Unlike the fusion with the Blade Spirit "Wrathblood Frenzy Blade".
The Twin Sword Souls "Dawn and Darknight" were comparatively gentle and restrained; the pain they brought was not chiefly of the body, but tended more toward stirring up the desires within a person's heart.
At once.
"Shff, shff-shff."
Thorns of energy, black and white interwoven, grew from his right palm, coiled and wound, and knotted themselves into a cocoon-cage that was at once protection and restraint.
The one inside the cage was Ke Jie, half his body in shadow and half in light, the left half of his face cold as frost and paired with the shadow, the right half warm as the noon sun and answering the light.
In this moment.
He could hear, inside him, two selves, utterly different and yet one in their opposition, each saying something of its own.
"Why worry about other people, Ke Jie? Playing by the rules alone will hardly carry out your revenge, will it? Only by casting off meaningless feeling......"
"Remember, you are no longer alone, Ke Jie. If you are set on revenge, why not recall the good memories you have with them? Must they be sacrificed......"
Choose to cut everything away and take revenge alone?
Or cherish the people before him and let the hatred go?
Whichever choice he made, it was a betrayal of the other road and its possibilities.
The deep fusion of the Twin Sword Souls set Ke Jie a trial beyond that of the Blade Spirit "Wrathblood Frenzy Blade".
Because he had to face his own heart directly, and look squarely at the knots in it he had not wanted to name and had not dared think through.
If those knots were not undone, he could never truly cross the Soul-Fusing Realm, and what then of the strength for revenge?
After a long moment.
His gaze hardened.
Ke Jie gave his answer.
"Revenge is the road I chose. Even if one day I destroy myself at the end of it, I long for it body and soul, and I will see it through to the end."
The shadow receded, and the black part of the cocoon-cage dispersed.
"The people around me are what I treasure. Whether or not they support my choice, I will stay with them as best I can, until there is no turning back."
The light dimmed, and the white part of the cocoon-cage shattered.
"What comes after I cannot choose. But at the least I want to become the person I want to be, and do what I want to do. That is... Ke Jie. And Li Yue."
He finished.
The knots were undone; good and evil were one.
Pitch dark and dazzling light shone into one another and became a transparent nothing — the soul has no colour to begin with.
"Thank you, Darknight... and Dawn, for letting me face myself honestly."
The Sword Soul emblem in his right palm faded by degrees.
His look complicated, Ke Jie had succeeded in fusing further with the Twin Sword Souls, and stepped into the Embryo Tier's Sublimation Realm.
Counting the Blade Spirit, he was now a Sublimation Realm wielder of three forms and two identities, Blade Wielder and Sword Maiden, without precedent in the whole Blade-and-Sword Federation; and he would climb higher yet.
However.
Just as the Blade Spirit's fusion had brought changes.
Fusing with the Twin Sword Souls gave his own body some brand-new changes too.
"Come to think of it, the way I am now, transforming into my Blade Wielder form actually looks more like how I used to."
Ke Jie looked toward the full-length mirror the room came with.
The glass gave back his new, changed appearance.
The demonic blood-red eyes remained. In place of his original short black hair was long silver-white hair identical to the Sword Maiden Darknight's, its silver strands threaded with a few of dawn gold.
His skin was fairer, his features had gone androgynous, his Adam's apple had faded and his frame had shrunk; with a little dressing up, an outsider would not have been able to tell what his original sex was.
The change had its advantages and its drawbacks. The advantage: he could slip past enemies behind the scenes who knew only his old face. The drawback: if in future his Sword Soul's realm ran far ahead of his Blade Spirit's, he really would turn completely into a cute girl.
"If it serves revenge, it's all the same. Even if in the end only Li Yue is left and Ke Jie is dead, so be it."
Ke Jie said it with a complicated look, his right hand loosely closed.
At a thought, the Blade Spirit emblem in his left palm lit, and he transformed into the Blade Wielder code-named Blood Demon.
It seemed that from now on, before strangers and acquaintances alike, this was the form he would mainly have to move about in.
***
Before long.
His gains tallied.
The changes briefly got used to.
Ke Jie left his room, shared the free staff dinner with his teammate Fang Zheng, and then began tonight's duty with Fang Zheng, keeping watch over the main hall.
The moment the duty began, Fang Zheng, as the senior, shared with an utterly sincere face his so-called experience in slacking off on the job, and while he was still talking, gazing at Ke Jie's unruffled cold face, he crashed soundlessly into sleep, flat on the front desk.
"Hello, senior. Goodnight, senior."
The "kind-hearted" Ke Jie smiled helplessly and quietly laid a few clean tissues over Fang Zheng's head, to keep him from being caught red-handed by Zhou Tianhao, who might come by on inspection.
Perhaps because today and tomorrow were both the weekend holiday, he, on watch in the main hall, received not a single request or report from outside right up until nine at night.
Now and then he greeted some poor soul working late who came out of a nearby office; the rest of the job was patrolling the first and second floors back and forth, a few rounds, back to the desk for a short rest, then patrolling again, over and over.
This tedious duty gave Ke Jie more or less an understanding of why Fang Zheng could fall asleep the moment he lay on the desk. More than that, that Fang Zheng, under his Blade Spirit's influence, could keep doing this job long-term and give up going out on operations with the rest of Team B stirred an admiration and respect in him that came from the heart.
Close to midnight.
The moment the watch ended and the two Blade Wielders taking over the shift arrived, Ke Jie woke Fang Zheng and went back to his room.
After a shower and a change, he lay on the big soft bed and sent a message on his phone to Bai Wuxie, whom he had added as a friend on the chat app the night before.
[Me: You there? Xiao Bai, I can meet your second request now. If you're free tomorrow on your day off, the other me can keep you company the whole day.]
Three seconds later.
The top of the screen showed the other side was typing.
[Xiao Bai: Wonderful! Sir, tomorrow just happens to be a paid day off for me, bouquet emoji.]
[Xiao Bai: Then let's set a time and place to meet? I think the private room on the second floor of that restaurant on the Bureau's street, where we had lunch, would suit nicely.]
After a brief pause, Ke Jie tapped slowly at the screen.
[Me: The place is fine. The time? I just came off watch and I'm a bit tired. I might get up late, face-palm emoji.]
[Xiao Bai: That's all right! Mr. Ke Jie. Then we'll meet at nine sharp, and breakfast, lunch and dinner are on me. The password is "Xiao Bai doesn't eat cabbage", doge emoji.]
Picturing the goofy look Bai Wuxie might be wearing on the other side of the screen, Ke Jie could not stop the corner of his mouth from lifting a little.
He had, he supposed, met yet another side of the Sword Maiden Longquan that nobody knew — the funny, bubbly big-sister type she was online.
[Me: Okay. See you tomorrow, Xiao Bai.]
[Xiao Bai: Goodnight~ Mr. Ke Jie.]
The screen went dark.
Ke Jie put the phone away in silence and, with a feeling of expectation both hard to put into words and odd, gazed up at the pitch-black ceiling, thinking about tomorrow's outing, which in name was not a date and in substance was no different from one.
Since he would be spending the time with her as the Sword Maiden Darknight, was it necessary to prepare in advance and get properly familiar with the different body, to try a thing or two?
"Xiao Bai......"
Ke Jie murmured it, his look complicated.
To make sure nothing went wrong at tomorrow's meeting.
He had decided. In a moment he would transform into the Darknight form, do some high-intensity phone research plus hands-on practice in pursuit of the truth, and cram the relevant knowledge before sleeping, so as not to make some fool of himself when the time actually came.
Dare to think it, dare to do it.
"Night, bless me."
In the dark a shadow cocoon condensed in an instant.
The shadow cocoon broke, and Li Yue appeared.
She climbed carefully down from the bed, and walked into the bathroom with the phone......