Just as the tiger had said, there was something undignified about having Jin on his back. Jin didn't really care, at this point - having to depend upon the great beast for safety was something he'd resigned himself to for now, and, well, riding atop a giant tiger would have actually made him feel quite powerful, if he had believed for a moment that he was the one in command. The tiger clearly felt embarrassed and degraded at being ridden by a cultivator however, and the embarrassment spread into Jin almost by osmosis.

The tiger's muscular form, hardened by his own innate ability to cultivate chi - much like a human's, though achieved without some of the steps - felt dependable beneath Jin as it strode past the carnage of the clearing, and the softness of the lustrous orange-and-black fur he held onto by lacing his fingers through it was almost a comfort. It was still daylight, and springtime, but Jin felt cold in his robes, as though there was a chill inside of his bones that couldn't be removed by wrapping up the outside of his body. The heat from the living animal was reassuring against him.

Still though, the sense that the tiger's pride was being wounded with every second it carried him, made Jin feel that he shouldn't try to make conversation. There were things he wanted to ask the tiger, and indeed, it was a rarity to meet a magical beast that had ascended to the level of using human language, but chattering away like a normal traveling companion would be crass. There would be time, he hoped, after they reached the dreaded house, and the tiger was no longer acting out of a debt, when they may perhaps be able to discuss the events that had just transpired on more even footing.

The house. Jin would probably have been more upset at this being his destination if it weren't for the fact that he had been expecting to have to go there again sometime in the near future anyway. He would turn 18 soon - at least, by Xinya's best guess of when he had been born, given she supposedly found him when he was already a few months old - and there was still one more trip to the sage left to complete his 'special training'. The two previous visits had been on his sixth, and his twelfth birthdays, and he was smart enough to figure out that pattern. His eighteenth had no doubt been the next birthday his master had planned to mark with such a gift, and now she was gone, that part of his fate hadn't apparently changed.

His sixth birthday was one of his earliest memories, at least in the sense that while he could remember hazy fragments of events that had happened before that, he couldn't remember how it had felt to be him, before that procedure. Master Xinya had been kinder than usual to him that day, and he had assumed it was merely because it was the day when they celebrated him getting a year older, perhaps with some special food or even a gift, and perhaps with a less arduous training schedule for him to withstand. Now, when he looked back, he knew that she was being kinder because she could only imagine how painful the day was going to be for him, and that there was really no way to explain to a child so young that what he was about to endure was actually a great blessing, which would make him stronger and better for the rest of his life. Even longer than that, should he reach the immortal realms.

The tiger bounded on through the shade of the forest unhindered, as Jin fought not to remember the pain.

That first time, he had been seated in a chair, and told only to swallow the elixir that the elderly, odd smelling man in his curious shack full of bizarre looking objects gave him. Everything in that room had seemed to glint with a kind of misintent - a type of magic that felt at odds with the beautiful blue gleam of his master's life energy. And yet, she had been there with him, telling him what he needed to do, taking out cubic crystals to pay the man. She hadn't seemed disturbed by the place at all. He'd been sure it would be fine.

He didn't remember how the elixir had smelled or even how it had tasted on his tongue. He had trusted Master Xinya that it was just a medicine to make him stronger, something that a young boy needed. Something that would help him train better. Medicine he had known as a child was never that pleasant, unless it was a healing pill to refresh him after a training injury, and so he hadn't been worried enough by the sour aroma or the burn in his mouth to fully commit it to memory. What it felt like when it hit his insides was another matter. That, he would never forget.

It started as a corrosive burn that felt as if it was dissolving the very structures of every blood vessel in his body. He'd been vaguely aware that someone was strapping him to the chair as he began to scream and convulse, though he would never be able to say if it had been the sage, or the cool hands of his master. Everything in the room around him had become irrelevant as his body struggled against the agony of transformation. Next came the feeling of every muscle, from the big, powerful ones in his legs through to the tiny ones that moved his eyes and flared his nostrils, heating up to an unbearable temperature. This didn't replace the acidic burn in his veins and capillaries, but added itself on top of it.

"Master the pain by forgetting yourself. There is more to come," a voice had said. It might have been Master Xinya, or even the sage, though it didn't sound like either. It might well have been the hallucination of his young mind, being undone by the pain, and fighting for a way to save himself. He had tried his hardest to do what it said.

As Master Xinya's sole disciple, he had been taught to meditate even at this very young age, to be able to remain focused on his own intentions and seek out insights even when all around him was uncomfortable. This was how a cultivator grew, he was told. But this wasn't a case of staying calm and focused while insects and worms crawled all over him - a basic form of mental training he'd practiced before - or while birds screeched in the skies on their annual migration, or while Master Xinya appeared to randomly slap him on the side of the head. This was more like trying to forget that he had nerves and pain receptors while he bathed in liquid magma. No training he'd done came close.

The battle between his will to separate himself from what his body was experiencing, and the intense, agonizing pain, was one that went on for what had seemed like an endless amount of time, as the excruciating, burning feeling began to permeate next his organs, one by one, each adding a new note to the discordant orchestra of unbearable sensations. Unconsciousness would have been a blessing, but it did not come - it seemed that the elixir required its host to be aware of its actions upon the body. Eventually, he had found that he could pretend, in his mind, that his real, inner self was unconnected to the physical form being ravaged by burning, that it could be somewhere else, and return when the ordeal was complete. He had never been sure, when he'd thought back on this state of mind over the years that followed, whether this had been what the voice had meant, but it did get him through it. In time he became aware of his body cooling down. A strange sensation, almost like things that had been white hot, liquid metal inside of him were solidifying. The pain de-escalated quite rapidly, in fact, and the young Jin tentatively allowed himself to mentally inhabit his body again fully, to experience what was happening. After a spell, he even opened his eyes.

He'd been surprised to find that the room was full of very thick steam, but other than that, Xinya was standing just where she'd been when he'd swallowed the elixir. The look on her face had been one of sympathy, and yet, there was something else there. Curiosity, perhaps? Or was it more like triumph? Jin could remember it plainly though, as seeing her was what had brought him completely back into the moment, and what a strange moment it was.

Everything about him felt different. He flexed his fingers and toes in wonder, noticing how much stronger and more agile even they felt, and then he flexed the muscles in his arms and chest, and found that in doing so he was able to tear through the strange feeling, elastic material that had been used to tie him to the chair. He had expected to feel weak and in need of a long recovery time after what had happened to him, whatever it had been, but now he felt so strong and good that he almost questioned whether it had happened at all. His memory bore the injury of the ordeal, but his body certainly did not.

"Come, come on, it is done now, there is no reason for us to stay here any longer," Master Xinya had said, and she'd pulled some fresh robes for Jin out of her Interspatial Ring.

Dumbfounded, he'd realized that yes, he had been wearing clothing when he'd taken the elixir, and now he was naked, but there was a pile of ash around the chair and scorch marks on the ground that hadn't been there before. He wondered if the sensations he'd had hadn't just felt like heat and burning, but had actually been a fire, that had burned his clothes to cinders. He dressed hurriedly, eager to get away from the strange room. The sage was nowhere to be seen.

"What happened to me, Master?" he had asked, as they'd walked through the forest, with a field of Xinya's life energy all around them to protect them from the beasts.

"Your body has been transformed. It is a great blessing. You were just a boy, but now you are as strong as a sword. I know it hurt, but you will soon understand that all power comes at a cost like that."

"Did they do that to you, too, when you were a kid?" he'd asked her. Master Xinya was the strongest person he had ever seen, and so surely, if there were painful ways to be strong, she'd have done them all.

"No. It is something new, and only for you. You will be much stronger than me, with time."

"Why? Why do I get a new way to be strong?"

"Because you'll need it."

That had been the only answer she would ever give, and it was just as unsatisfying when she said it again, after the procedure on his twelfth birthday to strengthen his mind - a process that had been just as horrible to endure as the one for his body. It was just as unsatisfying to remember those words now, in fact, as he rode a tiger on towards whatever was awaiting him on his third visit to the sage's house.