Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 437 – The Hardworking Genius

Long Kui didn’t waste another word.

“Dragonization!”

His dark-purple heavy armor exploded outward.

Bones swelled violently beneath the muscle.

Purple-black scales pushed up through the skin, covering his entire body.

His neck elongated, limbs dropping to the ground—a Western dragon over sixty meters long replaced the human form.

The other four Dragon Clan members transformed in quick succession.

Five dragons rose into the air.

Long Kui’s purple dragon was the largest, with a wingspan exceeding eighty meters, his whole body wreathed in purple energy mist.

The other four came in varying colors, but none exceeded sixty meters.

The five dragons formed a battle array, surrounding the eighty-plus-meter golden dragon from five directions.

The size difference was plain to see.

Though Zero’s dragon form was slender, her oppressive presence dominated the entire field.

Dark-golden scales refracted blinding light under the sun.

Five claws—each one the size of a small car.

“Go!”

Long Kui let out a draconic roar.

The purple dragon took point, diving head-on from the front.

The remaining four lunged simultaneously from left, right, above, and below.

Zero twisted her body, sweeping her tail in a wide arc.

Boom!

The smallest cyan dragon took the tail strike dead-on, its entire body bending into an arc mid-air, tumbling seven or eight times before regaining its balance.

But Long Kui’s attack had already arrived.

The purple dragon opened its maw, blasting a pillar of purple-black Dragon Breath straight at Zero’s head.

Zero tilted her head to dodge.

The breath streaked past her neck, melting half the wall of the Black Palace below into a pool of magma.

Two mid-Seventh-Tier dragons simultaneously sank their fangs into Zero’s hind leg.

Dragon teeth cut through Scale armor with a piercing screech.

Dark-golden dragon blood splattered into the air.

Zero snarled in pain, kicking out violently with her hind leg.

One was sent flying; the other held on with a death grip.

The late-Seventh-Tier gray dragon circled behind her, folded its wings, and rammed its entire body into her like a javelin.

Crash!

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The gray dragon’s horns plunged into Zero’s spine.

Scales shattered, flesh torn open.

Zero let out a furious roar.

Her dragon body rolled violently, flinging the gray dragon off her back.

At the same time, her claws seized the dragon still biting her hind leg, five fingers clamping shut and twisting the creature’s head half a turn off its neck.

That dragon shrieked as it plummeted, carving a crater dozens of meters wide into the ground.

Not dead—but it wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.

Long Kui’s pupils contracted slightly.

Four against one, and she was still winning?

No.

Long Kui observed for several exchanges and spotted the problem.

This golden dragon’s strength and speed far exceeded her tier, but her fighting style was far too crude.

Every attack was instinct-driven, devoid of any technique.

She didn’t use her size advantage to grapple, didn’t alternate between Dragon Breath and physical strikes to suppress her opponents.

She was fighting with brute force.

“She doesn’t know any Dragon Clan techniques!” Long Kui roared.

“Spread out! Wear her down with Dragon Breath!”

The four dragons immediately scattered, abandoning close-quarters combat, and unleashed Dragon Breath in rotation from different positions.

Pillars of purple, gray, cyan, and dark-red Dragon Breath crossed from four directions, bombarding her simultaneously.

Zero was forced onto the defensive.

She spat golden Dragon Breath to counter, but with four dragons harassing her in turns, the moment she suppressed one side, another was already burning through.

She truly didn’t know how to fight.

Long Yi’s genes had given her power, given her Bloodline talent—but not Long Yi’s decades of combat experience.

Those “memory fragments” were only images and emotions, not muscle memory.

If Long Yi himself stood here, with this Five-Clawed Golden Dragon’s physique, all five Long Kuis combined wouldn’t be enough.

But she wasn’t Long Yi.

She was a newborn “dragon,” swinging an adult’s fists with the clumsiness of an infant.

Even so, Long Kui was fighting with extreme difficulty.

The sheer physical dominance was simply absurd.

Zero could send a mid-level seven dragon flying hundreds of meters away with a casual flick of her tail.

Her scale armor was terrifyingly hard—ordinary Dragon Breath only left black scorch marks on it.

The stalemate lasted a full twenty minutes.

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All five dragons were wounded.

Zero had more injuries, but her regeneration was astonishingly fast—minor wounds healed within seconds.

“Is this thing unkillable?” the gray dragon cursed.

Long Kui’s face darkened, about to adjust their tactics.

Then, suddenly, the golden dragon’s movements stopped.

Hovering mid-air, her massive draconic body shuddered violently.

Zero’s draconic pupils abruptly lost focus.

It wasn’t an external wound.

It was her Mental Sea.

With the destruction of the chip, a crack tore open from the deepest recesses of her consciousness.

The memory fragments belonging to “Long Yi” were swept aside, revealing another layer beneath.

Not dragon memories.

Human ones.

The images were blurry and fragmented, like a broken old television set.

…The Capital Military District training grounds.

Four in the morning.

Before dawn.

A small, thin figure had already completed her three hundredth lap around the training field.

Military boots had worn through the heel, socks soaked in blood, sticking to raw flesh—every step sent searing pain through her body.

But she didn’t stop.

“Do you have a death wish? Go back to sleep!” the sentry on duty shouted at her.

“One hundred more laps.”

Her name was Zhu Yan.

A level-two Evolved being, her ability the most ordinary physical enhancement.

She ranked at the very bottom among the million Chosen Ones across all military districts on Blue Star.

The geniuses who awakened at level three or above, or with rare abilities, sat in the cafeteria eating steak and crayfish, debating whose ability was cooler and who killed more monsters today.

She ran laps on the training field.

Lifted weights in the training room.

On missions, she was always the first to charge in.

While others returned to camp to rest after battle, she went outside the camp to hunt Mutated Beasts, collecting extra Crystals to strengthen herself.

Some said she was crazy.

Others said she was stupid.

But two years later, that girl who’d been at the bottom had risen from level two to level five.

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The entire Capital Military District was buzzing.

“Did you hear? That grind fiend leveled up again!”

“That lunatic who ran until she coughed blood?”

“She’s level five now—same as Lu Yuan.”

Lu Yuan.

A legend in the Federal Military.

Awakened at level five, the Federation’s number one genius, Light-type Ability, with speed so absurd it defied belief.

Zhu Yan had seen him once.

It was when she received the Chosen One conscription order and was assigned to a war zone.

That guy basked in everyone’s adulation while wearing a flippant, carefree expression.

He was the kind of person she hated most back then.

A man blessed with unparalleled talent who walked around with a smug, punchable smile, doing everything half-assed.

In the early days of the Post-apocalypse, the Federation issued the Chosen One conscription order, assigning all Chosen Ones from every military district into combat units by level.

That was the most suffocating period of Zhu Yan’s life.

At only level two, with mediocre abilities, she didn’t even qualify to be assigned to frontline combat units.

The military district’s orders sent her straight to the logistics department, responsible for transporting supplies to the front lines and cleaning up battlefields.

For a woman with ambition carved into her very bones, this was an immense humiliation.

She had never been someone blessed with extraordinary talent.

In school, she got into a good university by doing three times more practice problems than everyone else.

In the military, she earned the title of Outstanding Soldier through extra training every day.

When the post-apocalypse came, she still refused to accept fate.

So what if she was only Level 2?

If the blade wasn’t sharp enough, she’d swing it ten thousand times a day.

If her strength wasn’t enough, she’d risk her life in combat to obtain Crystals.

When clearing out mutated zombies on the outskirts of the base, she was always the one charging at the very front.

Old wounds hadn’t healed before new ones appeared—she didn’t care.

All she wanted were Crystals. All she wanted was to grow stronger.

Until that sudden catastrophe struck.

A Spatial Rift tore open, and tens of thousands of Mutated Beasts poured out like a black tide.

The defense line was on the verge of collapse.

The logistics department received orders to retreat.

Zhu Yan did not retreat.

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She gripped her battle blade and charged against the flow of retreating people, straight to the front line.

“Retreating only means death—cut through them and we live!”

Those were the words she shouted at the time.

There were too many Mutated Beasts.

Countless creatures surrounded her at the center.

Her battle blade sank into a monster’s bone and got stuck.

The beast’s claws came swinging down at her face, a stench of blood rushing toward her.

In that moment, she could even smell her own blood.

She closed her eyes in despair.

A blinding light descended from the sky.

The beam, like a solidified blade, pierced through the heads of dozens of Mutated Beasts around her with pinpoint precision.

The stench of scorched flesh filled the air.

Zhu Yan collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.

A young man in special operations gear with messy hair floated down lightly from midair.

A half-smoked cigarette dangled from his lips, and in his hand he casually toyed with a freshly excavated Level 4 Crystal.

Lu Yuan glanced at her, his tone laced with undisguised mockery: “Logistics should stay in the back. Why run so far to the front? Delivering takeout?”

Zhu Yan’s face flushed red, and she was about to retort.

But Lu Yuan had already turned to face the tidal wave of beasts surging toward them like a tsunami.

He didn’t even draw his weapon.

Hands in his pockets.

The dazzling radiance around him illuminated the night as bright as day.

Tens of thousands of Light Blades fanned out in formation, sweeping forward.

With devastating, unstoppable force.

Mutated Beasts below Level 2 didn’t even have a chance to scream—they were vaporized on the spot.

Higher-level Mutated Beasts lasted only a few seconds before being sliced into pieces.

In just a few short minutes.

A massive swath of the despair-inducing beast tide had been wiped clean.

Lu Yuan flicked away his cigarette butt, dusted off his hands, and flew off without looking back.

Leaving Zhu Yan sitting dazed amidst a sea of corpses and blood.

She watched that man’s retreating figure, her inner pride shattered into dust.

Her desperate determination she’d always prided herself on, her relentless training day and night—before absolute talent, it wasn’t even worth a joke.

That night, she returned to her barracks, buried her head in her blanket, and cried for an entire night.