Early the next morning, Yuki left the cave after making Nana promise multiple times that she would not leave the cave while she was gone. Only then did she begin her ascent up the cliff. Luckily for her, the cliff itself was not very smooth and had many foot and hand holds. It helped that she was one to never wear boots of any kind. She could easily use her toes to grip the rocks as she slowly made her way up to the first ledge. 

After almost ten minutes of climbing, she finally reached her destination. But what she saw was a bit… “How am I supposed to know which way is which when everything looks the same!?” 

Yuki frowned as she sat down on the ledge and looked left and right. She really could not make heads or tails of her direction. It was not like this was earth, and she could find the northern star or go by which way the sun rose and fell. For all she knew, the sun and moon could rise south to north. 

With no way to really tell, she could only give up. “Fine! I will just live with Nana out here in the damn forest, growing stronger slowly.” Yuki was feeling upset.  She wanted to kick the entire world for working against her. She had just joined a sect, and now she was being forced to live in a forest.

Yuki sighed as she got up and began climbing back down. She entered back in the cave, still feeling down, as she plopped her butt down next to Nana and leaned against her. “We will be stuck here unless we can figure out which direction is which.”

“We are that deep?” Nana couldn’t help but frown. She did not realize they had traveled so deep into the forest.  “Then what do you think we should do?”

“Nothing we really can do at this time. If we are near the center of the forest, it would be suicide to leave the cave more than we had to. Even I am not sure I would be able to get out of here alive if I was alone. It might be different if we knew the direction the sect was in, but we currently do not. So, for now, we will just concentrate on cultivating. I have enough food to last the two of us for about two years. The same with water.” Yuki had saved up a lot of everything in her space, so she was not worried about a long term stay. She just hoped she could grow strong enough to escape before did run out of food.

 Nana did not know what to make of this as she knew that the water Yuki was talking about was for drinking. Or at least she thought since Yuki continued: “We can also use that water to wipe our bodies. I plan to build a few things to collect rainwater as well to replenish our stock. If we set up some traps, we can also secure more food if we are lucky to get dumb demonic beasts to die within them.”

“Then we should be set for a while then.” Nana was glad she could at least wipe herself clean for the time being. 

“When it gets dark tonight, I will help you wipe yourself off since you can not make too many movements. I will have to ask you to do my back, though.”  Yuki did have one piece of cloth she had saved for washing herself back when she was in the forest. So she did have something they could use for this task. Sadly she did not always have a chance to get clean, though, which resulted in the appearance she had when she was at the entrance test.

While Yuki and Nana were going over their ideas of what they should do from now on, Elder Nishikawa had flown down the river deeper into the forest. She had quickly arrived at a spot near the river bank that had two things that caught her eye. Spots of blood and two sets of footprints. “This was definitely them. They moved further into the forest. These girls are definitely alive. They have to be!” 

She continued forward, looking for more signs of their travels. She really had to thank the heavens that they were on her side. Not a cloud in sight, which meant no rain for quite a while. After traveling for most of the day, she finally came to a certain spot. She looked down from a tree to see a young girl collecting wood. Elder Nishikawa almost cried out in happiness, but she decided to hold it in for the time being. 

The demonic beast wave did not enter the outer ring. Which meant whatever caused it, had settled down before they could. The training was still going on, so although she wanted to find out how the girls were doing, she decided to just watch over them for the time being. She was happy to see that Nana was also okay. She saw Nana come to the cave entrance once and say a few things to Yuki before turning around and walking away. Yuki then moved the stone to close the door. 

Yuki knew Elder Nishikawa was here. She was very happy that She did not have to worry about finding her way back to the sect. She could barely smell Elder Nishikawa’s scent, but Nana picked up on it right away. This was why Nana got up to go to the door. 

She understood that if Elder Nishikawa was not exposing herself, then that meant that the sect was still undergoing their training. She did not know how she should feel about that, but she was happy that the one she accepted as her master had actually come and looked for her and Nana. It made her see Elder Nishikawa in a new light.