Sage’s nice mood was immediately soured. Half of the objects Hei Bai kept within her Storage Ring were gross and disgusting. Fully one quarter of the internal space was taken up by bones. It was like she’d taken those anatomical reference skeleton mannequins and hung them up in neat rows and columns from the ceiling. They were arranged like a square military formation, except hanging from the ceiling by wires and hooks like gruesome marionettes. The highest level had human skeletons, while the second level was filled with the bones of beasts and monsters. Beneath the beast skeletons, on the floor, there were dozens of bookshelves. The bookshelves were filled with storage bins and each bin had a different type of bone stored in it. It was a full on library of skeletal remains.

It didn’t stop there. Another quarter of the storage area was also filled with shelving, but much creepier than the bone area. This zone dealt with the storage of every other sort of material that came from living creatures. Eyeballs and other organs in jars of liquid. Stacks of different types of hides, furs, and skins. Boxes of fangs, claws, spines, and hooves. Crates of feathers or scales. Spool after spool of animal tendons and intestines turned into threads, cords, and ropes. There were even large jars that had fully preserved animal and insect specimens. A normal cultivator would collect these sorts of goods, but they’d sell them whenever they got the chance to clear up space. To Sage that meant either she was just making terrible use of her large Storage Ring, or she was actually pursuing a profession.

The other half of the Storage Ring was separated by exquisitely crafted wooden wall panels. On this side, Sage saw what looked like a huge closet. There was a small area with some stacked up furniture, the sorts of things you’d find in a lady's bedroom. A large bed with four posts and silk drapes, covered in pillows and exquisitely embroidered covers. A large vanity table with a huge mirror and covered with drawers of cosmetics. A large and small dining table with different sets of chairs. It looked like she had enough furniture to fit multiple occasions. Past the furniture were many closet racks. Many dresses and other garments were hanging up, while many more were folded up and stacked in crates. They were in many different styles and sizes, and not just women’s clothing. There was even a section of dozens of different military and official sorts of uniforms.

This must be what she used to clothe all those golems she made with the Black Enhydros.

After quite a bit of searching, he finally found what he was looking for. There was an area cleared out in the back corner where Sage found a stack of Spirit Stones. There were a few other random objects nearby and Sage felt he’d finally found where she kept her most commonly used items. He started sorting through it all to identify everything of value. The Storage Ring was much larger than any he’d ever looted so it was going to take him some time to sort through everything inside.

To make it easier on himself, each item he searched was sent directly into the Universe Ring. For the resources he had already collected some of, like Spirit Stones, or certain herbs or natural treasures, he’d add them to his own stockpile. For the rest of the items, he stacked them up in the same spot, recreating the storage area of this ring within the Universe Ring. He certainly didn’t have any plans for a huge assortment of bones or clothing, but he had enough space to be a terrible hoarder. The many different hides, threads, and other materials turned out to be important.

When looking through the many dressers and desks that Hei Bai kept, Sage found one of them filled with bamboo slips, jade tablets, and even a few books. The books were the least valuable, as they required actually reading text with the eyes. On the other hand, the bamboo slips and jade tablets were the preferred methods of cultivators. Using Qi, the information contained within could be sent directly into the mind. They were the much simpler and cheaper version of Memory Spheres, only learning text and not memory. A bamboo slip was the cheapest, but somewhat large, while a jade tablet was small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand. The downside of such devices was that the information was directly sent into the mind.

It was for this reason that Sage took out something he’d gained long ago, the Scroll Scout. He’d used it as a reference to develop a prototype of the Movie Projector, and he hadn’t really bothered with it since. After seeing what Hei Bai’s other belongings did to those condemned criminals, he was quite willing to take every precaution in the future. By placing a bamboo slip or jade tablet onto the Scroll Scout, it would project the contents into the air. Even now, Sage thought such a device was quite marvelous. It was essentially projecting holograms into the air, with sharp colors, high contrast, and clear enough to read the densely packed characters.

After marveling over the device again, he checked each and every ‘scroll’ from the stack to have a rough inventory of what he’d gained. His suspicions that Hei Bai was a Tailor were confirmed by the number of volumes related to the profession. During the inventory, he also found many official identification tokens, paperwork, and deeds. Hei Bai had multiple identities, and combined with the deeds he found, she was living more than one life. One of the deeds was actually to a tailor’s shop.

I really can’t imagine that evil old lady masquerading as a kind and caring seamstress. Oh, but I could definitely see her as one of those really handsy and cold Tailors taking measurements. Not saying anything, but you know they’re just judging your sizes.

Sage went through the scrolls one by one, until finally something caught his eye. He had been paying special attention to each of the jade tablets, as they were more expensive to make. Usually only special knowledge, or secrets were recorded on them. This jade tablet in particular seemed to contain only a poem. Given that none of the other jade tablets contained something so frivolous, it made this one stand out. Sage set it aside, thinking there was something unusual to it. Well, he did after trying a few methods to look for secret codes. While he knew how to code a few simple encryption algorithms and use hash keys, this was a written cipher and not a computer program. He figured there was likely to be another piece here that was used to decode it, but there was no telling which one.

On the plus side, he also found a section where Hei Bai kept her technique manuals. He found the manual for ‘Life Shadow Consumption’, a cultivation technique. It was pretty gruesome, absorbing the souls of people she killed. There were other techniques that let her use those plundered souls in various ways. Most of them were specifically paired with Life Shadow Consumption, but one of them was called ‘Yin Bone Adornment’. Despite the unusual name, the essence of the technique was to insert a soul into bones. It had a companion technique ‘Yin Bone Director’, which controls the soul in a ‘Yin Bone’ to animate it. The two techniques seemed to be the basis of Hei Bai calling herself a necromancer.

Either she found a way to use Yin Bone Adornment with the Black Enhydros, or those tar golems she made had a little bone hidden in each of them.

Surprisingly, there was even a cultivation journal. It looked like something Hei Bai would have prepared for a disciple. She was still carrying it when she died, so Sage guessed Hei Bai didn’t yet have a disciple, or at least the disciples hadn’t earned the notes yet. The text was like a diary of her experiences cultivating Life Shadow Consumption and all the tricks she’d learned how to make the best use of it and her different techniques. Sage was intrigued and stopped his inventory to read through the journal. His curiosity was rewarded, as Sage learned quite a bit about Hei Bai. That strange eye of hers was called ‘Sight Beyond Death’, and was not something that could be learned or trained. It was something of a rare bloodline or ancestral trait that could be awakened. The little skull that formed over her pupil allowed her to clearly see the true form of all spirit beings.

Sage had no attraction to the Life Shadow Consumption technique, but after reading the journal he realized it would be futile even if he did. Without Sight Beyond Death, the technique was many times more difficult and extremely dangerous to the user. There were some special techniques using special incense and drugs to increase sensitivity to spirit beings, but they were far from foolproof. The cultivator would have to gather increasingly more powerful spirits to keep advancing, and those spirits would not be pleased to be consumed or put to work. It was sort of like trying to tame animals with a blindfold on. It would take quite a lot of practice, and to keep improving you’d find yourself opposite a tiger.

Best of all, she even detailed her finding and mastering the Black Enhydros. She recorded the whole process of how she learned to adapt the Yin Bone techniques to be used with the Black Enhydros and Sage had to stop reading to laugh out loud.

Perfect!