Molting the Mortal Coil

When Sage placed his Sect Token into the pedestal, a golden light seemed to shine from beneath it. A few moments later the door in front of him opened up. He collected his token and stepped inside, watching as the door closed behind him. This would be the perfect opportunity for them to get rid of me.

It was only a mild flash of paranoia which quickly passed. Since the door opened it seems his accessing the Seal techniques was not a lie. With that doubt gone, new ones instantly took their place. If they were to give him access it was probably because they counted him as expendable. They certainly wouldn’t want a treasured member of the Sect to be put in such great danger. Thinking of it from another perspective, Sage realized he was a great choice. He hadn’t even become an Inner Court Disciple after all these years, so he wasn’t all that great a loss if he were to be discovered. His new appearance could even be used as evidence of him being a spy or outsider that the Sect could use as an explanation later.

On the other hand, he made a decent candidate to learn. He was the first one to find the books and had learned of the existence of Seals. Rather than worrying about keeping him quiet, they could reduce the number of people exposed to the knowledge. Additionally, while he has no talent for Cultivation, he was quite skilled at learning. Sage had ten different professions, which was proof he could learn the Seals. He was a perfect first guinea pig. Capable, yet still of low enough value that he was expendable. Having a Seal Master would definitely benefit the Sect, while losing Sage would not be a great loss. For the Sect it was an acceptable risk. As for Sage, he now understood that finding treasures and ancient legacies were his only path to power. The childish ideals of becoming a hero still existed deep within, he’d merely buried them again when he found the path blocked. All this time spent learning professions was founded on searching for a new path.

Sage walked down a single straight hallway, after a few dozen yards the path turned to the right. He noticed that the walls were sectioned into patterns that looked like doorways. The issue was that they all butted up together. It was like the walls were made entirely out of doors with no handles or hinges. Well, that would definitely make it hard to break in. You can’t even tell where the real doors are.

After another couple turns, part of the wall was open. One of the doorways had slid open on its own, giving Sage a view of the inside. The room was quite small and simple. To the left side was a small bookshelf rising from floor to ceiling. To the front was a basic desk, little more than a table with a few organizers on the corners for papers and writing utensils. In front of the desk was a simple wooden chair. The room was barely more than a closet, meant for a single person to read in. There was a light array on the ceiling to keep it bright in the room, and Sage watched as the door closed up behind him after entering.

Looking around carefully, there really wasn’t anything else interesting in the room except for the contents of the shelf. The bookshelf had six shelves, the lower three were filled with the reference materials on Seals that Sage had already copied down but hadn’t looked at yet. The upper three shelves were nearly empty, containing only four technique scrolls. Sage immediately brought them over to the desk and took a peek inside.

The first two were called ‘Crux Encyclopedias’. Sage had no idea what this was so he moved onto the next two. They were named ‘Repress the Mind’ and ‘Siphon the Will’. From just the titles he had no idea what these scrolls did so he decided to first build his foundational knowledge. It seemed he didn’t have to pay Contribution Points to enter the room, nor could things leave this room. He also hadn’t seen a time limit, so he assumed he could study at his leisure. With that in mind, he put the scrolls back on the shelf and returned to the Million Skill Library. There was still a few things he wanted to do before devoting all his time to studying Seals.

Sage went to the array formation techniques on the first floor and picked out a few books, before heading over to the Miscellaneous Skills area and starting to browse. He had a few ideas for how to better use Formations, but he needed to pick up a few more of the most basic types of formations. Now, he was searching out for a skill to cover his current greatest weakness. His terrifying appearance. So far he hadn’t experienced much more than fame, or notoriety, but he couldn’t live his whole life in the Sect so he needed help for when he was out traveling the world. He carefully read the names of every technique scroll and bamboo slip, looking for something that could help him disguise himself.

As he searched he noticed many different methods for creating a disguise, but they were all flawed in one way or another. One planted an illusion into a target’s mind to make the user appear however they wished. The drawback being it only worked on one person and failed against those with strong willpower. Another placed an illusion over the user like a shell, hiding them inside. The problem being it always had to be bigger than the user, and it was hard not to break the illusion when manipulating objects. They passed right through the illusion. There was at least a dozen others that only masked the features in different ways. They were all to hide the facial features, hairstyle, and hair color. Great for hiding the identity, but Sage needed a way to change his whole body. Eventually, he gave up for the moment and decided to come back to this problem later. He still had plenty to do before he was ready to leave the Sect again, and there was still a few other ways he could think of to create a disguise.

Sage returned to his home and took out the pair of scrolls and the Jade Box he’d found in the Soul Taming Abode. He’d found them hidden in the wall inside an Alchemist’s Laboratory. At the time he’d had no chance to look at them in detail, but he was free now. The second scroll was a journal from a person naming themselves as ‘Grand Alchemist Dai Long’. Sage found out that the first scroll, ‘Instruction of Divine Paradise’ was a technique that the Grand Alchemist Dai Long had discovered in an ancient ruin. He had spent his whole life working to master the mysteries within. Sage read the introduction of the journal then skipped near the end, finding out that even after centuries of study, the Grand Alchemist admitted to only having learnt barely half of what the Instruction of Divine Paradise was truly capable of.

Sage was impressed, the Instruction of Divine Paradise must be truly something powerful. The third important item was a Jade Box, which he noticed was mentioned near the end of the Grand Alchemist’s journal. He said that these three items were his Legacy. The item in the Jade Box was something he called the ‘Stormstone’, and only the true successor to the Instruction of Divine Paradise could use it. The main unique technique for the Instruction of Divine Paradise was called ‘Divine Breath’ and the Stormstone could be incorporated into the body to greatly enhance the technique. Others could be taught the Divine Breath, but only the one with the Stormstone could use the true version of it.

Sage browsed through the Instruction of Divine Paradise and saw many Alchemical Techniques and dozens of alchemical recipes before he stopped on the last thing in the scroll.

‘Divine Breath’.