The two of them locked eyes for a long time before either of them said anything. Then the Orca slowly circled around Sage and stopped in front of him, “There’s still something unusual about you, but I can’t pinpoint what it is. You were far too calm in front of the Killer Crew, and you said something weird. Do you have the guts to say it again? Was I right about you, or are you just all talk?”

Sage had previously learned that the gang of Killer Whales had done nothing against the rules of the Great Pod by attacking him. Just like the other cities of the Depths they only banned combat while within the city. There was nothing preventing their citizens from turning into complete pirates and killers whenever they were not in the city itself. He had to admit he was impressed by the intuition of this Pirate Captain and it now made sense why the Killer Crew was so fearsome. If their leader always had this sort of preternatural intuition then it would definitely give them a huge boost to survivability. It seemed much like having a naturally lucky person around to make decisions. If you couldn’t have a great commander, the next best choice would be a lucky one.

“I asked if you wished to be the rulers of the sea. I was going to offer your crew an opportunity. I have a sea in my territory and it is filled with mindless beasts. I’ve been collecting Demonic Fish to release there to improve it, but I could use some smart and powerful subordinates to take over.”

He chose to clarify his prior intentions with a bit of obfuscation. It was in fact his territory, so if the Orca had some method to detect lies then it would still be true, but he didn’t have to reveal the secret of where the territory he was referring to was actually located. Sage was able to repeat his earlier pitch without being disrupted this time and he’d also been careful not to give away any of his secrets in the process.

The Pirate Captain of the Killer Crew stared at him for a while. Sage had no idea what he was doing, but it felt like something else was going on. After a few moments the Orca just shook its huge head from side to side, “Your opportunity is not for me.”

Without any further explanation, the scar faced whale turned and swam away leisurely. The Pirate Captain and a couple more Orcas that were its subordinates left without any further conversation. Sage wondered how it must be to live life as that captain. How did he balance intuition and reason? Did he use his reason and experience normally and then his intuition kicked in as a sort of veto? Or was he always feeling a certain level of intuition about things? Was it a gut feeling or something more direct and detailed?

Sage put aside these idle thoughts and moved on, spending the next few days researching the different schools of cultivation in the Great Pod. He didn’t have much experience with sound-based methods of cultivation and Qi Techniques so this was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Most of the schools had strict requirements of entrance, but one of them was far more lax. It cared only about tuition. As long as you could pay enough, you could join up and learn their teachings. More remarkably, it wasn’t known as the weakest either, but actually fell somewhere in the middle. That might be because they were actually the most popular, but either way it was an opportunity for Sage to experience their training.

The School of the Golden Song, was very popular among the common populace. Most of the people of the Great Pod had trained there at one point or another, not only to gain a basic cultivation technique, but also so they could learn how to use their Spirit Power to manipulate objects. Without any hands, there were many things that were inconvenient for them to do. If they stayed only in the Great Pod then it wasn’t a big deal, but because of their exposure to human cultivators they had acquired desires that they wouldn’t have had before. The culture of the Great Pod had changed and so it was almost a requirement for them all to awaken the ability to move things with their minds and the School of the Golden Song was the simplest way to gain the ability. While parents could attempt to teach their children, the School of the Golden Song had specialized methods and devices that made it extremely smooth and simple to do.

Over time, the School of the Golden Song had a reputation much like the schools on Earth, children were expected to attend to learn certain things and then later they could go on to join other schools or sects if they could meet the requirements. As for how they paid? Well, the cetaceans used the same system as the other cities in the Depths. There was a thriving economy based upon Spirit Pearls and trade in different Demonic Beast parts and other natural resources. They had their own methods of carrying and securing Storage Bags or Rings onto or inside of their bodies and used Spirit Power to do fine manipulation.

Sage did some trading in the Great Pod, getting very good deals by swapping resources from the Inner World that were quite rare here in exchange for materials that were cheap and common here yet were very rare on the outside world. This was true for all of the Depths, but there was a little more variety here as the population was mostly cetaceans and didn’t have as many human cultivators. They had vastly different priorities and also didn’t have as much contact with the other cities of the Depths due to their lacking a Transportation Formation. With such favorable deals he made more than enough money to pay for learning everything the School of the Golden Song had available. It certainly wasn’t cheap, costing him a few million Spirit Stones worth, but it was only a fraction of the profits he made from the Great Pod.

Learning all the abilities of the School of Golden Song was not because he wanted to use them for himself, it was because he couldn’t help himself in collecting more techniques for the Inner World and the Lang Clan. Unfortunately, the cetaceans didn’t use any objects to store their knowledge. There was the equivalent of Keepers for the School of the Golden Song and if he wished to learn their techniques he had to train with them. Sage suddenly found himself becoming a long term resident of the Great Pod. Unlike the other cities of the Depths where he’d moved on after a few weeks or months, Sage ended up spending years training in the Great Pod. He wasn’t stuck only in the city during this time, heading out into the surrounding water to hunt the local sea life quite often while spending only a few hours each day at the School of the Golden Song.

The signature techniques of the school were also quite interesting, though somewhat basic in comparison to the other schools and sects. The Golden Song, as they called it, was essentially a method that used sound as a medium to transform energy into a solid form. It was a song infused with Qi that was used to create solid barriers or weapons to attack with. Each of the different objects that could be formed was a slightly different Golden Song. Many masters from the school had their own versions of each song, adding little variations and tweaks to the songs to essentially make their own customized weapons and shields.

Sage didn’t ever dabble in singing, nor was there any related talents in those bodies he had merged with. Learning the techniques of the School of Golden Song was quite difficult for him, but he considered it to be a challenge and he had plenty of time to practice it on the Inner World. He could have stopped after learning a few of their techniques or did a few Merges to make it easier, but he wasn’t really in a hurry. He’d already seen much of the Depths and he liked staying in the Great Pod as it was more isolated and cut off from the other cities.

Maybe I just like the whale songs when I head to sleep?