SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 649: Five Through the Lightning

Chapter 649: Five Through the Lightning

Five hours proved to be enough, although none of them had time to waste.

Leon prepared the duplicate record himself. It contained the layered frequencies, Seraphine’s discharge map, the results of both crossing tests, the paired-anchor design, their planned order of entry, and a plain description of every failure they could predict. He sealed the case and placed it beneath the ledger stone in the abandoned camp.

Vyra transmitted their intended entry window to Han Suwen and received confirmation. She then locked the three tracking formations into the tested cycle and sealed their controls. Once activated, they would continue without anyone remaining outside.

Ira inspected every formation anchor and drove the outer plate deep enough into the stormglass shelf that moving it would require breaking the stone around it. Seraphine marked the corresponding position for the inner anchor. Loriel checked all five return talismans, communication plaques, injuries, and cultivation routes.

They redistributed the field supplies as though they might not return that day. Each person carried water, food, medicine, spare spirit stones, and a copy of the essential formation frequencies. Vyra objected to the weight until Loriel pointed out that an isolated realm was a poor place to depend on one person keeping hold of the supply bag. After that, Vyra divided everything evenly.

Seraphine also prepared a second site for the inner anchor in case the corresponding ground proved unstable at any given moment. It was only two paces from the first, but Leon confirmed that both points lay within the region he could align with. If one cracked or shifted, she would have somewhere else to plant the plate without improvising under an open corridor.

They repeated the unmanned test an hour before the front arrived. The slab crossed, the paired anchors held after Leon released the alignment, and the slab returned intact.

Loriel made Leon complete a full circulation afterward.

"Clean," she said. "If that changes, I call the retreat."

"You call it."

When nothing remained except waiting, Leon gathered the four women beside the shelf.

"Nobody has to enter," he said. "The talismans may fail. The plaques may fail. If the anchors lose power, we could be trapped until the Palace finds another way inside. I can make the attempt alone while the rest of you remain here."

"Then you would be entering alone," Seraphine said.

"Yes."

"No."

She checked the bindings on her sword.

"I know the route, the discharge pattern, and the inner anchor. I’m going."

Vyra held up the case containing her formation records. "If the corridor fails, someone inside must understand the mechanism well enough to tell you why. I’m going."

Ira folded her arms. "The missing group includes three Golden Core cultivators, and something still trapped all nine without a fight. You are not taking a healer into that place without a combat guard."

"You could stay with Loriel."

"Loriel is going."

They all looked at her.

Loriel did not pretend enthusiasm.

"I would prefer not to enter the secret realm that made nine people disappear," she said. "But we do not know what condition they’re in, and I am the only one here who can treat injuries or environmental corruption properly. So yes, I’m going."

"Then all five of us go," Leon said.

Ira spat on the stone and rubbed it in with her boot.

Vyra stared at her. "What was that?"

"Basin luck."

"You invented it just now."

"Every tradition begins somewhere."

The front crossed the northern rim shortly afterward.

Rain struck the basin hard enough to flatten against the stone. Water began climbing from puddles and wet leaves, silver threads rising through the downpour. Pale veins illuminated beneath the stormglass shelf.

"Tracking formations synchronized," Vyra called. "Recognition pulse is stable."

Seraphine stood below the point she had marked on the ridge, inner anchor secured across her back. Leon spread his perception through the boundary and found the two spatial layers moving toward correspondence.

The first lightning strike hit farther west.

The second flashed behind the ridge.

The third came directly overhead.

Seraphine sent a narrow path of her own lightning up the rock face. The natural strike followed it into the shelf’s main channel.

The stormglass rang.

Another basin appeared over the first: dry black shelves, pale daylight, and nine distant figures going about their work.

Leon caught four paces of the correspondence before it could slide apart. Space and Lightning moved together through the Formless Myriad Scripture, one affinity holding the alignment while the other allowed him to correct it fast enough. The Primordial Void Heart absorbed the pressure returning through his channels.

For several seconds, the two grounds resisted.

Then the selected section settled.

There was no doorway or frame. Wet stone and dry stone occupied the same narrow stretch, both solid and both accessible.

"Test slab," Leon said.

Ira pushed it through and pulled it back four seconds later. It returned whole and dry on the far side.

"Go."

Seraphine entered first. Rain stopped striking her halfway through the corridor. She emerged into pale daylight, drew her sword, and checked the surrounding ground before unfastening the inner anchor.

She planted it on the corresponding point.

The paired plates connected. Leon felt the storm charge settle into a closed circuit between them.

Seraphine tested the inner plate with one boot before stepping away. Its teeth had sunk into dry stormglass, and each of its carved channels carried a steady pale current. She signalled that the anchor was secure.

He released most of his direct hold. The corridor remained stable.

Ira crossed next, followed by Vyra and Loriel. Leon waited long enough to confirm that the autonomous tracking formations and the outer anchor were still supplying a steady pattern. Then he stepped through last.

The rain stopped between one breath and the next.

He stood in a dry Ashen Rain Basin beneath a pale sky without a visible sun. The corridor remained behind him, supported by the two anchors. Through it, he could see rain falling over the real shelf and the tracking formations glowing at their posts.

"Talisman," Vyra said.

Leon’s return talisman was cold. The jade thread through it held no response.

The other four found the same.

Vyra opened her communication plaque. "It can’t locate the Palace. The connection isn’t being blocked. As far as this plaque is concerned, there is nowhere outside this realm to search."

"The corridor is our return route," Leon said. "Nothing else."

Two hundred paces northeast, nine figures worked beside a mineral pool.

Ira stared at them. "That’s actually them."

"Tight formation," Seraphine said. "We walk. We do not run."

They had covered perhaps thirty paces when the surveyors disappeared from view.

Nothing passed between the two groups. No mist rose and no formation light flashed. The mineral pool and everyone around it simply became too distant to resolve, as though a section of the basin had been moved several kilometres away.

The corridor behind them still stood open, but it too appeared farther away than it had seconds earlier.

Seraphine stopped and placed a marker at her feet. She took one careful step forward, then turned.

The marker was twenty paces behind her.