Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 321 – Last Words

In the dim underground cavern, only the faint light from the entrance provided any illumination.

Long Xuan lay on the cold stone floor, her chest rising and falling weakly.

Lin Fan crouched beside her, fingers pressed against her pulse.

The beat was weak.

Fewer than twenty beats per minute.

Her internal organs were shattered, her spine broken in three places, and her cerebral cortex had suffered irreversible damage from the Mental Backlash moments ago.

“Cough…”

Long Xuan’s finger twitched suddenly.

She opened her eyes and turned her head with difficulty, her gaze grasping blindly at the void before finally settling—unfocused—on Lin Fan’s face.

This was the final flicker of life.

The last reserves of her vitality were being burned through, just to maintain these final minutes of consciousness.

“You are…”

Long Xuan stared at the face before her, her eyes hazy.

So similar.

The brows, the eyes, the contours—even that cold, aloof temperament.

The gates of memory burst open, and the figure she had envied her entire life overlapped with the person before her.

“Long Qingyue…”

Long Xuan reached out a blood-stained hand, trying to touch Lin Fan’s face.

Lin Fan didn’t flinch.

The ice-cold hand pressed against her cheek, carrying a sticky, clammy sensation.

“You’re… Brother Teng’s… and that woman’s child…”

The corner of Long Xuan’s mouth twitched, pulling into a smile uglier than a cry.

“You’ve grown up… you look just like her… especially that golden hair…”

Lin Fan stared at her expressionlessly.

“Fifth Elder, save your strength.”

“You’re about to die too.”

Long Xuan seemed not to hear Lin Fan’s words, speaking to herself.

“I loved Brother Teng for forty years…”

“Since we were young… I stayed by his side…”

“But why… why did his eyes only ever see that woman from the cadet branch…”

Tears streamed down the corners of Long Xuan’s eyes, washing through the blood on her face, leaving trails of white streaks behind.

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“What was so good about that woman… She was the rebel’s sister… She was from the cadet branch…”

“I was the one most worthy of him…”

Lin Fan raised an eyebrow.

The rebel’s sister?

So something major had happened back then.

Long Xuan’s fingers gently traced Lin Fan’s face, their strength fading by the second.

“What happened back then… I didn’t want it…”

“Third Elder forced me… He said if I revealed that woman’s identity, the Council of Elders would spare Brother Teng…”

“I wanted to save Brother Teng… I only wanted to save him…”

Long Xuan’s voice grew softer and softer, her gaze beginning to drift.

She looked at the faint light at the cavern entrance, as if she could see that spirited young man walking toward her.

“I’m sorry… Brother Teng…”

“If… if there’s a next life…”

The voice stopped abruptly.

The hand pressed against Lin Fan’s face fell limp, striking the ground heavily.

Long Xuan’s eyes remained open, frozen in that final moment of regret and obsession.

The cavern fell into a deathly silence.

Lin Fan reached out and swept her fingers across Long Xuan’s eyelids, closing them.

“Next life?”

Lin Fan stood up, pulled a wet wipe from her pocket, and carefully cleaned the remaining blood from her face.

“You couldn’t even figure out this life. Why would you want a next one?”

She tossed the soiled wipe to the ground and looked down at Long Xuan, a guttering candle in the wind.

A peak seventh-stage Psychic-type Pureblood Dragon Clan elder.

Too bad she was a lovesick fool.

“System.”

Lin Fan called out in her mind.

“While she still has one last breath, time to work.”

[Qualified material detected: Long Xuan]

[Skin Grade: Mythic Grade]

[Time required: 1 hour]

[Begin crafting Skin?]

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“Yes.”

——————

At this very moment, within the Demonic Dragon Lair.

“Then let’s see you try!”

These four words roared from Long Teng’s throat, carrying a desperate resolve of certain death.

He did not draw his sword and retreat; instead, he gripped the hilt with both hands, and a brilliant green light blazed along the blade.

Every ounce of Spiritual power within him poured into the sword without reservation in that instant. The azure edge, originally only three feet long, suddenly swelled into a colossal blade forty meters in length.

“Slash!”

Long Teng’s face contorted, veins bulging along his arms as he pressed down with savage force.

The massive green Sword Qi tore through the gray mist, hurtling straight toward the crown of Long Jingtian’s head.

This strike was one that burned his Origin Power—even a peak seventh-stage defense would be sliced through like tofu.

Long Jingtian’s hand, pressed against his lower back, did not loosen.

Torrents of black blood seeped through his fingers, dripping into the swamp below with a sizzling, corrosive hiss.

He raised his head, gazing at the descending giant blade. In those sinister, shadowed eyes there was not a trace of panic—only the contempt of one looking upon an ant.

“Naive.”

Long Jingtian’s lips barely moved, spitting out two words.

Just as the green Sword Qi was about to touch the crown of his head—

Hum.

A visible ripple of black energy radiated outward from his body.

It was an energy form denser, more frigid, and of a higher order than Spiritual power.

The green Sword Qi struck that thin layer of black ripples and sank into it as if into quicksand.

No explosion. No thunderous roar.

That Sword Qi, capable of splitting mountains and cracking stone, dissolved before the naked eye.

“What?!”

Long Teng’s pupils contracted violently, his grip on the sword trembling.

He felt as though his blade had not struck an air wall, but had plunged into a black hole capable of devouring everything.

That black hole was not only consuming his Sword Qi—it was also draining the life force from his body, surging up along the blade with frenzied greed.

“Long Teng.”

Long Jingtian’s voice echoed across the battlefield, hoarse and grating.

“You’ve been stuck at the peak of the seventh stage for twenty years. Do you know why you’ve never been able to take that step?”

Long Jingtian released his hand from the wound.

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The gaping, blood-soaked hole that had pierced clean through his body was now filled with a mass of black, wriggling flesh.

Those tendrils writhed and interwove like living things, and in just two seconds, they formed a black scab over the surface of the wound.

Forcibly sealing the injury.

This consumed a vast amount of his Origin Power, but he did not care.

“Because you don’t understand what the eighth stage is!”

Long Jingtian stepped forward.

Ripples spread in rings across the void beneath his feet.

“The seventh stage—even at its peak—only borrows the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi.”

“But the eighth stage—”

Long Jingtian raised his hand, palm facing upward, and snapped his five fingers shut.

Crack.

The hundred-meter Sword Qi in Long Teng’s grasp shattered in an instant, scattering into countless specks of green light that faded into nothing.

“—is mastery of the Domain!”

“Soul-Devouring Domain, open!”

With that thunderous roar, the black mist around Long Jingtian erupted into a boil, transforming into countless twisted human faces that let out piercing, mournful shrieks.

This black mist was no longer defensive—it was an assault.

Like a school of piranhas catching the scent of blood, it surged toward Long Teng in an overwhelming tide.

“Damn it!”

Long Teng’s face went pale. He spun his longsword into a screen of green light, desperately trying to hold the line.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.

The black mist met the green light, producing a grating, teeth-clenching sound of corrosion.

The finest spiritual sword in Long Teng’s hand had rust spots mottling its blade, its once-bright gleam rapidly dimming.

“How is this possible…”

Long Teng stared at the sword in his hand, his eyes filled with utter disbelief.

This was a Spiritual Weapon forged with Deep Sea Mysterious Iron, unyieldingly hard—how could it be corroded by this mist?

“Nothing is impossible.”

Long Jingtian’s figure appeared behind Long Teng like a phantom.

That speed was twice as fast as Long Teng’s earlier sneak attack.

“This is the chasm between the seventh and eighth levels.”

“And the insurmountable abyss you will never cross!”

Bang!

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A palm print landed on Long Teng’s back.

A seemingly feather-light strike.

Long Teng’s Protective Spiritual Energy shattered in an instant, and his entire body, like a kicked sandbag, plummeted straight into the ground.

Boom!

The swamp erupted into a massive crater, mud splashing hundreds of meters into the air.

“Cough, cough, cough…”

At the bottom of the pit, Long Teng struggled to rise, black blood mixed with fragments of internal organs coughing from his mouth.

He felt a sinister, icy energy rampaging through his body, madly gnawing at his meridians and flesh.

That was the Soul-Devouring Power.

“I really must thank you for that strike.”

Long Jingtian hovered in midair, looking down at Long Teng from above with a cruel smile on his face.

“If you hadn’t drawn blood, I would have almost forgotten the feeling of life-and-death combat from back then.”

“As a token of gratitude, I’ll extract your spirit and roast it over demonic flames for a hundred years.”

“Let that bitch of a wife of yours wait for you below until she drowns in despair!”

Roar!

Long Jingtian let out a thunderous howl toward the sky.

Black light shot heavenward.

His body rapidly expanded, scales piercing through his skin as they grew, bones stretching and deforming.

In the blink of an eye, a black dragon over eighty meters long stretched across the sky.

Though a size smaller than the nearly hundred-meter Fallen Magic Dragon in the distance, his Dragon might was far more sinister and venomous.

“Die!”

The black dragon opened its massive maw, a condensed ball of pitch-black light gathering deep in its throat.

Then it dove downward, unleashing that destructive black orb, locking onto Long Teng at the bottom of the pit.

Wherever the orb passed, even light itself warped subtly, and the surrounding miasma was vaporized into a vacuum.

At the bottom of the pit.

Long Teng, leaning on the long sword, staggered to his feet.

He raised his head, his face covered in mud and blood, only his eyes burning with a terrifying brightness.

No fear.

No despair.

“Qingyue… Xiao Wu…”