Sword Domain and Shadow World collided.
In the end the Sword Domain had the edge, and partly invaded.
Perhaps because Li Yue's Tier was still low, and she could not yet call on more of the Shadow World's power.
The gap the deep violet thorns had torn went on widening.
A woman's voice came, amused and not without a thread of pleasure:
"Found you, Your Highness. Four minutes left."
The Half-Fiend surfaced like a ghost.
She gazed quietly at Li Yue in the alley's shadow, the smile on her face undimmed.
As if to say: run! My dear princess, run to somewhere I can never catch you.
"......"
Li Yue backed away.
Turned and jogged deeper into the shadow.
Trying to use the Shadow World's basic laws.
At that the Half-Fiend did not pursue, but stopped at the border of shadow and light and said, her eyes full of meaning: "You can't hide in shadow forever. Sooner or later you'll have to come out into the light, just like my master, when she was young......"
Before long.
A full half a street away.
"Hah, hah."
Only then did Li Yue stop beside a phone booth, panting, resting, steadying her breath.
Three minutes until the game ended.
She had to think of something; once her sword-force ran out, she would be genuinely trapped in the Shadow World with no way out.
Putting together what she knew of the enemy and herself, and the gap in what each knew.
"Perhaps this could work."
A risky gambit took faint shape in Li Yue's mind.
If she was willing to risk her identity, it was not impossible to pull a Blade Wielder for Sword Maiden switcheroo, the old swap-the-crown-prince trick.
Use her own Blade Wielder identity, Blood Demon, to stand in for a while for the Sword Maiden Darknight.
Then, with a bit of acting, mislead the Half-Fiend Circuit Envoy, and she could win this game of "hide-and-seek" by something close to cheating.
Dare to think it, dare to do it.
At a thought.
The shadow at her feet covered her whole body.
From the Shadow World she came into the Sword Domain.
In the same instant, blood-coloured flames of wrath kindled over her.
"Zzz, zzz-zzz."
The wrath-flame died down, revealing the figure of the Blade Wielder Ke Jie.
"Crunch."
One foot crushed a burning deep violet thorn nearby.
Ke Jie, face like frost, made what could fairly be called a provocative entrance.
Unhurried, he summoned the Wrathblood Frenzy Blade, wiped down the blade, and waited poised for the Half-Fiend to arrive.
Soon.
A few breaths passed.
At the nearest stretch of deep violet thorns to Ke Jie, the figure of the Half-Fiend "Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden" surfaced out of nothing.
"Mm? You're......"
The Half-Fiend looked at Ke Jie, puzzled.
As if wondering when she had pulled a Blade Wielder like this into her Sword Domain.
A moment's observation, and she understood.
She recovered her composure.
"Ke Jie, son of the Blade King. Nice to meet you. Do I need to introduce myself?" The Half-Fiend, her manner toward Ke Jie quite changed from before, greeted him in a flat tone.
Her high-lifted chin spoke silently of her contempt for Ke Jie and her displeasure at having her game disturbed.
"You're the one who planned the Blade Demon night attack and set up a game with my friend?" Ke Jie's face was unchanged, but his tone quietly gained weight.
The words carried a hidden misdirection — that he and Li Yue were two separate people, and friends who knew each other.
This was a necessary step in carrying out his plan.
"And what if I am? Our princess must have told you everything." The Half-Fiend threw the question back in an unfriendly tone, cold light flickering in her deep violet eyes. "You've disturbed my game with her. Have you worked out how you'll make it up to me?"
At that.
"Heh."
With a contemptuous laugh, Ke Jie chose to answer with action.
He raised the great saber and cut a deep gash across his own left palm.
Scalding, vivid blood ran from the gash in a steady stream, pouring down over the blade.
Like some ancient warrior consecrating his blade with blood.
"With my blood, I consecrate this body."
Scorching blood-coloured flames of wrath kindled and surged in an instant, lighting the whole blade, with a faint tendency to spread.
"Now. Can we talk properly?"
So Ke Jie threatened the motionless Half-Fiend.
In this state, fighting for his life, he could suppress even a first-rate Sheath-Tier Blade Wielder like Cheng Fang; pushed hard enough, wounding the Half-Fiend was not out of the question.
He could fairly be called a self-propelled human blood-burning firebomb, one touch and it blew, and whoever touched it got hurt.
"You and your father are cut from exactly the same cloth."
The Half-Fiend, who understood as much, frowned lightly and chose for the moment not to pursue Ke Jie's responsibility for barging in.
Of course, the reason for the frown was that she could not sense Li Yue's exact position within the Sword Domain, and could only confirm she had not left Dongdu; not that Ke Jie had angered her.
"Where have you hidden her? Ke Jie."
The Half-Fiend interrogated him in a tone very nearly a command.
"Don't you know in your heart? The secret history of the Nation of Night." Ke Jie, refusing to be outdone, shot back coldly.
Trying to draw out some genuinely useful information.
The next moment.
The move produced an unexpected result.
"......Sh-she actually gave you her first deep kiss?" With surprise and disappointment she could barely suppress showing on her face, the Half-Fiend murmured it low. Then her voice rose abruptly: "Even so, I will never forgive you and your father. You people......"
Her voice was shaking; her guard was wavering.
The other half of the sentence would not come.
As a Circuit Envoy of the Myriad-Fiend Empire, she had nearly forgotten when she had last lost control of her feelings. Perhaps when her master was still here?
But the moment she could not help seeing the Ke Jie before her as the Wrath Blade King in his youth, the thing calling the person to mind, the memories and feelings bound up with it were hard to hold down.
It had happened decades ago.
One Grand Blade-and-Sword Tournament, one sunset.
A former princess of the Nation of Night, her greenness shed; a disciple who followed her master; and a boy who became a Blade King for the one he loved.
The disciple watched with her own eyes as her beloved master kissed the boy. Afterwards the disciple missed her master's wedding, and worse, failed to make the last meeting before her master vanished, and turned her regret and resentment into hatred of the boy and of his son......
And so there was the Half-Fiend of today.
"What were you to my father?" Ke Jie frowned lightly too, and asked it in a low voice.
"Heh. Only your mother's onetime disciple and attendant, a small Half-Fiend nobody knows of, who erased her own name and traces; someone who hates your father." The Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden gave Ke Jie a cold smile, the implication needing no words.
Her feelings barely steadied, this Circuit Envoy of the Myriad-Fiend Empire advised him evenly: "Ke Jie, son of the Blade King. Please don't let your father make you forget your mother. My onetime master, I mean. She needs you to avenge her just as much."
That said, she did not forget to add:
"Don't misunderstand. I'm still your enemy. Come tomorrow, I have a little present for you and your new teammates."
Whether that could be believed, and whether Ke Jie believed it, only she herself knew.
"The one you're looking for is near the Demon-Purging Bureau."
Ke Jie, having got so much weighty information, gave in exchange a piece of news about to come true.
The other was right. He really had overlooked his mother, a figure hopelessly blurred in memory, gentle and mysterious, whom his father had gone searching for and, not long after, vanished and died.
"Good. Until tomorrow, son of the Blade King."
The Half-Fiend glanced at Ke Jie once, and vanished.
At that.
Quietly digesting the news of father and mother.
Ke Jie chose to release the transformation, slipped into the shadows and became the Sword Maiden Darknight, and made for the Demon-Purging Bureau......