“His brain has been destroyed. How did you do it?”

Sage just rolled his eyes at the continued blame cast his way, “I have a technique to glimpse into the recent past. I am using the Phantom Mirror to show you what I’m seeing.”

After saying this, Sage walked over to the set of shelves to get a better look at the culprit. He replayed the events from before but from this different perspective. The ghost rose up out of the ground, looked at its chest like something was wrong and over towards the culprit, then turned back and ran from the shelves. It jumped back up and looked down at the culprit again and an object flew out of its ear and back to the culprit’s hand. Sage froze the projection at this moment.

The rest of the group had been drawn into this show and followed behind Sage. With so many believing the show, even the Discipline Keeper felt compelled to let it continue. They all leaned in to look at what was in the culprit’s hand and saw a small grub-like worm. Sage walked over to look under the culprit’s hood and tried to get a look at some of the person’s features that weren’t hidden by the mask. The mask had very good coverage and he could only make out the edge of the person’s jawline, which seemed quite masculine, but it wasn’t conclusive. The robes they wore were large and baggy so there wasn’t anything he could make out from their figure either. He stepped back and let others look, waiting only until the Discipline Keeper was finished carefully examining the culprit.

Of course, Sage was seeing things in far more detail than the projection showed, but the projections from the Phantom Mirror technique were always somewhat ghostly. From the Discipline Keeper’s mannerisms, Sage had taken the man to be someone that cared more about appearances and reputation than justice. His goal seemed to make these people impressed by the capabilities and honor of the Clear Sky Academy. He didn’t look like he cared about the death of Lu Ju any more than how bad it was for the school’s reputation. Apprehending the murderer was merely a way for them to prove their capabilities and make everyone in the academy feel safe. The way the Discipline Keeper had questioned him, Sage felt the Keeper was trying to convince the other people that Sage was the murderer. Instead of finding the killer through an investigation, he seemed to be running a court of public opinion. If everyone here was convinced that Sage was the murderer, then no one would object or spread bad rumors.

With this in mind, Sage was aiming to do the opposite by showing everyone here he wasn’t the culprit. Sadly, he couldn’t just show off this little scene alone. Just as the Discipline Keeper said, it could all just be a fabrication on his part, so Sage had to find some actual evidence to point to someone else.

After giving them all a chance to examine the masked and hooded murderer, Sage slowly started the replay of the scene, this time forward rather than in reverse. The grub compressed into a balled up shape and then it shot out like a spring uncoiling, flying through the air towards Lu Ju. The projection was moving in slow motion, which was hard to tell at first, but then Lu Ju slowly turned his head and to look down at the murderer. Just as Lu Ju was starting to slowly jump off the ladder, Sage stopped it and went back to replay the worm flying into Lu Ju’s ear in real time. He played it once again in slow motion and then went back to real time. This time he played the scene till the point where Lu Ju was lying dead on the ground.

Seeing it played in the correct order was far more convincing to them, and from their varied reactions, Sage felt he had a much better chance of success. Now that he’d somewhat started to convince them of the validity of this replay, he reversed the scene again till they reached the moment of the murder. He gave them all a chance for a second look and then he let it continue in reverse. The worm flew back into the man’s hand, then the hooded man looked down from where he was gazing up at Lu Ju. Then the hooded man walked backwards, traveling down a set of rarely used aisles through the library rather than down the main path.

Sage followed the projection of the man as he walked backwards and the group followed behind him. The Discipline Keeper seemed hesitant for a moment, deciding on whether or not to put a stop to this show. While he was deciding, the whole group had already wandered off so he just followed along with them. He started at the back of the pack, but quickly moved to the front to have a better view of the ‘ghost’ they were chasing. The group of them walked from one secluded part of the library to another in a different corner. The library of the Clear Sky Academy was filled with Jade Tablets, but most of the time only a small portion of them in the front saw use. There were history, biography, and encyclopedias that had to be studied, but they were those commonly assigned by Teachers and so they were all placed in a section near the front. Along with that, the upper floor was filled with all the technique manuals that saw the most use. So these sections in the back of the first floor were used less than those in the restricted section.

The murderer moved through this rarely traveled part of the library and stopped near the wall. They turned around and touched one of the shelves and it swung open like a door. Then the ‘ghost’ walked into the wall. The group was shocked at this discovery and Sage was excited. Without waiting for a further explanation he moved up to the shelves and started looking around for the mechanism to operate what he’d immediately clocked as a secret passage. Given the powerful formation around the library then it seemed more likely the hidden door used a mechanical mechanism rather than an array formation or magic tool. Curious to see how it worked, Sage had extra encouragement to find the door on top of just clearing suspicion on himself.

Sage blinked slowly and deactivated the Timeless Eyes, swapping them out for the Sea Locust eyes of ‘natural’ body. He used his huge range of visions along with his Spiritual Sense to completely enshroud the shelf looking for discrepancies. He found nothing unusual around the outsides of the shelf or along the wall nearby, but the barrier around the shelf might be obscuring his senses. Instead of worrying about that now though, he tried the second best option and started picking up every one of the Jade Tablets on the shelf looking for hidden lines, latches, buttons, push plates, or levers attached to the tablets, on the shelfs, or in the wall behind the tablets. Sage was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Discipline Keeper wasn’t stopping him and was instead looking at the group carefully once more.

Did I miss something? He’s not watching me, but the rest of them now. Did they do something suspicious? This Discipline Keeper is incompetent at collecting evidence, but he is quite excellent at reading people.