Without taking a moment to think her next actions through, Liling began to speedspeed-walk in an effort to get away from the man. The latter, suspecting foul play, called the two men with him and they pursued her. Liling increased her speed and began to push past people roughly, occasionally glancing over her shoulder to see the men still coming after her determinedly. Panic began to creep into her mind as she realized that she had stolen from the wrong people. If they caught her, there was a very good chance that they would turn her in to the local guards who would in turn hand her over to the Imperial Guard and that would mean either of two things: life imprisonment or execution. Neither of the two were exactly pleasant to her. The man Liling had pickpocketed kept his eyes trained on her rapidly retreating form, his face set in an angry scowl. He had not worked for long hours under his merciless boss only to have his pay stolen by a young thief. Still... the finesse and ease wit

Wherever crows went, death and misfortune were often not very far behind. The pitch black birds were regarded as harbingers of ill, symbols of evil that knew no boundaries. Abhorred and feared by all those who did not wish to suffer a painful, violent death, it was only fitting that they accompany someone who was seen as the physical incarnation of death itself. Flocks of the accursed birds descended to join their compatriots to feast on the bodies strewn across the ruins of a village. One that had been a bustling hive of cheerful life and civility only mere hours ago. Now it had joined the ranks of the settlements that had been completely destroyed by an army of blood thirsty mercenaries, led by an individual whose mere presence brought terrible sorrow and suffering. Black smoke streamed up from the funeral pyres where the bodies of innocent victims had been piled up and burnt. Houses lay in smoldering ruins. Hundreds of dead corpses that had abandoned littered the streets, their i

At the last two words, Gui's normally cheerful face became strangely shrouded in contained rage and what seemed like disgust, as if the words left a sour taste in his mouth. Liling nearly asked him what had irritated him so much before she put two and two together in her head. Her own expression sobered up immediately when she realized who Gui had meant. "Mei Daiyu came to your village, didn't she?" The burly man simply nodded and she turned her eyes back to the crackling fire morbidly. She had heard enough about the Lady of Death to know what must have happened afterwards. "I'll leave the description of the things that followed to your imagination," Gui said grimly. The flames of the fire cast his face in different tones of light. "By the time I regained myself, everything had been destroyed and everyone was dead. My father I found pinned to the wall by an arrow through his chest. He lived long enough to hand over the staff and pass on his last wishes for me to fulfill on his

It took the greater part of TFW evening for Liu Han to finish with the greetings. Apparently he was in very good terms with pretty much every monk in the monastery, evident by the literal crowd that swarmed him as soon as word of his return spread. All the while though, Liling was content with standing on the sidelines and watching the whole thing unfold. If she were to be totally honest with herself,a part of her was a bit envious of the warm welcome her new guardian was receiving. Having lacked a normal upbringing available to most children, she had never had the opportunity to establish deeper familial connections with anybody. The gang that had taken her in did not count. That group had been full of thieves and criminals who did nothing but take advantage of her skills every chance they got. And besides, if she were to return to them now after all she'd done, there was no doubt that they would slit her throat immediately. Later that night, a small scale celebratory party was