Chapter 72

With the escort nearly complete, the disgraced former Zenin upends everything. The apparent death of Satoru Gojo hangs over the team as the mission collapses in a single, brutal moment.

Toji raises the special grade cursed tool, the Inverted Spear of Heaven, and with it cancels Satoru's technique outright, then shreds the young sorcerer in a blinding flurry of slashes that leaves him a bloody, seemingly lifeless heap. Deep in the catacombs beneath Tokyo Jujutsu High, Kuroi shares a tearful goodbye with Riko, the two vowing to love each other always. Suguru leads Riko into the Tombs of the Star, showing her its main hall and laying out the route to Master Tengen, who sits behind a barrier admitting only the invited. Riko may join the merger or turn back home, and Suguru recalls that he and Satoru had agreed to call the mission off if she did not consent. Yaga had framed the vessel's erasure as something morally wrong.

Having lost her parents and lived apart from others her whole life, Riko once believed she could leave everyone behind, but the time spent on the escort changes her, and she confesses a wish to remain with them. Suguru offers his hand to take her home. The instant she accepts, a gunshot strikes her in the head, stunning him. Toji emerges over her body, declaring it time to finish up, and tells Suguru he has killed Satoru Gojo. Believing him, Suguru at once summons a pair of his mightiest cursed spirits.

This chapter concludes the Satoru versus Toji confrontation and features the Inverted Spear of Heaven, along with Suguru's Cursed Spirit Manipulation and the curses Kuchisake-Onna and Rainbow Dragon. The events were adapted into the twenty-seventh anime episode.