BaiXue caught up to the family in no time then led them to her hideout.

"Thank you for helping us but... Are you sure that it's safe so close to the village?" The father could not help but ask.

"Sometimes the most dangerous place can be the safest place to hide at." BaiXue explained. Besides, she was confident in the spot that she chose. It was close enough to the village to be considered as a part of the village territory but far enough for people to not bother walking through.

"Who are you? Why're you helping us?" The mother asked.

"Someone else wanted to offer their help but could not so here I am." She did not want to reveal the existence of the writing to anyone else but did not want to lie to good-natured people, so she said it in such a way.

"How long do we have to hide here for?" The father asked again.

"Until someone strong arrives." She left it at that and closed her eyes to relax against a tree. She looked like she was sleeping but she was actually cultivating. The couple felt bad to disturb their saviour's rest so stopped asking as well. The baby has also calmed down by now when she sensed that her parents were calm again.

Dawn broke.

The couple could see the crowd returning with frustration and anger on their faces. 

They were feeling defeated. They could not find the family anywhere in the forest so they assumed that the family must have managed to escape far away from the village. Everyone was was hanging their heads in angry disappointment so they noticed a faint shadow on the floor that was gradually growing clearer and larger. By the time they registered in their brains that the silhouette was too big for any normal bird, a strong gust of wind blew through the entire area, causing some of them to stumble in their steps. They looked up with fear in their hearts.

"A black phoenix!!" Someone shouted.

Everyone took off straight after that, some changing into their animal forms hoping to escape notice with their small size. However, they only managed to take a few steps before the whole area was consumed in a black raging fire. The bird continued to fly ahead afterwards and circled the village, setting the whole place ablaze in its wake. Only when it was satisfied with its work, did it fly towards the hidden group.

The couple stood up and the mother tightened her hold on her baby instinctively which woke the baby up. They were ready to run for their lives. However, the mother noticed how BaiXue remained relaxed with her eyes closed. It was only then did she remember BaiXue's mention of the impending arrival of a strong person. She held onto her husband's hand and signaled to him to wait and see what happens. 

Even if BaiXue seemed to be on their side, the blatant show of power still intimidated them, so they dared not sit back down. Black sparkly aura grew thicker around the approaching black phoenix, just as it reached the ground, a dashing young man stepped out from within the black aura. The phoenix was no longer anywhere to be seen. 

MengYao looked at the woman hugging a small bundle tightly to her chest. He stopped right before her and looked at the baby. "A siren."

The mother turned her baby slightly away from MengYao while the father stepped between them to shield his wife. They had cautious looks on their faces.

"Good. Stay on your guard. There may be attacks on you again. The common people are not only ignorant, they're stubborn too. For now, this area is clear. Live freely." He glanced at BaiXue who still had her eyes closed before flying off. 

He had wondered about the purpose of signalling to him her location twice. He thought that it was an especially urgent situation. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw the messed up mob with weapons in their hands and the injuries on the father. If it were anything else, he would have probably killed her for being an annoyance. If he had not been informed of a pregnancy in this village 2 months ago by FenFang, he also would have killed her for the audacity to use the flute. It could be said that BaiXue's luck saved her this time.

BaiXue stayed on for two more days while the family built a new hut where BaiXue's hideout was at. They liked that it was a good spot for defending while being able to see everything that happened from beyond this point. 

BaiXue spent the remaining two days exploring, practicing martial arts, and cultivating at the secluded beach with all the different sized rock formations. She scaled the rocks and inspected the entire surface area of the rock formations. Eventually, she excavated two other animal skins that had writings on them. Nothing else could be found. Now that she was looking at the writings under the sunlight, it seemed to be written in blood. The words were horribly faded and they were ancient text. She could only deduce three things.

Mystical power. Mystical form. Cultivation. What on earth could these mean..?

Since she could not make sense of the three clues at the moment, she decided to keep searching for more clues elsewhere which would hopefully give her more inspiration.

 

Another six months flew by.

It was almost a year since BaiXue transmigrated into this world however her body still felt as empty as it was at the start. It was as if she could not keep hold onto the spiritual energy of this world after it hit a certain small limit. Her physical body was much stronger and fitter though.

FenFang has been sending BaiXue on various errands, tasks, and missions that were small and big. She soon became FenFang's most trusted aide as she pleased FenFang a lot with her good performance. 

Through the chit chat of the other three foxes, BaiXue found out that there was only one other birth of a mystical one out of a few pregnancies across the land. Coincidentally, it was at the village that BaiXue was assigned to again. 

BaiXue did not stand out in her way of managing the situation. The standard procedure was to monitor the situation and judge if the family would be able to protect themselves and survive by themselves. Unfortunately, the chance of a mystical baby surviving the ordeal was only 50-50. This was due to the restriction that the flute could only be blown during emergencies and the time lag that it would take for MengYao to reach the destination. 

BaiXue's promising capability showed when the other mystical baby survived under her watch as well. BaiXue learnt fast from the first encounter. She noticed the signs of an uprising and estimated where the limit of the family's tolerance was. This helped her predict the progress of the situation and know when she should summon MengYao. 

Due to this, MengYao arrived just as the village's antics against the family hit the climax and she did not have to intervene like the previous time. She simply sat back and enjoyed the show. MengYao witnessed the scene and it brought back memories of when he was young and victimised. It triggered him and his anger peaked. He did not simply burn the entire place down to ashes and cinders, leaving no other survivors except the family, he also made sure to terrorize them thoroughly before ending their lives in various ways. 

Over the six months, BaiXue noticed a suspicious pattern to the villages that she got assigned to observe. The villages that has no news of mystical ones being born would occasionally experience raids which kept their supplies and power low. The people involved would probably feel too emotional to notice but the amount stolen and killed would vary in proportion to the delay between each bandit attack. 

However, there was one village that was an exception to that pattern. Unconvinced that it was a mere outlier, BaiXue made the call to delve into a deeper investigation for that village. She spent a few days blending in to the village. Her cover this time was as a traveler looking for a new place to live at because she has lost everything she had to bandits in her previous village. 

Over a few days, she realised that everybody ignored a man who was constantly drunk and depressed in a quiet diner. He never paid for his booze or food but no one threw him out. She decided to try her luck with getting information from that odd stranger. She pretended to be another depressed person and spent the next two days drinking in the same diner at a different table. Only on the third day, she pretended to be in a drunken stupor and stumbled towards his table. 

"Ah, pardon me." She apologised for bumping into him. 

He cast a groggy glance at her then frowned. "...You're new in this village, aren't you?"

"How do you know?"

"...No one else bothers me. Not this polite either."

"Why not?"

"..."

BaiXue took another swig of the bottle and proceeded on to walk away.

"You."

BaiXue stopped in her tracks and looked back at him. "Talking to me?"

"You've been drinking here for the past 2 days, haven't you?"

"..."

"Why?"

"I lost everything. My house, belongings, everything I owned and loved. My family. Everyone." 

"How?"

"Bandits. Those bloody bandits! They came to my village all the time!"

"..."

"What about you? This village seems peaceful enough. There haven't been any bandits the whole time I was here. What could get you so depressed?" BaiXue said with a slightly mocking tone. 

"You darn newbie better shut your trap when you don't know who's been protecting this goddamn village from the bloody bandits." The man said getting all riled up. 

"What? You connected to that guardian angel of the village?" 

"I am him." He said with squinted eyes. 

"What's so depressing about that then?" BaiXue said with an even stronger mocking tone in her voice.

"Do you think I want to be the protector of this damned village?! This village could go to hell and be raided for all I care!" He slammed the bottle onto the table as he stood up agitatedly. 

"...Sorry. I didn't know." BaiXue's tone softened considerably. "How..?"

He threw a bottle at the wall on his left in his frustration. There were already existing porcelain pieces there so BaiXue guessed that this was quite the normal behaviour for him. "My family. They took them hostage when I was still young and weak against a whole mob... I could do nothing except be restrained... and watched them be taken away..."

BaiXue slowly sat down on the chair beside him. "... So... You're all alone too. Like me..." 

"... For a long while, I was. Then, I wasn't. I grew desperate and despondent when I couldn't find out where they were keeping my family. I can't remember it well anymore. But there was a girl." 

His tone became incredibly soft and he sat back down. "She felt sorry and disagreed with the way I was treated. She stood up for me more than once. Eventually, we fell in love. Things were more tolerable then." 

Suddenly, his breathing got ragged and his eyes turned red. "But when our love got found out, these goddamned villagers... They took her from me too. From right under my nose! She went out to get food... while I was chopping wood... and she never came back..." His face showed guilt, regret, and self-blame. 

"... I don't know what to say..."

"Doesn't matter... Just... go if you've nothing else to say."

"As a fellow person down in the dust... There's no way left but up." BaiXue left him with that sentence.

BaiXue stopped going to the quiet diner and mingled more with the villagers in the more popular diners. She gathered more intel, built connections, and got some hints about the whereabouts of his family through some loose-lipped lechers and braggarts.

With these new information, she reported back to FenFang immediately.