Sage had to admit that the demand was reasonable. The idea of telling them the exact limitations of his abilities was terrifying, but at the same time they were likely going to only want to make use of a few of his capabilities. He thought back to what the Discipline Keeper Shin, the cleaver-wielder, as well as the other students and teachers, had seen him use. He’d first given away the Hindsight of his Timeless Eyes. Then he’d showed off the Sound Barrier, along with his Jade Mantle and a bit of his physical strength. He’d also released the Searing Greenrose Miasma upon the Beast Keeper, and then they’d likely seen him using Ruby Blood and Fire Garden. That said, they probably didn’t know what Fire Garden did and Nightmare Garden would have just been multi-colored gas with an unknown effect. Unfortunately, he’d also shown off the Purple Mist Sect members and also some Shard Rifles.
Thinking of all this, quite a few of his tricks had been revealed. Were they going to ask for the details about all of them?
As it turned out, they didn’t really care about most of his abilities. They wanted the specifics of his ability to peer into the past, as well as how many living beings could be transported by whatever storage treasure he had. They were also curious as to the extent of his poison immunity.
Since he wanted to make himself useful to them, he gave them full answers about Hindsight and his Blood of Nine Pits. Not only could he be immune to nearly every poison imaginable, he could also store and produce them. He also carefully explained the limitations of his vision of the past and how it was very effective on recent events, but he had to spend a lot of time, if he wished to look further into the past. Since ‘rewind’ and ‘seek speed’ were not something people of this world would understand he had to make it simple and explain that every day he spent in concentration he could see six days further into the past. A week would let him see six weeks ago, and so forth. It was also important to note that it was only his sight and he could not use any of his other senses to observe the past events. On the plus side, he was able to read lips so they could still garner quite a bit of information. With the time dilation of the outside world and the Inner World, Sage had plenty of time to learn the skill, and he even had expert lip readers to assist him.
When it came to questions of his special storage treasure he told them it was an area the size of a large manor, and he had a special underground manor built in the Universe Ring to match the dimensions he gave. Since they were asking these questions they likely wanted to put him to use on a number of specific mission types. If he was called upon to transport any living beings he wasn’t going to let them see his Inner World or else they’d notice the drastic time dilation. He didn’t really want to show off the Universe Ring either, but it was a good cover for his even more important secret. Especially since its usefulness had mostly been overshadowed by the Inner World. It was basically only used by him for its stasis effect on resources and to hide inside, since he couldn’t enter the Inner World with his physical body.
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Surprisingly, the next few years flew by in a flash. They offered Sage different missions every few months that would make use of his unique abilities and he took most of them, only turning down those that would require long commitments of time. He skipped any mission that would take more than a few months and even then he demanded a large amount of pay for those. On the other hand if they were quick to complete he would do them for a small fee, showing Twilight that he was happy to help them, but he didn’t want to commit all his time. It was somewhat funny how they asked him about all his abilities, but forgot to ask about this preference. It didn’t take them long to figure it out and they’d entered a decent working relationship before a year had passed.
Sage solved recent crimes for them, spied upon people by trailing them in the past, and tracked down fugitives, missing persons, and stolen goods. He also helped them produce some rare and mysterious poisons, which then also entered the library of poisons on the Inner World. This benefit was the reason he was so forthcoming about his poison abilities, since his whole Clan would be immune to them, he had no fear of arming others with them. The usage of his ‘storage treasure’ on the other hand was usually tied to transporting things long distances and so most of those missions were declined. Sage could tell a few of the Twilight members were annoyed, but he’d already told them his goals and the time he’d be in the Academy. It didn’t require a deep thinker to figure out that he wanted to spend most of his time in the library and would never agree to being sent out on missions for months or years at a time.
As for the matter of Beast Keeper Deng, Twilight handled it without any further intervention on Sage’s part. The other students and teachers were protected by them and their story was told, getting one of the higher ups in the Academy into deep trouble. The existence of the secret passageways was hidden by this person and they took the fall for it, being removed from their position and expelled from the Academy and banned from the 20,000th level of the Tianxia Capital. They were able to avoid being blamed for the death of the prospective student, claiming that the Beast Keeper had found the secret passages on his own. Without finding any deep ties between the Beast Keeper and the Academy Elder, they could only expel the Elder.
Afterwards, Twilight made use of Sage’s Hindsight to help them uncover dirt on the others in the expelled Elder’s faction. After a couple years, the whole of the faction was completely dissolved within the Clear Sky Academy. As for Beast Keeper Deng? The Beast Keeper’s caretaker fought off the Discipline Keepers that arrived in the beast enclosure area, dying in battle. Beast Keeper Deng had escaped through the secret passages before Sage and the others had. As soon as he was poisoned, he fled rapidly and tried to make a low profile exit from the Clear Sky Academy. Unfortunately, for him, Sage and the others broke out and informed Twilight of his identity. The Discipline Keepers used the formations of the Academy to locate and capture him. He lost his position and was turned over to the father of the murdered Lu Ju, a powerful Sect Elder, and met a fate worse than death.
Or at least that was the rumor. One of the golden haired students that had been with them bumped into Sage a few years later and said that Beast Keeper Deng was still alive and was sentenced to hundreds of years of torture before they’d let him die.