SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 629: The Formless Myriad Scripture

Chapter 629: The Formless Myriad Scripture

Ji Liansu came to the chamber at dawn on the thirty-first day.

"You are early," she said. "You have two months remaining."

"I know."

"Then either you have something, or you are about to waste a morning." She took her place by the wall. "Begin."

Leon began with the empty route.

He drew the thread, ran it once around, and let her look. The neutral section took the energy and gave it back exactly as it had received it, and the circulation closed, and nothing anywhere in the room changed.

Then he ran the nine.

Fire, and out. Water, and out. Earth ran heavy and slow and completed. Wind ran fast and completed. Lightning went through the redesigned junctions without touching them. Ice thickened the second stretch and cleared. Light. Darkness. Space, which bent the route by four tenths of a percent and let it come back.

Nine circulations. Nine clean returns. Afterward Leon held the route open and let Ji examine it, and she did, for a long time.

"It has no character," she said.

"That’s the idea."

"Yes." She stepped back. "Do the difficult one."

Leon closed his eyes and started a circulation with Fire at the intake.

He let it get as far as the trunk. Then, without stopping the flow, he changed what he was feeding in — and Water entered the route behind Fire in one continuous stream, with no gap, no pause, and nothing in between them but the neutral section.

He felt them meet.

They did not collide. The Fire ahead reached the return path and was stripped cleanly from the route while the Water followed behind it. By the time Water entered the central section, Fire had left nothing in the walls for it to react against. The same unbroken circulation carried both affinities and returned to neutrality when they were gone.

Light to Darkness was harder. The central section came under real pressure at the transition — he felt it flex, and for a moment he thought it would tear — and then the resting shape reasserted itself and both halves completed.

Space he saved for last, and ran it directly out of Darkness, which was the worst combination he had. The route bent. It bent further than he liked. Then the energy left, and the structure came back to where it had started, and the deviation read zero.

Leon opened his eyes.

[Cultivation Technique — Personal, Original]First stage: StableVerified affinities: 9 testedNeutral retention: intact across sequential and continuous transitionBasic conditioning: functionalHigher stages: not begunAuxiliary routes: noneAdvanced refinement: not begun

"It has a name?" Ji asked.

"The Formless Myriad Scripture."

She considered it.

"Formless for the center," she said.

"It has no permanent nature and I don’t intend it to ever have one. Myriad because—" He stopped, and adjusted. "Because nine isn’t a number I want written into the architecture anywhere."

Ji Liansu looked at him for a moment through the veil.

"You built an original first-stage cultivation technique in thirty-one days," she said. "I gave you ninety and expected you to need most of them."

That was the entire compliment. Leon had been around her long enough to know what it cost.

"Now hear the difficulty you have purchased," she went on. "A rigid method is easy to extend, because every later stage is told exactly what to build on. Yours is not. Every stage you add from here must be larger, must be more complex, must perform actual refinement rather than mere circulation — and must leave that center as empty as it is today." She held up one finger. "One careless addition. One elemental convenience worked into the trunk because it solves a problem quickly. That is all it takes to ruin the entire framework, and by the time you notice, you will have built four stages on top of it."

"Understood."

"You do not understand yet. You will in about ten years." She turned for the door. "Bring your abilities. There is something you have not measured."

The testing formation stood in a walled yard on the peak’s northern face, ringed with measurement pillars.

"Reproduce what you already know," Ji said. "The same techniques, at the same output as before. Do not try to do more."

Leon did.

He ran through eight of them — a compressed frost lance, a lightning strike, a folded step, a Light closure, the wall of ice he had used in a merchant’s garden. He held each one at exactly the power he had used before this month, and the pillars measured the results, and the results were the same as they had always been.

The consumption was not.

[Comparative record — 8 techniques]Mean energy expenditure: 54% of prior baselineRange: 47%–61% by complexity and affinityActivation latency: reducedAffinity transition: reducedInternal strain: substantially reduced

Leon read it twice.

He had not become stronger. The lance hit exactly as hard as it had hit last month, and the wall was exactly as thick. What had changed was that every one of them now received energy that had been prepared before it arrived, instead of raw power he was forcing into shape at the moment of use.

Forty-six percent of it, on average, had been going nowhere.

He thought about four hours in a bowl of pale stone with a Moonless circling him, and about the garden, and about how much of that fight he had spent on waste he had not known he was producing.

"You will not hit harder," Ji said, watching the pillars. "Understand the actual gift. You can hold the same output for nearly twice as long. You lose very little during circulation now instead of wasting almost half of everything you release. Your control improves because the energy no longer resists you at the moment you use it. And in a long engagement, you will now degrade at roughly the rate your opponent expects a proper cultivator to degrade." She turned. "Also, each circulation will temper your pathways a little. That accumulates over years, and you will not feel it happening."

She paused.

"How you accomplished what you did in the Marches while wasting half your power, I do not want explained. I have decided that it is better for my peace of mind not to know."

Qingyue arrived that afternoon and did not come inside.

"The monthly gathering is in four days," she said from the gate. "Core disciples, personal disciples, and the supervising elders. Announcements, allocations, mission reports, recognitions. As the Palace Mistress’s personal disciple you are expected, and everyone has noticed that you have been in seclusion for a month."

"Then I’ll go."

"Wait." She came a few steps into the yard. "You should know what you are walking into. The register went public three weeks ago. Your age, your position, and Peak Golden Core."

"I assumed it would."

"The mountain has spent three weeks inventing reasons, and none of the reasons are flattering." She folded her arms. "Wei Zhaoran will be there. Do you know the name?"

"No."

"Peak Earth Immortal. Ninety-one. Lunar Sword Body, one of the recorded ones. He holds a moon technique that three people in this Palace are permitted to learn." She said it flatly. "He has never lost to anyone at his own realm, and he earned all of it, which is what makes him difficult. Eight years ago, before entering his present master’s lineage, he asked to become your master’s personal disciple and was refused. He has spent those eight years believing she takes no disciples at all."

"And now she does."

"And now she has taken a twenty-two-year-old at Peak Golden Core." Qingyue met his eyes. "He is not a fool and he will not do anything crude. He believes the appointment is a mistake, and he believes a mistake can be corrected by demonstrating it in public."

Leon thought about the sensible option, which was to stay on this peak and work on the second stage for a year.

"I’m not going to hide up here from an offended swordsman," he said.

"No," Qingyue agreed. "I thought not. Granduncle."

The robes had been waiting in the residence since the day he arrived: pale green over silver-grey, cut close, with the Palace Mistress’s mark at the collar and nothing else anywhere on them. He put them on for the first time and found they fit exactly, which meant someone had measured him at some point without his noticing.

Then he walked out through the compound gate, in daylight, for the first time in a month.