SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 620: The Master Above Them All

Chapter 620: The Master Above Them All

Leon’s spatial perception had covered the entire hall since the first elders arrived.

It had noticed message tokens, hidden formation threads, and every person who crossed the doors. The woman beside the monument had passed through all of it without creating a single disturbance.

That was more alarming than any display of pressure.

She wore pale green and silver-grey robes without ornament. A silver veil covered the lower half of her face. What little Leon could see above it made the veil feel like a decision rather than decoration.

Every elder bowed.

The Supreme Elders bowed lower.

"Palace Mistress," Qingyue’s master said.

Leon bowed with the rest and examined the newcomer only as far as courtesy allowed.

Qingyue was a Late Earth Immortal. The Palace Mistress stood only one named realm above her, but the distance between them was enormous. Leon recognized the completed density and self-contained power of a Peak Heaven Immortal.

he translated privately.

She was the strongest publicly active cultivator in Jade Moon Palace.

The Palace Mistress looked first at the saturated monument, then at the examination record. She read every entry without asking another person to summarize it.

"Twenty-two," she said. "Peak Golden Core. Dao Palace-level density and a foundation the examiner cannot map. Nine affinities held in complete balance."

Her gaze settled upon Leon.

There was no invasive pressure in it. She simply watched him with the patience of someone accustomed to discovering more than people intended to show.

"Your foundation is stranger than the monument’s classification explains," she said. "I will not attempt to explain it in a hall containing thirty witnesses."

"I would prefer that," Leon replied.

"I expected you would."

She turned toward the assembled elders.

"The recruitment argument is over."

Nobody protested.

"I offer Leon direct discipleship. Not outer discipleship, inner discipleship, or core status awaiting further consideration. If he accepts, he will receive instruction and protection appropriate to his standing from the day he enters."

Several elders concealed disappointment badly. The Frostmoon elder glanced at the monument as if searching for one final argument, while the Verdant Tide elder appeared to calculate whether speaking would damage him more than silence.

The Palace Mistress continued before either could decide.

"His constitution will be studied with his knowledge and cooperation. He is a disciple of Jade Moon Palace, not an artifact the Palace has acquired. His resources and access will be determined after someone asks what he needs, which none of you managed to do before offering him your vaults."

The formation elder looked away.

Then the Palace Mistress addressed Leon again.

"That is my offer. You may refuse it. Before you answer, tell me what you came here seeking."

The question was more useful than every promise he had heard that morning.

"A place in this world that cannot be erased by the first powerful person who dislikes my origin," Leon said. "Knowledge of its cultivation, history, and powers. A road upward that does not require me to pretend I understand traditions I encountered less than two weeks ago."

"And loyalty?"

"Earned in both directions."

The hall became very still.

One Supreme Elder frowned at the answer. The Palace Mistress did not.

"Good," she said. "Promises given too quickly are worth very little. I offer protection, instruction, and the standing of my direct disciple. In return, you will obey the Palace’s rules while you live within it, protect its disciples when doing so does not demand the sacrifice of everything you are responsible for, and speak honestly when you do not understand what is being asked of you."

No demand to expose the dimensional world. No oath to surrender the people within it. No claim over every technique he possessed.

Leon considered the offer for four seconds, three more than he required.

The Palace Mistress was the strongest person he had encountered in this world. Standing beneath her authority ended the competition immediately. One direct relationship was safer than owing pieces of himself to eleven elders with competing peaks and inheritances.

More importantly, she had recognized that his cooperation mattered before asking for it.

Leon bowed in the formal manner Yanning had taught him during their journey toward Moonfall, roughly ten days earlier. Neither of them had imagined where he would first use it.

"Then I accept," he said. "Master."

Something shifted at the edge of the Palace Mistress’s veil. It might have been the beginning of a smile.

She lifted one hand. A silver-green thread of light crossed the space between them and settled around Leon’s identity tablet inside his sleeve. It did not overwrite Shen Yuanhe’s guarantee. It added a second imprint above it: the personal mark of Jade Moon Palace’s ruler.

"Your admission is complete," she said.

Elder Wen looked at the unsigned examination record, then silently signed it.

Qingyue’s master was the first Supreme Elder to bow toward Leon in acknowledgement of the new relationship.

"Junior Uncle," she said.

The title travelled through the hall like a second, much quieter phenomenon.

Leon looked at the woman who had lived for centuries and taught Qingyue, then at the ordinary elders realizing what the Palace Mistress’s direct discipleship did to seniority.

The Palace Mistress spared him from answering immediately.

"Formal modes of address can wait until he has learned why half of them are absurd," she said.

Qingyue lowered her gaze, but Leon saw the corner of her mouth move. A few ordinary elders appeared personally wounded by the ruling.

The Palace Mistress faced the room.

"This morning’s exact record is sealed. His bone age, realm, foundation anomaly, nine affinities, and the classification shown by the monument will not leave the Palace through any channel I have not authorized. That instruction includes the officials who recorded it and every elder who entered afterward."

One elder glanced toward the ceiling.

"Palace Mistress, the bells—"

"Nine bells rang, and half the reception compound saw a nine-colored pillar. We will not pretend otherwise. Nor will we erase memories or confine witnesses. A sect that visibly buries a discovery merely invites outsiders to dig."

Her voice remained quiet, but nobody missed a word.

"Let the rumor say Jade Moon Palace found an exceptional disciple. Rumor requires no assistance beyond that. It will not carry his name, age, cultivation, elements, or spiritual-root classification from anyone in this room."

The disappointed elders bowed their acceptance one by one.

The Palace Mistress assigned Qingyue’s master to oversee the sealing of the original record and ordered Elder Wen to prepare a second, public entry containing only Leon’s lawful admission and the fact that his aptitude met the Palace’s highest recruitment standard. The two records would agree without giving an outsider the useful details.

"Do not invent a lesser result," she said. "A false record creates contradictions. Omission is sufficient."

Elder Wen nodded, visibly relieved to receive an instruction that belonged in an examination hall.

Qingyue remained beside her master, looking calmer than she had any right to feel. Elder Wen began collecting the record slates himself. The four junior officials moved with the stiff care of people who had started the morning expecting ordinary paperwork and ended it under a direct order from the Palace Mistress.

Outside, the nine-colored pillar had already begun to fade. Across the terraces, hundreds of disciples would be inventing explanations. By sunset, every major power near the jade sea would know that the Palace bells had rung nine times.

They would not know for whom.

The Palace Mistress stepped away from the monument and gestured toward the inner doors.

"Come, disciple. You have been offered a dozen inheritances by people who know almost nothing about you. We will begin by correcting that."

Leon followed.

Behind him, the Ninefold Elemental Harmony monument continued to burn with all nine colors, filled to the limit of what its makers had imagined.

It had named nine parts of him.

For now, nine were enough.