Yanbo immediately walked towards the entrance of the temple with purposeful, long strides, almost about to break into a run. Her mind felt rather hazy, and it was filled with a single purpose: get back what belonged to her. Even though she didn't have enough proof to do it in public, if she met with Qingshan in private, got her to show the crane birthmark on the back of her neck... and the way she'd been able to cultivate fire-based spiritual energy even though her bloodline held not a drop of Desert Sect blood... the way everyone said that she had an aura of the Desert Sect about her... The pieces all fell together, a puzzle long in the process of solving finally getting its last piece, and as Yanbo pulled back to see the bigger picture, she was determined to move the hand of karma and get what was rightfully hers back.

"Stop!" The fortuneteller person held her shoulder. "Where are you going?"

Yanbo must've had a really ugly expression on her face, because the fortuneteller person drew back a little, but then tightened her grip. "You can't go find this Qingshan person just yet. From what I understand, she's got to be really powerful by now, even if she hasn't ascended to the heavens, and you're not even a cultivator, so how will you be able to confront her?"

"And what about me?" The nun's voice came from behind her. Yanbo's mind slowly cleared of the foggy tendrils and she blinked. That was true. She had no skills... with what, exactly, would she be confronting Qingshan and how, exactly, would she be able to win? And her work at the temple was still unfinished.

Yanbo slowly turned back around, and then wordlessly headed back to help hand out food and treat the injured.

When most people had fallen asleep was only when she was able to go and get her own burns treated. She gritted her teeth together as she splashed water on her wounds to clean them, and then spread ointment over them, but suddenly, she felt a tugging at the hem of her robes, and she was startled.

"Thank you." A little girl was staring up at her, and Yanbo realized that it was the little child that she'd saved earlier. Yanbo felt a little panicked and was unsure of how to speak to the child.

"It was merely what I was supposed to do." Yanbo finally replied. The little girl didn't seem to process this answer.

"Are you one of the immortal fairies from heaven?"

Yanbo was a little confounded and let out a slightly disgraceful 'huh?'.

"I saw you were able to make the flames back away and rescue me. But... it looks like even immortal fairies can get wounded." The little girl looked rather sorry. "What's your name?"

"Cui Yanbo."

The little girl smiled and pulled harder at her robes. "My mother always taught me that I have to repay a favor, especially a major one like a life-saving favor. But... I don't own anything, so I can't give you anything, but I can always give you this life. In the future, I'll be your personal maid, and I can serve you and help you with anything."

"What about your mother?" Yanbo tried to gently detach the little girl's grip on her robes.

The little girl frowned down at the floor. "She's dead." She said abruptly. Yanbo stopped trying to wrestle the girl away.

"Then... your father?"

"My father is dead too. I don't know any close relatives." She seemed rather sad all of a sudden. "I've been out on the streets for almost as long as I can remember."

The homeless little girl looked rather pitiful, before Yanbo suddenly realized that the nun would be just in need of a helper. Yanbo tried to look as friendly as possible and held out a hand to her.

"Come with me. I know a place where you can stay." Yanbo said. The girl's face split into a huge grin, and she took Yanbo's hand immediately.

"Really? Will I be able to stay with you?"

Yanbo shook her head. "Consider it taking my place in this temple and setting me free so I can go walk the path I need to walk."

The girl looked rather sad, but she seemed to understand, and followed Yanbo with enthusiasm as Yanbo led her to meet the nun.

"What's the meaning of this?" The nun said with an almost guarded expression.

"As you might've expected, I'm no longer able to stay here and help take care of this temple, as I have other things to do." Yanbo said with a polite dip of the head. "In order to help you with your duties, I have brought this girl to replace me. She was the one that I saved earlier, and she is homeless, without a home to return to, so it would be best for her to stay here and help out under you care."

The nun looked a little sad as she gazed at Yanbo, but she took the hand of the little girl anyway and squatted down to her level.

"Are you sure you want to take up this job? It's a bunch of difficult work each day, and you rarely get any rest." The nun warned gently. "At best, you're busy every day, tending to sometimes ungrateful people, dressing injuries, feeding the homeless, and at worst, you're very lonely, with no one to talk to except my old sack of bones."

The girl straightened her back. "In order to pay back this jiejie's life-saving favor, I'm willing to do any work in place of her. Besides, I'm not scared of being lonely." She smiled. "Having an a-yi like you to talk to isn't bad either."

The nun smiled a little, her expression almost as if she was reminiscing on something long ago. She patted the little girl's shoulder. "Well, then, from now on, you'll stay here, and you'll help me split the chores and work and I'll make sure you have a place to sleep, food to eat, and clothes to wear. How does that sound?"

The girl grinned and hugged the nun's shoulders. The nun looked rather startled, but then relaxed and patted the girl's back.

Yanbo stepped back and cupped her hands respectfully. "I would like to thank you for caring for me and taking me in and giving me a place to stay for this past year. I'm sorry to leave you so suddenly, but... I hope you can understand."

The nun smiled. "I understand."

Yanbo smiled back, and turned away, walking step-by-step back towards the entrance of the temple. She had donned her Mountain Sect robes again. She'd changed her mind. She wouldn't be wearing the normal robes. And now, she was on her way to walk a new path.

***

When she arrived at a town on the borders of the Plains Sect that she sometimes visited when she was studying at the Du Clan, she was very tired and a little thirsty and hungry and in need of a place to stay, but she at least wasn't in her delusional and feverish state that she'd been when she'd stumbled into the Longnan town. She counted the coins in her pocket. She had more than enough for a meal, but not enough for a night at an inn. She thought a bit, and finally decided that she should just thicken up her face, buy a thick cloak and sleep on the streets tonight. After all, she knew this town well and knew that it wasn't that dangerous at night, so she had nothing to worry about.

She walked the streets for a while before she found a tailor's shop, and she entered, looking to see if her uniform could be mended and to buy a thick cloak, but the first face she saw when she stepped inside was a familiar one.

"Cui Yanbo?"

It was Du Yucheng.

Yanbo had half a mind to turn and leave, with almost a guilty conscience, but then she realized she'd done nothing wrong, except...

"Why did you just disappear? Where have you been? And how did you... how did you get to such a state? Where is your sword? What happened?" Yucheng bombarded her with questions, and she took a step back.

"I..." For the first time in a while, she was lost for words. "Things happened at home."

"What things happened at home that caused you to lose your sword and your entire life's cultivation?" Yucheng said too loudly, and the shopowner gave him a sharp look for startling the other customers. Yucheng hastily apologized and dragged her outside.

"Explain slowly. I'll bring you to get a meal. You look like you haven't eaten for days."

Do I really look that bad? Yanbo wondered to herself. However, she didn't protest at the free meal.

Yucheng led her into one of the nearby restaurants and sat her down and then sat down across from her. "Just what has been going on?"

Yanbo looked down at the table. The little paper crane fluttered out of Yanbo's robes and landed by her hand, and Yanbo stroked its wing anxiously.

"I... I caused my brother to lose his life because of me." She said, her voice cracking and losing strength towards the end.

"Who?" Yucheng asked, tensing up.

"Yunhai." Yanbo whispered, feeling guilt seep into her bones. She didn't dare look up at Yucheng to assess his expression. She had no face to go back to the Mountain Sect, but what face did she have to crawl back to the Du Clan, either, she realized.

Yucheng, at the moment, was wearing a complicated expression. He looked like he had a million things he wanted to say, and then finally ended up wearing a bitter, pained smile.

"How... why? How did he... how did this happen?"

Yanbo pressed her lips together and didn't speak. Yucheng sighed, and then reached across the table to pat her shoulder. Yanbo flinched, afraid that he was going to move his hands and strangle her. With her current state, she was in no position to fight back.

"And you? How did you lose all your cultivation?"

Yanbo gazed down at the table. "It was my burial gift to him, the best thing I could do to repay him other than giving him my life."

Yucheng let out a pained laugh. "No wonder... no wonder... I was wondering where he'd been for the past year, too. He'd never let an entire year pass by with no communication, but I just assumed... I just assumed he was busy. I never thought that I'd already seen him for the last time."

The two people, sitting across the table, both sat there, immersed in their own thoughts, each feeling as though they were reliving his death. When the waiter put their dishes on the table, Yanbo was pulled out of her thoughts. She hungrily began to ate, disregarding etiquette and eating her fill as Yucheng only ate small bites, looking distracted and worried, as if his mind was floating in a whole different universe.

When Yanbo was full, she put down her bowl and chopsticks and asked the question that had been lingering on her mind. "Do you know Bai Qingshan of the Desert Sect?"

"Bai Qingshan?" Yucheng repeated. "Of course."

"Where is she now? What has she been doing lately?"

"Only a few months after she curried favor with the Sect leader of the Desert Sect, she ascended to heaven herself. She was only five years older than that Lin Jinghe. The Desert Sect truly has been the center of the attention, having produced two cultivators who ascended to the heavens in the past few years, not to mention at a young age."

"She ascended to immortality?" Yanbo asked. Her face gradually fell into an ugly expression, and she stood up suddenly. Yucheng's eyes followed her as she stood up, slightly bewildered. As if Yanbo realized her rude move, she cupped her hands and bowed slightly to Yucheng before excusing herself.

"Wait!" Yucheng caught her arm. "Where are you going?"

Yanbo didn't look back as she answered, "to do the things I have to do, and to balance out injustices where they are imbalanced."

"What injustices?" Yucheng asked. Yanbo remained resolutely silent.

"Fine. I won't ask about that. But will you be coming back?"

Yanbo had an urge to laugh. "Why would I be coming back? To display how useless I am now I'm back to a normal person?" With that, she pulled her arm free from Yucheng's grip and exited the place.

There was a temple to Jinghe, she knew, farther north of the town, where she could stay. She had gone there a couple of times when she was still studying at the Du Clan. It only took an hour to walk there, but with her burnt and ragged uniform and the absence of the sun in the night sky, she felt cold, and it turned every one of her steps to ice.

When Yanbo arrived, she pushed open the creaky doors and opened it to a slightly dusty, average-sized temple, whose floors were a little dirty, but there was a little straw in the corner for her to sleep on, and her clothes would make adequate covering, at least until it got cold. With that thought, she closed the doors behind her, found that mattress of straw, and bundled herself up and went to sleep.

From then on, she would sleep on a mattress of straw with clothes as blanket. She would sweep the floors of the temple, draw fresh water from the well, cut fresh straw from the endless wild fields, set up incense offerings, and practiced. Even though Yanbo had long lost the book detailing the practices of demonic cultivation, she remembered, and when she closed her eyes, she could almost see the yellowed pages in front of her. And, so, whenever the temple had no chores left for her to do, she would sit in meditation, or practice her martial arts, but regardless, not one second was spent wasted.

Yanbo had a job to do, she had revenge to take, and she was lying in wait.