Chapter 700: The Palace’s Choice

Chapter 700: The Palace’s Choice

The higher flow lasted half a cycle before Leon shut it down.

He sat on the eastern flat inside his dimensional world, watching the reservoir’s measured feed diminish. Nothing had torn. He had stopped as soon as pressure began collecting at the neutral center, but his irritation arrived with the same speed as if something had gone wrong.

It worked perfectly at the old volume. Naturally.

His foundation could accommodate the additional energy. The circulation could not yet redistribute the supply quickly enough when demand changed.

He ran a slower trial and followed the delay.

The nine affinity branches already operated at different rates, drawing on the neutral reserve as needed. Their supply routes, however, still responded on the same schedule. Under a sudden increase, the busiest route finished receiving its share too late.

He had improved what each branch did with its energy and left the distribution behind.

Leon reached for his notes.

The Lord of Illusion and Mystery had made unequal flow sound almost embarrassingly obvious. He wondered whether she would find it amusing that he was still discovering places where he had failed to apply it.

Fortunately, he had no reason to tell her.

The work took a fortnight of subjective time.

Leon widened the supply paths used most heavily during his ordinary techniques and adjusted when the neutral reserve fed them. The elemental circulations remained distinct; he was changing how their needs were met, not pouring fire into water and hoping they would get along.

His first successful test was seated. He enjoyed it for perhaps a minute before getting up to find out what movement would ruin.

He walked with ice gathering along his forearm, released it, and called lightning while folding a few paces sideways. The demand rose sharply. Supply reached the active branches before pressure could build at the center.

On the next trial, he held a rock within a pocket of space and moved the pocket with him. That worked too.

Then he concealed the fold, increasing the demands of Darkness and Space together, and found a route he had left too narrow.

"Of course it’s you," he muttered, marking the junction.

Widening everything would have been easy and wasteful. It would also have taught him very little about whether the foundation could adjust when an unfamiliar demand appeared.

He corrected the restriction and repeated the earlier trials, varying the order so he could not unconsciously prepare the next response.

The arrangement held.

Only then did he settle into sustained cultivation, gradually increasing his working volume until his circulation maintained it without constant correction. The reservoir fed the process in measured portions. By the time his foundation stabilized at the new capacity, most of what remained had been drawn into the array.

[Native Cultivation: Mid Foundation Establishment]

Leon opened his eyes and stretched his legs before standing.

He had the beginnings of a foundation that could change its response. Someday it would need to do that for an affinity he did not yet possess. For now, keeping the present nine working under a heavier load was satisfying enough.

The last portions went into consolidation. When he finished, he turned the empty cylinder in his hand and checked the seal out of sheer reluctance to put it down.

Ten reservoirs purchased. Ten consumed.

Worth it. Expensive as hell, but worth it.

He set the cylinder aside and began recording what the next stage would require.

Xyra passed the shelter while he was writing and asked whether he wanted the training zone left ready. Leon nearly said yes out of habit, then looked at the empty reservoir. He thanked her and gathered his notes. He wanted to tell the others before deciding what to attempt next.

Outside, the remaining weeks passed toward the Grotto-Heaven’s original three-month assessment mark.

Leon left the accelerated training for specific work. He spent ordinary days testing his circulation in the practice yards, reading, and discovering how many small tasks appeared when five people actually lived in a residence.

Loriel recruited him to hold a tree upright while she checked its roots. Ira returned from the medicine court carrying a second opinion about her mineral and arguing aloud with both opinions. Vyra persuaded the formation hall to modify a testing schedule after showing exactly where its standard measurements missed her requirements.

Seraphine changed her grip for the Third Form, then found the adjustment affected the Seventh. Leon heard about both over dinner and was called outside afterward to provide a moving target.

He liked these evenings. Nobody needed him to be impressive at the table, though Ira remained very interested in whether she could beat his newly improved native circulation without using her full strength.

He told her to finish her own preparations first.

One afternoon, he checked the date of the previous Cosmic tribute installment against the local calendar. The next expected payment remained some weeks away.

The higher beings followed their own cycles. He had expected those cycles to differ from the clock here, and his working estimate was roughly three local months between receipts. The Grotto-Heaven’s opening did not change that calculation.

He closed the interface without posting anything.

Asking a basic question in that company could become a much more expensive mistake than buying another reservoir.

Recognition within the Palace reached him in small, unmistakable ways.

A formation specialist requested his account of the repaired entrance. Two disciples under consideration for the expedition sought his opinion about carrying supplies through shifting terrain. Han Suwen included him in correspondence that would previously have gone directly to an elder.

The people involved knew what he had found. Beyond that circle, the account remained a survey team recovered from a broken formation field.

Ji summoned him a fortnight before the expected opening.

"Your allocation remains as agreed," she said. "Priority selection within your personal share. Structural and access resources remain with the Palace. Your household’s separate contributions receive their own credit."

Leon nodded. "Understood."

"And if something exceeds that allocation, ask before treating it as yours."

"I can manage that."

She gave him a look that suggested she would remember the answer.

They discussed supplies and collection procedures. Leon asked about preserving living specimens, then about recording the energy conditions around them. If the realm offered both useful materials and a chance to study how different energies coexisted, he wanted to bring back more than a bag of stones.

Ji approved the recording equipment.

"One more thing," she said as he rose. "If you must choose between a load and the people carrying it, leave the load."

"I will."

"Even if you chose it first."

Leon smiled. "Especially if someone else can help me retrieve it later."

"That is an answer I believe."

Three days later, a new packet from Ruan brought him back to Ji’s study.

The preliminary tests concerned the inner threshold. No one had entered the true realm, but its admission array had begun responding to the signatures Ruan presented.

Ji placed the readings before him.

"The lower signatures are accepted for passage," she said. "Those above Golden Core are refused. Concealing the higher signatures hasn’t changed the response."

Leon read the measurements twice.

"Would that keep the elders outside?"

"If the opening confirms it, yes." Ji gathered the pages. "Ruan is checking the boundary again. We may need a very different expedition."

Her gaze settled on him, and Leon began to understand why she had called him personally.