Author Notes: I have returned with a chapter and a brain aneurysm! Hope you like this action packed chapter that was a very big pain to plan and write.
/ --- /
Ganyu
Ganyu stood at the ridge's edge beside her master, close enough to the drop that the mountain wind pulled at her hair.
She kept her eyes on the clearing below, tracking the two figures standing across from each other.
She recognized Ren immediately. She would recognize his shadow storage and the particular way he held his sword anywhere by now.
The woman across from him was someone she was not that familiar with, but had met a few times.
Shenhe. Her master's other student.
The two of them were comparable in combat prowess. After all, they were students of the great Cloud Retainer.
Even so, she didn't interact with Shenhe much. But from her limited interactions, she knew that while she had the upper hand in experience, skill, and elemental mastery… Shenhe was a different beast when it came to physical strength.
Ganyu's hand had prepared to summon her bow unconsciously.
"Master… Is this alright?" She asked quietly.
Xianyun stood beside her with her hands folded, her expression blank as she watched the standoff below.
"Possibly," she responded.
It was not the reassurance Ganyu had been hoping for. "He's going to get hurt."
"Perhaps."
"Master." Ganyu's voice grew more tense.
Xianyun was quiet for a moment, her eyes still fixed on the clearing. Then she let out a frustrated sigh.
"Do not fret, One is watching closely," she said, "If things go beyond what is acceptable, One will intervene personally. You have One's word."
Ganyu's hand relaxed slightly, though she was still very worried. Below, neither figure had moved yet.
"Did you plan this?"
Xianyun gave her a sidelong glance. "What makes you ask that?"
"Because you don't seem surprised."
After a pause, Xianyun turned her gaze back to the clearing. "One had intended for them to meet at some point... Under considerably more controlled circumstances."
"But not like this."
"No. Not like this. Shenhe's arrival was not part of One's arrangements."
Ganyu processed that, watching the two figures below. She wasn't even the one fighting and yet she felt like she was more tense than those two were.
"He doesn't know who she is."
"He does not."
"And she doesn't know who he is."
"Also correct."
Which meant neither of them had any reason to stop.
Ganyu's jaw tightened as she watched Ren shift his weight slightly, adjusting his grip. She knew that movement.
She'd seen it before a fight started, the small unconscious preparation her body made before her mind had fully committed to the decision.
He was going to make the first move.
"Master—"
"One sees it," Xianyun said calmly. "Let him."
Ganyu wanted to argue. Every part of her that had spent the last several months enjoying her time with Ren wanted to run down there herself.
Seeing him about to face an entity on par with an Adeptus made her heart clench tightly.
But she trusted her Master.
So for now, she held back.
/ — /
Ren
Ren could feel his heart beating fast in his ears as he stared down the woman in front of him. He kept his sword in a ready stance, infusing and reinforcing it with his Cursed Energy.
His eyes moved across Shenhe the same way they had across Chen at Guyun. Reading her stance, weight distribution, and the position of her spear hand.
What he found wasn't encouraging.
She was completely composed, not even looking the slightest bit winded after destroying a giant shikigami with a single strike.
Her spear lay in her hands in a tight grip, her pale eyes fixed on him like she wanted to dissect his very being.
'She's not even taking me seriously,' he thought. 'Which honestly might be the only advantage I have right now.'
His CE reserves were nearly full, and all of his shikigami were ready to go. The open clearing also reassured him a little. Just from her presence alone, he knew that she was way above his league.
Going in headfirst would end up in his assured death. He needed the first move to create distance.
Shenhe's grip on her spear tightened slightly.
But Ren moved first.
'Extension Technique: Orochi!'
He drove CE into the ground and pushed Orochi's extension outward in every direction at once, and a wave of Geo erupted from beneath his feet, spreading across the entire clearing in a solid wall of rising rock.
But the woman just walked through it.
She didn't even try to dodge. Her spear came down once, and the wave shattered around her, stone fragments scattering across the clearing as she dashed forward into the dust and found nothing.
Ren had summoned Nue and was already high in the sky, riding Nue to gain distance.
'I'm completely outmatched on the ground,' he thought grimly, watching her scan the clearing below. 'She broke through that like it wasn't there, her physical strength is crazy! Close range is suicide… I'll keep the distance and try to wear her down.'
"Nue!"
Nue shrieked, wings folding as it aimed straight down, and bolt after bolt of Electro tore from its body toward the clearing below.
The strikes hit fast and close together, cratering the stone around the woman in rapid succession.
'That should— You've gotta be kidding me!'
She dodged the lightning strikes with ease, weaving through them like they weren't even there. But at least Ren was able to get her moving now. As long as he kept his distance, he could find ways to tire her out.
Suddenly, the ground below was encased in ice.
Ice erupted upward in a ring of sharp pillars, shooting up from the ground with such speed that several grazed Nue's wings before it could fly higher.
He looked down and saw the woman standing on top of one of the pillars, and she launched herself upward with enough force that she was already closing the gap before he registered she'd moved.
He slammed his palms together.
'Extension Technique: Orochi.'
Dozens of giant Geo pillars manifested in the sky to meet her. With a quick motion, Ren sent them all flying down.
She raised her spear in turn to clash, and the ice and stone collided in a giant shockwave. Both constructs shattering simultaneously, sending giant chunks of rock and ice spinning through the air.
'Shit—Nue, watch out!'
The shockwave was so strong that it hit him off Nue.
The world spun as he fell, and by pure reflex, he got his hand around the edge of a falling rock slab, one of the larger pieces from the shattered Geo pillar currently dropping through the air.
He pulled himself onto the surface and slowly found his footing. He tried to call for Nue, only to realize that the rock he was on was falling too fast for it to catch up.
An overwhelming presence suddenly closed in, and the woman landed on the same rock within seconds.
She didn't seem keen on wasting time. Not even a second later, she rushed straight at him, and Ren barely got his sword up in time to block her spear strike, but the impact drove him backward to the rock's edge.
'I can't keep this up! The only reason I didn't get sent flying again is that I braced with everything I had! She's too strong and too fast, and I'm running out of room!'
His mind flashed to the moment when Xiao had nearly taken his head off. That particular feeling of helplessness, the knowledge that his body simply could not match what was in front of him, was one he recognized immediately.
That time, he had reached for Mahoraga.
But this time was different.
He was no longer the stranded sorcerer he had once been. Now, he had other options.
He dodged her next strike rather than blocking it, creating distance, and brought his hands together.
"Hunt—"
"Hold—"
"Crush—"
"Come forth, Ganki!"
The shadow beneath his feet expanded, and a seven-foot shape burst upward, black and white fur catching the light as four arms came up simultaneously and intercepted the woman's follow-up strike dead in its path.
Her eyes widened and glared at the new enemy.
'Hopefully he can put up a fight long enough…'
Ganki was a fusion he thought of after realizing just how much CE Yǔnjié used up. At his current strength, it was a bad idea to rely on such a high-cost fusion.
So he used Well's Unknown Abyss again to create a fusion that was more CE efficient. Using Divine Dogs as the Base, with Orochi and Toad added onto it.
It was a bipedal wolf with four arms, one pair of which was made entirely of Geo. While its body may look covered in fur, beneath it was flesh reinforced by Geo and CE, giving it durability that surpasses Orochi.
While it took a lot of CE to summon, its real use was its ability to absorb Elemental Particles from the surrounding area and convert them into Geo, or it could store them for later use. Putting off the weight from Ren having to use his CE.
'The process takes a while, but it lets me use elemental attacks without wasting Cursed Energy. This will have to do for now.'
For exactly one second, she stared at the thing in front of her, and Ren saw genuine surprise cross her face before it hardened back into a colder and considerably more hostile expression.
Ren used her surprise as a chance to get away, reaching for Nue through their link and pulling the shikigami back toward him.
He caught its wing, swung himself onto its back, and pulled them both clear of the rock as it continued its fall.
Ganki stood alone on the stone, turning to face Shenhe.
They turned into a blur as they appeared directly in front of each other, and the sound of the first exchange reached Ren.
Ganki took the first hit using its Geo arms and didn't go down, which was already more than Ren had expected.
The fusion planted its toad feet and pushed back, utilising all of its four arms. The natural two holding the spear, while the Geo construct arms swung in from the sides, forcing Shenhe to redirect rather than just drive straight through.
She expertly wielded her spear, slashing Ganki across the shoulder and sending the fusion skidding back several meters, its feet tearing grooves into the stone.
Ganki recovered quickly, slamming its Geo arms together to manifest dozens of floating Geo shards, sending them flying.
The woman was surprised for all but a millisecond as she cut through the first barrage.
The second volley Ganki launched she dodged entirely, already inside the fusion's guard before the projectiles had finished forming.
She drove her spear into Ganki's torso hard enough that the Geo reinforcement beneath the fur cracked. Another direct strike from her would no doubt be the end of the shikigami.
Ganki caught the spear shaft with its long tongue before she could pull it back.
The adhesion held long enough for the Geo arms to slam down on both sides of her position simultaneously.
Yet the woman wrenched the spear free anyway, the tongue tearing away with it, and answered the arm strikes by ducking under both and turning into a kick to Ganki's torso.
The fusion howled in pain and was pushed back to the edge of the rock.
'It's not going to last for much longer,' Ren thought from above, watching Ganki being overpowered.
Shenhe was circling the shikigami, reading the fusion's patterns, and once she had the rhythm down, it would be over fast.
Good thing he had already finished preparing.
'Now.'
Ganki dissolved into shadow mid-step, disappearing completely just as Shenhe's spear came around for another strike.
"?!" She had exactly one second to register that the fusion was gone.
'Rabbit Escape!'
They poured from every shadow on the rock simultaneously. Hundreds, then thousands of light green forms tumbling over each other, and the sheer mass of them hit Shenhe all at once.
She tried to push them back or slash them away, but the rabbits were climbing and multiplying faster than she could clear them, and the weight of thousands of Anemo-infused bodies only quickened her descent.
CRASH.
She hit the ground hard, and the rabbits followed her down, burying her completely.
Then her energy flared outward, and a burst of Cryo tore through the pile in every direction. Dozens of frozen rabbit forms were scattered across the clearing, and the rest of the swarm recoiled from the blast.
But the ones that survived weren't white anymore. The Cryo had infused them, their Anemo body turning light blue as it absorbed the Cryo particles from her attack.
'It worked!'
"Nue!"
Nue screeched, the shikigami folded its wings and drove a massive Electro discharge straight into the mass of Cryo-infused rabbits below.
The woman's eyes widened as she realized her blunder.
The high concentration of Anemo and Cryo, hit by Nue's Electro.
'Good thing I picked up that book on Elemental Reactions.' Ren thought with a smirk, 'I need to thank Xingqiu if I get the chance.'
BOOM.
The explosions that followed tore through the clearing with enough force that Ren felt the shockwave from high up in the sky, the burst of energy reducing the remaining rabbits to nothing and sending a ring of shattered stone outward from the point of impact.
The dust that rose after was thick enough to swallow the entire lower section of the clearing.
Ren held his breath and watched.
'Did that get her?'
/ — /
Moon Carver had been doing nothing for the better part of the morning when he sensed a great disturbance.
He raised his head slowly, eyes narrowing toward the direction of Mt. Aocang.
The sound itself meant little. Cloud Retainer's domain had seen its share of disturbances over the centuries.
What gave him pause was what rode underneath it. A pressure that was dense and wrong in a way that was all too familiar to him.
'Karmic debt?' he thought.
In this era, there were barely any evil gods left, as most had been taken care of. The real thorn in their side was the remnants of said gods.
Far away, in another part of Liyue, Mountain Shaper felt it mid-flight, a surge of filth riding the wind currents toward him from Cloud Retainer's domain, sharp enough that he turned hard and put his full attention toward its source.
It was not Abyssal. It was not elemental. Yet it bore a striking resemblance to the former.
Both Adeptus watched Mt. Aocang, waiting to see if Cloud Retainer would call for them.
She did not.
/ — /
???
In Liyue Harbour, a man was walking through the usual hustle and bustle of the city. Yet he stopped moving as he felt the demonic presence surging far away in the mountains of Liyue.
His sharp, amber eyes narrowed for a mere second before he continued walking.
"Just what are you up to, old friend?" he muttered.
/ — /
Ren
The dust from the Superconduct explosion still hadn't fully settled when Ren spotted movement.
The woman pulled herself out of the crater without any visible effort, stone crumbling off her shoulders as she straightened up.
Her clothes were tattered, and there were cuts across her arms and face, but she didn't seem that rattled. Like everything he threw was only a minor inconvenience.
'She's still standing… Of course she is.' Ren thought tiredly.
He was tired. His reserves were still above half, but the cost of sustained use of multiple extensions was starting to show. He could fight longer. He just needed to be smarter about how.
The woman's head turned upward, locking onto him immediately.
She moved to launch herself skyward again, only to be held back and slammed down to the ground.
It was Toad's tongue that shot out from the nearest shadow and wrapped around her waist. At the same moment, Geo burst from the ground around her feet and hands, encasing them in thick stone cuffs before she could pull free.
Before she could tear out of her bonds, a large shadow grew above her.
Her eyes moved upward and widened as Max Elephant fell from the sky directly onto her position, its enormous bulk blotting out the light completely.
CRASH.
The impact sent a shockwave outward, cracking the surrounding stone in every direction, the ground collapsing inward under the weight and force of the drop.
From above, Ren couldn't help but smirk sharply.
It was a widely known tactic from several previous 10 Shadows users. If they found themselves about to lose, they would give up and summon an untamed Mahoraga to ensure mutual destruction.
But no one in history had ever thought to do the same thing with any other of the 10 Shadows shikigami.
This not only helped Ren in hurting his opponent, but also saved him a lot of Cursed Energy as an untamed Max Elephant only consumed CE for the taming ritual itself, not for the shikigami's attacks.
'That should at least—'
BOOM.
A second explosion tore through the first, and Max Elephant's form dissolved instantly, shards of the shikigami scattering before collapsing into dark particles.
'She killed it in one shot again.'
The dust cleared enough for him to see her.
The woman stood in the center of the crater, breathing hard for the first time since the fight started.
She's in a worse state than before. A part of her bodysuit was torn away completely, with fresh cuts along her arm.
And across the left side of her face, blood was running freely, a dark line cutting from her temple to her jaw.
'I made her bleed.'
It wasn't a victory, far from it. She was still standing, and he was still the one on the ropes. But something about seeing that blood gave him more confidence.
She looked up at him with nothing but murder in her gaze. But Ren met it without fear this time.
'I can't go close range just yet. I need to keep wearing her down.'
'Extension Technique: Rabbit Escape.'
'Extension Technique: Orochi.'
Dozens of Geo shards manifested in the air around him, each one roughly the size of a person's head.
The moment they formed, he wrapped each one in a current of Anemo, and the shards began to spin.
The air around Nue filled with a high whirring sound as the spinning shards picked up speed, Anemo currents locking them in tight orbits.
Below, Shenhe's eyes tracked the preparation.
Ice erupted beneath her feet once again, and she rode the pillars upward, dozens of them shooting skyward in rapid succession, and she was already so close before he finished preparing.
'Nue!'
Nue screeched and drove Electro into the Anemo surrounding every shard simultaneously, the energy crackling through the currents and infusing each spinning projectile.
Ren released them all at once.
Electro-infused shards tore outward in every direction, and the woman weaved between them, spear sweeping to redirect the ones she couldn't fully dodge, leaping from pillar to pillar as explosions tore through the ice around her.
Each shard that detonated pulled inward on impact, the Anemo and Electro reaction creating a suction burst that pulled her in even when the shards missed directly.
Yet she was still moving closer to him!
Then she stopped dodging entirely.
Her spear came around in a swipe with every ounce of force she had behind it, and the shockwave that followed hit the remaining shard formation like a wall.
Every spinning projectile was sent flying outward, the whirring sound replaced by the explosions of dozens of elemental reactions.
'I miscalculated! Nue, get us out—!'
Just as he turned around, the woman was somehow already above him.
He didn't even see her move. She just suddenly appeared, spear raised overhead, and she drove it straight down.
Nue's wings snapped shut around Ren instinctively, taking the full impact across its body.
The force drove them both downward like a meteor, crashing through Shenhe's remaining ice pillars one after another, each impact sending fragments spinning, and as they hit the ground, Ren's world turned dark.
/ — /
"Haa—!"
Ren's eyes snapped open.
The sky above him was the wrong angle, and it took him a while to understand that he was on his back.
'Did the impact knock me out?'
He blinked a few times before turning his head and finding Nue beside him. Its wings were battered and in terrible condition.
But it was Alive.
He desummoned the shikigami immediately before anything could change that.
He tried to push himself upright, and his body answered by producing a cough that brought blood up with it, spattering the stone beneath him in dark red.
'That's definitely a few broken ribs,' he thought.
His arms were bleeding but not broken, and his legs responded when he tested them. He had no idea how long he was actually out, so he had probably a few seconds before—
"SHIT!"
Pure instinct threw him sideways as a spear hit the ground where he'd been standing, driving into the stone hard enough to create a ring.
Ren quickly submerged into his shadows.
The shadow swallowed him completely, and he pushed his consciousness through it, surfacing ten meters away, gasping as the cold mountain air hit his lungs and his broken ribs reminded him exactly how bad an idea breathing was.
The woman was in front of him, having already picked up her spear.
She saw his battered state and attacked immediately, and Ren threw up a wall of Rabbit Escapes between them.
Dozens of bodies absorbed the impact as she tore through them, slowing her just enough for him to create space.
'She's faster than me. Stronger than me. Better trained than me. I can't match any of that directly.' He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
'But she's been fighting for a while now, and she's bleeding. Which means she gets tired… Should I summon Yǔnjié now? No, not yet. He's my trump card, and I only have one shot.'
His eyes moved across the clearing. 'Just push her a little more, I still have enough CE!'
'Extension Technique: Orochi.'
Geo surged outward across the entire battlefield, covering the ground in a thick layer of irregular stone.
At the same moment, he released Rabbit Escape across the whole field, and hundreds of light green forms burst from the shadows and scattered into the Geo terrain, disappearing amongst the rocks.
The woman's eyes swept the clearing, tracking movement, finding too much of it to isolate. The rabbits were everywhere, and the dense field of Geo and rabbits was doing exactly what he'd intended.
His energy was completely buried amongst the noise.
Behind her, a rabbit lunged.
She cut it without looking automatically, and the moment the movement left her body, every rabbit in the clearing moved to attack.
She tore through them easily, and in a few seconds, ninety percent of the rabbits were gone, pure physical force reducing the swarm to nothing, and she was still standing—
"What?!" she said in surprise. The first time Ren had heard a word leave her mouth.
One rabbit got under her guard and started to put pressure.
It dodged a hit from her spear and used an Anemo burst to redirect it, throwing itself onto the shaft of the weapon before she could reposition.
She tried to land another thrust, only for the rabbit to climb onto her spear and rush towards her face.
The rabbit threw punches and kicks while dodging strike after strike. It seemed like it was able to hold its own for a while, even if it didn't land a direct hit.
Until the woman grabbed it.
The rabbit seemed to have a smug expression as it dissolved in her grip, Anemo scattering between her fingers, and two more nearby dissolved simultaneously.
She was slightly caught off guard at the sudden stop of attacks. But then she felt the air around her head tightening, a small concentrated sphere of Anemo covered her head, and the oxygen inside was being pulled out.
Seeing her try to dispel the sphere, Ren took the moment to come out from the shadow behind her and swung his blade.
She got her spear up on instinct, but the block was slower than before, the lack of air was already doing its job. Ren didn't give her a moment to rest.
Sword clashed against spear, driving her backward, forcing her to work for every exchange. His legs submerged into a shadow and repositioned at a different angle to slash her thighs before she could react.
She was slowing down.
Her spear moved to block a thrust, and a Geo pillar came straight up from the ground and hit the shaft from below, sending the weapon spinning out of her hands.
The world seemed to slow as Ren found his opening.
He rushed in close with his sword raised, aiming directly at her heart. For a moment, he thought he had won.
Cryo exploded from her feet in every direction.
The unexpected attack forced him to throw himself backward, skidding across the stone as the burst covered her in a thick shell of frost.
He landed in a crouch, breathing hard, and looked at the ice formation in front of him.
'Orochi. Tear through it. Don't give her time to—!'
CRASH.
The ice shattered instantly.
The shockwave hit him before he understood what had caused it, a burst of wind that staggered him backward, and he looked up to see the woman standing with both palms pressed together, the Anemo ball around her head gone.
'There's no way!'
She'd clapped her hands hard enough to create a shockwave that both shattered the ice and collapsed the anemo sphere simultaneously.
'This fucking monster—!'
The world slowed once again when she appeared in front of him. No spear in hand, and he realized that with the way her eyes looked right now, she didn't feel like she needed it.
He brought his sword up to block.
Her fist connected with the blade, shattering it completely.
Ren stared at the broken hilt in his hand for a fraction of a second, and then she was already winding back for the next strike.
'She's too close!'
'Extension Technique: Orochi!'
'Extension Technique Rabbit Escape!'
Geo and Anemo barriers burst upward between them. He built layer upon layer of dense walls as fast as he could.
Only for her fist to go through all of it.
The impact hit him dead center in the chest, and the world went white.
He didn't know how, but in a blink, he was suddenly embedded in the mountain.
/ — /
Shenhe
Shenhe was breathing hard.
That alone was enough to make her angry.
She stood at the edge of the crater she'd made, spear back in her hand, and assessed her current condition.
Cuts across her body, a gash along her jaw, and the left side of her face was still wet with blood.
She turned her head upwards in the direction of the man responsible for her state. She walked toward where she had sent him flying, her eyes scanning for movement.
The area was in complete ruin. Geo terrain torn up, ice formations shattered, scorch marks from a dozen elemental reactions covering every surface.
All of it because of one person who was so full of filth.
Even with the red strings that suppressed her nature, she couldn't help the boiling anger from building up.
Not long after, she spotted him.
He was crouched at the base of the mountain where she'd sent him. He had his hands pressed together and his head down.
His entire body was trembling visibly from this distance. She could see blood on the stone around him.
'Finally,' she thought.
She raised her spear and prepared to finish this.
"Shenhe, enough!"
Shenhe recognized her master's voice immediately, and her feet slowed by instinct. As she turned her head to face her master, she failed to hear the words that left his mouth.
"—Emerge, Karmic Arbiter: Yǔnjié."
Her instincts screamed at her as a wave of what she could only describe as cursed energy enveloped the entire mountain.
She gripped her spear hard, but before she could move, something closed around her.
'Jaws?!'
A maw large enough to swallow her whole came crashing down. Shenhe drove her elbow outward with everything she had, the beast's sharp teeth sinking into her flesh.
She punched the upper maw hard and heard a crack. The beast roared in pain, and she tore herself free, landing hard and spinning to face it.
For the first time in this entire fight, she froze.
It was enormous. Serpentine and draconic at the same time, its body covered in crystalline Geo plates and hard Electro formations that crackled between the wings, spreading outward like a corrupted crown.
Its four eyes burned with a light that she recognized and didn't recognize at once.
It looked like Rex Lapis.
Yet it looked nothing like Rex Lapis.
The scale, the presence, the weight of power was there, but the energy underneath it was that same wrong, filthy darkness that had been pouring off the summoner since the moment she arrived.
Something had taken the form of a god and filled it with the opposite of everything a god should be.
Yǔnjié roared.
The Electro discharge that followed tore through the clearing in every direction, and Shenhe threw up a Cryo wall and braced as the blast washed over it, the ice nearly shattering from the attack.
When the charge dissipated, she instantly ran towards the creature, driving her spear straight at its head.
Yet somehow, the tip redirected itself as it landed a hit.
She pulled back immediately, narrowing her eyes.
The Geo plates along its body were shifting constantly. Small movements that repositioned the formations to intercept incoming strikes before they landed.
Shenhe's eyes widened when she saw the beast prepare to charge.
Yǔnjié's body hit her full on before she could readjust.
The impact sent her skidding backward across the stone, losing her spear once again. She punched her hand into the ground to stop her momentum.
Her chest hurt in a way that meant something was definitely broken. She coughed once, felt the blood in her mouth, and spat it out.
This time, she was the one on defence.
Yǔnjié's tail came around from her left. The massive, Geo-plated tail with Electro crackling between the formations.
She caught it with both hands and took the full force of the hit, her arms straining from the attempt.
'This beast is much stronger than the others!'
Her eyes moved past Yǔnjié to the summoner, still crouched at the mountain's base. Still not moving.
A plan formed in her mind, 'If the creature's existence depended on him—'
She threw the tail to the side and dashed towards the injured summoner.
Yǔnjié noticed immediately. The creature turned from her and placed itself between her and its master, lowering its head as every Geo plate on its body shifted into a denser configuration.
She and the creature stood still for a single moment.
Then both of them moved at once.
She pulled her fist back, Yǔnjié reinforced its body, and the gap between them closed to nothing—
A sudden weight came from above.
"Agh—!"
It hit both of them simultaneously, pressing down with immense force that drove Shenhe to her knees. She pushed against it and found it immovable, a pressure that covered the entire clearing like a second sky had descended.
'This energy… Master?!'
She turned her head, straining against the hold, and saw her master in a human form walking toward her across the ruined clearing.
The pressure eased just enough for Shenhe to talk properly.
"Cease," Xianyun said.
"That man—!"
"One knows what you sensed. One has sensed it as well."
Shenhe's jaw tightened. "Then you know what it means. That energy is—"
"Dangerous," Xianyun agreed. "Foreign. Wrong by every measure that we know of." She paused. "Yet he means no harm."
Shenhe looked at her master.
And Xianyun held her gaze without wavering.
"Very well." She relented.
The pressure of the Anemo hold was fully released, and Shenhe was able to stand up again.
Her eyes moved from the beast still held down by Cloud Retainer's hold, and back to the summoner across the clearing.
/ — /
Ren
Ren wasn't entirely sure what was happening.
The hit he took from the woman would have killed him instantly if he hadn't created those layers of defence while simultaneously reinforcing the spot he hit with as much Cursed Energy as he could.
He could feel the shikigami's presence through the link, but he couldn't see much past the clearing's wreckage from where he was.
He was fairly certain the fight had stopped.
Fast footsteps hit the stone nearby, and he turned his head.
"Ren!"
Ganyu dropped to her knees beside him, her expression worried.
"Stop fighting. Shenhe won't attack you anymore."
Ren looked at her for a moment and saw the expression of worry on her face.
Slowly, he dispelled Yǔnjié.
The shikigami dissolved above the clearing in a slow collapse of dark energy, the massive form breaking apart and folding back into the shadows until the presence was gone.
Suddenly, Ganyu's hands were on him, checking the cuts on his arms, his face, and his whole body.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
'What do you think?!' He thought. But he didn't say it out loud.
It would be wrong for him to yell at her for being worried.
"Aside from the dozens of wounds and broken bones," he turned to her with a wide smile, "I'm just fine."
Ganyu stared at him with a blank expression. One he couldn't help but chuckle at, but only a huff came out.
She put her arms around him, gently trying to help him up. "Come on, let's get back to Master's abode. She has things that could heal— Ren?!"
He fainted into her arms.