Chapter 663: The Story the Palace Told

Chapter 663: The Story the Palace Told

The rain took the ash into the mud within a few minutes, and Ji Liansu turned away from it before it was finished.

"Elder Ruan. You stay."

The formation elder was already back at the flat ground with a stylus between her teeth. She took it out. "How many people?"

"As many as you need, chosen by you, vetted by Elder Shan. Reinforce what my disciple repaired. Conceal the pulse — I do not want a wandering cultivator with a tracking formation stumbling into this a second time. Layered seals over the entrance, and a permanent access formation designed and built before that realm matures." Ji paused. "Nobody enters. Including you."

"I’d like to enter."

"I am aware. Nobody enters."

Elder Ruan made a noise that was not quite agreement and went back to her lines.

"Elder Shan. The basin is closed. Palace authority, a perimeter you can hold quietly, and every record from beneath this ground through your hands before anyone else’s." Ji’s voice did not rise. "No disciple, merchant, allied clan, or elder outside this conversation gets the true report without my permission."

"And the reason we give?"

"An unstable ancient formation field. It trapped a survey team, damaged the regional tracking arrays, and remains dangerous until the Palace certifies it. All of which is true."

Then she went to the nine surveyors, and Leon watched her handle them differently.

"Deacon Yu. I am going to restrict you and your people, and I would rather you heard why from me than guessed at it."

Yu came to attention. "Palace Mistress."

"Medicine court first, all nine, tonight. Then you will each be questioned separately. Nobody suspects you of anything; nine separate accounts simply reconstruct an event more accurately than one agreed version. You will be compensated for the mission at the rate for a completed survey plus hazard, and I will sign it myself." She let that sit. "After that, everything you experienced beneath this basin is sealed. You do not discuss it with your peaks, your families, or each other."

"Understood."

"Nobody is touching your memories," Ji added. "Nobody is threatening you. You went where the Palace sent you and kept all nine members of your team alive through a spatial event that lasted more than three weeks outside. That earns protection, not suspicion."

Xie Lan spoke without meaning to. "Palace Mistress — the Palace will be told we walked into a broken formation. Nobody will ever know what’s actually down there."

"A great many people will know," said Ji. "In three to six months, in an order I choose. At this moment, seventeen people know what lies beneath this basin. That is already more than I would prefer."

Mo Rui looked at the flat ground a while and said, quietly, "Then it’s a good story. I’d believe it."

Ji asked for the spikes before they left.

Leon handed over all three, cased and sealed, and gave her the same account he had given her in the rain.

"The craftsmanship matches the ward-breaker used against the Shen estate. Same finish, same character-cutting, in my judgment the same workshop." He met her eyes. "That’s a maker, not a buyer. I still can’t prove who commissioned either set."

"Good," said Ji. "Keep saying it that way until it stops being true."

The transit formation came down an hour later, a moon-white lattice opening in the clouds above the basin. Leon felt its cost now that he was not distracted. Fifteen people crossed eleven days of ground in a breath, and the Palace had spent that power on his household today.

Elder Ruan did not look up as they went.

The story reached Jade Moon Palace ahead of them and was already growing by the time they arrived.

A survey team lost in an unstable ancient formation field. Three weeks. All nine recovered alive. The region closed pending certification.

Every visible fact supported it. Leon heard three versions inside two hours, none correct and none dangerous. In one, he had personally carried the deacon out. Nobody guessed at a realm because nobody had reason to.

And I’m not going to be credited with the thing I actually did, Leon thought, and found he preferred it that way. Public credit for finding an unborn Grotto-Heaven would have made his household the most closely watched people on the mountain.

Han Suwen met them at the gate of his peak with a ledger and no expression.

"Twenty-four days," she said. "You left on a survey escort with a two-week estimate. You have returned with nine recovered disciples, a sealed report, a closed territory, and the Palace Mistress personally directing the aftermath." She looked at Vyra. "I am not going to ask what is in the report."

"Good," said Vyra, "because I would have had to be unpleasant about it. Here’s what I can give you." She handed over three pages. "Approved version, supply reconciliation, and everything we lost or abandoned in the field. The last page is a purchasing request the Young Master needs moved quickly."

Han Suwen read all three, wrote something in her ledger, and said, "This is well organised. Whatever you did down there, you kept your accounts."

"I kept my accounts," Vyra agreed, "while a Nascent Soul cultivator was trying to kill us."

Han Suwen’s pen stopped for exactly one beat.

"I am not going to ask about that either," she said.

Inside the sealed residence, they spent most of an hour discussing what Ji had done.

Ira said it first. "She turned seven people into ash between one word and the next."

"She did."

"They were kneeling. They were sealed." Ira had not sat down. "I’ve killed people. I could have killed those men in that chamber, and I would have if you’d ordered it. But that was different, and I can’t work out why."

"Because there was nothing left to decide," Loriel said from the edge of the table. "It wasn’t rage or punishment. She asked a question, received the answer, and decided they had stopped being useful. I understand the reasoning. I still didn’t like watching seven lives end because a piece of information had run out."

Seraphine had been quiet the longest.

"None of that is what worries me," she said.

"Then what?"

"She made an irreversible decision before anyone else in that clearing had finished thinking." Seraphine turned to him. "Leon, she landed with the arithmetic already done. While she checked the surveyors and signed their compensation, she was waiting for you to say yes. I’m not saying she was wrong. I’m saying your master reaches conclusions faster than the people around her can follow, and she has no obligation to slow down for us."

Vyra had been writing the entire time and put her pen down.

"And here’s the part I want recorded," she said. "The Palace put two specialist elders and an emergency transit formation into that basin within twenty minutes. It closed the territory and built a public story before we returned." She tapped the page. "That is how an institution responds to something worth more than a mountain. Ji Liansu understood its value before her boots touched the ground."

They all looked at Leon eventually.

"It frightened me," he said. "Ji ended seven people in less time than it takes to breathe out. For a moment afterward, I understood exactly what she could do to any of us."

"And?" said Ira.

"She was right. I’d have reached the same decision after a trial and a great deal of paperwork." He shook his head. "Both things are true. I’ve stopped trying to make one cancel the other."

Nobody argued with him for what he stated.

He waited until the residence was quiet, then went through the formations one more time out of habit rather than doubt, and sat down on the floor of the main hall.

In two months, Leon had fought a duel, repaired an ancient nexus, rescued nine cultivators, and discovered an unborn realm. The circulation he had spent thirty-one days building had been tested, damaged, healed, and tested again, but never used for its actual purpose.

Enough.

He opened the connection and went through.

The light on the other side was late afternoon, and the air smelled of turned earth, and somewhere down the slope a work bell was ringing.

"Xyra," he said. "I need you."