SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 604: The Fourth Anchor

The spearman drove toward the chamber while the chain wielder attacked Leon from the side.

Their plan was simple. One would force Leon to protect the door, leaving the other free to strike him. The leader continued feeding power into the breaching disc, and fine cracks spread across the chamber’s outer ward.

Leon raised an ice wall across the steps. The spear pierced it in two blows. Before the third, Leon folded the distance beneath the attacker’s feet.

The man completed his charge at the bottom of the dry pond, twelve paces from his target. Ice closed around his legs.

The chain wielder used the opening. Qi-hardened links struck Leon’s shoulder and tore through cloth and flesh before he caught them. Lightning ran along the metal. The attacker released the weapon, but the current had already reached his arm and disrupted its circulation.

Leon crossed the space between them and broke the man’s manifestation with a second strike.

The cultivator abandoned his body before it fully failed. His anchored consciousness reached beyond the sealed garden, attempting to form a new avatar on the far side of the wall.

Leon bent the route back into the containment field.

The new body assembled directly in front of him. Light showed the active connection, and Leon severed it before the avatar could stabilize.

The second presence disappeared.

The spearman shattered the ice around his legs. He looked at the two empty places where his companions had died, then compressed everything he had into one final charge at the chamber.

Leon caught him one step from the door.

The spearhead punched into Leon’s already wounded shoulder, but space twisted the weapon away before it could pass through. Leon drove lightning down the shaft and through the spearman’s spine. Ice locked the collapsing body in place while Leon cut the connection sustaining it.

The third anchor failed.

Leon pulled the spear free. Light closed the wound, leaving the shoulder stiff and sore.

The garden fell quiet.

Three Early-stage Ethereal Initiates were dead. None had escaped, and the chamber remained sealed.

The Late-stage leader removed the breaching disc from the damaged ward and stored it inside his robe. Pressure unfolded from him until cracks spread across the frozen pond.

”You allowed us to enter,” he said.

”I needed to know why you came.”

The leader sealed the garden with a clan technique, blocking the passage in both directions. ”Then you know enough to understand what happens if my clan learns you interfered.”

”Your clan wanted a quiet theft. You gave me the chance to walk away because you didn’t want witnesses or questions.”

The man’s expression changed slightly. Leon had his answer.

They moved at the same time.

The first compressed sheet of qi shattered Leon’s ice barrier and reduced the stone behind it to gravel. The second arrived through the opening. Leon folded aside, then sent lightning through the leader’s footing to break his balance.

The leader recovered before the current finished passing through him. He turned the disrupted step into a low sweep that split the stone where Leon landed. Leon blocked the follow-up with layered ice, and the impact drove cracks through all three layers.

The difference between Early and Late stage was clear. The leader’s body carried denser energy, and his cosmic anchor restored damage almost as quickly as Leon inflicted it. Twice Leon struck through his chest. Both wounds closed as the wider anchored existence supplied a new manifestation.

Killing him would have been easier. Leon needed him alive.

Lightning disrupted his techniques just before they settled. Ice narrowed the battlefield and suppressed his channels without destroying them. Light let Leon track every injury while layers of space remained over the ancestor’s chamber.

The leader realized Leon’s intention when a third strike stopped short of his dantian.

”You want information.”

He threw the breaching disc.

It tore through two spatial barriers and struck the third. The circulation behind the chamber door trembled once.

Leon’s restraint vanished.

Space compressed across the lower garden. The leader tried to cross nine paces and travelled only two. His next attack curved away from the chamber and buried itself in the dry pond.

Unable to break free, he abandoned his body.

His manifestation collapsed. Consciousness rushed into the distributed cosmic anchor, intending to reform beyond the estate.

Leon wrapped the active connection in folded space and closed it into a loop. He left the anchor intact. Everything the leader sent outward returned to the same few paces of garden.

A new body formed inside the compression.

The leader tried again and reappeared in the same place. On the third attempt, he stopped trying to flee. His awareness turned inward, reaching for his own anchor with enough force to damage it and destroy whatever information Leon wanted.

Leon tightened the spatial restraint around the connection. The leader remained linked to his anchor but could no longer reach deeply enough to collapse it.

Ice entered his limbs and major channels. Lightning disrupted his nerves. Guided by Light, Leon applied only enough force to suppress the body and keep the man conscious.

The leader ended on his knees with his arms locked at his sides. His avatar was intact, his anchor remained stable, and he could neither reform elsewhere nor destroy himself.

Four minutes later, Leon removed the seal from the garden arch.

Six guards rushed through first. Shen Baoyuan followed in a night robe, with Yanning beside him holding two formation flags. They stopped when they saw the garden.

Baoyuan counted the three bodies and stared at the kneeling prisoner.

”Four Void Immortals,” he said quietly. ”Inside my home.”

”Three are permanently dead,” Leon said. ”The Late-stage leader is restrained. He knows who sent them and whether another group is coming.”

Yanning descended the steps and placed one hand against the stone beside the chamber door. The refinement circulation continued on the other side. When she confirmed it, some of the tension left her shoulders.

”What did you hear?” she asked.

”The treasure strengthens a cosmic anchor. Your ancestor is refining it because this may be his last chance to reach Earth Immortal.” Leon nodded toward the prisoner. ”They learned the date and waited until he couldn’t safely interrupt the process.”

”Was someone inside the family involved?”

”Their conversation didn’t prove that. A purchase this valuable could be traced from outside. He should know how they found out.”

Yanning turned to the guards and began issuing orders. The inner estate was to be sealed. No one would enter the rear garden. Every guard on the eastern route would be questioned, but nobody would be accused without evidence. The prisoner would be moved only after Leon approved the restraints.

Shen Baoyuan remained near the arch, looking from Leon to the sealed chamber.

”I gave you money and a token,” he said. ”That cannot repay this.”

”You gave me enough to live here for a year when I had no local money, papers, or place to sleep.” Leon looked at the old merchant. ”I remembered.”

Baoyuan bowed his head and did not argue.

Leon crouched in front of the captured leader. He checked the spatial loop, the restrained connection, and the stability of the cosmic anchor. Everything held.

The man raised his head. Fury remained in his eyes, but the confidence had disappeared.

”Who sent you?” Leon asked.

The captured leader let Leon’s question hang in the cold garden air.

”You should think carefully about what you’ve done,” he said at last.

His voice remained steady, though maintaining it took visible effort. Leon had left him kneeling at the foot of the steps, his arms locked against his sides and every path to his Ethereal foundation held inside a spatial restraint.

”Three members of my force are permanently dead,” the man continued. ”That is not a debt the Shen family can settle with an apology.”

”I didn’t ask what I should fear,” Leon said. ”I asked who sent you.”

The leader turned toward Yanning. She sat near the covered walkway with a lamp beside her and a writing board across her knees. Trusted guards had sealed the surrounding courtyards, but none stood close enough to hear.

”You manage the routes and ledgers,” the prisoner said. ”Then you understand what happens when a merchant family offends a power it cannot fight. Your house has warehouses in other cities and caravans on roads you cannot protect. Release me, and I can report that the treasure became impossible to extract. Keep me, and the people behind me will eventually learn where I disappeared.”

Yanning’s brush paused, then resumed.

”How long have you been a Void Immortal?” Leon asked.

The change of subject unsettled the man. ”Three hundred and eleven years.”

”Then you know what happened to the other three.”