SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 617: Only Golden Core

The pale ring was warm.

Leon placed his hand where the examiner indicated and felt the artifact sweep through bone, marrow, and the bond between body and soul. He held his foundation still and allowed it to see what it had been made to measure.

Age. Integration. Possession. Reconstruction.

It passed over his second heart without understanding it. The dimensional world remained deeper still, untouched by the ring’s awareness.

Three lines appeared upon the stone.

Bone Age: Twenty-Two Years

Body–Soul Integration: Unbroken

No Possession, Reconstruction, or Age Concealment Detected

One junior official inhaled sharply.

Elder Wen turned his head. ”Twenty-two?”

”Yes, Elder.”

”Again.”

The second reading took longer. It reached through Leon by another route and returned the same three lines.

Elder Wen studied Leon rather than the artifact this time. Leon understood why. Twenty-two-year-olds were not supposed to possess his stillness, his reflexes, or the habit of watching every door in a room.

”Your bearing is older than your bones,” Wen said.

”The place where I grew up did not leave much room to be young.”

Qingyue had expected him to be young by cultivator standards. Perhaps forty. Even that would have made his apparent strength extraordinary. Twenty-two changed the scale of the problem.

Elder Wen gestured toward the next artifact.

”Cultivation.”

The second instrument was a shallow basin of dark metal filled with something that resembled neither water nor light. Leon placed both hands into it. The substance climbed his forearms without wetting them.

It began at the lowest cultivation realm and tested upward. Halfway through, the formation hesitated. Its light faded, returned, and began the entire sequence again.

One junior frowned at his plate. ”Elder—”

”I see it. Do not interfere.”

The reading slowed at the same place. Then the dark surface steadied and characters formed above it.

Realm: Peak Golden Core

Leon translated the result privately.

Level 50. Peak Ascendant.

Behind him, Qingyue made a very small sound.

It was the loudest thing in the hall.

He turned. Her composure had cracked by less than a finger’s width, but Leon had spent four days travelling through the Desolation with her and several more in Moonfall. He had never seen her openly surprised.

No one else in the hall understood why. A twenty-two-year-old at Peak Golden Core was highly talented, but the result alone did not justify disbelief.

Qingyue knew what the basin did not show.

She had found Leon holding his ground against the Moonless Shadow Leopard in the Desolation, an Earth Immortal beast that could have killed most Void Immortals within seconds. On the road, he had then killed seven Dao Palace cultivators and their Early-stage Void Immortal leader. Later, in the Shen estate, he had killed three Void Immortals and captured a fourth with his immortal foundation sealed.

Qingyue had explained those feats by assuming Leon’s true cultivation was concealed—Dao Palace, perhaps, with techniques refined enough to make him look weaker than he was.

Peak Golden Core stripped that explanation away.

She had not overestimated him. She had underestimated him by an absurd margin.

Her expression settled before any of the officials could read more from it, and she said nothing. They did not know his combat record, and she had no intention of revealing it without his permission.

Elder Wen was studying the basin rather than Qingyue. The formation had hesitated and restarted before producing its answer, which was reason enough for him to distrust a routine reading.

”Drain it. Reseat it. Secondary formation and full calibration.”

Two officials lifted the dark basin while the others opened the plinth and inspected every formation node. Elder Wen laid a second array beneath it to detect suppression, borrowed power, false advancement, and anything that might deliberately lower the result.

Leon submitted to the examination without comment.

Twenty minutes later, the same words appeared.

Realm: Peak Golden Core

The officials checked the suppression formation first. Its twelve nodes remained clear. A borrowed technique would have left a second rhythm in the basin; none appeared. A damaged breakthrough would have produced fractures or turbulence; Leon’s reading remained smooth enough to irritate Elder Wen further.

At the examiner’s order, one junior brought a reference crystal used for testing the basin itself. It displayed exactly the value carved into its base.

No one could blame the instrument anymore.

Elder Wen kept one hand in the dark fluid as he studied the internal flow.

”The artifact is functioning,” he said. ”There is no false suppression, forced advancement, corrupted foundation, parasitic technique, or borrowed cultivation. His realm is real. Everything surrounding the realm is the anomaly.”

”Explain,” Qingyue said.

Wen lifted one finger.

”His energy density is comparable to that of a strong Dao Palace cultivator. I mean density, not combat output. What he possesses is compressed far beyond the normal limit of Golden Core.”

A second finger rose.

”His foundation is more complete than the realm requires. There are Dao Palace cultivators inside this Palace with less stable foundations.”

Then a third.

”His body, spirit, and power support one another without a weak seam. That is rare at any realm. At twenty-two, I would have called it impossible yesterday.”

Wen lowered his hand and frowned at Leon’s submerged arms.

”I cannot tell you how he accomplished it. His energy does not circulate along any meridian structure I recognize. I have examined cultivators for two centuries, and I cannot map his channels.”

The four junior officials stared openly now.

”Where did you cultivate?” Wen asked.

Leon gave the answer he had prepared during the vessel journey.

”Inside a sealed inheritance realm. I do not know who created it. Its methods were different from the ones used here. I have been outside long enough to buy a children’s primer on meridians, and I understood only half of it.” He allowed some genuine frustration into his voice. ”I was taught how to use what I possess. Nobody explained why it worked. When the entrance collapsed, I emerged with no teacher and no way back.”

”That is an unsatisfying answer.”

”It is the answer I have. If I invented something better, people here would expose it within a week.”

Elder Wen regarded him for several breaths, then grunted.

”That last sentence is the most convincing part.”

For Qingyue, the missing history finally began to make sense. A twenty-two-year-old with this foundation could not have developed openly. Any clan that found him as a child would have built its future around him, while any sect would have recorded every breakthrough. If Leon had grown anywhere connected to ordinary civilization, someone would already have claimed him.

His lack of history was no longer the greatest weakness in his story. It was evidence supporting it.

Elder Wen turned to the recording official.

”Two separate entries. Realm: Peak Golden Core. Then: energy density and foundation quality comparable to Dao Palace; upper limit undetermined. Do not combine them.”

The official wrote each line carefully.

Wen looked toward the final artifact.

It was a monument rather than an instrument—a dark stone slab nearly three meters high, worn smooth around its base. Nine faint channels ran across its face, surrounded by characters in a script Leon had not seen anywhere in Moonfall.

”Remove the routine candidate calibration,” Wen ordered. ”Use the old setting.”

One junior hesitated. ”Elder, that setting has not been used in—”

”I know when it was last used. This morning has given us a twenty-two-year-old Peak Golden Core cultivator with Dao Palace-level energy density and a foundation I cannot map. I will not trust a routine reading.”

The officials spent ten minutes waking the older formations. Something deep inside the monument stirred with a sound like a bell struck beneath water.

Qingyue moved to Leon’s side. She had expected to defend an unusual recommendation. Now she suspected the first two tests had been the ordinary part.

”Place your palm flat,” Wen said. ”Do not push power into it. The monument will take what it needs.”

Leon touched the cold stone.

Nothing happened.

Then the first dormant channel opened and burned red.

Elder Wen leaned forward.

”Fire,” he whispered.