SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 605: Three Hours Until Dawn

Leon crouched in front of him and adjusted the spatial restraint.

For two seconds, every route connecting the prisoner’s manifested body to the wider structure of his existence closed. Leon did not touch or damage the Ethereal foundation itself. He merely made it unreachable.

The leader’s face emptied of color.

Leon released the pressure before any harm was done.

”Your foundation is intact,” he said. ”I intend to keep it that way. Tell the truth, and you remain alive as a prisoner. Deliberately lie, and I lose my reason to preserve you.”

The man breathed slowly until the panic left his eyes.

”You need what I know.”

”That is why you’re still breathing.”

Silence stretched between them.

”Qiao,” the prisoner finally said. ”The Qiao clan of Ninefold Ridge.”

Yanning’s brush stopped.

”Their mark?” she asked.

”A notched iron ring. There is one sewn inside my collar.”

Yanning looked at Leon. ”The clan is based eleven days east when the roads are clear. They control three mining valleys and much of the river trade beyond them. They have no seat in Moonfall, but they buy through local intermediaries and have several Void Immortal ancestors.”

”Powerful enough to crush the Shens?” Leon asked.

”If we challenged them openly and stood alone, yes.” Her expression tightened. ”A prisoner’s statement and an emblem won’t be enough for a formal accusation. They would deny everything, petition Moonfall’s magistrates, and demand restitution for damaging their name.”

She turned the writing board around and drew a rough line east from Moonfall.

”Ninefold Ridge is far enough away that people here sometimes forget its reach. But Qiao ore enters Moonfall through several companies, and more than one ruling house depends on that trade. If we accuse them tonight, half the city will ask what proof we have. The other half will ask how much business they might lose by believing us.”

”And the Qiao clan will learn exactly how much you know,” Leon said.

”Yes. Silence gives us room to investigate. An accusation gives them warning.”

Leon returned his attention to the prisoner. ”How did they learn about the treasure?”

The answers came slowly.

The Qiao clan had noticed the Shen family selling routes, collecting old debts, and moving an unusual amount of wealth through brokers. That activity revealed the purchase. Someone along the delivery chain had then marked the treasure itself with a tracking formation fine enough to survive the Shen family’s inspection.

The formation did not transmit conversations or images. It revealed the treasure’s location and changes in its energy. When Shen Yuanhe began refining it, the paired device reacted. The Qiao clan knew the exact moment their target became both active and difficult to move.

”That was why you attacked tonight,” Leon said.

”The old man couldn’t stop safely. If he interrupted the process, he would ruin the treasure and injure his foundation. We expected the rest of the estate to be helpless.”

”You expected correctly,” Yanning said. ”Except for one guest.”

The prisoner ignored her.

”How were you meant to leave?” Leon asked.

”Across the eastern storehouse and through the same seam we used to enter. We would leave Moonfall before anyone knew what had happened.”

”Then report after you were clear?”

”There was no need. We were expected at a rendezvous.”

Yanning looked down at her notes.

”No confirmation method?” she asked.

”None.”

”My family sends a receipt runner with herb shipments worth three silver. The Qiao clan sent four Void Immortals after a foundation treasure and arranged no one to check whether they succeeded?”

The prisoner did not answer.

Leon watched his breathing.

”Someone local has the paired device,” he said. ”That person watches the estate and reports if you fail to appear.”

The leader’s jaw tightened.

Leon touched the restraint again without closing it. The man felt the warning and lowered his eyes.

”One agent,” he admitted. ”He will take position an hour before dawn. If we reach the rendezvous, he leaves without sending anything. If we don’t, he reports what he sees.”

”Where?”

”He chooses his own observation point.”

”How does he contact the clan?” Yanning asked.

”A paired message-jade. He also holds the device linked to the tracker.”

”Does he know your route out?” Leon asked.

”Only the rendezvous beyond the eastern gate.”

Yanning recorded the answer. ”Then he cannot confirm where the team went afterward. That gives us something to work with.”

The leader glanced between them. ”A false message will not fool him if the tracker still shows the treasure inside this estate.”

”Then we change what the tracker shows,” Leon said.

The eastern sky was still dark, but it would not remain so for long.

Yanning checked the small water clock a servant had placed beside her. ”Less than three hours.”

Leon looked toward the chamber beneath the garden. The vast circulation within continued at the same slow rhythm. Shen Yuanhe had no idea that four Void Immortals had crossed his walls, and stopping now could still destroy his final chance.

Capturing the observer before he reports only delays the problem until the clan misses two groups instead of one.

”If no message arrives, Ninefold Ridge investigates immediately,” Leon said.

”And if the agent reports that we vanished inside the estate, they’ll know the Shens had help,” Yanning replied.

”Then we don’t stop the report.”

She studied him. ”What do we do?”

Leon looked down at the man who had spent the last hour trying to bargain his way out of the garden.

”We decide what it says.”

They prepared the false report in the strongroom beneath the counting house.

The captured leader was chained to a formation post. Yanning wrote each version of the message on thin paper, read it aloud, and burned it when either Leon or the prisoner found a flaw.

”It must be short,” she said. ”The longer it is, the more chances we give him to notice something wrong.”

”Short and ordinary,” Leon agreed.

The message would claim the raid had succeeded. The treasure had been secured, but an unexpected patrol near the eastern route had forced the group to hide outside Moonfall. They would suppress the tracker, remain concealed, and make contact again after attention faded.

It explained why the four Void Immortals would miss their rendezvous without suggesting that anything inside the Shen estate had defeated them.

The leader surrendered the necessary details one at a time. The contact method used two paired message-jades and worked within a limited distance. Authentication came from a rotating monthly phrase disguised as ordinary commercial news. That month’s opening concerned the price of dried river fish in Baihe.

”That is the Qiao clan’s secret code?” Leon asked.

”Complicated codes are forgotten under pressure,” the leader said. ”This one is remembered.”

The tracker was harder to deceive.

Its formation remained on the treasure while Shen Yuanhe refined it. Removing the mark could disturb the process, and Leon refused to risk that. Instead, he found the faint signal leaving the underground chamber and folded a thin layer of Space around it. The sheath reduced the signal without touching its source. A concealment disc taken from the raiders weakened it further.

To the paired device, the treasure would still appear present and active, but deliberately smothered—the expected state of stolen goods was hidden by professionals.

”How long will it hold?” Yanning asked.

”A few days,” Leon said. ”After that, the signal will drift enough to look wrong.”

”Then we use those days.”

Before Leon left to find the observer, the prisoner spoke the authenticated message into his jade while Yanning held the written script in front of him. Leon remained beside him through the entire recording, ready to close the restraint if the man inserted a warning.

The message-jade was set to release at the eighth morning mark. Yanning would supervise it from the strongroom. Leon would already be outside, watching whoever received it.

Before he left, Leon made the terms clear to them one final time. If the recording contained a hidden warning they had missed, then the prisoner’s bargain ended. The leader looked toward the spatial restraint surrounding every route to his foundation and confirmed that he had made no such attempt.

Yanning sealed the jade inside a timing frame. Once activated, neither she nor the prisoner could alter the message without breaking the frame and cancelling its release.