Before long, Yanbo settled into a routine. In the mornings and afternoons, she would help the nun with a bunch of daily chores, like making a trip into the town, drawing fresh water from a nearby well, or sweeping away mud tracked in by the occasional passerby. After everything was done, she would sit outside in the sunlight and read, slowly making her way through the stacks of novels. They were mostly epic tales of heroism, love and betrayal, success and failure, tragedy and comedy, and more. She read them with minimal interest, but she allowed herself to be swept away into the stories, and day by day, she slowly came to heal, even telling the nun, who she'd regarded as a senior, who was to be respected but not gotten too close to, her true identity and the event that had caused her to be kicked out of her home. The nun merely smiled and accepted her answer without much comment, only giving a few words of, "the dead are already gone," in a vague sense of comfort.

Often, pretty awful storms would set upon the area, driving many people to take refuge in the temple, and, so, the name of the small temple to Lin Jinghe, goddess of justice and equity, became well-known throughout the nearby Longnan town. With that came a couple of people who were relatively more shameless, putting their pride away to stay in the temple for extended periods of time while they tried to earn money and get a foothold on their life, and once those shameless people took the initiative, other people began to feel less ashamed about overstaying the hosts' welcome, and the once quiet temple became more and more active and lively.

Even though the expenses for supporting so many people only grew and grew as more people came, the nun and Yanbo never asked or demanded a cent from any person who stayed. Luckily, their added fame in the town led more people to come and donate, some of the richer families of the nearby Longnan town even pledging monthly donations. Therefore, their donations box became quite a steady source of income to support the many people streaming in and out of their temple.

Yanbo's routine, however, remained unshaken throughout the changes and developments in their temple, which was now becoming an infamous homeless shelter in the local area. She continued reading, with one particular story catching her attention.

It was about two wealthy female girls from two wealthy families, but those two wealthy families were competitors with each other, so they never liked each other. The two girls met when they were very young and immediately took a liking to each other, and the book detailed some interactions that Yanbo had distinctly remembered had only ever been mentioned in books between boys and girls. Even if it wasn't a boy and a girl, it would at least be a boy and a boy. She had never heard of female cut-sleeves before.

Yanbo asked the nun about it, and the nun reasoned that if it was possible with a boy and a boy, a boy and a girl, there was no reason why it couldn't be possible with a girl and a girl.

"But I don't think you see them often. Parents are always rushing to get their daughters married off to some man because they usually won't get anything good from staying single all their lives, so even if a girl has such... tendencies, it would never get past their parents, and they'd be married off to a man anyways." The nun explained, sounding rather expert on the topic. Yanbo nodded thoughtfully and returned to reading the story. The story didn't have a happy ending, like many of the cut-sleeve books she read, and it disappointed her quite a lot.

However, when the disaster of the next day struck, she didn't have time to think about it anymore.

It had been one year since Yanbo had left behind her broken family at her mother's request, and she was rather surprised that she hadn't bumped into any of her fellow cultivators from the cultivating world. Even though the town of Longnan wasn't within the borders of any cultivating Sect, there would at least be some cultivators passing through the town now and then.

A spiritual fire struck in an area of the market she commonly frequented to purchase foods for the people who resided within the temple. She heard about it when there was a sudden influx of refugees with nowhere to go crowding into the temple that night.

Late into the night, she busied to get everyone settled down and serve food for the refugees, so busy that she could barely make ends meet. Even though the nun and Yanbo had built up a lot of experience serving the increasing number of people in the temple, there was simply too many, and the sun was rising when Yanbo could finally sit down and take a rest. She'd been listening in to the gossip and conversation exchanging among all the new refugees, some of which who'd even been at the scene and witnessed the raging fire. Listening to their descriptions of its endless burning and extreme heat and the way it stayed extremely regulated in one area, it was exactly like that fire that she'd investigated all those years ago. With that, she made the decision to head into town as soon as most of the refugees were gone and investigate the remains herself.

However, the fire came to her instead. Two nights after the fire in the market, the same fire struck the temple. Yanbo, having just gone to sleep for a couple of hours, was immediately awakened to crackling sounds, and was startled awake by the sight of the flames in front of her. Shortly after, her awakening was followed by everyone else, and screams echoed as everyone streamed out of the available exits of the temple.

Yanbo made her way to the exit as well until she heard the sound of a small child crying out, and she could only double back to rescue the child. As she picked up the child and slung him onto her back, a wall of flames suddenly seemed to shoot up in front of her, surrounding her in such an unnatural formation that she could confirm even without sensing for spiritual energy that it was not a normal fire, that it must've been started by someone with a cultivation base.

Yanbo took a deep breath and covered the small child with her body, making a split-second decision that she might as well just charge through the flames, protecting the child with a meat shield and get it safely out before something fluttered in her robes and came flying out with a grand flourish, beating away the flames and clearing an opening.

Yanbo was surprised, but she didn't take the time to question it, darting through the opening and delivering the child outside. Once outside, the little flaming paper crane perched itself on her finger like an obedient pet and rubbed itself against her thumb, seeming to be asking for affection and praise. She merely spared the tiniest of smiles, which dumbfounded the nun, who'd never seen her smile before, and told the flaming paper crane, "go".

The flaming paper crane disappeared back inside, and Yanbo's smile dropped immediately when she heard another child crying inside, and she darted back into the building before the nun could warn her against it.

Inside, smoke filled the air, and she coughed roughly, squinting her eyes to see the child's outline within the small space. As she rushed around, trying to see the child, the child's cries sometimes grew louder, sometimes grew quieter, but Yanbo never saw even the shadow of any child. She was burned multiple times when she wasn't able to dodge the flames, but she ignored the pain, searching desperately for the child. Slowly, her suspicion grew, and she came to a stop, listening to the cries. They sounded very real, but... had she fallen into a trap?

When she turned around, she immediately confirmed her suspicion as walls of flame closed in on her. She, on habit, tried to wield spiritual powers to force the flames away, but when nothing came to her hands and the flow of her energy was nonexistent, she remembered again that such efforts were fruitless. As the walls of flame closed in even more and the smoke swooped down over her, covering her, she realized that she might be about to die, and standing there, she remembered her family, her second brother who'd died for her, only for her to end up perishing in such a place. She closed her eyes and prepared for the burning sensation, determined not to cry out and to die with dignity.

But the burning sensation never came. Instead, she felt something nudging her cheek, and she opened her eyes to find that the flaming paper crane had, once again, opened a path for her, and her racing heart calmed down. Only once she was outside and her knees went weak did she realize that she very much did not wish to die. In fact, she still felt that there were things incomplete on this earth that was up to her to complete.

Standing outside, Yanbo commanded the paper crane to go inside and put out the fire, but before the paper crane had fully darted inside, the flames went out on their own, leaving that roaring fire only a memory and leaving behind only slightly charred wood. There wasn't even any smoke left over. As she'd suspected, it hadn't been any ordinary fire.

Yanbo went up to the building to investigate, but she was starting to feel the multiple burn wounds she had on her body. Gritting her teeth, she investigated the foundations of the temple and realized that the fire had not burned anything except for the people inside. Not even the straw that was being used for mattresses and the blankets were burnt, not even a little. While the wood was blackened on the outside, when she poked it a little and scraped that layer away, most of the foundation of the building was intact.

So the caster of the fire was coming for the people in the temple, not the temple itself. Yanbo had never met such picky assassins.

"We can go back in. There's no smoke left over, and the fire was specially made to only hurt humans, so nothing is really damaged." Yanbo told everyone, and everyone streamed back in gratefully, letting out exclamations of surprise when they found that their things were pretty much all intact.

"What sort of mysterious fire did such things? Or perhaps was it the mercy of the gods?" Someone asked. Yanbo went to explain, but everyone latched onto the latter idea and immediately turned towards the statue of Jinghe in the back of the temple, getting on their knees and kowtowing, thanking her for her mercy. Yanbo suddenly felt the urge to laugh on behalf of Jinghe, and she wondered how Jinghe would react to such a thing. She would probably go slightly red, and rush to tell everyone to stop kowtowing to her, it wasn't like she was a goddess or something, and then realize that she was, in fact, a goddess. She felt a warmth spread inside her, something she hadn't felt for a while.

The paper crane came back to nuzzle on her shoulder. "Good job." Yanbo praised it quietly, and the paper crane seemed to be happy. Yanbo took it in her hands and looked at it carefully. Now the danger had passed and she had some down time to think about it, she realized that the flaming paper crane, instead of being wilting and low on spiritual energy since she hadn't fed it for a year, was brimming and bursting with spiritual energy. Moreover, a large part of that spiritual energy wasn't the flame-based spiritual energy she usually fed it, but the metal-based spiritual energy that she usually practiced. But it had never left her person ever since that night, and there'd never been any chance for anyone else to...

That night. Yanbo remembered: gathering all of her spiritual energy and her spiritual foundations in her hands, and slamming it into the ground; the little paper crane shivering, then suddenly seeming to come alive, nudging against her hand almost sorrowfully; and as she walked for those three days and three nights, it tried to shield her against the rain, but Yanbo ignored it, so it could only flutter after her dejectedly. So that little paper crane had accidentally absorbed much of the spiritual energy she'd released. No wonder it had come alive in such a way. After absorbing all that spiritual energy, any spiritual artifact would be close to consciousness, let alone being able to do simple things like sense emotions.

Yanbo let out a sigh. "Then you're one of my only friends, now."

The flaming paper crane seemed to be happy at that declaration and perched on her shoulder with poise. Yanbo sank into a reverie as she thought about Jinghe, and that night when she'd received this flaming paper crane, when she suddenly felt a stabbing pain, and realized that the crane was poking at one of her burn wounds.

She remembered, suddenly, that she had multiple burn wounds all over her body that would all need treatment. Gritting her teeth, she carefully took off her outer robe to look at all the burns that had burned through her Mountain Sect uniform. She would be needing a new set of robes to wear.

"What's that on the back of your neck?" Someone asked suddenly, and Yanbo turned around abruptly.

"A birthmark." Yanbo said almost defensively, feeling slightly threatened for some reason or another.

"Have you had it since birth?"

Yanbo shook her head. Why was this person asking?

The person stood up and walked closer to Yanbo. Yanbo couldn't help but start to feel skittish and anxious, not knowing what the person wanted to do, but she kept her chin up and looked at the person head on.

"May I look at it?"

Yanbo gave the person a measured glance, and then slowly turned around. She flinched when she felt cool fingers on the back of her neck, slightly pulling down the collar of her inner robe to reveal that flame-shaped embellishment on the back of her neck.

"When did you get this?"

"Over ten years ago."

The person pursed her lips. "This birthmark isn't normal."

"Why?"

"Birthmarks exist from birth. All others are not normal, of course." The person answered. "This has made me curious. May I tell your fortune?"

"I don't have any money." Yanbo replied.

"I will do it for free." The person said with a slight smile. Yanbo stuck out her palm for the person to read. After a few moments, the person's eyebrows rose higher and higher.

"What day were you born?"

Yanbo answered. The person's eyebrows only rose higher.

"You have a fantastic destiny, with great fortune and amazing luck, as well as natural talent. You were destined to rise to the heavens in your twenties. How is it that you've come to such a downfall?"

Yanbo frowned, ready to dismiss the person's words as just random nonsense. What great fortune and amazing luck?

"Thank you for your efforts, but I've never had this fantastic destiny you speak about." Yanbo said politely and was prepared to go retrieve some burn ointment that they had in storage to treat her wounds, before the person cut her off with something that made her blood run cold.

"Someone must've swapped fates with you."

Yanbo came to a halt, and her heart seemed to jump.

"Over ten years ago... what happened? When did you get this birthmark?"

Over ten years ago... it was that fire, and then meeting Jinghe. And before, curled up in that room, the tinkling of metal, the feeling of something, part of her essence, being taken away from her, leaving her empty, and then returning something that felt so foreign.

Yanbo put a hand to her chest.

"Do you remember now?"

"Bai Qingshan." Yanbo whispered.