The soft silver-white hair was tied into a high ponytail on one side, and a few small pale yellow evening primrose blossoms, threaded through it as ornaments, joined into a pretty ring.
The dream-violet, star-blue eyes blinked a few times, setting off that youthful face, delicate and proud and cool all at once, as though saying: go on, dote on this princess all you like.
The star-gauze gown, rather noble and mysterious before, gained a lively, vivid naturalness and spirit from the few four-o'clock blossoms pinned as a corsage at her breast.
The black lace thigh-band had been replaced by a thin ribbon, which together with new obsidian-black over-the-knee stockings edged in gold made a brand-new absolute territory.
Li Yue as she was now, set against how she had looked before Bai Wuxie set to work on her, could fairly be called a true little princess of the Nation of Night.
"Thank you, Xiao Bai."
Li Yue said it in heartfelt thanks.
She closed her eyes again, and engraved that unforgettable picture on her heart.
The next second.
"Well? Pretty, isn't it? My masterpiece."
Bai Wuxie puffed out her chest and bragged, her face full of pride.
"Mm."
The corner of Li Yue's mouth lifted, and she nodded composedly.
"Good! Then I'll go and pay. I'll trouble you to carry the clothes in a moment, little sis."
With the answer she wanted, Bai Wuxie took the clothes she was carrying and went ahead to the counter.
As for the flowers bought at the flower shop earlier, the evening primrose and the four-o'clocks, they had gloriously given themselves for the princess.
A short wait where she stood.
Before long.
The two sisters, each carrying bags large and small, left the clothes shop and returned to the restaurant they had set out from.
To keep their hands free for the afternoon's trip to the Blade Wielders' and Sword Maidens' underground market, the two of them promptly stuffed the restaurant's self-service lockers more than half full.
That done, Bai Wuxie, busy all morning, showed her tiredness at last, and led Li Yue into a private room on the restaurant's second floor to order lunch.
"Mm... A-Li, do you want yesterday's set meal or something different?"
But just as Bai Wuxie, entirely unguarded, was ordering and asking Li Yue's opinion.
Suddenly.
"Ah!"
A sharp pain in her neck.
Her cerulean eyes went abruptly dim.
Bai Wuxie fell into a sleep like a baby's.
It was the act of a Li Yue about to go to the Myriad-Fiend Empire's Circuit Envoy, the Half-Fiend "Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden", and her game, choosing not to let Bai Wuxie be dragged in.
"I'm sorry, Xiao Bai. I have to do this. To save you, please forgive my betrayal."
Li Yue murmured it low, her look complicated.
In this moment.
She who was Bai Wuxie's little sister, the Sword Maiden Darknight, was no longer pure; overlapping and doubled with her was the avenger Ke Jie.
Even if it meant an act near to betrayal, so long as it could save the girl she treasured, what of it?
***
After that.
As agreed beforehand.
Li Yue came alone to the flower shop's door.
"Your Highness. I thought you might go back on your word."
The Half-Fiend looked at Li Yue with a crinkling smile, and showed her true face beneath the disguise.
It was the bewitching face that matched the memory Li Yue had seen in the Sword Fiend Ziling's fiend core.
Long lavender hair was gathered at the back of her head with a reddish-brown wooden pin into a high bun, baring a slender, fair, clean-white neck.
"......Spare me the talk."
Li Yue said coldly.
Her opened eyes flicked over the Half-Fiend once in warning, then slowly closed again.
Out of sight, out of mind; she decided to let the Half-Fiend's teasing go in one ear and out the other until the game began.
"My, how cold, Your Highness. How could a nobody like me catch your eye? This outfit of yours, was it prepared specially for me?"
The Half-Fiend gave a sly, needling complaint, her deep violet, bewitching eyes looking Li Yue over closely with a touch of surprise and appreciation.
"What a feast for the eyes, Your Highness. Thank you for the treat. As thanks, I'll give you ten extra seconds of the game to run."
That said.
The Half-Fiend curtsied gracefully, lifting the hem of an imaginary skirt.
The corner of her mouth lifted into a devil-may-care curve. "The rules are simple. You run, I hunt. From now on I'll count down second by second; you have thirty seconds in all to find somewhere to hide."
"There are three restrictions while you run. One, you may not leave the city of Dongdu. Two, you may not reveal this game to outsiders. Three, you may not ask the official powers for help."
"If I catch you and you lose the ability to act, you have lost. Conversely, if I haven't caught you within five minutes, you have won."
The words had barely landed.
The Half-Fiend straightened her face, and her pink lips parted:
"Thirty."
"Twenty-nine."
"Twenty-eight."
Plainly beginning the so-called countdown.
At that.
Li Yue opened her eyes.
The Sword Art "Meteor Night-Cleaving" was open.
Without hesitation she turned and ran, weaving fluidly around the pedestrians in her way.
"Twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five......"
From behind came the Half-Fiend's count, at a normal pace, fading by degrees.
Almost in the second after Li Yue turned into a certain alley thick with shadow.
The Half-Fiend, still counting where she stood, stopped behaving, and her right hand made a loose grasping shape at her side.
Deep violet sword-force surfaced.
"Snap."
She took firm hold of the Hundred-Blossom Poison Sword, black and violet from end to end, housed in its red-sandalwood sheath.
"Thud."
Sheath in hand, the Half-Fiend struck it hard against the ground.
At once.
A thin pale violet mist condensed out of nothing and spread rapidly outward from that centre.
From the tip of the sheath where it touched the ground, long thin violet thorns spread swiftly, growing fast, carpeting the road, weaving into a net.
Across the net, at random, opened flower after flower of every colour and kind, building a sea of poison blossoms, beautiful, mysterious and deadly.
Wherever the thin pale violet mist of condensed sword-force swept, uninvolved passers-by were expelled one by one, of their own accord, out of this great stretch of brand-new shallow subspace, taking shape with reality as its template.
At the last, by the deliberate selection of the master of the Sword Soul "Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden", her own Sword Domain, "Sea of a Hundred Poison Blossoms", had unfolded at the shallow level, and drawn Li Yue alone into it.
"Please, delight me to your heart's content, my dear princess......"
The Half-Fiend wore a doting smile with something sick in it, and ended the countdown.
Which meant her game with Li Yue had formally begun......
At the same time.
Elsewhere.
The moment she fled into the alley thick with shadow.
"What's this?"
Before Li Yue could react she had been drawn into the Sword Domain "Sea of a Hundred Poison Blossoms", laid shallow over reality.
Surprised and uncomprehending as she was, with no way to know what the pale violet mist and the thorn-and-blossom sea around her meant.
She understood in her heart that time was short; she closed her eyes, gathered her focus, and cast her awareness into the shadow beneath her feet.
At once.
"Shadow, grant me your blessing."
A devout, focused murmur burst out.
The thick shadow beneath her feet crept upward.
By the time her whole body was swallowed in a heavy shadow that had all but condensed into substance, she had vanished from the spot.
"The second time, in the Shadow World."
Since the Blade Demon night attack.
Li Yue stepped once more into the Shadow World, a place of black and white only, monotonous and sharply divided, that existed only by clinging to other spaces.
The Shadow World's shape depended on the shape of whatever it clung to, but its colours were black and white alone.
Things and people of the black could not stay exposed in the white for long, generally not even a short spell of more than three seconds, and could move only within the corresponding lightless shade; and the reverse likewise. Li Yue, of course, excepted.
As a princess of the Nation of Night, the one chosen by the Sword Soul "Darknight", she could ignore the Shadow World's basic laws. The price was that she could not use the Sword Art "Meteor Night-Cleaving", and could only touch and control the shadows with sword-force to serve as her eyes, seeing in a special way.
In theory, Li Yue ought to have been safe once inside the Shadow World.
But even as she paused to catch her breath and recover sword-force, she was frightened by what she saw before her.
"Rip."
Outside the alley.
From the blank white ground of the lit side, several deep violet thorns had torn through space and crawled in, invading......