Chapter 223

Shinjuku becomes the stage where the mightiest sorcerer ever born meets the mightiest now living. Whoever moves first decides which one of the pair gets labeled the challenger.

Amid Shibuya's wreckage, Gojo and Kiyotaka Ijichi scale a skyscraper while discussing his stint in the Prison Realm, which he likens to a grueling work week that raced by. He asks about the people stranded on B5F of Shibuya Station, and Ijichi explains the curses Kenjaku released steered clear of his residuals there, so every survivor recovered fully from Unlimited Void. The pair reach the rooftop and rejoin Utahime Iori and Yoshinobu Gakuganji, who have a ritual ready. Over in Shinjuku, Sukuna waits atop another tower with Uraume, sure the battlefield will declare itself, and soon feels Gojo's vast cursed energy in the distance.

Flashbacks show Gakuganji raising Masamichi Yaga's death with Gojo, who takes the blame for getting sealed and, noting Gakuganji shielded Panda's secret, judges him a changed man fit to lead now that the old Jujutsu Headquarters figures are dead. Gojo had also briefed Ijichi, confessing he trusted him above anyone, and Ijichi now lays out talismans to raise a barrier around him. The innate technique Utahime wields, Solo Forbidden Area, swells a chosen sorcerer's cursed energy reserves and output; Gakuganji's music turns her chants and dance into a ritual, and the boost climbs to one hundred twenty percent, while Gojo's own chants and hand signs drive his technique further. Hitting two hundred percent, Gojo fires a Hollow Purple that tears from Shibuya into Shinjuku straight at Sukuna. Ijichi's barrier throws Sukuna off, so he misreads the move and senses the output too late; his block fails as the tower crumbles and both reinforced arms shred. Dropping to ground level, he heals with reverse cursed technique, and Gojo warps over, first blood drawn, branding him the challenger.

This nineteen-page chapter came out May 22, 2023 in issue 25, belonging to the Shinjuku Showdown Arc and gathered into Volume 25, with Ijichi and Gojo on the cover. The bout between Gojo and Sukuna opens here, and Utahime's Solo Forbidden Area powers the amplified two-hundred-percent Hollow Purple that begins it.