Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 463 – Underground Beast Pens

The dawn bugle call dragged Lin Fan out of her light sleep.

She slipped on her cloth shoes and stepped out of the tent, letting the cold morning wind rinse her nostrils, which had been marinating in a mix of odors all night.

People were already moving about on the gravel paths of the camp. Fifth-rank logistics soldiers hauled wooden barrels and dried beast meat, while a few burly Tiger Clan men jogged past carrying a log, kicking up loose stones.

Lin Fan walked straight through the outer camp without glancing sideways, arriving before a squad’s quarters.

Long Xiao was already there.

He leaned against a bone pillar, arms crossed, and gave her a once-over as she approached.

“You’re punctual.”

“I said mao hour.” Lin Fan flashed her token.

Long Xiao didn’t waste more words. He turned and led the way.

The two passed through three checkpoints in the inner city. At each one, Pureblood Dragon Clan guards verified their credentials, with procedures strict enough to require dual confirmation of both bone token and facial features.

After the third checkpoint, the ground began to slope downward.

A wide ramp extended into the earth, with night pearls embedded in the stone walls on both sides, spaced three steps apart, casting a cold white light.

The air grew damp, carrying a thick, gamey smell—not the stench of rotting food, but the natural body odor of a massive number of living creatures gathered together.

Roughly a hundred times stronger than the smell in the women’s camp tent.

Lin Fan’s expression didn’t change.

At the end of the ramp stood an iron door three zhang tall, its surface carved with Dragon Clan runes, traces of Spirit Energy flowing along the edges.

Two sixth-rank peak black-armored guards stood before the door, faces grim and utterly expressionless.

Long Xiao presented his token, and the iron door slid open with a dull rumble.

A wave of heat wrapped in a pungent stench rushed at her face.

“Turn left after you enter, follow the main passage to the end—that’s the duty room.” Long Xiao stopped at the threshold and didn’t follow her in. “The west sector is your area of responsibility. Routine patrols twice a day, and you answer the horn call to suppress riots at any time.”

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“What about the others?”

“They’re waiting inside.” Long Xiao glanced at her, seeming to hesitate for a moment.

“The duty captain is Long Cang. Pureblood. Seventh-rank mid-stage.”

Lin Fan nodded.

Long Xiao turned and left, his footsteps quickly fading up the ramp.

Lin Fan stepped across the iron door’s threshold.

The door closed behind her, sealing off the light and air from outside.

The underground passage was far wider than the one above—at least ten war horses could walk side by side.

The arched ceiling rose seven or eight meters high, the stone walls polished smooth, with a white Crystal Core Lamp embedded in the wall every ten steps.

But what truly caught Lin Fan’s attention wasn’t the passage itself.

It was the sound.

Countless breathing sounds, the scraping of claws against metal, low growls, curses, impacts—all of it mixed together, surging from the depths of the passage, converging into a low-frequency rumble.

Like a living beast breathing beneath the earth.

Lin Fan followed the main passage for about three hundred meters, passing two branching corridors, each guarded by a sixth-rank sentry. They let her through after seeing her token, their gazes lingering a second longer on her horse-face skirt.

At the center of the main passage was an open platform.

On one side of the platform was the duty room, and further beyond…

Lin Fan stopped.

Iron bars.

Row after row of iron bars extended from the platform’s edge, densely arranged across a massive underground cavern.

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The cavern was absurdly vast.

Lin Fan’s Omniscient Domain, while in its disguised state, only dared to maintain an effective radius of about a hundred meters. But even within that hundred-meter perception range, she had already lost count of how many iron cages there were.

Each cage was roughly ten meters square. The Mutated Beasts imprisoned inside varied in type—there were four-legged creatures covered in carapaces, two-headed flying species, and pitch-black reptilians with glowing red eyes.

Their ranks ranged from Level 1 to Level 4.

Further out, in the regions her Mental Strength couldn’t reach, roars and crashing sounds layered upon one another without end.

She had originally assumed that with only ten Rifts remaining unconquered by the Dragon Clan, an estimate of three hundred thousand Mutated Beasts in the breeding grounds was already the most optimistic projection.

After all, the Demonic Creatures deployed to Blue Star in the early stages had already consumed a considerable portion of the stockpile, and the cost of maintaining a million-strong biological population was no small expense.

But the scene before her overturned all her judgments.

Endless as far as the eye could see.

Within just the visible range from the platform she stood on, the cages stretched in at least a thousand rows, each row extending deep into the darkness beyond measure.

Combining the cave’s spatial volume with the spacing between cages, a conservative estimate—

One million.

And if the numbers fluctuated upward, possibly more.

No wonder the Dragon Emperor Hall needed spatial Teleportation Arrays.

Biological weapons of this magnitude simply couldn’t be deployed through ordinary means—only dedicated Teleportation Arrays could achieve mass transport.

And no wonder the Level 7 watchman had died.

If a million Mutated Beasts erupted in a large-scale riot, even if they were all low-level, the combined impact force would be enough to tear a Level 7 body to shreds.

Moreover, not all of them were low-tier. She had already sensed several Level 4 peak Mutated Beasts, individually confined in special cages reinforced with three layers of seals.

Lin Fan withdrew her gaze.

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A faint curve formed at the corner of her mouth.

One million Mutated Beasts.

Azurewood City’s Crystal Core Weapons were desperately short on energy, and even with Copperbeard’s arsenal running at full capacity, they couldn’t produce enough ammunition.

If all these Mutated Beasts were cleared out, the Crystals they yielded would be enough to sustain Azurewood City for years.

Provided she could get her hands on the Teleportation Array and send this million-strong herd to Azurewood City.

Once delivered, she could have Long Teng and the other two drill with the garrison forces—training the troops, recovering the Crystals, and cutting off the Dragon Clan’s logistics supply all at once.

Even “killing three birds with one stone” wouldn’t do it justice. This was a veritable windfall.

“You’re the new one?”

A cold, hard voice came from the direction of the watch station.

Lin Fan turned around.

A middle-aged man stood at the entrance of the watch station. He had a slender build, wore dark silver light armor, and his long black hair was tied back. His features were sharply defined, with golden Vertical pupils and a pair of extremely slender silver Dragon horns slanting backward from his temples.

Pureblood.

His Level 7 mid-stage aura wasn’t deliberately suppressed, unabashedly enveloping a hundred meters in every direction.

Long Cang.

Behind him stood three others—two men and one woman, all at Level 7 early stage, wearing identical black-armored watch uniforms.

Long Cang’s gaze swept from the top of Lin Fan’s head down to her feet, pausing for two seconds on her cloth shoes.

“Branch lineage?”

“Mm.”

Long Cang’s brow furrowed slightly.

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“I told the Fourth Elder not to send me useless people. The last piece of trash cost me an extra round of night patrol.”

He stepped forward two paces, looking down at Lin Fan from above.

“If you’re going to be just as pathetic as him, you’d better get out on your own now. Don’t wait until something goes wrong and drag the whole team down with you.”

Lin Fan looked at him, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t worry.”

He took the bone token from his waist and spun it half a turn between his fingers.

“I don’t take half-baked jobs.”

Long Cang snorted and turned to walk into the guard room.

After two steps, he stopped.

“Let me make things clear beforehand.”

He didn’t look back.

“When those things down below start making trouble, I’ll only handle suppression.”

“As for whether you live or die—”

“That’s your own problem.”

The Teleportation Array.

Lin Fan lowered his gaze and tucked the bone token back into his waist.

He’d said it himself.

She didn’t even need to ask.