Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 527 – Is the System Useful?

The Dragon Emperor’s figure fully emerged from the darkness.

No ornate armor. No ostentatious dragon robes. Just an ordinary black long coat, two dark-golden dragon horns atop his head, and black hair casually draped loose.

He was actually rather handsome—except those golden vertical pupils held not a trace of living warmth.

Long Yan lay sprawled on the ground, veins bulging on his neck, struggling just to move a single finger.

He turned his head to glance at Long Yi and Long Teng, who were also pinned to the ground beside him. Three Rank 8 powerhouses, all stuck to the earth as if glued down.

This kind of utterly unreasonable suppression wasn’t something a Domain could achieve.

It was Rules.

The Death Rule.

All life force within several hundred meters was being slowly drained away. Flowers withered, soil cracked, and a putrid stench permeated the air.

Lin Fan knelt on one knee, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

The backlash from having her Domain forcibly shattered still rang dully in her skull.

She quickly analyzed the situation before her.

Not good.

The Dragon Emperor’s Power of Rules was different from hers. Her Time Stop could currently only last three seconds, covering one kilometer, and it had no synergy whatsoever with her Omniscient Domain or Life Domain.

But this Dragon Emperor—his Death Rule had already achieved Perfect Fusion with his Domain.

Domain is Rules. Rules is Domain.

This meant he could continuously release Rule suppression without expending additional Mental Strength.

That was the gap between a veteran Rank 9 powerhouse and someone who had just stepped into Rank 9.

What made it worse was that she was currently wearing Yui’s Skin.

Though she retained half of her original body’s attributes—120,000 points, more than enough to crush Long Zhan—against a mid-stage Rank 9 Dragon Emperor…

She fell far short.

If she were at her full strength in her original body—250,000 physical attributes plus 250,000 Mental Strength, combined with Time Stop—she might have been able to trade blows with this guy.

But now?

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She was in danger.

The Dragon Emperor’s gaze passed over Long Zhan kneeling in the pit, over the three sprawled on the ground—Long Yi and the others—and finally settled on the girl in the sailor uniform, half-kneeling on the earth.

“You arrived earlier than I anticipated,” the Dragon Emperor spoke.

His voice was flat. No anger. No killing intent. As if he were commenting on the weather.

But it was precisely that flatness that sent a chill down Lin Fan’s spine.

She looked up.

“What did you say?”

The Dragon Emperor didn’t repeat himself. He simply looked down at her from above. Those golden vertical pupils held no superfluous emotion—like a hunter watching prey that had finally walked into its cage.

Lin Fan’s mind raced.

“You arrived earlier than I anticipated.”

That sentence contained two key pieces of information.

First: “anticipated.” He had been expecting her to come.

Second: “earlier.” He had calculated when she would arrive, but she had come ahead of schedule.

What did this mean?

It meant those four hundred-plus Rank 7 Purebloods deployed to Blue Star…

Had all been arranged by this Dragon Emperor.

Lin Fan suddenly recalled the things Chu Chen had said.

Among the dragon expeditionary forces on Blue Star, the male-to-female ratio had been deliberately calibrated—the number of females just enough for her to meet the threshold for collecting Skins. The speed of the Rift’s expansion had been precisely timed to prevent her from returning to the Dragon Spirit Continent within ten days.

Everything had been calculated against her.

But here was the problem.

They had never met before.

At Border Dragon City, she had killed Fifth Elder Long Xuan, and faced off against Long Zhan and Long Ye. The Dragon Emperor had never once shown his face.

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At White Bone Pass, she faced Long Junshan and the Demi-human army. The Dragon Emperor hadn’t appeared either.

Her Skin System, her Life Domain, her combat style, her advancement path… This kind of intelligence wasn’t something that could be obtained casually.

Even if Long Zhan and Long Ye had reported the battle situation to the Dragon Emperor, it couldn’t have been this precise.

“Who exactly are you?”

Lin Fan stood up, her sharply contrasting black-and-white eyes locked tightly onto the Dragon Emperor hovering in midair.

The Dragon Emperor tilted his head, his golden dragon horns gleaming with cold light in the darkness.

“I am the Dragon Emperor, sovereign of the Pureblood Dragon Clan. This question needs no answer.”

“I wasn’t asking about your title.” Lin Fan’s tone shifted.

On Yui’s innocent face, an expression belonging to Lin Fan emerged. Scrutiny, wariness, and a hint of… a strange sense of familiarity.

She couldn’t articulate where this feeling came from.

But from the moment the Dragon Emperor appeared, her instincts had been screaming alarms. Not warnings of danger, but warnings of something “wrong.”

This Dragon Emperor—the way he looked at her was too familiar.

Not the look of an enemy, nor the look of prey.

It was a look of… appraising a work.

Just like the way she herself looked at those Skins in the System Space.

With possessiveness, with control, and with a trace of regret.

“You have no reason to fear me at all, so why scheme and set traps for me?” Lin Fan changed her question.

The Dragon Emperor was silent for two seconds.

“Because with you lingering here, it’s inconvenient for me to do things.”

“Do what things?”

“Things you shouldn’t know about.”

Lin Fan was momentarily choked by these words.

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She found the Dragon Emperor’s way of speaking deeply unsettling. Not because of arrogance—quite the opposite, he was too calm.

Calm to the point where he seemed to know everything about what was happening tonight.

“Lei… Lei Jie…” Long Yan lay sprawled on the ground, forcing out a few words with difficulty, “This guy… could he really be the Dragon Emperor…”

“Shut up, don’t waste your strength.” Lin Fan said without turning around.

Long Zhan crawled out of the pit, covered in blood, yet grinning like it was New Year’s.

“Dragon Emperor, this witch is that White-Haired Demoness! She used some evil art to swap faces, but this subordinate can confirm—it’s her!”

The Dragon Emperor glanced at Long Zhan.

“I know.”

Four words, spoken lightly.

But after hearing them, Long Zhan’s smile froze on his face.

He knew?

When had he known?

The Dragon Emperor paid no attention to Long Zhan’s change in expression, shifting his gaze back to Lin Fan.

“The System—does it work well?”

Lin Fan’s pupils abruptly constricted.

These words coming from the Dragon Emperor’s mouth shocked her more than the suppression of the Death Rule from earlier.

The existence of the System was her most closely guarded secret.

The people who knew about it—Su Xiaoxiao, Chu Chen, Sun Jing… all of them were people she trusted most, and each one knew only different details, simply aware that she could devour others’ abilities and appearances.

How could this Dragon Emperor know?

“It seems you’re surprised.” The Dragon Emperor’s tone remained flat. “No need to be, really. This System—I understand it better than you do.”

Lin Fan’s face finally lost its smile.

Yui’s sweet features were now cold enough to freeze.

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“What nonsense are you spouting?”

“Your heart is unsettled.” The Dragon Emperor raised his right hand and spread his five fingers.

A visible ripple of spatial distortion spread outward from his palm.

This wasn’t Dragon Clan spirit energy, nor elemental power.

It was pure spatial ability fluctuation, completely identical in origin to Zhou Ming’s.

Lin Fan froze.

Zhou Ming’s words exploded in her mind.

“Since the Fragrant Hills International period, there has been another person with spatial ability completely identical in origin to mine, leaving residual fluctuations around you all along.”

Chu Chen’s deduction surfaced simultaneously.

“The natural probability of two people having completely identical spatial ability origins is zero.”

“A schemer who has existed for at least two hundred years.”

“We’ve been on someone else’s chessboard from the very start.”

Lin Fan stared at the spatial ripples in the Dragon Emperor’s palm as every clue in her mind suddenly snapped into a single line.

Long Hao, who opened the portal between the two realms two hundred years ago.

Spatial ability identical in origin to Zhou Ming’s.

Complete familiarity with the Skin System.

She opened her mouth, the nebula in her eyes churning violently.

“You… who exactly are you?”

The Dragon Emperor withdrew his palm, and for the first time, his golden vertical pupils showed a ripple of emotion.

That ripple was complex—like the look of someone gazing upon a person they had waited for a very long time.

“That question,” the Dragon Emperor said, “I will answer when you are qualified to live long enough to hear it.”