Hei Bai called her creation: ‘Human Face Golem’. Just like the other Heavenly Materials, the Black Enhydros transformed Qi. Instead of creating flames, water, or a strange bluish ice like metal; it created that odd black tar substance. Unlike other Heavenly Materials it was far less useful in its raw state, but it was also much easier to subdue. A Heavenly Material didn’t just create things, it also controlled those manifestations. Someone with a Heavenly Thunder couldn’t just electrify a lake, they could guide it into forming full on lightning bolts. Similarly, producing and controlling magnificent flames were far more impressive than just creating mounds of black tar.

With much experimentation, Hei Bai adapted her Yin Bone techniques to the Black Enhydros. She killed a person and then infused their soul into a mound of black tar. With the soul of a person inside, she found it much easier to manipulate if she sculpted the tar mound into the same body shape and appearance as the dead person. She even carried dozens of sets of clothing to dress up her Human Face Golems for her purposes. With the combined effect of her innate control over the tar along with the Yin Bone Director technique, they could seem very much like normal humans. That is, as long as she only controlled a dozen or so and kept them close to her. She even detailed the best methods she found to disguise them with makeup and clothing to make the illusion as detailed as possible.

One of the other techniques of Life Shadow Consumption even let her read the surface thoughts of the killed person within the last few minutes of their lives. It was far from letting a Human Face Golem replace a person that had just died, but Hei Bai used it to commit quite a few crimes. She even talked about torturing people, and using certain interrogation tactics to fill their minds with the information she was looking for before killing the person to gain it. There were plenty of other terrible tid-bits of knowledge in the journal, but they were mostly in relation to the exclusive techniques for use with Life Shadow Consumption. Others were supplementary to Sight Beyond Death, and also useless for Sage.

Well, if I ever want to raise a cult full of murderers, now I have something to use.

Sage set his sarcasm aside and looked for clues as to the organization that Hei Bai was working for. Unfortunately, the journal was 90% related to cultivation and only rarely did she mention her own personal life and activities. Even so, there were still a few clues that he could pick out. Most notably, the times when she acquired new techniques. She usually spoke of their origins, probably to be thorough, but for Sage it was a good trail to follow. Specifically, he could pick out the ones that she called ‘earned’. Many others were ‘plundered’, ‘looted’, or ‘stolen’. He made a list of all the techniques she ‘earned’ and referenced those dates.

With the dates as a guide, he learned she’d only started earning techniques within the last five years or so. That gave him a clue to the other documents in her storage ring. All those things which were newer than five years old would have been created while she was part of that organization. It didn’t rule out anything older, but it did add weight to the newer ones. When he was finished with the journal he did another check based on that new clue. Sage wasn’t an expert on the age of documents, but he did have the Timeless Eyes.

The right eye can see the future, the left can look into the past. With both eyes together, the third level of the Timeless Eye technique can be used. ‘Principle Vision’ was not used to assist combat like Foresight, or to be a detective like Hindsight. Instead, it could see to the core of something. Seeing both where something has been, and where its going at the same time gave immense insight into their essence. It was truly valuable to get a glimpse as something’s core, and truly view their crux. It was an extremely powerful technique for a Seal Master. Sage had only barely scratched the surface of this technique, and it took him a few minutes to perform it at only the most basic of levels.

Fortunately, he wasn’t aiming to learn the crux of these documents, he merely needed to take a little glimpse and see how long they’d been in existence. Principle Vision showed him a sort of cloud of thousands of tiny glowing motes. If he focused his consciousness on any of those little motes of light, he could view a sort of small viewscreen that played back an important event. Depending on the color of those motes of light, he could tell how far into the past or into the future those events were. It was something like photo mosaic art, where a picture was created using other pictures as individual pixels, except in this case the ‘pixels’ were moving memories and the overall picture was the object or creature that Principle Vision was focused on.

It took him a few minutes to carefully form the Timeless Eye technique in both eyes at the same time. Eventually, he got it to work and then carefully started checking each of the documents. He didn’t need to decipher any cruxes, so he didn’t have to focus on any of the motes of light. Instead, he only focused on the colors of light. Picking out those that were from the correct neighborhood he was looking for. It strained his eyes to check so many documents, but he finally found a clue before ending the technique.

Within Hei Bai’s desk, there was a section where most of the documents were created within the last five years. It was likely the place where she put all her work related, or at least the most recent and important documents. From the way her Storage Ring was laid out, Hei Bai seemed to be quite organized and it was quite likely she would keep her desk organized as well. Sage focused his search on all the bamboo slips, jade tablets, books, and the letters in that section of the desk. He especially paid attention to any of the works in that same section that weren’t newer than five years old. If she kept any older works in that same section they might have been given to her by the organization she worked for.

After messing around for far too long, Sage eventually gave up. He had a small stack of books that he was trying to use as a key code to decipher the other documents, but he wasn’t any sort of code breaker.

Things just aren’t nearly as easy as they are in mystery games.

Having failed as an amateur sleuth, he returned to doing an inventory of Hei Bai’s possessions. It took a few days, but he eventually examined, sorted and stored it all in the Universe Ring. He retained the placement of all her documents, miscellaneous items, and clothing racks, but all the precious resources and materials were sorted and stored with his other goods. Even if he was going to be a hoarder, he wasn’t going to keep a disorganized warehouse. If you can’t find something, it would be as good as having lost it.

After the sorting was done, Sage did some cultivating. He had endless things that he still wanted to research, but it was far more important to keep improving his own strength. He spent a few hours a day studying the mysteries of the world to work on building his rank. Another few hours were spent on physical training. He had a powerful beast body, so it would be a waste not to use it. The rest of the day he’d use on research, spending some time studying with King and Ruanfu, and some on building gadgets.

Or at least that was his goal. He actually only had a few days to spend on training before the Chameleon Mantis he was using as transportation had made its way to the capital of 10,000 Wave Province. The Clan in charge of the province was actually the Chong Clan, one which the Lang Clan had been a branch of. Superficially, it meant he had a relationship with the ruling clan of the province. In actual practice, he’d only ever actually spoke with one member of the Chong Clan. He’d met Chong Xiezi during the Thunder Mountain Bridge tournament, and had helped her with that Fu Clan member. Afterwards, it had led to him being chased down and killed. Getting killed for providing them assistance might garner him some favor from the Chong Clan, but it also might just make them eager to learn how he survived. Given that he was supposed to be dead, Sage chose not to step into those troubled waters at the moment.

Instead, he merely traveled to ‘Golden Cricket Cove’. The capital of 10,000 Wave Province, and also the home of the Chong Clan.