Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 504 – We Have Been on Someone Else’s Chessboard from the Very Beginning

Su Xiaoxiao watched the gray-shirted man’s figure disappear into the crowd.

Chewing on her last hawthorn berry, she muttered indistinctly.

“Riddle-teller. Xiaoxiao hates riddle-tellers the most.”

Sun Jing didn’t respond.

She stood there for two extra seconds, watching. But only two seconds.

Three years into the post-apocalypse on Blue Star, she had seen too many people with complicated eyes.

Some had lost their entire families. Some had killed their own companions with their own hands. Some had gnawed on raw flesh amidst piles of corpses.

That kind of calm that came from seeing through life and death was no longer rare.

An ordinary survivor with only a Level 2 or 3 Spirit Energy fluctuation, spouting a few nonsensical words—it wasn’t worth dwelling on.

“Let’s go. They’re still waiting at the East Gate.”

Sun Jing turned around. Su Xiaoxiao quickly followed, her fox tail swishing behind her.

The two figures were soon swallowed by the crowd.

The hawkers’ cries from the food street flooded their ears once more.

The daily life of Azurewood City was more disorienting than the battlefield.

No one noticed that the man in the gray shirt, after walking into a secluded alley, slowed his pace.

He stopped before an earthen wall.

On the wall was pasted a hand-drawn map—a commercial district layout of Azurewood City that Su Yue had commissioned. The ink was still wet.

The man didn’t look at the map.

His gaze fell on a charcoal sketch beside it—a simple doodle.

It was a crooked, lopsided fox, with four childish characters written beside it: “Sister Xiaoxiao.”

He stared at the drawing for a long time.

“Jing’er.”

His voice was so soft that even the wind in the alley drowned it out.

“The you in this world is just as cheerful.”

He raised his head, gazing at the azure sky above the city walls.

The sky of this other world was far cleaner than Blue Star’s—no radiation clouds. Sunlight poured down, carving sharp, contrasting contours across his face.

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“Three hundred years.”

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, something flickered and vanished in the depths of his pupils.

“Soon.”

“Soon, I’ll be able to go home.”

“Jing’er. Lily. Wait for me.”

The voice faded.

An unnatural draft swept through the alley.

The air rippled like the surface of water, spreading outward in fine concentric waves from the man as the center.

A local Rabbit-kin grandmother, carrying a basket of radishes, passed the alley entrance. She felt she’d caught a glimpse of a figure in her peripheral vision.

She turned to look. The alley was completely empty.

Only a pile of candied hawthorn crumbs slowly scattered to the ground.

…

Sichuan Base Command Center.

Chu Chen hadn’t left this chair for fourteen hours.

He was crouched on the swivel chair, both feet on the seat, knees tucked up to his chin.

The desk was littered with all kinds of sweets and coffee.

The screens on all four walls were lit.

The three screens on the left scrolled real-time energy monitoring data of global Rifts.

The two on the right displayed satellite imagery relayed from Azurewood City.

On the main screen directly ahead, a dense array of timelines and logical chains—hand-drawn by Chu Chen—was arranged in tight rows. Red and blue marker lines crisscrossed and intertwined like a spider’s web.

His eyes were closed.

But his mind never stopped.

Zhou Ming’s report replayed over and over in his head.

“Ever since the Fragrant Hills International period, there has been another person with a Spatial Ability completely identical in origin to mine, who has been spying on Lily all along.”

Completely identical in origin.

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Not similar. Not the same category. Completely identical in origin.

At the time, Chu Chen had offered two hypotheses: talent replication, or ability theft.

But both hypotheses rested on the same premise.

That this person had acquired their Spatial Ability postnatally.

What if that wasn’t the case?

If this person had possessed this ability all along?

The probability of a completely homologous spatial ability occurring naturally was zero.

Then what about the probability of it occurring unnaturally?

The gears in Chu Chen’s mind suddenly clicked into place.

He opened his eyes, reached out from his chair, and dragged the timeline on the main screen all the way to the left.

Three hundred years ago.

Long Xi and Long Hao, the siblings, had made their first attempt to open a portal connecting the Dragon Spirit Continent to Blue Star.

That was the earliest recorded point of contact between the two worlds, as learned from Lei Li.

Three hundred years ago, Blue Star had no post-apocalypse, no Rifts, no mutations, no Evolved beings, and certainly no Crystals.

Nor was there a Zhou Ming.

Zhou Ming’s spatial ability had awakened in the early days of the apocalypse.

Before that, he had just been an ordinary fitness trainer.

So Zhou Ming couldn’t have been the one who possessed the ability first.

That meant the other person with a homologous ability was the one who had it first.

Before Zhou Ming.

Before the apocalypse.

Before the Rifts.

Chu Chen’s breathing changed.

He pulled up the research logs that Chen Dingjun had left behind in the underground laboratory in Hangzhou.

That “anomalous spatial fold” had existed for at least three hundred years, with an energy magnitude far exceeding that of the Dragon Clan’s portal, and was suspected to be a key to a higher dimension.

Three hundred years.

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If Long Xi and Long Hao’s portal-opening three hundred years ago was taken as the starting point, then the appearance of that fold coincided perfectly.

Chu Chen pulled up the spatial modeling diagram of the Dragon Clan’s Spirit Gathering Array.

One hundred and three Rifts precisely formed the Spirit Gathering Runes.

The Formation Eye pointed to Hangzhou.

Hangzhou.

Lei Li’s original starting point.

Chu Chen picked up a marker from the desk and drew a vertical line on the timeline.

Beside the line, he wrote three characters: The First One.

The first person to come from the Dragon Spirit Continent to Blue Star.

Or conversely, the first person to go from Blue Star to the Dragon Spirit Continent.

He added a line of small text beside the vertical line: Possesses spatial ability, completely homologous to Zhou Ming’s.

Then he stopped.

The pen tip hovered one centimeter above the screen, perfectly still.

The only sound in the room was the low hum of the servers.

Chu Chen’s face gradually changed under the cold glow of the screen.

He began recalculating.

From the appearance of the Rifts, to the outbreak of mutations, to the Dragon Clan’s invasion, to the Spirit Gathering Array, to Chen Dingjun’s underground laboratory, to Long Ye’s premature actions, to the Dragon Emperor Hall’s breeding plan, to the Teleportation Array at White Bone Pass.

All events.

All time nodes.

All coincidences.

All fed into a new variable: the existence of a person with a spatial ability homologous to Zhou Ming’s, who had arrived at or left traces on Blue Star at least three hundred years ago, and was still operating in the shadows to this day.

This calculation lasted half a day.

The model in Chu Chen’s mind was overturned three times and rebuilt three times.

Each rebuild pointed to the same conclusion.

A conclusion he dared not believe.

Evening.

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Bang!

Chu Chen fell off his chair.

His legs, which had been crouched for fourteen hours, had long lost all feeling. His body toppled sideways, his shoulder slamming into the cold metal floor.

Chen Mo beside him was startled. He rushed over in three quick strides and grabbed Chu Chen’s arm.

“Chu Chen! Are you okay?!”

Chu Chen was helped into a sitting position, his back against the chair leg.

His eyes were fixed straight ahead at the screen, pupils unfocused.

“Wrong.”

His voice was hoarse, as if forced out from his throat.

Chen Mo didn’t catch it: “What?”

Chu Chen slowly raised his hand and covered his face.

In the eyes visible through the gaps between his fingers, there was no fear—only an emotion that had never appeared on his face before.

Dazed confusion.

“It’s all wrong.”

His voice echoed through the empty command center.

“From the very beginning… we’ve been playing on someone else’s chessboard.”

Chen Mo’s hand, steadying him, froze.

Chu Chen lowered his hand and turned to look at the encrypted communicator on the table.

He wanted to contact Lei Li.

But he opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Because he suddenly realized something even more terrifying.

If this mastermind had existed for over three hundred years, then his understanding of Lei Li was likely far beyond what Chu Chen could imagine.

Perhaps this person even knew Lei Li better than she knew herself.

The communicator’s indicator light blinked quietly in green.

Chu Chen stared at that green light as a cold bead of sweat slid down from his temple.