"Haaa....haaa....." Ei was feeling exhausted now. She gave her all to that attack, and she was barely able to break that horrifying spear of Kenshin's.
But she had won now, and she could feel the exhilaration in her body start to calm down.
Now that she thought about it, why was she this tired? She knew Kenshin was using the energy she had been releasing for hundreds of years, but all her energy came from the Mussou Isshin, how could that remnant of energy even compete with the very same source of energy it came from?
"Ready to continue?" she heard Kenshin speak calmly and looked at him in shock.
She had used everything she had, even if she only cut his arm it should have been enough to vaporize him, why was he still calm?
"You look confused" said Kenshin, making a spectral arm appear where his flesh one should have been. The applications of soul power were infinite when he was in this kind of place. "I added my own energy to that spear, that's why you couldn't break it instantly. My own energy is incredibly powerful, so much so that I was able to regenerate the soul of a God, a weak one, but still. I control everything here, when I sensed the stalemate between our attacks I realized instantly that I would lose, my attack was made of soul energy, and there was no way I would miss it. I waited for you to decide what part of me to strike, and decided to cut my losses. Do you see that blood?"
Ei looked to where his spectral arm was pointing, and instantly realized what was wrong.
"Indeed, if you had cut me, the wound would have been cauterized, so no blood would have spilt. The one that cut my arm was myself" Kenshin said with a calm gaze, but realized that he had lost this battle.
He had been focused to the extreme for god knows how long, and the pain from losing an arm made him mentally exhausted, only the rush of adrenaline allowing him to talk.
He had more than enough energy at his disposal to continue the fight, but his mind couldn't catch up.
Ei was exhausted, but she would be able to regain her breathing just by dodging his now sloppy attacks, and by the time she had recovered, he would die.
He could use this moment to try and kill her, but he knew she wouldn't die. And that was never his intention anyway.
Killing Ei would only save Inazuma from the Decrees, but what about the civil war? What if another God like Orobashi attacked? What if the Fatui decided to strike with all their strength?
He could ask Morax for help, but then Inazuma wouldn't be Inazuma. They would be leeches, using Morax's might to live.
And he couldn't do that to his friend. He had decided to retire and live happily among the people, and now he had Guizhong by his side, he couldn't throw him into another cycle of fighting only for his ideals. Morax would do it because of the 'debt' he thought he had with Kenshin, but Kenshin wouldn't be able to live with himself.
Morax had already finished his role as Rex Lapix, all that was left was a man knowledgeable about all things, with no money, and who liked to hear stories while sipping tea, Zhongli.
So killing Ei was not an option, not to mention how devastated Yae would be, and how disgusted he would be with himself for killing a woman who only wanted the best for Inazuma even if she chose the worst options.
His fight was never to kill his opponent but to prove a point.
"I still don't understand" Kenshin said calmly, not moving from his place 10 meters away from Ei, and not attacking. "All that power and you are still afraid".
"Afraid? Me?" Ei asked in surprise while panting. She was surprised Kenshin didn't kill her, but she never understood Kenshin. Not at all.
"Of course. Why would you steal the Visions otherwise?" asked Kenshin like it was obvious.
"You wouldn't understand" said Ei, picking up her sword and standing up, but she couldn't move yet.
"Of course I do" replied Kenshin in a calm tone with his messy black hair sticking to his forehead due to the sweat. "I know more than you do".
"How?" asked Ei, looking at his calm eyes. She couldn't guess the thoughts behind those incredibly powerful eyes.
"I know that your sister died 500 years ago" Kenshin revealed in the same calm tone.
Ei's eyes were wide open hearing that, and immense sadness surged in her, but anger quickly replaced it. She didn't want to hear Kenshin act like he understood what it was to lose someone so precious when he wasn't even there.
"Shut up, don't speak of what you don't know" she gritted her teeth and looked with hostility at Kenshin for the first time. Until now he had been a foe, an adversary, but not an enemy. "I will speak with Y-"
"It wasn't Yae" Kenshin interrupted her, not afraid of her anger. "It was Barbatos who let it slip, and he had all the right to speak, as he was there".
"Still, you are not allowed to speak about it" Ei said with increasing hostility in her gaze, but Kenshin was still not afraid. "You know nothing of loss".
"I do, even if I have not lost anybody" Kenshin had to erect a wall in front of him to stop Ei's incredibly weak attack from reaching him.
"If you have not lost anybody, what do you know of loss!" shouted Ei. "Do you know how much I miss my friends, my sister?!"
"Of course not" spoke Kenshin, blocking another attack.
"Then shut up!!" Ei's face was unrecognizable from her normal calm state, it was contorted in hatred and pain.
"Do you know what did I in Liyue?" said Kenshin, blocking a barrage of slashes from Ei, who was approaching little by little while sending attacks his way.
"I don't care!!" she shouted again, not realizing that releasing more attacks in her state was weakening her without doing anything to Kenshin, who observed everything calmly.
"I had to seal thousands of Gods, dead ones, and let me tell you, the process implied reliving the most important or impactful moments of their lives" he said with nostalgia, not even looking at the attacks Ei was sending. He was too tired to react, but all he needed to do now was to erect a wall in front of him.
"I don't care!!!" Ei repeated again.
"I was 5 at a time, and I will always remember every single one of them, but the first one was extremely impactful. She was called Shen Zi" Ei's attacks were not growing stronger, and Kenshin was relaxed now, lost in his memories. "She lost her husband to a monster, that also took her daughter's life. In the end, she was begging for me to kill her. But that wasn't what I was trying to tell you. Do you know why did your sister die?"
Ei didn't seem to hear him, tears were sliding from her eyes, and his face expressed the pain she was feeling.
"Because I do" Kenshin revealed, making Ei stop in her tracks, frozen. "500 hundred years ago, Khaenri'ah, a godless nation, played around with something called the 'Art of Khemia', and the process was incredibly dangerous, something that made the Heavenly Principles erase that nation, but somehow, something went wrong and monsters started spawning".
"The Cataclysm...." Ei said with a shocked face. Finally, she understood the reason her sister died.
"So that Eternity you are yapping off all the time, that stupidity of getting closer to the Heavenly Principles, is bullshit because the Heavenly Principles had nothing to do with the Cataclysm, it was a byproduct of whatever happened there" Kenshin hadn't witnessed all this, and only heard about it from off-handed comments of Xiao, Morax and Barbatos, so he couldn't say with certainty that it was exactly what happened, but overall he believed it.
Ei grew angered at that again.
"How dare you?! I gave everything I had for 500 years to protect Inazuma, and you dare to question my actions?! A mere boy who isn't even 20 years old?!"
"And the one that knows what you didn't" replied Kenshin, but his calm was starting to disappear. "And I know everything I do from people you could have asked".
"Shut up!" shouted Ei, attacking once again.
"I won't!" Kenshin shouted back. "You are dooming us all with your stubbornness!!"
"I am doing my best!!" screamed Ei.
"And I'm telling you that it's not enough!!! You are the worst kind of ruler possible, you don't know anything about how to govern!!" shouted Kenshin. He knew he was being cruel at this point, but he couldn't keep it bottled anymore.
"I know!!" screamed Ei, crying in impotence and sadness. "I don't know how to get food like you do!! I don't understand why the descendants of such strong and righteous people are a bunch of hypocrites!! I don't understand why the people left me after I gave my best!!"
"Then listen to us!! I know everything you just admitted you didn't know! BUT.YOU.DON'T.LISTEN!!!" Kenshin shouted and sent an attack her way that left Ei sprawled on the floor. "Yae also knows, but you don't listen!! You are the best warrior, the supreme bodyguard, but not a ruler, so let those who know do it!!"
"I can't, I don't know if it would end like the Cataclysm" Ei was not shouting anymore, but Kenshin was her soul trembling, and it was starting to show cracks. "I am doing everything I can, but it's never enough. No matter how much I think, I can't resolve anything, and it's only making it worse, and I don't know what to do!"
"Calm down" Kenshin was nervous seeing this. He had started to vent and didn't realize how fragile Ei's mind was, and now her own soul was starting to fracture under the emotional pain she had been bottling for 500 years. The sheer weight of those bottled feelings was hitting her in full force now.
He never intended to kill Ei, but she was going to die at this rate.
"Visions are dangerous, so I thought that keeping them vigilant would be a fine solution to protect Inazuma, but everyone left my nation, my sister's nation, the one she died for. And I don't understand why, I had been protecting them all this while, why don't they trust me?" Ei cried on the ground, not caring about the blood and tears streaming through her face.
"W-Well, your ways were a bit..." Kenshin tried to explain, but he saw something scary, Ei's soul was condensing, something he didn't know was possible. The process of facing a painful experience and overcoming it makes your soul condense and get denser, and stronger.
And Ei's extremely powerful soul needed an extremely powerful trauma to condense again, and there was no problem with that, Ei's experiences were more than enough.
But in her case, if her soul condensed and she wasn't able to stabilize herself and overcome the trauma, it would probably overcharge, and maybe explode.
"I don't want to be alone, I want to talk with Miko and eat dangos again, but I can't go out because of the Erosion" sadly cried Ei, completely unaware of the impending doom. "And I know that if Inazuma ceases to exist, my sister's legacy will have died, making her disappear from the world forever!!" Ei's voice started going up again.
Kenshin made a few walls just in case and approached carefully, but Ei didn't even notice his presence.
"I want Inazuma to prosper so my sister's dream can be achieved, but I can't do it!" Ei shouted again, releasing all the frustrations she had felt over the years.
"E-Ei, calm down" Kenshin said strongly. Her sword was starting to shine now, and it was scaring him.
"I don't understand politics! I don't understand economy! I don't understand art! All I know is how to fight!!" the sword was visibly shaking now. "I want to be a good ruler like my sister, but I can't!"
"EI, STOP!! IT'S BURNING!!!"
"But I can't do it like my sister did, and I don't know what to do. WHAT CAN I DO?!!!" Ei screamed her lungs out.
SLAP!!
Ei looked stunned at Kenshin, who slapped her with all his force.
"SHUT UP AND CONCENTRATE! IT'S BURNING!!" Kenshin said with a panicking face, looking at the sword.
Or what was inside the sword.