Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 443 – Now It’s Your Turn to Be the Price

A burst of background noise came through the communicator.

Someone was moving things, mixed with the clatter of metal colliding.

Then a male voice—slightly tense, slightly urgent—picked up.

“Huh? Oh, oh? Black Palace? Is Lily there?”

Chen Dingjun froze completely.

The voice paid no attention to his identity verification and grew excited on its own.

“Hey hey! Lily, are you there? I… I’ve got everything on my end sorted. All of Song Qing’s researchers have been registered and catalogued, and the database has three backups! Not a single thing you asked for has been missed! Lily? Lily, are you there?”

Standing a dozen meters away, Lin Fan heard the commotion coming through the communicator and rolled her eyes.

Zhou Ming, that idiot.

Shouting “Lily” across the entire channel. As if he was afraid no one would figure out who was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

“Enough.” Lin Fan raised a hand, her voice quiet.

Zhou Ming on the other end of the communicator sounded like someone had grabbed him by the throat—his voice cut off mid-syllable.

Chen Dingjun slowly, very slowly, lowered the communicator from his ear.

He finally understood.

The Capital Base was gone.

The Pacific Base was gone, too.

His stitched-army, his genetic database, his research team, everything he had built from scratch since the apocalypse began.

All of it, gone.

The hand holding the communicator dropped to his side. He leaned against the wreckage of the aircraft, his shoulders sagging just a little.

Rеαԁ οո КatRеaԁіnɡСafе

Just a little.

But for an old soldier whose spine had never once bent, that little bit said a great deal.

Wang Shan on the ground let out a hoarse laugh.

He lay at the base of the flagpole, wearing nothing but a pair of floral boxers, his weathered face covered in dirt and blood—but he was laughing with genuine delight.

That kind of joy that says: I’m screwed, but you’re not getting off easy either.

“You old bastard.” Wang Shan’s voice was ragged, every word leaking air. “You still don’t know? Those precious bases of yours were already taken down by this woman alone. Alone. You hear me?”

He propped himself up on his elbows, expending great effort to lift his head a little higher, the better to see Chen Dingjun’s expression.

“Ha… one person, turned your old Chen’s life’s work upside down.”

Wang Shan laughed until tears came.

Whether from laughter or pain, it was hard to tell.

Chen Dingjun didn’t look at Wang Shan.

He looked at Lin Fan.

This young woman in a cyan hanfu, her white hair coiled at the back of her head, was bending over to flick a bit of dust off her cloth shoe.

The motion was casual and relaxed, no different from strolling around her own backyard.

She alone, single-handedly, had smashed through the Capital defense base he had painstakingly built over five years, and somehow found her way to the deep sea ten thousand meters down to breach the Pacific Laboratory.

She had swallowed up the work of half his lifetime in one go.

“What… what exactly are you?” Chen Dingjun’s throat was parched and raw as he forced out the words.

Lin Fan straightened up.

She tilted her head, looked at him, and the corner of her mouth curved slightly.

Rеaⅾ οո КatReаⅾіոɡСαfе

“Something you couldn’t dream up even in your wildest dreams.”

She paused, then added another line.

“Didn’t you say, ‘For humanity, any price is worth paying’? Well then, your bases are indeed serving humanity now. It’s just that the one they serve has changed.”

Chen Dingjun’s hand tightened around the communicator, his knuckles cracking audibly.

Sixty years.

He had been a commander before the apocalypse, and after it, the banner of the holdout faction.

He had done many cruel things with his own hands, and carried burdens that should have broken him.

He had never feared anyone.

But in this moment, his heart was pounding violently.

Not from fear.

Something deeper.

It was the sudden realization that everything he had done in the past five years—the research, the experiments, cultivating the chimeras, building the base—all of it was like a castle made of sand before this woman.

She reached out and pushed, and it all came tumbling down.

He didn’t even know how she had done it.

What was even more terrifying was that her expression hadn’t changed at all after she finished.

She flicked dust off her shoes, straightened her sleeves.

Like she had just crushed an ant.

Lin Fan turned to Zhu Yan and gave a slight lift of his chin.

“What are you standing there for? Weren’t you in the middle of something?”

Rеаⅾ oո ΚαtReаdingCаfe

Zhu Yan didn’t move right away.

She stared at Chen Dingjun for several long seconds.

Chen Dingjun felt that gaze. He tucked the communicator back into his chest and straightened his spine once more.

Even if everything was gone, he wasn’t about to show weakness in front of an “Experimental Subject.”

“Zhu Yan.” Chen Dingjun spoke, his voice hoarse but steady. “I understand that you hate me. But have you considered—without my research, what would humanity have to fight the Dragon Clan with? What would we use to hold our last territory? All those who sacrificed…”

“Commander.”

Zhu Yan cut him off.

Her voice was so soft it seemed impossible for someone at the peak of the seventh rank among Artificial Dragonkin.

“You once said that sacrifice is the duty of a soldier.”

Zhu Yan took a step forward.

“You said that for the future of humanity, any cost was worth paying.”

Another step.

“Those girls believed you. Zhang Xiaoman on bed three believed you. Li Ting on bed five believed you. Chen Shuting on bed seven believed you. They all believed you.”

Another step.

Three meters.

“When they gave their lives, they thought they were heroes.” Zhu Yan’s voice remained soft, but every word was crystal clear. “But when you wrote them into the records, the name you used was ‘specimen.'”

Chen Dingjun’s lips pressed into a thin line.

He said nothing.

Because there was nothing he could say.

Reаԁ oո KαtRеαԁіnɡСαfe

Zhu Yan stopped two meters away from him.

“So, Commander.”

A slow smile curved across her lips. Tears glistened in her dark eyes, but her smile was complete.

“It’s your turn to be the cost now. What do you say?”

Golden Dragon Qi exploded from Zhu Yan’s body in a sudden burst.

The density of that energy lifted every piece of rubble within dozens of meters into the air, spinning slowly in midair.

Chen Dingjun moved the instant the Dragon Qi erupted.

A sixty-year-old man, an Evolved being at the mid fourth rank—his reaction speed was already at the limit of human capability.

He leaped from where he stood, sprinting toward the aircraft.

But compared to someone at the peak of the seventh rank among Artificial Dragonkin, his speed was like a turtle racing a hare.

Boom.

The ground split apart. Debris flew everywhere.

Zhu Yan’s figure flashed past Chen Dingjun in an instant.

Lin Fan stood in the distance, making no move to interfere.

She rolled up her sleeves, propped her left hand under her right elbow, rested her chin on her right hand, and found a relatively flat rock to sit on. She settled into a comfortable position to watch the show.

Wang Shan lay at the base of the flagpole. He turned his head, and the old man and the young woman exchanged a glance.

Then Wang Shan looked at Chen Dingjun, who was being chased all over the place, and his laughter grew louder and louder, more and more manic, until his voice cracked from the strain.

“Run, Old Chen! Aren’t you the one who’s best at using people as materials? Well, now your materials are going to devour you! Hahahaha!”