fushiguro. Naoya, however, refuses to grant her any legitimacy, branding her a cheap copy. What began as a struggle over control of the Zenin clan swells into a deeper rivalry: each fighter wants to be recognized as the one who belongs in the company of Toji and Satoru Gojo, the names spoken of as the strongest.

A flashback shows the young Naoya, lavished with praise and groomed to one day succeed Naobito as clan head. Curious about the family's powerless outcast, he sought out Toji expecting to pity him, only to be rattled by the man's calm, indifferent stare. In the present, Maki has cut down most of the Zenin's elite and now stands against Naoya himself.

Naoya unleashes Projection Sorcery, firing off a flurry of strikes inside a single second. Maki deflects much of it while trying to count his movements, but he seizes her and locks her in a frozen frame, then boots her through the estate's stone structures at staggering speed. The technique has limits, no breaking physics, a ceiling on initial acceleration, yet sustained use lets his velocity keep climbing. Unlike his earlier bout with Choso, Naoya intends to push past the sound barrier and skewer her at peak speed.

Worn down from her earlier fights with Ogi and the Hei, Maki braces for the impact, dropping into the Shiranui-Gata stance to absorb the blow even at the cost of her ribs. Naoya counters by tagging her with his palm to force the technique's twenty-four-frames-per-second condition on her, expecting her to freeze. She does not. Her new body lets her read his motion and obey the rule herself, and as his face rushes toward her she pivots and meets it with her fist, hammering him into the dirt. He never finishes calling her a fake, so she leans over his ruined face and tells him to say it again.

The chapter is the fourth installment titled Perfect Preparation and runs nineteen pages, with Naoya Zenin on its cover. It appears in Volume 17 and adapts into anime Episode 51. Naoya's internal monologue frames his obsession with strength as the central wound that drives him, arguing that ordinary people sin through their blindness to true power.