Jin had fought humans before - strong ones, at that, men high in the stages of corporeal conditioning, who had been found guilty of some crime against the Shi clan and sent to Master Xinya to be used as training dummies for her disciple as part of their sentence. He'd been told that these were bad men, that these were people who could be hurt or even killed in his training, and it wouldn't matter - that his progress was more important than their lives. He had never killed one, however, and on a few occasions, he had slipped healing pills meant for himself to men who he had injured more than he felt comfortable with.
It wasn't that he hadn't been willing to take lives, or that the idea of doing so had been especially distasteful to him. Master Xinya had told him that all martial artists who reached their pinnacles would inevitably have to have fights along the way that would result in one participant dying. It was the fact that he didn't really know what these men had done, or even what made the Shi clan special enough to judge them, that made him stay his hand. If he had killed them, it would just have been to further his own training, not for justice, or because the men had willingly entered into combat with him. He had discovered too, that he could get better training by exercising some restraint, and letting the men fight to their own true potential, rather than just ending the fight himself with a killing blow at the first chance he got. By letting them fight him in relative safety, they would have the chance to show him their special cultivation techniques, and give him different attacks to try to discover ways to handle. He had been happy with this.
He had fought beasts, too. He had never fought the tiger, though he had watched Master Xinya do so in an attempt to teach him another important lesson - an incident which he suspected was one of the reasons for the strange dynamic between the beast and his master. He had, however, hunted creatures in the areas close to his home as training, and had also had trapped beasts brought to the training area in the clearing for him to practice his techniques against. Those, he had killed, but only because they were not of the same intelligence level as the tiger, and so could not be reasoned with. They didn't know why they were fighting, but once a fight had begun, the only way to end it was to incapacitate them.
What Jin had never fought, though, were enemies of other kinds. Ghosts, spiritual beings, demons - all of these things lived in the world, as much as it could be said that these things lived - and in more types and subspecies than even the most learned sage knew of. However, encounters with them for training purposes were difficult to orchestrate, and Master Xinya had forbidden him from seeking out real combat experience in truly dangerous situations until he was 18. He would be ready then, she had told him, ready to go out into the world and begin truly perfecting himself as a martial artist. He'd be at the stage of his training where life or death situations would be required for him to progress further, and learn more.
He had taken this to mean that whatever would be done to him on the third trip to the sage's house would be required for him to be able to face creatures different to human cultivators and magical beasts. Yet here he was, having to face a goblin spirit before that rite of passage could be completed. He could rely only on theoretical knowledge about fighting spiritual creatures, and the fact that he had the tiger by his side.
Jin had never seen anything as ugly as the goblin spirit, outside of books. Even the least aesthetically pleasing beasts in the forest, like the tarantulas and the hairless, wrinkled mole rats, at least gave the sense that they were supposed to be that way, that it served some natural purpose. The goblin spirit looked like something that shouldn't be - a twisted and degenerate parody of a humanoid form, with grayish-yellow skin, and patches of matted, wiry hair sprouting out between wrinkles of excess flesh that hung from its hunched, bow-legged skeletal shape.
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Its face was worse still, though it was difficult to fully appreciate every crag and fleshy hole in its flapping cheeks in the dim, failing twilight. Malformed, oversized teeth like tusks protruded from its lower jaw, and its eyes were set too far apart, one bulging and bulbous, the other deep set with a sagging lower lid revealing a pallid, grey-red membrane under which spindly blood vessels throbbed.
It remained crouched, seeming to be making the choice about which of the two was the most interesting to attack. Its intent felt like pure malice. It did not give off the energies of a creature that was ready to fight because it wanted to defend itself, or because it was hungry, or even because it was enraged. It seemed to be looking at Jin and the tiger without fear or curiosity, seeing them only as potential playthings it could hurt, until that ceased to be satisfying, and then kill. This unsettled Jin more than anything else about the thing in front of him. He had never encountered a creature that would see a cultivator and a tiger as nothing but its next victims. Was the goblin spirit really so strong it could genuinely disregard them as a threat, or was this just its nature? Did something like this, something formed from the life of the forest and the suffering of the dead, simply not fear death, or losing, and think only of what harm it could do, caring not of the risk to itself?
As Jin tensely observed the creature, trying to fathom out why its intent felt so unlike anything else he had sensed before, whether from weak or strong, man or beast, the tiger decided he had had enough of waiting to see what the goblin spirit would do, and sprang forward with a deafening roar.
Jin followed in the tiger's wake, expecting the beast to try to pin down the goblin spirit with a leap, and wanting to be ready to move in and decapitate it with his twin swords if that happened. Ending the fight quickly by working together, using the tiger's weight and strength and Jin's speed and blades seemed like the best strategy they had against a creature whose attacking style and abilities were unknown.
The goblin spirit simply stood with an unnerving grin on it's face until the tiger was within a good distance to leap forward. This alone was worrying - it was as though it knew something that the boy and the beast did not, and that this was the way its enemies always behaved. Jin sensed that something was wrong and diverted his direction, leaping to the side and dashing at an angle as though to try to flank the goblin spirit, rather than following the tiger in a head on attack. His sense that something was awry was quickly proven correct as, while the tiger was is mid-air, jumping with teeth bared and the long, gleaming claws on his front paws poised to tear at the goblin spirit, the strange creature vanished.
The tiger's momentum caused him to crash forwards through the empty space where the goblin spirit had been, while Jin stopped moving easily to pivot and look for where it might have materialized. Jin knew that some cultivators, once they had surpassed the corporeal conditioning levels, could use their life energy to transport themselves around a battlefield with certain special cultivation techniques, and so he was expecting that like them, the goblin spirit had moved instantly, rather than truly disappearing. The strong, malevolent aura that spread out from it was still just as potent, so it definitely wasn't gone. It definitely wasn't safe to leave.
Before he had time to cry out to warn the tiger, a whooshing, gray blur descended from a tree high above, and the goblin spirit landed with a painful sounding thud on the back of the tiger, who roared with what Jin supposed was surprise and anger. But the goblin spirit had its bony fingers pressing into the tiger's neck, and the roar became anguished and high, as though the tiger was in excruciating pain.
Jin didn't stay still to try to figure out what was happening to his companion. He kicked off of the tree and dashed at the goblin spirit, jumping to the right height and making a wide slash with one of his swords that should rightly have taken the ugly head of the creature off of its jowly neck. But the butterfly sword cut through the air with no resistance. The goblin spirit had vanished once again.