Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 465 – Oracle

After the first round of patrols, Lin Fan returned to the guard post on the western platform.

The area Long Cang had assigned her was in the northwest corner of the cavern, pressed against the rock wall—the worst-lit section with the lowest density of mutated beasts.

Clearly, she’d been given the most desolate spot as a branch family member.

Lin Fan had no complaints.

Desolate was fine.

No one watching meant more room to move.

She spent two hours walking the entire western sector.

Three hundred and seventy rows of iron cages stretched from the platform all the way to the rock wall at the cavern’s end. Level one to level three mutated beasts made up the bulk, with level fours scattered here and there, locked in reinforced cages etched with double-layered runes.

Roughly three hundred thousand in total.

The cavern was divided into four sectors.

The eastern sector belonged to the female guard who followed behind Long Cang—early seventh rank.

The southern and northern sectors were each manned by two male guards, also early seventh rank.

Long Cang himself didn’t hold a fixed position.

Lin Fan crouched at the platform’s edge, using the motion of wiping down her black iron staff to sweep her peripheral gaze across the distant passage.

Long Cang emerged from the southern sector, unhurried in his steps, and entered the guard room.

About forty minutes later, he came out again and headed straight for the northern sector.

Lin Fan didn’t look up. Her fingers slid slowly along the staff’s shaft, wiping away the beast blood.

She’d already mapped out the pattern.

Long Cang’s patrol route was fixed—south, north, east, west, rotating clockwise.

He spent thirty to forty minutes in each sector.

Then returned to the guard room for a drink of water and a quarter-hour rest before moving to the next sector.

A full circuit took roughly three hours.

Which meant that after he left the western sector, Lin Fan had a window of nearly two and a half hours of clear time.

Two and a half hours was enough to do a lot of things.

But not enough for one person to tamper with the teleportation array coordinates across all four sectors.

There was only one teleportation array, located at the exact center of the cavern, shared by all four sectors.

Two seventh-rank guards were stationed permanently around the array.

Long Cang also took a glance at it whenever his patrol passed by.

To touch the array, she’d have to simultaneously deal with the guards in the remaining three sectors, the two guards at the array itself, and Long Cang—the strongest of them all.

Six seventh-ranks.

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It wasn’t that she couldn’t beat them.

It was that she couldn’t fight.

If the energy fluctuations of battle penetrated eight hundred meters of rock to reach the surface, Long Junshan would arrive within thirty seconds.

Two days later, Long Ye would also come.

Two eighth-ranks.

She could fight eighth-ranks.

But she couldn’t fight two eighth-ranks at once while also teleporting over a million mutated beasts.

So she could only wait.

Wait for Zhou Ming.

Wait for him to sneak in wearing the Ghost Set, wait for the moment the teleportation array activated.

She would strike at the instant the array powered up—when spirit energy surged and spatial fluctuations were at their most violent.

At that point, all perception methods would be disrupted, and even Long Junshan couldn’t tell whether the fluctuation came from the array or from battle.

The window was only a few minutes.

That was enough.

Lin Fan set the staff upright beside her and sat down against the cold rock wall.

Underground, there was no distinction between day and night.

Next to the guard room was a small rest chamber partitioned off with stone slabs, containing a hard plank bed and an animal hide blanket.

Better than the women’s camp.

At least no one snored.

These past few days in the women’s camp tent, Hu Ya’s snoring sounded like a bellows being pumped, and across from her, Long Su’s teeth grinding gave her goosebumps all over.

Add to that the sweat and leather stench that never dissipated from the tent, and getting a full night’s sleep would’ve been a miracle.

Lin Fan closed her eyes and shifted her attention from her physical senses to her Mental Sea.

Countless points of light surfaced in the depths of her consciousness.

Faith Threads.

Every person who had drunk the Holy Water shared an invisible spiritual bond with her.

The brightness of the light points represented the strength of faith, while their positions indicated geographical direction.

The brightest cluster was toward Azurewood City—that mass of light was almost blinding.

Scattered across the direction of the Forest of Elves were several thousand light points of varying brightness.

She was looking for one specific point.

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Zhou Ming.

Lin Fan extended her mental strength slowly along the Faith Threads, sifting through the multitude of light points.

The process was a bit like trying to find one specific cable in a tangled mess of headphone wires—hard on the eyes, but not difficult.

Zhou Ming’s Faith Thread was easy to identify.

First, he had the highest concentration of undiluted Holy Water of anyone on the team. Lin Fan had personally poured it down his throat more than once. High intensity meant a thick thread.

Second, his faith wasn’t entirely pure.

It contained something that shouldn’t be there.

Something like an indescribable fervor—not quite the same as religious worship.

Lin Fan couldn’t be bothered to investigate what it was.

In any case, she found him in the direction of Azurewood City.

The light point was bright, and it was moving slowly.

Su Yue had done her job efficiently—he’d already been summoned.

The problem now was this: previously, she had shared the senses of that minor guard at Dragon Emperor Hall through the Faith Threads. That was passive reception—an invasion that followed the other party’s emotional fluctuations in reverse.

But the situation with Zhou Ming was different.

What she needed wasn’t to eavesdrop. It was to actively transmit a message.

To pour information one-way into a believer’s mind.

A Divine Oracle.

Lin Fan gave the concept a name in her head, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

After playing the role of a god for this long, adding a Divine Oracle function wasn’t asking too much.

She condensed her mental strength into an extremely fine thread and pushed it along the Faith Thread channel toward Zhou Ming’s consciousness.

Not language.

What she pushed was intent.

The content was simple.

First, her location. Not coordinate numbers—Zhou Ming couldn’t possibly parse latitude and longitude in his head—but a sense of spatial orientation. The kind of instinctive awareness that lets you know which direction your home is even with your eyes closed.

Second, an instruction—come.

Third, a warning—be quiet.

The information packet slid out along the thread.

Lin Fan opened her eyes and waited about ten seconds.

A response came back from the other end of the thread.

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Not language. Not intent either.

It was a pure surge of emotion—excitement, loyalty.

Message received.

Lin Fan severed the connection and let out a long breath.

Useful.

This thing was far more convenient than a communicator.

No signal needed, no equipment required, couldn’t be intercepted, immune to jamming.

The only limitation was that the recipient had to have drunk a sufficient concentration of Holy Water, and their faith strength had to reach a certain threshold.

Zhou Ming qualified completely.

With the amount of Holy Water in that guy’s system, you could probably pickle him into a jar of preserved vegetables.

Now she just had to wait for him to arrive.

Given the strength of Zhou Ming’s Spatial Ability, locating from Azurewood City to near White Bone Pass would require multiple short-range jumps.

Combined with the stealth assistance of the Ghost Set to avoid ground patrols…

At the fastest, one day.

Just in time to arrive before Long Ye does.

Lin Fan looked up at the cold white Illumination Crystal Core Lamps on the cavern ceiling.

Three days.

In three days, the three thousand elite troops at White Bone Pass would gleefully step onto the Teleportation Array, believing they were about to descend upon Blue Star and wreak havoc.

Then they would discover that what awaited them on the other side was an arsenal of high-tier Crystal Core Weapons and over a thousand sixth-tier Spliced Gene Warriors.

And the million-strong Demonic Creature army they had been counting on was currently locked in Azurewood City’s slaughterhouse, queuing up to be turned into Crystals.

As for Long Ye.

Lin Fan lowered her gaze.

The pain of that punch at Border Dragon City was still on the books.

Time to collect the interest.

Bang.

The sound of an iron cage being struck echoed from the distance.

Long Cang’s voice followed immediately, cursing and grumbling, mixed with the roars of Mutated Beasts.

Another one acting up.

Lin Fan picked up his staff and rose to his feet, heading along his patrol route.

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His expression was perfectly proper—exactly what a collateral-branch guard should look like.

His steps were steady, his breathing even, like a beast lurking among sheep with its eyes closed in feigned slumber.

…

Azurewood City.

Zhou Ming stood at the edge of the Otherworld Rift, eyes shut, focusing his Mental Strength to sense the spatial coordinates.

The silver-gray wristband on his left hand grew faintly warm, its continuous output of Spirit Energy keeping his Mental Strength at a highly active state.

His right hand clutched a Space Stone, its surface patterns slowly rotating in accordance with his will.

Suddenly—

Something in his mind was gently pressed.

Not a sound. Not an image.

It was a more primal perception.

A sense of direction.

Like someone had lit a lamp tens of thousands of kilometers away—a lamp only he could see.

He knew where Lily was.

Precisely knew.

Zhou Ming’s eyes snapped open, his pupils slightly dilated.

Then a second layer of information flooded in.

Come.

Quiet.

Only these two meanings, yet they were transmitted with absolute clarity.

Zhou Ming took a deep breath, suppressing the surging emotions in his chest.

His fingers tightened around the Space Stone.

He glanced down at his equipment.

Around his neck hung the Ghost Set pendant newly crafted by Copperbeard.

In the inner breast pocket were a pair of white foot wraps and a pair of black silk stockings.

Those were his talismans.

Zhou Ming raised his head and said one sentence to Su Yue, who stood watch nearby.

“Arrange the pickup.”

“I’m leaving early.”