Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 442 – Your Base? No, It’s My Base

(The gifts from the brothers have arrived again, so here’s a fourth chapter today!)

At the flagpole, Wang Shan’s pants had been torn halfway down, revealing a pair of garishly patterned underwear.

Lin Fan leaned against a collapsed stone pillar not far away, arms crossed over her chest, enjoying the show.

“Your dancing isn’t quite up to par, Old Wang.”

She shook her head.

“It’s fine. I’ll give you a little boost.”

Wang Shan’s body suddenly spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees around the flagpole.

The sheer impact of that image was something no one present would ever forget for the rest of their lives.

Zhu Yan knelt in the ruins in the distance, watching the scene. Her mouth opened and closed, then closed and opened again.

She turned her head to look at the woman leaning against the stone pillar—white hair, green robes, smiling as she watched the commotion with amusement.

This person… what kind of monster was she?

Lin Fan watched for thirty seconds and decided that was enough.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to keep watching—it was genuinely an eyesore.

A scrawny old man in his fifties writhing around on a flagpole. One more second of that and she was afraid she’d throw up.

“Enough.”

Lin Fan withdrew her Mental Strength control.

Wang Shan slid down the flagpole like a heap of rags, collapsing onto the ground, trembling all over, his eyes unfocused.

With his Mental Barrier forcibly shattered, he had fallen into a brief state of dissociation.

Lin Fan didn’t look at him again.

She turned around, her gaze landing on Chen Dingjun, who had been cowering silently behind the wreckage of the aircraft in the distance.

“Chief Chen.”

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Lin Fan didn’t make a move.

She walked over to Zhu Yan’s side and looked down at the girl kneeling in the ruins.

The baptism of the Energy Potion had already taken effect.

Zhu Yan’s skin had faded from the dark golden scales of her previous golden dragon form back to normal yellow skin, and her facial features had returned to the contours of a human woman.

There was a stubbornness in her brows and eyes, her lips pressed tightly together, her jawline sharp and clean.

Only her golden hair and the two golden dragon horns at her temples remained, reminding everyone of what she had been through.

Lin Fan reached out and patted Zhu Yan on the head.

The gesture was casual, much like petting a cat she’d just picked up off the street.

“Want revenge?”

Zhu Yan looked up.

Something was burning in her dark eyes.

Lin Fan smiled, withdrew her hand, and tilted her chin toward Chen Dingjun’s direction.

“Go on.”

Zhu Yan stood up.

Her legs were still trembling, her wounds hadn’t fully healed, and dragon scales and human skin alternately covered her limbs.

But her gaze was steady.

When Chen Dingjun saw Zhu Yan walking toward him, he pressed his back against the aircraft wreckage and shuffled half a step backward.

His hand reached into his pocket, pulled out the controller, and his thumb frantically pressed the red button on it.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

No response.

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The chip had already been destroyed by his own hand.

Chen Dingjun’s thumb froze on the button. The expression on his face shifted from agitation to bewilderment, then from bewilderment to an ugly shade of livid gray.

“Zero… no, Zhu Yan.” Chen Dingjun forced himself to calm down and tossed the controller aside.

He straightened his back and lowered his voice: “You should be thanking me. I gave you this body. I turned you from a fifth-rank ordinary Evolved being into a peak seventh-rank…”

“Material.” Zhu Yan spoke, her voice hoarse. “The word you’re looking for is material.”

Chen Dingjun’s mouth closed.

But only for two seconds.

After all, he was Chen Dingjun—a sixty-year-old veteran soldier, a man of iron backbone who had stood for ten years on the ruins of the post-apocalypse without falling.

Even as he retreated to the edge of the aircraft wreckage, his spine remained straight.

“I never used the word ‘material,'” Chen Dingjun said, his voice pitched low. “I said ‘samples.’ Every volunteer signed an informed consent agreement and understood the risks of the experiment. It was their own choice.”

Zhu Yan stopped five meters away from him and didn’t move closer.

She didn’t respond either.

Silence stretched for a few seconds.

Then she spoke, her tone eerily flat.

“In the lab, the girl on bed three was called Zhang Xiaoman. She was from the mess hall, a second-level Evolved. When she volunteered, she brought me a piece of compressed biscuit, saying she was afraid the experiment would make me hungry.”

Chen Dingjun’s brow twitched.

“The one on bed five was called Li Meng, a signal corps member, third-level. She said she wanted to go back home to find her mother after the experiment. Her mother had been sick before the Post-apocalypse began. She didn’t know if she was still alive.”

“The one on bed seven was called Chen Shuting. Your files list her as ‘Sample Seven.'” Zhu Yan’s voice carried no tremor. “But she told me her family used to run a noodle shop. Her father’s beef noodles were especially good. She said she’d make some for me once we got out.”

“The one on bed nine was called Zhao Yu, nineteen years old, just promoted to third-level. After the injection, her whole body convulsed for forty minutes. In the last few minutes she stopped screaming, but she was still smiling. Do you know why she was smiling? Because the pain had destroyed her nerves, and the muscles in her face were no longer under her control.”

Zhu Yan’s voice was level, like she was reading from a faded roster of names.

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“They all died. Right on the beds next to mine. I listened to them scream, one by one falling silent.”

Chen Dingjun’s Adam’s apple moved.

He didn’t respond.

Not because he had nothing to say—it was because he had no intention of getting tangled up in such a debate with an Experimental Subject. He had more pressing matters to attend to.

Seizing the gap in Zhu Yan’s speech, Chen Dingjun’s hand slipped quietly into his jacket and pulled out his personal communicator. His fingers flew across the encrypted frequency for the Capital Defense Base.

Buzz.

Connected.

Chen Dingjun lowered his voice and spoke rapidly: “Capital Base, do you copy? Dispatch all sixth-level Half-dragon combat units to the Black Palace coordinates immediately. Repeat, all units!”

Two seconds of silence on the communicator.

Then a lazy, drawling male voice came through.

“Hey~ hey~ This is the Capital Defense Base. Who’s this on the other end?”

Chen Dingjun froze.

That voice… it wasn’t any officer at the base.

“This is Chen Dingjun!” He raised his voice. “Who are you? Put your commander on the line!”

“Oh, Chen Dingjun.” The tone on the other end shifted, from languid to an infuriating cheerfulness. “An honor, an honor. Your base is decorated quite nicely, though those Stitched Abominations have a bit of a stench. We’re doing some spring cleaning over here. Oh, and by the way—your commander ran off without even putting his pants on. Is that his usual style, or just a special occasion?”

Chen Dingjun’s fingers were trembling.

“You—”

“No time to chat. Busy. Bye-bye.”

Buzz—buzz—buzz—

Dead tone.

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Chen Dingjun’s hand holding the communicator hung suspended in midair, not lowering.

Five meters away, a subtle change crossed Zhu Yan’s expression.

She recognized that voice.

Lu Yuan.

That bastard who was always slacking off, who had talent off the charts but never bothered to train properly.

When she’d heard he’d gone into the Rift and lost contact, she’d worried for a long time.

Now it turned out the guy was still alive.

Fine.

That was all Zhu Yan thought to herself, before pulling her attention back and looking at Chen Dingjun again.

Chen Dingjun didn’t notice her expression.

His mind was full of noise, and his fingers had already begun tuning to the second frequency band.

The Pacific Base.

His final trump card.

Ten thousand meters beneath the sea, triple-encrypted, with an independent power source—the most concealed military installation on the globe. He was the only one who knew its coordinates.

There was no way it was gone too.

Absolutely impossible.

Buzz.

Connected.

“This is Chen Dingjun. Pacific Base, do you copy? Over!”