A minute later.
The last second before the game ended.
Li Yue, transformed into the Sword Maiden Darknight, walked out of the shadows almost exactly on the mark, to the door of the Demon-Purging Bureau within the Half-Fiend's Sword Domain.
The moment she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the Half-Fiend "Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden", red-sandalwood sheath in hand, standing at the door where she had waited some time, her expression complicated.
"Your Highness, you really did keep me waiting, and brought me a little surprise besides."
The sly, needling tease came.
Li Yue was unmoved, her face as before.
"I won. The antidote."
She went straight to the point.
With no intention of tangling with her longer than needed.
At that.
The Half-Fiend smiled helplessly and answered in the tone of business:
"Fine. As agreed, you may make one demand within my power and ask one question that must be answered and can be."
A brief pause, and she turned: "But I never said I wouldn't go back on my word, you know. Your Highness trusts me far too much. If someone else cheats you later, I'll be quite troubled."
The words landed.
"Whoosh!"
A wild, fierce wind struck her full in the face.
Li Yue shut her eyes by reflex.
The wind stopped, and the sting in her eyes was gone.
Without a sound, the Half-Fiend who had just been standing at the Bureau's door was now pressed close behind her.
The other's lips all but touched her earlobe, breathing warm air.
"Your Highness, hear your humble handmaid. Don't favour your little boyfriend too much. The son of the Blade King may be a fine thing, but your Nation of Night bloodline must not be sullied either. Try not to cross that line too soon. It's better for you both."
Kindly advice, like a devil beguiling a heart.
The Half-Fiend's hands rested on Li Yue's shoulders, and she bent down to murmur it softly.
In this moment.
Li Yue, whose body was sensitive to begin with, blushed.
A rosy flush crept up the roots of her ears.
"I, I......"
She really did want to explain that it was a misunderstanding.
But she did not know how to say it, and stopped.
Dating herself and doing that sort of thing with herself, letting a misunderstanding like this go on, even if it was only the Myriad-Fiend Empire's Circuit Envoy, the Half-Fiend "Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden", who misunderstood it, was still too much for a little Sword Maiden whose heart had never yet opened......
Luckily.
"Your Highness, your reaction is a feast for the eyes. I'll stop teasing you. Remember what I said."
Having seen Li Yue's rare shy side, the Half-Fiend let go, satisfied, and stepped away to stand a metre in front of her, then held out a hand and asked cheerfully:
"What is your demand? And what is your question? Ask me anything you like."
A short wait.
"Hah, hah..."
Li Yue barely steadied her ragged breathing, her face turning from flushed to calm, opened her eyes, and answered in a voice that still trembled with the aftereffect:
"Give me the antidote. Tell me, what is the little present you're preparing for Ke Jie tomorrow?"
At that.
The Half-Fiend stared at Li Yue a while with wide, deep violet eyes, her look going from odd and puzzled to helpless and reproachful.
"Your Highness! Hasn't the antidote been on you the whole time? Don't tell me you're a little princess of the Nation of Night who ran away from home, like my master when she was young? You don't even know you carry the blessing of immunity to all poisons."
If not for that.
An ordinary Sword Maiden would long since have collapsed in her Sword Domain, a hundred poisons in her, her life in the balance.
That said, without waiting for the silent Li Yue to speak, she went on: "Your bodily fluids are the most incurable poison in this world, and the finest antidote too. The Nation of Night's Sword God bloodline is a curse, and a blessing."
"Taken from different places, your fluids work differently. I'll say it plainly. Saliva is the mildest antidote and a means of making a pact; blood is the fiercest poison and a killing weapon. The rest... Master wouldn't allow."
As she spoke.
Not only did the Half-Fiend's weathered face colour a little; the attentively listening Li Yue's pretty face went faintly pink too.
It couldn't be helped. That's just how a princess of the Nation of Night is.
"Ahem, ahem. Next question."
The Half-Fiend chose to avoid the subject and changed it.
"......"
Li Yue stayed silent, and the pink of shame faded from her face.
She had really tempered her sense of shame today.
As for what exactly the shame was about, that's a princess of the Nation of Night's private business. Don't ask......
"The little present for Ke Jie? Simple. Just one Greater Demon Tier Blade Demon and one Lesser Demon Tier Circuit Attendant, as the Blade Wielder Blood Demon's debut at the Demon-Purging Bureau. Not bad, is it? For your little boyfriend."
The Half-Fiend raised an eyebrow and threw Li Yue a flirtatious look.
Li Yue ignored it, her eyes still as dead water.
"More detail."
Li Yue pressed coldly.
"He'll know tomorrow morning. Any more detail and it wouldn't be a surprise. Besides, that counts as a new question."
The Thousand-Faced Poison Maiden's face went cold, and she said no more.
The implication being: thank you for playing this game with me, but personal is personal and work is work, and the two are not to be mixed.
The game, unequal from the start, between a big girl and a small one, an elder and a junior, a Half-Fiend and a Sword Maiden, ended here, wiped clean.
Suddenly.
"How old are you this year?"
Li Yue asked out of nowhere.
"Counting from the Second Blade-and-Sword World War, let me think...... wait, what are you asking that for?"
The Half-Fiend, caught off guard, answered by reflex, then halfway through turned playful and laughed the question back at her.
And in the next second very nearly cracked.
"Old hag."
Li Yue stated it without expression.
"Heh-heh."
The Half-Fiend felt her fist tighten.
Only the courtesy was left in her smile.
"Your Highness, I forgot to tell you. I've already triggered the sword-poison in your friend. Counting the time, you have about three minutes to save her."
Call it the revenge of an elder exasperated with a junior who would not shape up, and a Circuit Envoy of the Myriad-Fiend Empire laying her groundwork too.
"Goodbye. Old hag."
Li Yue turned, cold-faced, and ran.
Without hesitation she hurried toward where Bai Wuxie had been, with no more time to bicker with the Half-Fiend.
"That child... what a poisonous mouth."
Watching Li Yue go, the Half-Fiend, a little forlorn, dispersed the sword in her hand of her own accord.
The Sword Domain dispersed with it; reality returned, and everything looked as though nothing had happened.
Her game with Li Yue was over; but her game with Ke Jie, son of the Blade King, had only just begun.
"Ke Jie, son of the Blade King. I won't hold back for your little girlfriend's sake."
Her feelings settled back by degrees into cold indifference.
The Half-Fiend chose to leave the place......
***
Before long.
Li Yue hurried back to Bai Wuxie's side.
Bai Wuxie was still in her baby's sleep, as when Li Yue had left, only her posture had changed.
"Heh-heh, my little sister......"
She was still mumbling in her dreams.
A clear, colourless liquid ran from the corner of her mouth and dampened part of the hands pillowing her head.
If the Half-Fiend had not said it in so many words, Li Yue would never have believed her own Xiao Bai was in danger of her life.
Her biggest problem now was how, decently, to get her own saliva into Bai Wuxie's small mouth as the antidote, and make sure it was swallowed.
A kiss? Absolutely not. Neither party involved, herself included, would agree to doing such a thing while the other was unconscious.
But with a life at stake, was she really going to let the other die over some so-called sense of shame?
A moment's thought.
"I'm sorry. Forgive me, Xiao Bai."
Li Yue gave her answer through action......