SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 596: No Witnesses

Qingyue moved north across the broken stone at a pace that left little room for conversation. She never told Leon to keep up, but the test was obvious within the first few steps.

Ridges swept toward them and vanished behind them almost as soon as Leon noticed them. Loose stone cracked beneath Qingyue’s feet, yet her upper body hardly moved. She travelled with the ease of someone who had long ago stopped measuring journeys by days.

Leon had no intention of chasing her true limit. Qingyue was at least comparable to the Moonless Shadow Leopard, and likely much stronger. The speed she had chosen, however, was one he could maintain all day.

He closed the thirty paces between them and settled beside her without letting his breathing change.

Sixteen kilometers later, she glanced at him. Her gaze lingered on his calm face, then she turned forward and increased her speed by about a fifth.

Leon matched her again.

This time, she kept the same pace.

The increase placed a little more pressure on his legs, though it came nowhere close to straining him. He kept that from his face. Matching her chosen pace already revealed enough, and Qingyue’s brief sideways glance told him she understood that.

”Your inheritance taught you to move like that,” she said after a while.

”Some of it.”

”Which part?”

”The part that kept me alive.”

The land gradually changed around them. The black, glassy basins of the deep Desolation gave way to gray stone and stubborn patches of scrub. Even the wind was losing its metallic taste. Twice, Qingyue stopped and held a flat crescent of pale jade on her palm. The light inside it pointed south both times.

”How long were you sealed inside?” she asked.

”I stopped counting.”

”That is not an answer.”

”It’s the one I have.”

”Did the others in your inheritance cultivate as strangely as you do?”

”There weren’t any others,” Leon said. ”Not by the end.”

The answer carried enough truth to silence her. She asked nothing else for the next hour.

Leon watched the changing land. Around midday, they passed a line of weathered stone markers and reached a reinforced road. The material beneath its surface made his spatial sense skip when he stepped over it. Deep paired ruts showed frequent wagon traffic, while old fire scars and a stripped axle spoke of the dangers along the route.

The road looked maintained, but never safe. Tracks veered around old patches of scorched stone, and someone had carved warning marks into one of the roadside pillars before weather wore them nearly smooth.

They were nearing the edge of the Desolation.

Leon smelled blood roughly a kilometer before the caravan came into view. Burned qi and the remnants of shattered formations hung over the road, mixed with a sweet medicinal scent leaking from broken cargo. Eight presences moved ahead, all of them alert.

Qingyue sensed them at nearly the same moment. She slowed to a walk, though her sword remained sheathed.

They rounded the shoulder of a hill and saw what remained of a merchant caravan.

There had been eleven wagons. Four burned along the roadside while men searched the other seven, breaking open storage containers and sorting cultivation goods into piles. Nine guards already lay dead.

Around forty survivors had been forced into the gap between two wagons. Merchants, servants, children, and badly wounded guards huddled together under the watch of two robbers. Both men faced the prisoners with weapons ready.

Several captives were too injured to sit upright. Others pressed pieces of torn cloth against wounds while trying to keep the children quiet. Whatever fight the guards had offered was already over.

Leon focused on the attackers.

[Archon — Level 84]

[Archon — Level 81]

The readings continued as his attention moved across the road. Seven Archons in total. Their leader stood beside the largest wagon with his hands behind his back. His presence was much denser, pressing against the air around him.

[Ethereal Initiate — Level 96]

One Ethereal among seven Archons made the group dangerous enough to destroy an ordinary caravan. It also explained the confidence with which they worked.

A young woman moved among the captives, holding the survivors together through sheer composure. A moderate cut crossed her left shoulder, bleeding through a sleeve she had torn to bandage someone else. She guided three children behind a wagon wheel so they could not see the bodies. When a servant began sobbing, she put a waterskin in his hands and sent him to help an old man with a crushed leg. The task steadied him.

She never spared a glance for the wagons holding her family’s fortune.

Near the front of the group, an older merchant in fine robes knelt before the leader with both hands open.

”Take the cargo, the registry seals, the route contracts—everything. I will not report the loss. I will not name you.” His voice cracked, but he forced it steady. ”There are children here. Take everything and leave them.”

The leader regarded him with mild interest and gave no answer.

Leon studied the other robbers. Each man had taken a position near the prisoners, and one had cleaned his blade without sheathing it. Their purpose was clear. Once the cargo was sorted, they would kill every witness.

The older merchant seemed to understand as well. His eyes kept moving between the raised weapons and the children, searching for an argument that might still reach men who had already decided.

Qingyue stopped half a pace behind Leon. Her attention rested on him, waiting to see what he would do.

Below them, the merchant tried again. ”Please. My daughter. The children—”

The nearest robber stepped behind him and raised a broad blade as casually as a woodsman lifting an axe.

Leon moved.

He crossed the slope without a sound and caught the robber’s wrist as the blade fell. With a twist, he forced the strike aside and pulled the merchant clear.

His free hand drove through the robber’s chest.

Lightning burst through flesh, heart, and cultivation core. The Archon died before his body struck the road.

Silence lasted half a breath. Then the remaining attackers turned toward Leon.

He gave them no chance to organize.

Lightning carried him across twenty paces. The two men guarding the prisoners were the immediate threat, so he killed the first in passing and tore through the second before the man could aim his weapon. Archons lacked cosmic anchors. Destroying their bodies and cores killed them permanently.

Ice surged from the road between the survivors and the attackers. Leon raised one wall three meters high, then angled another from its edge. The captives were boxed between the wagons with a single entrance, and Leon planted himself inside it.

Four Archons rushed him together.

Behind them, the lone Ethereal Initiate finally began to move.