With Musou Isshin resting in her hand, the Raiden Shogun's presence rose to something almost unbearable.
This was no test, no casual spar.
She was genuinely trying to cut Su Han down.
The killing intent pouring from her blade was not something that could be faked.
Beside her, Yae Miko stared, momentarily stunned. What was this friend of hers doing? Did Ei really not understand what it would mean to kill Su Han here and now, when he stood in Inazuma as Liyue's representative?
He was not just any foreigner.
He carried another nation at his back.
Soft footsteps echoed across the broken courtyard.
Musou Isshin glowed with a cold purple light as Raiden Shogun walked toward him. With every step, lightning slid down her shoulders and wrapped around the blade, the storm on her body tightening until it felt as if all the thunder over Inazuma had been pulled to a single point.
"Hey, Ei," Yae said sharply. "You can't cut this man. The Geo Archon—"
"Enough."
A light flared in Ei's eyes.
Musou Isshin trembled once.
The air split like glass under a hammer.
Thunder exploded outward, and darkness rushed in to swallow both her and Su Han.
The sight made Yae's face drain of color. "Idiot," she hissed. "She pulled him into the Plane of Euthymia. Can't she go one day without swinging that sword?"
"The Plane of Euthymia?" Shenhe asked, taken aback.
"That's where Ei trains," Yae said quickly. "It's cut off from the outside. Unless she chooses to let him out herself, if he dies in there, we won't even know it happened."
"What?" someone breathed.
Expressions tightened all around.
No one here doubted how important Su Han was. If he actually died under the Raiden Shogun's blade, everything connected to him would collapse with him.
No wonder Yae had been so tense.
Shenhe drew Calamity Queller into her hand, fingers sliding into a ready grip. "Then we break that space from here," she said. "Even if the enemy is a deity, so what?"
Su Han was her husband.
Seeing the desperate look on Shenhe's face, Mona was the one who steadied first.
"Hold on," she said. "Su Han already sent a message in the group. He told us not to panic.
"If something goes wrong, he can use the Nether Path's power to tear open the space and walk out."
At that, Shenhe's shoulders eased a fraction.
Yae turned to Mona instead. "So he's fully mastered that power now?"
Mona nodded. "With Xiao's guidance, he has it under control."
The heavy stone in everyone's chest finally loosened a little.
Even so, the anxiety did not disappear. Su Han was facing a true Archon, not a half‑recovered sea demon that hadn't regained its full strength.
…
The Plane of Euthymia was empty and still, a quiet world with no sky or horizon.
In the center, a lone figure sat cross‑legged in midair.
As soon as Su Han arrived, she opened her eyes.
Ei looked him over from head to toe. "You wield the elements without a Vision," she said. "You study technology beyond the sea.
"If I leave you alive, more variables will appear sooner or later.
"I kept wondering where that fox was getting so many strange things.
"It seems they all came from you."
Su Han laughed once, without humor.
"Has anyone ever told you," he asked, "that your so‑called eternity is an empty joke?
"Inazuma is piled with white bones, and you, the one who calls herself its guardian, see none of it.
"Do you know what a nation is?
"Do you know what eternity is?
"You don't, do you?"
Her face stayed expressionless, but Musou Isshin crackled in her hand, arcs of lightning racing madly along the blade.
"I hope your mouth," she said quietly, "is as sharp as your sword."
Thunder flashed.
The blade came down with a force that was hard to imagine.
Its speed belonged to an entirely different world than anything the Fatui or even the ancient wolves could muster.
And yet—her first cut only met empty air.
She touched down lightly, turned, and saw him standing a short distance away.
"He anticipated it," she thought. "He read my angle before I moved.
"How interesting."
Purple light flared again.
She drew more thunder to Musou Isshin, layering streak after streak over the blade.
Opposite her, Su Han let the seal fall from Tessaiga and allowed his body to slip more fully into the azure dragon form. If he wanted to cross blades with Ei here and walk away, there was no room left to hold back.
"Thunder's Thousand Span."
"Ice Soul—Wind Scar."
A bolt as thick as a tree trunk smashed into a sweeping arc of storm‑torn wind and cold.
The Plane of Euthymia shuddered around them. Cracks spider‑webbed across the skyless emptiness.
Watching the two forces tear at each other, Ei's brows drew together. Her thunder had been stopped.
This man was more interesting than she had expected.
Someone who could truly stand before an Archon's blade was rare.
Perhaps, she thought, he should be allowed one real stroke.
That thought sent a deeper violet glint through her eyes.
Musou Isshin answered, its pressure surging once more.
She drew in a long, controlled breath and let it out in a low shout.
Power flooded into the sword, not wild but focused, honed into a single absolute edge.
This was the peak of her sword arts, the culmination of her thunder—her ultimate technique as the Electro Archon.
If he could take this strike, she would go against her own instincts and spare him. Very few beings in this world could endure such a cut.
"Damn," Su Han thought, feeling the air around him lock tight. "She's going all in."
Now he understood.
This was the difference between those who played with divine power and those who owned it.
His body refused to move. Even the elements in him felt as if they had been bound in place.
The blade rushing toward him was no simple blow anymore. It felt like a verdict written in thunder.
Standing still to meet it was just asking to die.
But he had no intention of dying here.
At that razor edge between life and death, time seemed to slow.
Under Ei's crushing will, the powers inside him twisted restlessly. They, too, sensed the danger approaching. They surged and collided, folding closer together.
The core at the very center of his being drank greedily and then seemed to burst open.
Across the space between them, Ei watched his sword suddenly begin to vibrate, the rhythm running from hilt to tip. The pale blue of the blade darkened, swallowed by a sheen like a night sky filled with distant stars.
"An Archon… so what?" Su Han's voice cut through the roaring thunder.
"Have you ever seen the worlds beyond your heavens?
"Have you ever seen what true invincibility looks like?
"Have you ever seen the wide sea of stars?"
"You're just a shut‑in."
"You don't understand how to rule. All you know is how to run, again and again."
"Wake up, Raiden Ei."
His shout echoed across the empty Plane.
Power answered.
A presence no weaker than hers erupted from his body, tearing through the invisible bonds and blowing them apart. The shackles of divine pressure shattered like glass.
The black lightning of his will turned brilliant gold, flooding the Plane of Euthymia.
His strength climbed another step.
His eyes seemed almost to glow.
Whatever chains were thrown in front of him, he would break. That was the only way to stand, one day, at the very top of all the worlds he had seen.
"Nether Path—Crescent Shatter."
The dense orb of darkness at his blade's edge broke apart.
Hundreds of crescent slashes burst outward at once, all aimed at the falling arc of thunder.
Purple light still filled the realm, but the extinguishing force of the Nether Path met it head‑on and, barely, held.
Musou Isshin was a divine weapon, born of an Archon's will.
The Nether Path was not much weaker.
Even so, Su Han could feel the truth in his bones—this was his strongest technique, and it still could not fully erase her cut.
"So this is the power of an Archon," he thought, breathing hard. "I still can't beat her."
He glanced once toward Ei in the distance, let out a quiet, resigned breath, and turned away.
Tessaiga bit into the fabric of the Plane itself.
The space in front of him split open.
He stepped through.
…
Back at the ruins of the Kanjou estate, Kujou Sara saw the air above the courtyard twist and tear under a streak of strange black power.
The man the Raiden Shogun had dragged away only moments ago stepped out of the rift as if through a doorway.
Without hesitating, he sprinted toward his companions, raised his sword once more, and drew it through the air.
His slash wrapped around them all.
In the blink of an eye, every one of them vanished.
It was a full three minutes before Ei appeared again in front of Sara.
"My Shogun," Sara said at once. "They've escaped."
"Mm." Ei's tone was as calm as ever. "Next time we meet, I'll give him another cut.
"As for the Tenryou Commission… everyone responsible this time will die."
"Yes."
She turned and left without another word.
There was no new decree, no order to post warrants or purge Ritou. She did not so much as mention punishing the island itself.
Only the quiet promise of another meeting.
…
Alone again in the Plane of Euthymia, Ei replayed Su Han's words in her mind.
Her expression remained composed.
Her voice did not.
"He's right," she murmured. "I don't know how to govern a nation.
"The one who ruled before was my sister. All I've ever really known is how to kill."
"Even when the Seven met, I called myself a warrior first."
"Worlds beyond this one… so that's your secret?"
"He called me a shut‑in." A small, almost sulky huff escaped her. "Next time we meet, it won't be with only thirty percent."
A faint, irritated crease settled between her brows, equal parts offended and oddly motivated.
Here in the Plane of Euthymia, of course, no one could see it.
…
At Narukami Shrine, space split open above the paving stones.
Su Han half‑fell through the tear and landed sitting on the ground, shoulders shaking with exhausted laughter.
"That felt good," he said between breaths. "You have no idea how hard I just yelled at her."
Yae looked him up and down. "You really dared to shout at Ei like that? You aren't afraid she'll put everything she has into killing you next time?
"That idiot can be pretty ruthless."
"If she really meant to kill me, she wouldn't have dragged me into the Plane of Euthymia," Su Han said, shaking his head.
For all that Yae called Ei her friend, Su Han had a better read on shut‑ins than she did.
From the moment he stepped into that gray world, he had understood: this Electro Archon wanted to see him up close.
And talk.
Her way of talking just happened to involve swinging a blade that could erase mountains.
Most people wouldn't survive that kind of conversation.
Most people wouldn't even qualify to enter that space.
Which was why, once he realized what this was, he had taken the chance to throw everything he'd been holding back right in her face—anger, frustration, all the ways he felt she had gone wrong.
Once it was all out, of course, he had also been smart enough to run.
Mona could only rub at her temple. "She's still a deity," she muttered. "You really dared to scold her like that…"
"You don't get it," Su Han said. "Sometimes, yelling at her does more good than flattering her.
"Besides, officially, we just 'lost,' didn't we? We'll leave it at that for now.
"It's the perfect window."
He pushed himself to his feet and dusted off his clothes.
"While she's chewing on that lecture," he said, "we can proceed with the Grand Sacred Sakura Cleansing.
"And start putting Inazuma back in order."
From within his robes, he drew out the locust‑wood box.
All the preparations had already been made.