SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 618: The Monument’s Ninth Answer

Red light climbed the first channel and remained at its peak, steady as a lamp.

The recording official lifted his brush.

”One elemental compatibility. Fire—”

The second channel opened.

Blue flowed upward through the stone. When it met the red at the top, neither light weakened.

The official stopped writing.

”Water,” Elder Wen said.

The third compatibility rose more slowly. Amber gathered from the base and settled into its channel with a weight Leon could feel beneath his palm. Pale green followed, always moving, the light refusing to remain still anywhere inside its path.

Four elements in less than a minute.

”A four-element spiritual root,” one junior said. ”Elder, that is—”

”Exceptional,” Wen finished. ”You may stop counting aloud.”

The fifth channel ignored him.

Lightning branched upward in violet-white forks, separating and reforming faster than the eye could follow. The sixth filled with silver-blue frost that spread from the base in crystalline fans.

Wen stopped naming the results.

Lightning and ice burned beside each other without conflict. He had once read an entire study written from nine recorded cases of that pairing. Leon had six elements, and the monument had not slowed.

The seventh channel filled with gold.

The eighth did not seem to fill at all. A black-violet depth opened inside the stone, extending inward rather than rising. It gave off no light, yet everyone in the room could see it. Darkness settled one hand’s width from Light, and neither devoured the other.

Elder Wen stepped backward.

”Light and Darkness,” he said. ”Together.”

One junior put down his brush. Pretending this remained an ordinary examination had become impossible.

Leon kept his palm flat and his expression calm.

His spatial perception had entered the monument with its power. He could feel the formations below, the ancient current moving through the base, and the architecture of the artifact itself.

Nine channels.

Exactly nine.

Eight already held a result, and the monument had brushed against other parts of Leon’s foundation without possessing anywhere to place them. It was not concealing what it found. It simply had no language or structure for anything beyond the sockets its maker had carved.

The ninth channel opened.

Space did not burn, flow, or crystallize. The monument’s outline stopped agreeing with itself. Along the final channel, the wall behind the stone appeared in two places at once.

Then the artifact stopped searching.

Leon felt its attention retract and settle. It had filled every channel it possessed and concluded its task.

This is the monument’s limit. Not mine.

There was no need for anyone else to learn that.

He buried the realization and kept his breathing unchanged.

The nine lights turned inward.

Fire and Water met first without extinguishing each other. Earth rose beneath them and held. Wind threaded through all three. Lightning branched through the structure while Ice formed around it without shattering. Light and Darkness approached last, remaining whole and separate even when Space folded around them.

The combined phenomenon emerged above the monument.

Nine colors turned inside a single sphere, every affinity distinct yet perfectly balanced with the rest.

Ancient golden characters appeared across the stone.

Elder Wen read them once in silence. When he tried aloud, his voice failed and he had to begin again.

”Ninefold Elemental Harmony Spiritual Root.”

Nobody answered him.

A bell rang somewhere above the reception compound.

The sound travelled through the stone as strongly as it travelled through the air. A second bell answered before the first echo faded. Then a third.

The junior officials went pale as they counted.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Qingyue turned toward the ceiling, her lips parted.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

The merged light passed through the hall’s roof without damaging it and rose into the clear morning sky. Nine colors braided together in a pillar visible from every terrace, courtyard, and practice ground around the reception compound.

Elder Wen stared at the golden classification.

”More than three thousand years,” he said. ”The last confirmed bearer appeared over three thousand years ago. He eventually became a Heaven Immortal.”

Several officials looked at Leon as if the final realm had already been promised.

Wen noticed.

”The spiritual root did not hand that man his cultivation,” he said sharply. ”It gave him compatibility. He still spent centuries surviving, learning, and breaking through. Record the result without inventing a destiny around it.”

”What became of his lineage?” one junior asked before remembering this was not a lecture.

Wen’s eyes remained on the monument. ”It ended. His descendants inherited fragments—two elements in one generation, three in another, never the harmony itself. The Palace retained his records, but no complete method could be passed to someone who did not share his constitution.”

That answer changed the mood again. Leon was not merely repeating a known inheritance. If accepted, the Palace would need to build a path around him from surviving pieces.

The official picked up his brush, though his hand was no longer steady.

Leon removed his palm.

The lights did not fade. All nine channels remained saturated, their colors moving slowly beneath the dark surface.

Wen inspected the base and sent a thread of qi through its release formation.

”Nothing is broken,” he said after a moment. ”The monument took in more than it can release quickly. Four days, perhaps six, before it can examine anyone else.”

The first elders arrived before the fourth minute ended.

They entered quickly and with visible irritation, clearly expecting an artifact failure. One was halfway through demanding an explanation when he saw the monument.

He stopped.

The others saw the same sequence: a young man in plain Moonfall clothing; a record showing a bone age of twenty-two; Peak Golden Core cultivation; a separate note describing Dao Palace-level density and foundation quality; nine saturated channels; and a forgotten classification burning in gold.

More elders arrived. Then more after them.

The nine bells had not identified a candidate or even confirmed that the event came from an examination. They had only announced that an ancient threshold had been reached. That uncertainty drew senior cultivators faster than a detailed message would have. Each new arrival entered prepared for several possibilities and abandoned all of them after seeing Leon.

One elder asked whether the light could have been produced by nine candidates touching the stone together. Elder Wen pointed silently at the single handprint still glowing at its center. The elder did not ask a second question.

Elder Wen tried three times to restore order. He abandoned the effort when the eleventh arrival began arguing about the monument’s calibration history while another elder sent a message token out of the hall.

”All records remain on this table,” Wen snapped. ”No copies leave until the Palace decides how this result will be handled.”

Qingyue stayed beside Leon.

She had entered the hall prepared to endure a season of ridicule if her recommendation proved foolish. That concern had died somewhere around the eighth element. She had not yet decided what had replaced it.

An old elder in green was the first to stop staring at the artifact and examine Leon himself.

”Whose personal disciple is he?” the man asked.

”No one’s,” Qingyue said.

Every elder in the room looked at Leon again.

This time, they were not examining him.

They were calculating.