Half a minute until the match began.
The ring-pommel saber in his right hand, Ke Jie held his blood-coloured eyes open and watched Cheng Fang, nearly a hundred metres away, with a cold face.
Under the Blade Spirit's enhancement, his eyesight as it now stood was enough to make out things a hundred metres off clearly.
Transformed, Cheng Fang wore a suit of pure white old-style robes and gripped in both hands a long narrow modao with ink flowing along it, and his originally short black hair now fell to his waist.
Without seeing it for oneself it was hard to believe this was the same man as the deputy captain of a moment ago.
A little while.
"Fight... begin!"
Zhou Tianhao raised his voice and called it.
Ke Jie and Cheng Fang moved at once.
"He has the advantage in Blade Qi reserves and recovery. A war of attrition is certain to work against me. Only by attacking first, using offence as defence to suppress him and force him into a head-on fight, do I have a better chance of winning."
Holding to that thought.
Ke Jie threw off the caution he had shown before the fight and rushed at Cheng Fang at speed.
His right palm clenched hard on the haft, dragging the heavy ring-pommel saber along as he went.
Every time he swung wide around a humanoid target in his path, blood dripped from the body of the blade, leaving a broken, intermittent trail behind him.
Almost at the moment he was about to converge with Cheng Fang at the exact centre of the training field, the blood the blade carried had drained away completely.
The next second.
"CRUNCH!"
A flash of blade-light.
Ke Jie sheared away the humanoid target standing in front of him with one stroke, revealing Cheng Fang beyond it, three metres off, halted and set in a defensive stance.
Scarlet blood-eyes met deep black ink-pupils.
The two exchanged not a word. They only stayed silent, holding against each other for one brief instant.
That instant past.
Ke Jie was first to step out in a lunge, accelerating into a testing cut and swinging out the great saber his right hand dragged.
Only for it to be caught and locked fast by Cheng Fang's modao.
"Ting! Ting-ting!"
As both attacker and defender put more force behind it.
Bursts of metal ringing on metal went up.
"Good timing. Short on power."
Cheng Fang delivered the assessment with room to spare.
That said.
Seizing the moment while Ke Jie's great saber was locked against the ground, he abruptly put out his right foot and kicked straight at Ke Jie's left leg.
Pressed like that, Ke Jie had no choice but to pull the saber back and give ground, returning to where he had started.
"Now it's my turn to attack."
Cheng Fang took hold of the blade in his hand in a grip close to the way one holds a writing brush, and did not neglect to say so.
As a senior, he had already gone appropriately easy. What came after would not be so simple.
"Please instruct me."
Ke Jie put it plainly and settled into a defensive stance.
Since he could not break through the man's guard for the moment, setting his own tactics aside for a while was not out of the question.
At which.
Cheng Fang did not hesitate any longer.
A lift, a set. A stroke, a withdrawal.
Ink at the blade's tip soaked into the dust and spread fast in every direction, as though staining a sheet of white paper.
In an instant, of all the ground to stand on within ten metres, there was not a patch that was not black as a block of ink.
And the modao was left with nothing but a hilt, the blade itself gone from sight.
Might this be an opening to close in and attack?
No, it might just as easily be a trap deliberately laid bare.
"Shff, shff-shff."
The soles of his feet scraped over the ground.
Ke Jie shifted his footing cautiously, bit by bit, meaning to back out of the ink-stained earth the way he had come.
"......"
Watching it happen, Cheng Fang could not help a private twinge of regret.
If Ke Jie had attacked just now, he would have walked straight into the trap.
Right then.
"THUD!"
The top of the hilt struck the ground, his eyes fixed in Ke Jie's direction. Like a calligrapher setting brush and ink flying, he bore down and drew one more stroke.
Drew it to the very limit, then lifted with the momentum.
And swung out a blade-body of ink and water, ten metres long, that seemed to have grown out of the ink-stained earth itself.
To an ordinary eye, it was a blade of ink risen out of nothing and out of the ground, its edge a rival to a high-pressure water cutter.
To make an inkstone of the ground, a brush shaft of the hilt and a brush tip of the blade — this was the signature Blade Art of Cheng Fang's Blade Spirit "Inkstone": "Brush-and-Inkstone Blade".
"WHISH!"
A short, sharp tearing of air.
Ke Jie's pupils shrank; he barely managed to react and twisted half his body to the right.
The skin of his left arm brushed the ink-blade's edge in passing, and it tore the surface open and left a bloody wound running half the length of his left hand, the grain of the muscle plain to see.
"RIP."
A great quantity of blood spattered to the ground.
Feeling the fierce stabbing pain from his left hand, Ke Jie frowned lightly and shot Cheng Fang a glance.
Having swung that stroke, Cheng Fang was lifting the hilt again to repeat the trick.
"At least three seconds between the movements, and... his wind-up is fairly obvious, so it can be predicted and dodged ahead of time. But there really is no avoiding it the first time you see it."
He thought it over a moment.
Ke Jie had the measure of Cheng Fang's Blade Art in broad outline.
Which meant it was time for him to open his counterattack and settle this in one blow.
A few seconds later.
With his preparations made in advance, Ke Jie dodged the second stroke in good time and fell back beyond the ink-stained ground.
That position was outside the reach of Cheng Fang's Blade Art.
The trail of blood he had laid down on his way in joined up with the blood that had just run from his left hand.
"I offer up this blood, to send you on your way."
Letting the blood from the wound in his left hand run down his palm and coat the edge, Ke Jie's eyes kindled with wrath.
This was not a figure of speech, nor an exaggeration.
A scorching sensation came from both his eyes.
A thin film of blood-flame covered the surface of those blood-coloured pupils, laying a filter of steeped blood over everything he saw.
A fury he could hardly hold down rose from the bottom of his heart, surged and swelled, and answered his will to revenge.
"Zzz, zzz-zzz."
Blood-red flames of wrath, unbearably hot, kindled along the blade and spread down it, setting alight all the blood everywhere they passed, and not harming the man holding the blade in the slightest.
To make firewood of blood and tinder of fury, and burn away whatever the edge is turned upon — this was the Blade Art belonging to the Blade Spirit "Wrathblood Frenzy Blade" alone: "Blood Demon Blade Flame".
Damaged as the Blade Spirit was, no longer at its peak, it had once been a first-rate Blade Spirit that made a Blade King. Flawed, its Blade Art was still first-rate.
In the space of a few breaths, a vast blaze was taking shape all around, burning fiercely and growing worse by the moment.
The fire spread, eating away and eliminating the ink-soaked ground drop by drop.
"What is... this?"
Cheng Fang tried to stop it, but the moment blade-ink entered the earth it evaporated on the instant, its Blade Qi dispersing along with it.
"Heh."
Pale as he was from heavy blood loss, Ke Jie let a sickly smile come from somewhere genuine.
He was well aware that his state right now was not right.
But... venting the emotion appropriately under the Blade Spirit's influence was a strategy of a kind too, wasn't it?
"Tap, tap-tap—"
One step and another, his stride quickening.
Both hands raised the saber, and he charged in a headlong run.
Thick blood-flame burned over his whole body, blotting out any sight of what he had originally looked like, and only a pair of soul-seizing scarlet blood-eyes could be made out at all.
"CLANG!"
Ke Jie and Cheng Fang crossed weapons again.
Set against the first time, the result was utterly different.
"This is bad."
Cheng Fang was pressed down by a monstrous strength he had not braced for. The modao nearly flew from his hands, and only by the narrowest margin did he twist and roll aside from a stroke that could have killed him.
Before he could get a breath in, Ke Jie, who had just cut a deep furrow across the ground, pressed his advantage and came down with another stroke.
Left with no choice, he chose to bring out his own blade sheath to shield himself.
"You win, Ke Jie."
Which marked this entrance trial as ending in Ke Jie's victory.
"Mm? Aren't you going to stop, Ke Jie?"
Pinned and unable to move by a Ke Jie who was very nearly possessed, Cheng Fang could not help putting in the reminder.
If this went on, he would not be holding back any more.
"......"
Ke Jie did not answer, only went on swinging the blade.
Outside the field.
The several onlookers exchanged glances.
At the start they had watched Ke Jie being suppressed by Cheng Fang and been worried and tense on his account; watching now, it was anyone's guess who ought to be worried about whom.
"Wu Yuan, will you or Annie step in and calm him down?" Fang Zheng swallowed and did not dare go and stop a Ke Jie who could fairly be called a blood demon.
"Let me. He's most likely being affected by the Blade Spirit." Zhou Tianhao, who had been watching for some time, was about to move.
He had barely put his front foot out when he stopped again, and his taut face eased into a look of relief.
"It seems we won't be needed."
Inside the field.
Perhaps because his Blade Qi had run dry.
Or perhaps because he had taken hold of his reason again.
Ke Jie had gone back to looking as he normally did.
He put out a hand and helped Cheng Fang up off the ground, and apologised while he was at it. Cheng Fang said nothing more, indicating that he understood.
***
A few minutes later.
By means of the Pilgrim Court's specially made holy water that Wu Yuan carried, the injury to Ke Jie's left hand healed as good as new.
With Fang Zheng and the others offering their good wishes, Ke Jie took from Uncle Zhou's hands the personal identity-authentication insignia whose design changed according to his Blade Spirit.
"Congratulations on passing the entrance trial and formally joining us, Ke Jie. What code name do you intend to act under from now on?"
"Blood Demon. My code name is... Blood Demon."
"Is that so? Fitting enough, as it happens."
Zhou Tianhao nodded slowly, thoughtful, then took his leave of them all and went into the main hall to update Ke Jie's file.
Just three minutes after Zhou Tianhao had gone.
"Creak."
The main hall's rear door opened again.
And with it came a greeting that cut off the members of the Joint Combat Division's Team B in the middle of their conversation:
"Excuse me, everyone! May I ask, have you seen Mr. Ke Jie?"