The tiger ran fast, even with Jin riding him, but Jin remembered well that the sage's shack was several hours journey away on foot, and the further away they got from the clearing, the more magical beasts were visible. The ones closest to Jin's former home had all rushed to be a part of the gruesome feast that was now taking place there, but deeper into the forest were creatures who would never have made it in time to participate, and who were carrying on their lives as if nothing in the world had changed.

The sun was beginning to set now, too, and while it was already fairly dark in the forest, with the tall, ancient trees blocking out the light, the shards of hazy sunshine that shot down through the canopy of leaves were becoming duller. This didn't matter at all to the tiger, and only a little to Jin; one of the benefits of that terrible procedure on his twelfth birthday to reforge his mind was a keenness to his senses that rivaled a beast's, and he could see very well in low light. What it did mean, though, were that the kinds of creatures they were passing were changing, and the behaviors of the animals were different, too.

Huge moths with a faintly glowing gray dust on their wings began to settle on the tree trunks, where before they had been flapping their wings high above where the tiger trod. In the air, leathery-winged, bat type creatures took their place, making screeching cries that set Jin's nerves on edge. The floor, caked deep with pine needles, rustled with the sounds of unseen rodents and serpents making their way to their dens, and the yapping of foxes could sometimes be heard in the distance.

None of these things needed to trouble Jin, for these monsters were no match, even for a less talented martial artist than he, and especially not when he was being escorted by a tiger. However, his concerns were not about the creatures he could hear and see, but rather the ones he couldn't. He'd just watched strong masters being torn apart by gorillas, and attacked mercilessly by wolves and hawks, all denizens of this forest, and while the tiger was surely among the strongest beasts found here, Jin knew enough about magical beasts to know that he was not unmatched. That is not to speak of other tigers, who would surely not take well to seeing one of their kind bearing a human - a tasty human cultivator, no less - to safety.

But when the tiger suddenly dug his four great paws into the ground to halt himself, the fur beneath Jin's fingers palpably bristling, it was not because a gorilla or direwolf had decided to challenge their progress to the sage's shack. Jin couldn't see what it was, yet, and it was possible the tiger couldn't either, but both were aware of the powerful fighting aura, potent with killing intent, that they'd brushed up against.

Jin wished he was able to bring his life energy outside of his body and use it to create a barrier, like Master Xinya could do, or even a weapon, like the soldiers she'd been fighting, but that was beyond his cultivation level, and also beyond the capabilities of the tiger. Both of them were still at stages of what was known in the cultivation world as corporeal conditioning. Jin had trained hard, and had also been given alchemical pills regularly by Xinya which helped him to progress through the levels of corporeal conditioning rapidly, and he was only a few stages from the peak of this part of his evolution. Paired with the forging his body and mind had gone through with the sage's elixirs, Jin had incredible resilience, flexibility and strength, as well as reflexes and sensory perception. He had also studied cultivation techniques that allowed him to perform complex attacks that could cause fatal damage, or even seal another martial artist's abilities, by hitting the pressure points and destroying the flow of their life energy. But prodigious as he was as a fighter, he could not go beyond what one man could do with one body. He couldn't hurt someone without contact, or create things out of his own energy and will. He couldn't perform, or defend against, spiritual attacks. He still had both feet in the realm of humanity, even if he did have a body as strong as a sword. And there were many people and things in the world that he could not yet fight.

"Do you know what it is that we can feel, here?" he whispered to the tiger.

"I fear that I do. This is not man, nor beast, but the aura of a goblin spirit."

"I don't know what that is... Is it a ghost of some kind?" Jin asked, frowning in concern.

"I have heard tell that they can appear in this part of the forest, but have never seen one before. They are forged from the life energy of the trees and the plants, but given their intent by the sorrows of suffering humans as they die."

"Can't we take another route to the house? Or... just not go there at all? I'm happy to just leave the forest without going there, you know, if it's a problem..."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Jin knew he really should do as Master Xinya would have made him, and that whatever the benefits of his next procedure with the sage would be would surely be incredible, but it wouldn't have taken a huge obstacle to persuade him to skip it and take his chances outside the forest without completing that part of his training.

"There is no other route, because it is most likely that the goblin spirits are created here because it's close to the house... We beasts know about that place. We don't go near, because it is a place where beasts can meet their end. We know that humans can meet their ends there too. Their suffering gives life to the goblin spirits. But as for not taking you there, and leaving the forest instead, your master made me swear to deliver you there, and to force you to enter, if I had to, and only then will I be free of my debts. I am sure you know better than I do why it would be important to her, but probably neither of us truly know that woman's real goals."

Jin listened, and tried to think. He didn't know about goblin spirits specifically, but he did know that any kind of ghost or demon would be a tough opponent, even for very strong cultivators at the corporeal conditioning levels, like himself and the tiger. There was no way to make the tiger forget about taking him to the sage's house without fighting him, and he definitely didn't want to do that. Not only would it be the kind of fight where even if he won, he'd sustain terrible injuries, because he had to fight hand to hand, and the tiger possessed colossal size as well as fangs and claws, but also, he didn't want to hurt or kill the tiger. He felt like the only thing left connecting Jin to Master Xinya. They'd have to get through this part of the forest, then, and that could mean getting into a fight with the thing creating this stifling aura.

"The weapon!" he said, his voice still a whisper.

"Weapon? If you have a good weapon, now would be the time to unsheath it, I would say," the tiger replied.

"I don't know, but I have my master's Interspatial Ring, and those men, they were after a special weapon of some kind. If she really was hiding it for that Wuying Shi guy, then it will be in here. Even if it's not, there's going to be something among her stuff that can help us here, I'm sure of it. She wanted us to come here that badly, and she'd know we can't protect ourselves the way she protected me when we went there before. She will have thought of this, I know it!"

The tiger did not share Jin's admiration of Master Xinya, who had tricked him into owing her three life debts. He made a skeptical grumbling noise, but stayed poised to move while Jin used the Interspatial Ring and searched its contents.

He'd never used the ring before, but the process of accessing its contents was intuitive to him as someone experienced in meditation. He was able to mentally interact with the space inside the ring, and explore it. With time, he'd be able to learn his way around the ordered collection of stuff inside, and be able to bring out whatever he needed in an instant. But time was not something he had right now, and Master Xinya had, it seemed, accrued a lot of stuff in her life that she felt valuable enough to hide here. He needed to find a weapon, so he ignored the piles of cubic crystals - he was aware they were a currency, but not aware of just how wealthy Xinya's hoard had made him, having never been outside of the forest to spend anything - and the piles of books containing cultivation techniques, and the various other strange items he had never seen before. He focused only on what must have been Xinya's arsenal.

There were plenty of regular, non-magical weapons in here, many of which he had seen or trained with before. There was also a long staff which he knew Xinya was very proficient with, which had sapphires set at either end, and dark, gunmetal gray dragons embossed up and down its length. This staff was a spiritual-grade weapon, a tier higher than a magical weapon, and something that someone at the corporeal conditioning level like Jin would not be able to harness the full power of. He could use it, but only to perform physical martial attacks - none of its other features would work for him. There were also a pair of butterfly swords which Jin had seen Xinya use before, and these were magical tier weapons.

There was nothing in here, though, that he hadn't already seen, or which would be more powerful than the average master at Xinya's level would possess. Unless something was hidden deeper within the ring, or he was missing something, the secret weapon of Wuying Shi wasn't there.

"Quick, boy, I see it there between the trees," the tiger urged, and Jin felt its body tense further beneath him, as if it was winding up to pounce.

He knew he had to get off of the tiger so that both of them could fight unimpeded, and that the time for choosing a weapon was over.

The staff and the butterfly swords would have a big strength difference between them in a master's hands, but for someone at the corporeal conditioning level who could just use them as what they were, it came down to whether he wanted to fight with blades or with the range of the staff. Both had their merits, but he opted for the swords. They were exceptionally sharp, and that may just give him the chance to land a fight-ending strike quickly, even if it did mean he was giving up the superior agility and reach he'd have with the staff.

In one solid movement, he leaped from the tiger's back to land on his feet beside the beast in a fighting stance, the two short, single edged weapons materializing in his hands.

His eyes searched the space between the trees in the darkness, and he finally saw what the tiger had seen - the goblin spirit, crouching its deformed body, ready to launch itself forward in attack.