Jin had learned how to ride horses before, using animals that came along with the prisoners he was given to train with. Prisoners, however, were not usually transported on the back of the Shi clan's precious bolthoofs, and so Jin had never experienced the kind of speed and power he was experiencing now, as the golden horse dashed through the forest, leaving the sage's house far behind.

Jiang Deng had offered to let Jin rest at his house while he recovered from the soul reforging, but the truth was, Jin really didn't feel like he needed it. Just like with the body and mind reforging, once he had fully awakened to normal reality again, he'd felt better than ever. He didn't feel the same obvious changes he'd had those times. When his body had been reforged, he'd noticed right away how much stronger, harder and more resilient he was, and when his mind had been reforged, he'd instantly been aware that his intellect could glean more information from his senses than it could before. Then there had been the improvements he had noticed while living as his reforged self for a while, such as having almost impossibly quick reflexes, and a sharper memory. With his soul, however, he didn't awaken feeling like he'd been upgraded in some way that could be clearly quantified. Instead, he just felt more at peace with things, and as though he had a new, strange trust that he could call upon the dragon, whatever it was, and that he'd know when the time was right to do so. Soul violence didn't frighten him anymore. How could he be afraid of some malevolent little goblin attacking his soul, when he knew the fire and the dragon were inside, burning with limitless power and strength? He was sure that the next time he encountered a creature like that, things would be different.

Seeing as he felt no need to stay, he'd asked Jiang for the information he needed to ride to the Imperial Capital, paid him, and left on the bolthoof horse. He had come to like the sage, but he knew that the journey he needed to go on was vast in scope, and the idea of resting in the forest when he could be pressing ahead to whatever awaited him at the Boundless Sun sect felt wrong. He hoped he would meet the sage again, in fact, he hoped that one day, he would be able to count himself among the trusted people who could go to Jiang Deng in a life or death emergency. Still, he felt it inappropriate to ask for such a privilege now, and decided it was probably one of those things that had to be offered, rather than requested.

The sun was beginning to rise by the time he'd set off, and so it was in the chill, dim spring dawn that he experienced what would be his last moments in the forest where he'd spent his whole life. The beasts were of no real concern while he was riding the bolthoof - there was no creature so fast in this region, and the smaller insects, snakes and birds that may have been able to harm him by latching onto him or the horse all fled from the sound of its thundering hoofbeats.

He couldn't help but smile to himself as the trees began to thin out, and he realized he'd soon be seeing what some other landscape looked like. It had been the most eventful day and night of his life, and he had lost so much, but he couldn't help but feel inspired by the idea that his real life was just beginning, that childhood was over, that having someone else deciding what he learned and where he could travel was over. He would mourn for his master for years, but this moment was not about her death, but about his rebirth.

It had taken less than an hour to cover what Jiang Deng's map had said was over 100 miles of forest, and the sun was low in the sky when the trees finished, and Jin was able to see for the first time that the Dragon Valley region was indeed between two vast mountain ranges. The mountains had been there forever, in the distance, and yet, he'd never seen them before, the trees of the forest creating a barrier between the world he knew and the world that was really there. It almost took his breath away to see them reaching up, their peaks shrouded in the misty haze of a clear morning. He didn't think he'd ever seen so much light before, either. The clearing he'd lived in with Xinya was big enough to grant him a patch of blue, or gray, or black to look up at, but he'd never been surrounded by unimpeded daylight like this before. The sun had barely even risen, and he wondered just what it was going to be like to be out here in the middle of the day, with all this light and space.

The horse was still running at its fastest, and yet even at this speed the mountains were so big, and so dominant on either side of him that he had the chance to look at them clearly as he flew onward. Jiang had said that the horse would be able to keep up this speed for two hours, before needing a rest and some food, and he'd helped him find a town on the map at around the right distance where he'd be able to arrange for both. No idea appealed to Jin more than that of another hour of this exhilarating ride through these beautiful new surroundings.

But suddenly, something was wrong with the horse. It was as though her hooves had snagged on something for a moment, a sensation like something snapping as she passed. Then, a terrifying, loud noise, an explosion of some kind, and Jin found himself hanging on carefully while she reared up in panic, spooked by the sound. They were surrounded by a thick, gray smoke that was hard to breathe in - Jin's slow breathing meant that this wasn't a problem for him, but the bolthoof was panicking even more, bucking wildly and making frightened sounds. Jin was only lucky that his unusual agility and strength meant that it wasn't too much of a struggle to stay in the saddle.

Something was pressing against his body in places now, and he realized that a kind of net had been thrown over him and his horse. There were men talking animatedly with an accent he had never heard before, and he focused to be able to hear them over the horse's frenzied whinnies.

"Told you it was worth hanging around to see if there were any more of them! It's not every day big bags of gold on four legs just come running out of the forest!" one man said.

"The trap worked great, poor beast's going crazy though!"

"Wait for the smoke to clear, it'll soon calm down, especially when we show it its friends."

"I'm keeping this one. It was my idea to stay behind to see if another came, and I've taken a shine to them now I've seen them properly. We'll make enough off the other four - this one's mine."

"Er, guys... this one... seems it's actually got a rider on it."

It did. And the rider did not look happy.