Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 480 – The Gratitude of the Materials

The mushroom cloud was still slowly dispersing at the horizon, its gray-white curtain of dust pressing the sky low over the far northern ice fields.

At the edge of the crater, vitrified scorched earth gave off a pungent, acrid smell.

The radioactive particles hanging in the air were being filtered out one by one by the remnants of Lin Fan’s Life Domain.

Forty-three members of the women’s battalion lay sprawled across the frozen ground in every which way.

The first to move was Hu Ya.

Her physique truly left nothing to be desired.

A one-meter-ninety Beast-type frame, the tiger clan’s innate damage-resistant constitution—the nuclear blast’s shockwave hitting her was equivalent to taking a heavy punch from someone a rank or two higher.

It hurt, sure, but not many bones were broken.

Hu Ya picked herself up off the ground and shook her head, ears ringing.

Most of her battle armor was in pieces. Her left arm bore a seared gash running from shoulder to elbow, the subcutaneous tissue curling outward as blood seeped from the wound.

But she could move.

She turned her gaze toward the women’s battalion and her pupils contracted sharply.

Long Su lay motionless among the rubble, the blood at the back of her head already crusted into a dark red shell.

Long Yao lay on her side, her left calf bent at an unnatural angle, lips bitten white.

Long Shuangling sat propped against a raised mound of frozen earth, half her face torn raw by flying debris—but her one good eye was fixed on the distant mushroom cloud, pupils still flooded with lingering terror.

Further out, thirty-some more members of the women’s battalion lay toppled in various positions.

Some groaned. Some coughed blood. Some had passed out entirely.

But they were all alive.

Each person still carried a faint trace of emerald light on their bodies—the mark of the Life Domain.

It was no longer providing healing, but that brief few seconds of coverage earlier had precisely repaired everyone’s fatal wounds.

As for the pain, the external injuries, the ability to move… that was their own problem now.

Hu Ya’s gaze swept past the wounded strewn across the ground and landed on the figure standing in place, having not moved a single step.

Black one-piece leather suit.

Knee-high heeled boots.

An ink-green ponytail drifting slightly in the hot wind left by the nuclear blast’s aftermath, not a single speck of dust clinging to the strands.

Lin Fan stood five meters from the crater’s edge, her heel planted on a patch of vitrified scorched earth, poised as casually as if she were taking a stroll through her own backyard.

She held a menthol cigarette between her fingers, bringing it unhurriedly to her lips.

Hu Ya’s throat bobbed.

That instant just now… if not for that layer of green light…

All forty-three of them wouldn’t have survived a single one.

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“Ning… Ning Shuang…”

Hu Ya staggered over, each step tearing her left arm wound further open, but she didn’t care.

“You saved us.”

Lin Fan exhaled a plume of smoke and glanced sideways at her.

“Mm.”

An extremely brief single syllable.

Hu Ya wasn’t someone skilled at expressing gratitude.

A tiger-woman from Marshstone City, her vocabulary was far smaller than her fists.

But she bowed, genuinely and deeply.

The one-meter-ninety tiger-woman warrior bent at the waist before this Collateral Dragonkin who stood nearly twenty centimeters shorter than her, performing a bow she’d probably made no more than five times in her entire life.

“This life of mine—whatever you say it’s worth, that’s what it’s worth.”

Lin Fan didn’t respond right away.

She withdrew her gaze from Hu Ya and swept it across the sprawled members of the women’s battalion behind her.

Long Yao, dragging her broken leg and bracing herself with one hand on the rubble, was struggling to crawl in this direction.

Her face was ashen, but her eyes held the relief of surviving against all odds and undisguised gratitude.

“Sister Ning Shuang!”

Her voice was hoarse.

“If it weren’t for you making us stay… we’d have gone with the men’s camp…”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

She didn’t need to.

Where were those three hundred-plus men from the men’s camp now?

In that kilometer-wide crater beneath the mushroom cloud.

Long Shuangling also pushed herself to her feet, half her face’s blood already dried into a crust, but she nodded in Lin Fan’s direction.

The movement was slight, because the muscles in her neck had been strained by the shockwave, but the meaning of that nod was clear enough.

One by one, more members of the women’s camp woke up.

Some forced their eyes open through sheer willpower; others were roused by companions slapping their faces.

They all did the same thing first.

Confirmed they were still alive, then looked at the black-clad woman standing in their midst.

Long Su was awake too.

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She’d only regained consciousness after Hu Ya poured half a canteen of water into her mouth. The wound on the back of her head still throbbed dully, but it didn’t hinder her thinking.

She glanced at the distant mushroom cloud.

Then looked at Lin Fan before her.

“You knew all along.”

Long Su’s voice was soft.

“You knew something was hidden in there. That’s why you stopped us.”

Lin Fan flicked the ash from her cigarette.

“What do you think?”

Long Su’s eyes reddened.

She wasn’t an emotional person.

Quite the opposite—a Collateral Dragonkin who’d survived to this day as an attendant beside a Pureblood young master couldn’t have a simple mind.

But in this moment, she was truly afraid.

If not for “Long Ningshuang’s” single word—”Don’t move”—she, Long Su, would now be a wisp of smoke beneath that mushroom cloud.

“Thank you.”

Long Su knelt.

Not a perfunctory gesture of courtesy, but a genuine kneel, her knees striking the rubble with a dull thud.

“Ning Shuang-jie!”

“Ning Shuang-dajie!”

“Thank you for saving our lives!”

Voices rose one after another.

Those who could stand bowed standing; those who couldn’t lowered their heads toward Lin Fan from sitting or lying positions.

A lionwoman warrior with a dislocated arm even thumped her chest with her uninjured hand, performing the Chest-thumping Salute—the highest sign of respect among tiger and lion kin.

Forty-three peak Level 6 female warriors, all now facing the same direction.

Lin Fan stood in their midst.

The blue-gray smoke of her mint cigarette twisted in the hot wind, scattered into the enormous shadow of the mushroom cloud.

She looked at these people.

All above mid-Level 6.

All female.

The corners of Lin Fan’s mouth curved slightly upward.

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The arc was faint and subtle, like an inadvertently revealed smile.

But if anyone could read her mind at this moment, they would find that the undertone of that smile had nothing to do with warmth.

“Of course I have to protect you.”

Lin Fan took one last drag of her mint cigarette and flicked the butt into the still-smoking crater in the distance.

She turned around, facing these forty-three women who were gazing at her with gratitude.

Her gaze swept from left to right, passing over each one.

Like taking inventory.

No.

That was exactly what it was.

In her eyes, what flashed across these forty-three faces of various kin was not gratitude, not trust, not the relief of surviving disaster.

It was specifications.

It was quality.

It was assessment of worth.

Forty-three.

If all were made into Skin, that would be forty-three Epic Grade.

Adding the existing one hundred fifty.

One hundred ninety-three.

Still seven short.

A gap of seven.

Lin Fan’s gaze passed over these unsuspecting female warriors and landed on the Spatial Rift in the distance, still radiating its azure glow.

The Rift was still open.

The Blue Star side had been blasted into scorched earth, but the Rift itself remained completely unaffected.

That thing was a product of spatial dimensions—the physical yield of nuclear warheads couldn’t harm it in the slightest.

Which meant the other eight Rifts were likely in the same condition.

The Dragon Clan’s expeditionary force teleported over from White Bone Pass had been simultaneously cleansed at all nine landing zones by the nuclear devices Chu Chen had planted.

Three thousand elite soldiers?

Against a strike of this magnitude, they didn’t even qualify to warm up on the field.

But the Rift was still there.

In five days, Long Ye—or even Long Zhan himself—would personally step through.

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And when that happened…

“Ning Shuang.”

Hu Ya’s voice cut through Lin Fan’s thoughts.

The tiger-woman warrior had already roughly bandaged the wound on her left arm with torn cloth. Though blood was still seeping through, her tone had regained its usual gruffness.

“What do we do now? The men’s camp is completely wiped out, and that Pureblood commander—dead or alive, who knows. We…”

“We can’t go back.”

Long Su picked up the thread.

She was holding the back of her head, her expression far more lucid now.

“The Teleportation Array is one-way. We can only return if they activate it from White Bone Pass. The next activation is in three days—if there even is a next time.”

“Then we just wait here for three days?”

Long Yao gritted her teeth as she straightened her broken leg, cold sweat beading on her forehead.

“There’s not even a tent left to block the wind here—everything’s been flattened.”

Forty-three pairs of eyes turned in unison toward Lin Fan.

“Sister Ning Shuang, you make the call.”

Hu Ya’s tone was utterly natural when she said it.

As if from the moment she had bent down, the chain of command had already shifted without a word.

Lin Fan looked at them.

Forty-three peak Level Six female warriors, drenched in blood and clad in rags, placing their fates into the hands of a “Collateral Dragonkin” they had known for less than three days on the scorched earth of an alien world.

The curve at the corner of her mouth deepened by another degree.

That same smile.

Light and airy, like a cat watching koi fish in a fishbowl.

“Of course I’ll protect you.”

She repeated the words.

Her voice was languid, carrying a hint of amusement that only she herself could understand.

“You are all my very important…”

She paused.

Forty-three gazes waited for what came next.

“…materials.”