SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 630: The Disciple Who Should Have Been Chosen

Chapter 630: The Disciple Who Should Have Been Chosen

The gathering was held on the great terrace below the central peak, under an open sky, with the sea running out green and endless to the east.

It was a working assembly. An elder read the season’s allocations — cultivation ground rotations, medicine court quotas, priority on the practice waters. Three mission teams reported: an escort that had gone well, a reef survey that had gone badly, and a beast-clearance in the southern shallows that had cost two outer disciples their lives and produced a long, uncomfortable silence. Four disciples were recognized for advancement, and one was publicly reprimanded over a requisition.

Perhaps three hundred people stood on that terrace, and Leon estimated a hundred and eighty of them looked at him at least once before the announcements finished.

The reactions varied more than Qingyue had implied.

A dozen disciples greeted him with genuine courtesy, because the Palace Mistress had chosen him and that was sufficient. Many more simply stared at a face that had produced three weeks of rumor. A group near the eastern rail was openly unimpressed, and one of them said something that made the others laugh quietly, none of them looking at him while they did it.

Qingyue stood beside him through the announcements and said nothing on his behalf.

When an elder called his name for formal acknowledgment as the Palace Mistress’s personal disciple, she stepped back half a pace and bowed with everyone else, and afterward, in front of perhaps forty people, she said, "This way, Granduncle," and the resulting ripple ran halfway across the terrace.

"You enjoyed that," Leon said.

"I did not. It is protocol." A pause. "It was slightly satisfying."

Wei Zhaoran came over as the assembly began to loosen.

He was tall and unhurried, in white and silver-grey with a plain sword at his hip, and the crowd opened for him without appearing to. He stopped at a courteous distance and bowed a courteous amount.

"Junior Brother Leon," he said. "Wei Zhaoran. Welcome to Jade Moon Palace — belatedly, since I understand you have been in seclusion since the day you arrived."

"A month of it."

"Productive, I hope." His tone was warm and entirely pleasant. "There is a great deal here worth a month. May I ask what you were studying? The library sees a great many new disciples and very few of them for thirty-one days without emerging."

"Circulation theory, mostly."

"Ah." Wei nodded slowly. "Foundational work. There is no shame in it." He turned slightly, so his voice carried to the twenty or so people who had gathered near without appearing to gather. "You will find the Palace generous. I would offer one thought, since nobody else is likely to say it to you directly and I would rather it came from someone who means you no harm."

"Go on."

"A personal disciple does not stand for himself." Wei’s manner remained perfectly even. "When I walk into a hall in the outer islands, people do not see Wei Zhaoran. They see my master’s judgment. Every match I have fought since entering her lineage has been a report on her." He gestured lightly at the terrace. "The Palace Mistress has taken no personal disciple in a very long time. Whoever she chose was always going to be looked at closely, by us and by everyone outside these islands who hears about it."

"That seems reasonable."

"I hoped you would think so. Which is why I would rather ask honestly than let the question circulate as gossip." Wei’s eyes came up. "The register lists your cultivation as Peak Golden Core. Every personal disciple on this terrace is in the immortal realms. When the eastern sects send representatives at the turn of the year and ask who speaks for the Palace Mistress’s lineage — what shall we tell them?"

There it was.

The crowd had grown considerably. Leon could feel the shape of what Wei wanted: irritation, or a boast, or a hint about the sealed record, or the flustered silence of a young man asked a fair question in public with no good answer.

"Tell them what’s in the register," Leon said. "It’s accurate."

Wei waited for more and did not get any.

"That is all?"

"My master knew my cultivation when she accepted me. She had the record in her hand." Leon’s tone did not change. "If her judgment needs defending, she’s better placed to defend it than I am. And if the eastern sects want to form an opinion about a line in a register, I don’t think anything I say here changes it."

Something behind Wei’s pleasantness shifted.

"That is a very composed answer," he said.

"It’s the true one."

"Then let me be less composed, since we have both been polite long enough." Wei’s voice stayed level and stopped being warm. "Eight years ago I asked the Palace Mistress to take me as her personal disciple. I was refused, and I accepted it, because I told myself she took no disciples. I then spent eight years becoming the strongest disciple of my generation on these islands. That is a record anyone here may check, not a claim."

Nobody on the terrace was pretending to talk about anything else now.

"Then she accepted you," Wei said. "In one morning. Without a trial, without a service record, without a single day of contribution to this Palace. A stranger from the frontier at Peak Golden Core." He drew a breath. "I do not think you are a liar and I do not think you are a fraud. I think a mistake has been made, and I think the only honest way to establish that is to find out what you can actually do."

He stepped back one pace and bowed properly, formally, from the waist.

"I request a spar with Junior Brother Leon. Before the assembly, under an elder’s supervision."

The terrace erupted.

It was arithmetic more than outrage on Leon’s behalf. Someone said loudly enough to carry. An elder near the front called out that a Peak Golden Core disciple could not be asked to face one in any format whatsoever, three other voices agreed, and one added that Wei knew it perfectly well.

Wei let it run for exactly as long as it took to become general.

"Of course," he said, and the terrace quieted. "I would not insult anyone by proposing that. I will seal my cultivation to Peak Golden Core for the duration and hold it there. Publicly, before I enter, so that every person here can verify it."

He turned back to Leon.

"At equal cultivation," he said, "nothing decides the outcome except foundation, control, experience, and technique. Those are the only things I have ever claimed. If yours are better than mine, then the Palace Mistress was right and I was wrong, and I will say so where everyone can hear it."

Leon looked past him.

Ji Liansu had come onto the terrace at some point, and he had no idea when. She stood at the top of the steps with her hands folded inside her sleeves, and she had clearly heard everything, and she said nothing at all.

She waited until he looked at her.

"Do you wish to accept?" she asked.

That was all. No warning, no permission, no assessment of the odds. She had left the entire decision on the terrace where it belonged, and Leon understood that she would have supported a refusal just as calmly.

"I do," he said.

Only then did Ji Liansu come down the steps.

"Then it is a supervised match," she said, and her voice reached the whole terrace without effort. "No deliberate killing. Neither participant may use an external treasure whose grade exceeds the declared level of the duel. It ends by surrender, by incapacity, or when the supervising elder calls it." She looked at Wei. "You will seal in the open where the assembly can see it, and you will hold that seal for the full match."

"Of course, Palace Mistress."

The arena stood on the lower terrace already — a sunken circle sixty paces across with barrier pillars at eight points. Three hundred people moved toward it without anyone giving an instruction.

Wei went to the center and did exactly as he had promised. He drew his cultivation down in front of all of them, layer by layer, and Leon watched something enormous fold itself smaller and smaller until what remained standing in the circle read as an ordinary, solid, unremarkable Peak Golden Core.

He rolled his shoulders once and looked entirely at ease.

Leon stepped down into the circle across from him, in pale green and silver-grey, carrying no weapon and nothing anyone could see.

He had eight familiar techniques and half the fuel cost he used to pay for them, and he had never once used the Formless Myriad Scripture in a fight.

The barrier pillars lit, and the wall came up around them, and the noise of the terrace cut out.