Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 445 – The Secret of Hangzhou

Lin Fan was about to ask something when Chu Chen’s voice crackled through the communicator again.

“You need to see this.”

The sound of chewing candy stopped.

Chu Chen’s speech quickened by half a beat. That was unusual for him.

“I ran a spatial model on the precise coordinates of all one hundred and three Rifts worldwide.”

Lin Fan raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“Something’s off.”

Chu Chen’s voice was dry, like he was reading off a lab report.

“One hundred and three points, spacing error margin no more than three percent.”

“Speak plainly.”

“These Rifts didn’t appear randomly.”

Chu Chen paused for a rare moment.

Not to organize his thoughts—to confirm he hadn’t miscalculated.

“Their positions were precisely calculated. The distance between every two Rifts is almost perfectly proportional. When I connected these points with line segments, it generated a shape.”

A short burst of keystrokes came through the communicator, then Chu Chen transmitted the modeling data as a light projection.

Lin Fan glanced down.

A three-dimensional pattern composed of one hundred and three nodes and hundreds of line segments materialized on the communicator’s miniature holographic display.

Lines intersected, nodes flickered, and the whole thing formed an extremely regular geometric structure.

She’d seen something like this before.

In the rune manuals of the craftsmen in Craftsman City.

“It looks like… Spirit Gathering Runes.”

Lin Fan spoke each word deliberately.

“Close.”

Chu Chen picked up.

“More precisely, it’s a variant of Spirit Gathering Runes. The craftsman clan manual Sun Jing sent back has records—standard Spirit Gathering Runes are used to draw in ambient Spirit Energy from an area and concentrate it at the Formation Eye.”

“But this isn’t gathering Spirit Energy.”

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Chu Chen’s voice dropped.

“This is gathering life.”

Lin Fan said nothing.

Her fingers idly rotated the holographic projection, flipping the pattern over, then back.

Spirit Gathering Runes gathered Spirit Energy.

What if you swapped Spirit Energy for human life force?

Like how she’d just drained those seven seventh-tier Dragon Clan members dry.

Blue Star’s population of over seven billion had been whittled down to just over a million survivors in the Post-apocalypse.

The remaining million were scattered across the globe—some in defensive bases, some in the wilderness, spread thin and far apart.

If Long Hao wanted to devour all life on Blue Star to break through to the tenth tier, he couldn’t possibly hunt them down one by one across the entire world.

So what was the most efficient method?

Draw a formation.

Use the one hundred and three Rifts as nodes, turning the entire Blue Star into a net.

Then close the net.

Drag all of Blue Star’s life into the Formation Eye and swallow it in one bite.

“Where’s the Formation Eye?”

Lin Fan asked.

Two seconds of silence on Chu Chen’s end.

A rapid flurry of keystrokes followed—so fast there wasn’t a single break between them.

Then it stopped.

Completely stopped.

“Chu Chen?”

Another two seconds of silence.

“…Hangzhou.”

Chu Chen’s voice was different now.

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Before, no matter what he said, his tone was as steady as an emotionless machine.

But when those two words came out, the ending note sank low.

“The Formation Eye isn’t located at any of the Rifts themselves. It’s at the exact center of the circle formed by all the connecting lines.”

He took a breath.

“That point ultimately points to one place: Hangzhou.”

Lin Fan’s fingers froze over the holographic projection, unmoving.

Hangzhou.

That was where Lin Fan had died. It was also where she’d been reborn.

It was where everything began.

Lin Fan stood there, holding the communicator, pausing for a long moment.

“Interesting.”

That was all she said.

Her tone was very flat, revealing no emotion.

But the fingertips of the hand holding the communicator went white for a moment before returning to normal.

The positioning of this formation was too precise.

A thought crossed Lin Fan’s mind.

That old bastard Long Hao, strictly speaking, had never been to Blue Star, and couldn’t possibly come here at all.

Yet the positions of those one hundred and three rifts happened to form a perfect spirit-gathering formation.

How had he determined their locations?

And the Formation Eye just happened to be in Hangzhou.

Could all of this be mere coincidence?

It was like an invisible puzzle, and even Lin Fan, who had always been the one pulling the strings, now found herself hesitating.

“Haah…”

She let out a turbid breath, suppressing the doubts in her mind.

One month.

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One month remained until all the rifts fully opened.

The things she needed to do in this month could form a line longer than she could count.

Collecting Skins, merging with Long Xi, raiding the Dragon Clan’s breeding grounds, relocating the population, fortifying Azurewood City, dealing with Long Hao’s descent…

Every single one was a matter of life and death.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, pulling herself together.

Continuing into the communicator, she said,

“Next, I have two things to arrange.”

“Go on.”

“First, have your people take full control of Chen Dingjun’s two bases as soon as possible. The researchers, Gene Warriors, equipment, and data at the Capital Base and the Pacific Deep-Sea Base—not a single one can be lost.”

Lin Fan paused.

“How are those several hundred Gene Warriors above level six doing?”

“Lu Yuan and Zhou Ming have already arrived and are taking inventory.”

Chu Chen flipped through the data.

“Excluding combat losses and those who fled, about three hundred and seventy are usable. Among them, ninety-two are at the peak of level six, and roughly two hundred and eighty are at mid or early level six. They’re all conscious, but their mental states vary.”

“Three hundred and seventy above level six.”

Lin Fan rubbed her chin.

“Can they fight?”

“Give them two to three days to reorganize, equip them with the Crystal Core Weapons shipped from Azurewood City, and they’ll be usable.”

Chu Chen’s answer was crisp.

“Have Lu Yuan and Chen Mo organize these people into an independent combat unit. The defensive line on Blue Star’s side can barely hold.”

“Then do it that way.”

“And the second thing?”

Lin Fan glanced at Wang Shan, who was curled up into a ball at her feet.

She ignored him.

Her gaze shifted into the distance. The light of the Spatial Rift northeast of the Black Palace still flickered across the sky, brightening and dimming by turns.

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“The second thing is bigger.”

A burnt smell drifted through the air.

There were still fires that hadn’t been put out over at the Black Palace.

When the wind shifted, the smoke rolled in with the dust, stinging people’s throats and making them cough.

Lin Fan paid it no mind.

“Since Long Hao wants to use this formation to drive the people of Blue Star toward the Formation Eye, to feed them straight into his mouth…”

“Then why don’t I just move everyone out before he arrives?”

Silence came from the other end of the communicator.

Not the kind of silence that meant he hadn’t understood.

Chu Chen was the type who could grasp anything within half a second.

He was calculating.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Eight seconds.

Lin Fan waited.

She knew Chu Chen well—the longer he stayed silent, the more variables he was crunching.

At twelve seconds, Chu Chen spoke.

“Two million people. Across dimensions. All relocated to the Dragon Spirit Continent.”

He enunciated each phrase clearly, as if confirming he wasn’t hearing things.

“That’s right,”

Lin Fan said.

“Before Long Hao descends, turn Blue Star into a planet with no humans on it.”

Another few seconds of quiet.

Then a faint laugh came through the communicator, carried on a breath of air. It didn’t sound like amusement—more like a reaction to the sheer audacity of the plan.

“Chen Dingjun is already crazy enough,” Chu Chen said. “You’re ten times crazier than him.”