SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 636: Five Names at the Gate

Chapter 636: Five Names at the Gate

One of the public routes into Jade Moon Palace passed through its eastern harbor.

Three stone piers extended from the walled port into water clear enough that Leon could follow the anchor chains down forty feet. Supply barges came and went throughout the morning, along with passenger vessels carrying merchants, Palace disciples, and workers returning from the mainland.

Leon and the four women arrived aboard one of those passenger vessels and walked down the pier with their documents prepared.

"Formation seam at the second pier head," Seraphine said quietly, three steps behind his left shoulder. "There’s a gap in the outer array where the stone was repaired. They patched it with a secondary node instead of recutting the anchor."

"You’ve been here ninety seconds."

"It’s a bad patch."

Ahead, the pier opened into a receiving yard with checkpoint tables arranged beneath a broad awning. Vyra had stopped watching the water and begun studying how a clerk handled a merchant’s token. He examined it, compared it against one ledger, and then passed it to a second clerk who checked another record.

"Two independent checks," Vyra said. "Different books. Neither clerk can approve entry alone."

"Is that good?"

"It’s honest, which is more than I expected." Her attention shifted to the guards positioned around the inner arch. "Those two are Foundation Establishment. The man sitting down is Golden Core and pretending to be bored."

Ira had noticed none of it.

She was staring past the receiving yard toward the terraced mountainside, where sunlight flashed across a series of white platforms cut into the stone. Figures moved across them, accompanied by the distant flare of techniques being released and caught.

"Those are training grounds," she said.

"They are."

"There are eleven of them."

"Ira."

"I’m not saying anything." She turned and walked backward for several paces so she could continue watching. "I’m noting the number."

Loriel had stopped entirely.

She crouched beside a strip of silver-green growth planted along a formation channel, one finger hovering above a leaf without touching it.

"Young Master Leon, this was planted deliberately."

"Most gardens are."

"No. It was planted inside the channel." Loriel pointed toward the thin stream of spiritual energy escaping through the stone. "This species absorbs the overflow. Someone found the exact place where the array vents and chose a plant that could use what would otherwise be wasted."

She looked up with an expression Leon had rarely seen since their arrival in the higher world.

"That took someone a very long time to understand."

He had not expected to enjoy this as much as he did.

The woman waiting at the checkpoint appeared to be around forty. She wore plain Palace grey, with an administrative seal hanging from her belt. Her cultivation sat quiet enough that only Leon’s senses caught its depth.

Late Nascent Soul.

"Senior Brother Leon." She bowed the proper amount. "Han Suwen, senior deacon of outer administration. The Palace Mistress assigned me to oversee your household’s registration. Your authority token, please."

Leon handed it over.

Han Suwen examined it properly. She turned it, checked the characters engraved on its face, and held it against the light to inspect the internal grain before returning it.

"You know who I am," Leon said.

"Everyone on this mountain knows who you are. That has nothing to do with whether the token in your sleeve is the one issued to you."

She turned toward the registration tables.

"Your household’s identities carry the Palace Mistress’s written authorization. That settles the question of their origin. Nobody here will ask them about the collapsed inheritance realm or demand to inspect what they brought from it."

"And what will they ask?"

"Cultivation, bone age, affinity, and whether any of them carries something capable of killing people on this mountain." Han Suwen glanced back. "Those checks apply to everyone entering through this gate, including elders returning from missions. I will not skip them because your master signed a document, and I will not extend them merely to prove that I cannot be influenced. Is that acceptable?"

"Entirely."

Vyra caught up with Leon as they followed Han Suwen.

"I like her," she said.

Registration took less than an hour, most of it spent waiting for the testing stations to clear.

The bone-age artifact was smaller than the monument used during Leon’s assessment, but it performed the same basic task. Four readings appeared. None caused concern.

The cultivation test used a shallow stone basin. Each woman placed her hand above its surface and circulated a measured amount of spiritual energy.

The answer appeared four times.

[Peak Foundation Establishment]

The clerk checked the second and third results twice before writing an additional note in his ledger.

"Their foundations are extremely stable," he reported to Han Suwen. "Far more than normal for recently registered cultivators."

"Record the observation and continue."

The affinity examination drew more attention.

Seraphine went first. Violet-white lightning appeared along one side of the formation plate while clean golden light emerged from the other. Rather than repelling each other, the two currents settled into a stable interwoven pattern.

The clerk consulted the reference beside him.

"Lightning and light," he said. "Both strong. Dual-affinity harmony in the upper range."

His attention lingered on the result, then shifted toward the cloth-wrapped sword on Seraphine’s back. Whatever conclusion he reached remained his own.

"Affinities recorded," Han Suwen said.

Ira and Vyra both registered as fire cultivators, yet the formation responded to them differently.

Ira’s flame gathered close to the plate, compact and bright, with almost no energy escaping from its core. Vyra’s spread evenly across the formation and remained under precise control. When it touched the residue Ira’s test had left behind, it folded the weaker flame into itself without losing stability.

The clerk stared for a moment before writing both results.

Loriel’s affinity caused him to call over a second official.

Wood and vitality filled the plate with a deep living green. The color continued strengthening long after an ordinary reading would have settled.

The second official watched for several breaths.

"What is your cultivation background?" he asked.

"Medicinal," Loriel said. "Mostly plants."

"Mostly plants," he repeated. "Young lady, your vitality affinity is purer than anything I’ve measured from the medicine court this year."

"Thank you."

He plainly wanted to ask more, but Han Suwen closed the matter.

"Affinities recorded. Continue."

Nobody asked to see a cultivation technique. Nobody demanded that Seraphine unwrap her sword or questioned how Ira compressed her fire. They verified identity, cultivation, affinities, stable circulation, and the absence of demonic corruption or possession.

Then the examination ended.

Leon had half expected someone to push beyond that boundary. Watching the officials stop exactly where their authority stopped told him more about Jade Moon Palace than several weeks in its library had.

The five of them attracted attention. That was unavoidable.

Four young Peak Foundation Establishment cultivators entering a single household drew notice in any receiving yard. By the time their tokens were being prepared, Leon counted eleven people who had found reasons to stand nearby.

The whispers began before the group was out of earshot.

"Four of them, all Peak Foundation..."

"The inheritance realm. There must have been other survivors."

"The ledger says attendants."

"Attendants," someone repeated, followed by quiet laughter.

One older disciple watched Seraphine rather than the others.

"That one isn’t an ordinary servant," he told his companion. "Look where she stands relative to him. That’s a guard’s position."

Nobody approached them or said anything openly disrespectful. The reaction remained what Leon had expected: curiosity, calculation, and the first pieces of a story that would reach every inhabited peak before evening.

Han Suwen completed the record and read the positions aloud.

"Seraphine, chief attendant and personal guard. Ira, combat guard. Vyra, steward and adviser. Loriel, medicinal-garden and spiritual-plant attendant. All four registered to the household of Leon, direct disciple of the Palace Mistress."

Their tokens were pale green, each bearing Leon’s household mark beneath the insignia of Jade Moon Palace.

With the registration complete, Han Suwen led them up the terraced road toward the front gate.

It stood thirty feet high and remained open beneath the daylight. Disciples, workers, merchants, and guards moved through in both directions.

Leon crossed it with the four women beside him.

For weeks, he had opened brief apertures from his sealed cultivation room to pass books and resources into the dimensional world. He had asked them to remain hidden and to make themselves smaller than they were because a single careless witness could expose everything.

Now they walked beside him on a public road, and the only thing following them was rumor.