Everyone was cheering Satoru Gojo's victory, which made Ye Xuan's complaint a real wet blanket.
"Holy shit, Satoru Gojo won? Then who's going to make up for the part I missed where Sukuna diced Little Kashimo like a mango?"
He slapped his thigh, devastated. There would be no taking turns fighting Sukuna, and no fun watching a crowd gang up on him. His enjoyment had been cut in half.
"How boring. I'm leaving."
That was what he said, but inside, he was delighted.
He had gotten the Wish Power.
This trip had given him a full thirty percent, bringing the total to fifty-one percent. He was past halfway, so the trip had been worth it.
The only painful part was that if Satoru Gojo had lost and things had gotten a little uglier, it probably would have risen a good deal more.
That was what he truly regretted.
As he pondered this, a bolt of lightning fell from the sky and struck straight at him.
Without even looking up, Ronava casually blocked it, and the lightning vanished completely against her palm.
Hajime Kashimo had arrived.
He stood atop a pile of rubble, Cursed Energy surging around him, his gaze shifting from Ronava's face to Ye Xuan.
"I heard you running your mouth earlier, saying Satoru Gojo would die-I thought you were just talking nonsense. Now you're here wishing me dead too?"
He took a step forward, sending gravel tumbling down beneath his feet.
"Thinking everything's already settled before the fight has even begun-that's how a loser thinks."
"First I'll deal with this little girl who looks like a porcelain doll, then I'll kill you. Finally, once Satoru Gojo has recovered, I'll go defeat him."
He raised a hand and pointed at Ronava, his mouth curling into a dangerously wide grin.
"I don't believe there's any god of death in this world. Still, if she can carry that title, she should have some ability. I hope she doesn't disappoint me too much."
How much had this guy drunk?
Ye Xuan said, "Use what you learned in this battle to teach him a lesson."
Ronava said nothing and took two steps forward.
She really had learned something.
Watching Satoru Gojo and Sukuna fight, she had grasped the very core of Elemental Power.
As long as she mobilized all seven Elemental Powers at once and made them mesh together and amplify one another, she could do things she couldn't before.
Her voice rang out across the ruins.
"Domain Expansion: Requiem to the Underworld."
The domain spread out.
Satoru Gojo had just wandered back from the other side of the ruins and hadn't even found his footing before he was swept inside. He was dumbfounded.
"Hey, hey! I only just finished fighting, and now I'm trapped in another domain? Is nobody going to do something about this?"
Nobody paid him any attention.
Everyone had been pulled into Ronava's domain.
The sensation was eerie.
It was like an aura of death seeping out from between their bones, clinging to their skin and refusing to dissipate. They couldn't shake it off or strike it away.
Wherever they went, it followed.
Was this a god of death?
The same thought sprang into everyone's mind at once.
Normally, the best way to counter a domain was to clash domains against each other.
Could Hajime Kashimo's domain overpower Ronava's in quality?
No one knew. But everyone instinctively felt that was what he was about to do.
Only Ye Xuan was already struggling to keep a straight face. Fighting was a serious matter-how could he laugh?
Only he knew that Hajime Kashimo couldn't use Domain Expansion at all.
Hajime Kashimo brought his hands together.
"Hollow Wicker Basket."
Everyone froze.
He was going to withstand it with a Simple Domain? Use Cursed Energy to defend against a god of death's domain? Did he think he could win without a clash of domains?
There were no surprises.
The next second, Hajime Kashimo fell stiffly to the ground, dead as dead could be.
Hollow Wicker Basket was a Simple Domain, and all it could neutralize was the "sure-hit" technique within an opponent's domain.
But Ronava's domain wasn't a technique at all. It twisted seven Elemental Powers into one and created a small world.
Then she controlled the Authority of Death to attack within it.
The moment Hajime Kashimo died, the domain disappeared.
The feeling of being wrapped in an aura of death finally faded.
The cold sweat on everyone's backs refused to subside. One after another, they leaned against the walls, gasping for breath.
Ye Xuan looked at Hajime Kashimo's corpse and shook his head.
"Using Hollow Wicker Basket to defend against a domain created with Elemental Power and resist a god's Authority-that's courting death."
"All right. There's no time to mourn Little Kashimo. We have to go back."
Hajime Kashimo's death hadn't been in vain.
The accumulated Wish Power had risen another three percent, bringing the total to fifty-four percent.
He longed to fight the strong? Too bad he'd picked the wrong opponent.
"Finally, we're back."
That trip to another world had put Eula under considerable pressure.
From beginning to end, she hadn't dared to truly let out a breath.
Those things were far beyond anything she could handle.
Only now, with her feet back on the familiar floor, did she realize that the sweat on her back had gone cold, leaving her uncomfortably sticky.
With an arm around Ronava, Ye Xuan looked Eula up and down, grinning obnoxiously.
"What, couldn't wait to become my little maid again?"
Eula turned her face away, the tips of her ears growing a little hot.
"Hmph. That's all you ever think about."
It wasn't that she didn't want to retort; she just couldn't.
She had never won an argument with him. Every time, he talked her into a pitfall, then hit her with something even more infuriating at the end.
She had learned her lesson. Keeping quiet meant at least one less loss.
But Ye Xuan had no intention of letting her off.
"You don't understand. I'm working hard to get stronger. Ronava has gotten stronger too, and you're the only one still standing in place. At this rate, I don't even know if I should take you along next time."
Eula's brow twitched.
That one had struck a nerve.
After experiencing a domain firsthand, she really had gained some insight.
But she also knew that as soon as she said, "Take me with you," Ye Xuan would smile and name his conditions, and she would end up angry all over again.
"...I'll go change, all right?"
She gritted her teeth and squeezed the words out between them.
She returned to her room.
She yanked off her outer garment a little roughly and fastened each button with excessive force, as though taking her anger out on someone.
She stared for two seconds at her reflection in the mirror, back in her maid outfit, then took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
"This was your own choice."
Eula Lawrence's teeth itched with hatred.
"It was my own choice."
As she said it, she had already sent him flying with a beating eight hundred times in her head.
After Ronava had completely submitted, Ye Xuan made no secret of his own lack of combat ability, because anyone who wanted to fight him would have to get past Ronava.
Ye Xuan had also told Eula that he relied on a vast amount of Wish Power to grow stronger.
"Then why not help more people fulfill their wishes? Can't you accumulate Wish Power that way?" she couldn't help asking.
"Do you know how slow that would be?"
How much time would it take to help people fulfill their wishes?
"Jealousy and unwillingness to accept defeat will always come faster and harder than 'realizing your worth through hard work.'" He smiled. "It only takes an instant to hate someone."
"As the saying goes, rather than improve yourself, slander others."
Eula fell silent.
She wanted to argue, but found she had nowhere to plant her feet, because it was true.
From then on, she could only observe in secret, trying to see what Ye Xuan was planning. That guy had never done a good deed in Mondstadt.
Ye Xuan was happy to let her.
How could she gather information without paying a little price?
Besides, even if he let her know what he wanted to do, could she stop him?