SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 670: What a Master Notices

The journey back took eleven days.

Leon checked his cultivation on the safe nights. Early Qi Refinement remained stable, but the dark cores offered the same difficulty as before. He could recover small amounts of energy from them. He could not make that irregular trickle support the circulation he needed for another attempt.

The Moonfall purchases gave him cleaner supplements. What he needed now was a better way to use the resources already in his hands.

Ji received him three days after their return.

"Shan has the two prisoners’ accounts from the Shen estate," she said. "They agree with the records you recovered."

"Then he has enough?"

"To proceed. He will handle the rest." She placed a requisition slip on the table. "Your reward has been approved. Purchasing credit and one cultivation treasure from the second vault. The four women receive separate material allocations."

Leon picked up the slip. The credit would cover the supplementary stock on his revised list, with room for the array supplies he had been considering.

"And the advance against our expedition share?"

"Remains an advance. This is earned payment for completed work."

"Vyra will be pleased."

"I expect you will all find a use for it." Ji leaned back. "Have you decided what treasure to request?"

"Not yet. I’d like your advice first."

She listened while he described the problem.

He kept the origin of the seven cores private. Ji needed to know how the material behaved, not where he had obtained it.

"It’s heavily drained," he said. "There is valuable residue left, but extracting it gives me an uneven supply. Then I have to remove the original imprint before I can use any of it."

"And you do that while cultivating?"

"I’ve had to. If the supply changes, I need to adjust it without disturbing the nine branches. During the first session I kept losing progress because I couldn’t give both tasks the attention they needed."

Ji rested a finger against the requisition slip.

"How much can you extract without cultivating at all?"

"Slowly? Enough to be worth doing."

"Then come with me."

The second vault contained weapons, sealed medicines, and objects Leon could not identify even after reading their labels. Ji led him to a wooden case holding a broad intake plate, a grey reservoir, and two control assemblies.

"A regulated cultivation array," she said. "You’ve probably seen diagrams of the smaller ones."

"I have. I wasn’t sure they could hold energy this dense without losing most of it."

"Most couldn’t." She indicated the fine inscription inside the reservoir’s rim. "This one was made for sustained work with high-grade materials. It retains the prepared charge and keeps the release steady as the reservoir empties. The tolerances are what you’re paying for."

Leon bent closer. The inscriptions continued beneath a transparent inner lining, packed more tightly than his eye first suggested.

Ji placed a clean spirit stone on the intake plate and opened its valve. A thin current entered the vessel. She let it run, then closed the valve and removed the stone.

The stored charge remained.

"Your supply doesn’t have to arrive while you’re using it," she said. "Prepare enough first."

She turned the release ring. A steady current emerged from the outlet, unchanged as she moved the now-empty intake plate aside.

Leon watched it for several breaths.

He could give the purification his full attention, accumulate the cleaned energy, and begin the circulation afterward. The residue would still take effort to recover. It simply would not need to support every task simultaneously.

"For your material, keep the inlet under your control," Ji continued. "This array regulates energy. It does not remove a dead cultivator’s imprint."

"I clean each portion before storing it."

"Yes. Then close the extraction line when you begin cultivation. Work from what you’ve prepared."

She handed him the release control.

"Start low. Find what your routes accept before increasing it. Change the feed setting separately from the circulation, or you won’t know which adjustment caused a problem."

Leon tried the second setting, then the third. The difference was small enough to feel useful.

"How long will the charge keep?" he asked.

"Long enough for this work, provided you maintain the seals. The operating materials are listed in the case."

He turned the ring back and shut the outlet.

"I want this one."

Ji wrote her approval on the slip. "Good. Bring me the result when you’ve used it."

The women spent most of the next day making their own selections.

Seraphine chose a naturally charged storm-heart shard and conductive plates for testing its light and lightning. Ira found a slab of ember-iron whose internal channels could withstand repeated exposure to her flame.

"The quartermaster thought I wanted it forged into a spearhead," she told Leon. "He started explaining how much that would cost."

"What do you want it for?"

"To train against something I won’t keep melting." She patted the wrapped slab. "Then we’ll discuss the spearhead."

Vyra selected slow-burning fire cores and replacement components for the formations she had been improvising since Ashen Rain. Loriel returned with three moonvine cuttings, a jade-root seedling, and a small jar held carefully in both hands.

Leon looked inside. A curled green shoot turned toward him.

"Coilvine," Loriel said. "It follows warmth. The nursery keeper let me have a cutting."

"Will it survive beside your other plants?"

"If Ira leaves it alone."

"I haven’t touched it," Ira said from the doorway.

Loriel carried it past her. "That’s why it still has leaves."

They celebrated that evening with the residence sealed and far too much food on the table.

Ira had arranged the meal without consulting anyone. There was river fish, a pot of fragrant soup, and dumplings arriving in quantities that suggested she had misunderstood how many people lived there.

"Did you order for tomorrow as well?" Leon asked.

"I ordered until the cook stopped looking worried."

Vyra inspected the spread. "You paid in advance?"

"Of course."

"That explains it."

Leon laughed and drew Ira down beside him before she could go back to the kitchen. He took her hand under the table, rubbing his thumb over the callus at the base of her fingers.

"You did well at the crossing," he said quietly.

Her expression softened. "The guards weren’t much."

"The cargo survived you. That’s what impressed everyone."

She pinched his hand, then leaned against him while reaching for a dumpling.

Across the table, Seraphine was telling Loriel how she intended to test the shard. Vyra listened until the conversation reached the likelihood of ruined equipment, then began asking what was replaceable.

Leon took the ledger she had brought and set it on the empty chair behind him.

"After dinner."

"I was only checking—"

"After dinner," he repeated, and placed a piece of fish in her bowl.

Vyra considered arguing. Instead, she picked up her chopsticks.

Loriel’s jar sat beside the tea. Its shoot turned when Ira reached across the table, following the warmth of her wrist.

Ira stopped.

"Why is it doing that?"

"It likes you," Leon said.

"It wants the heat," Loriel corrected, pleased. "Hold still."

"I am trying to eat."

Seraphine moved the jar closer. Ira watched the shoot uncoil, suspicious until its small leaf brushed her knuckle.

"Oh," she said.

Loriel smiled. "See?"

A little later, Leon found himself with Ira leaning against one side and Loriel tucked against the other, explaining where she would plant the moonvine. He listened, asked about the soil, and kissed her forehead when she finished.

The array case stood beside the wall. The new supplies were packed and ready. For once, he did not feel the need to get up and use them immediately.

He stayed until the tea went cold.