Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 541 – Lin Fan, Do You Know What Is Behind the Door?

Too late.

The moment Lin Fan’s feet touched the ground, those two words slammed into her mind.

The black light behind her was closing in fast. Zhou Ming’s spatial interference was clearly on its last legs—maybe ten more seconds, fifteen at most.

Ahead of her, the light arc swelling to ten meters wide was devouring the Spirit Energy clusters like a rabid beast.

Every single cluster was the life essence of countless souls—from Blue Star or the Dragon Spirit Continent.

If Long Hao got his hands on them first…

She couldn’t think about that.

“Cultivation-Absorption Domain!”

Dark green Life Ripples exploded from her chest.

This time, they didn’t spread outward. They contracted inward.

All the ripples converged on her body’s surface, forming a massive vortex.

The Spirit Energy clusters that had been racing toward the light arc were forcibly yanked off course.

A hundred rivers returning to the sea.

They poured into Lin Fan’s body in perfect unison.

The first wave of Spirit Energy entered.

Those wrinkled hands—the skin visibly tightened and snapped back before her eyes.

The creases peeled away layer by layer. Full, firm muscle contours re-covered her knuckles.

A jade-white luster spread from her fingertips all the way up to her wrists.

The second wave.

Her gray-white, withered hair began to brighten from the roots.

Like someone holding an invisible brush, painting the color back inch by inch.

White light, flowing radiance, stardust-like glimmers danced across the strands once more.

The third wave.

Her cracked lips regained their color. The lines at the corners of her eyes faded clean away. Collagen rushed back into her cheeks at an absurd speed.

That weary, forty-something face regressed to twenty-five in three seconds flat.

Peak condition.

Mental Strength fully restored.

Physical condition fully restored.

Still climbing.

Spirit Energy clusters surged in without end.

Not just from Blue Star.

From the direction of the Dragon Spirit Continent, an even vaster, denser torrent of Spirit Energy was tearing through the spatial barrier, visibly converging toward the Hangzhou Formation Eye.

260,000.

280,000.

300,000.

The mid-Level-Nine barrier shattered with ease.

350,000.

400,000.

Late Level Nine.

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“BOOM!”

A hundred meters of rock exploded.

A streak of black light pierced straight down through the mountain.

Rubble, alloy gate fragments, precision instruments—all blasted away like scraps of paper.

Long Hao landed directly across from her.

Less than twenty meters away.

He was in rough shape.

The aftereffects of Chu Chen’s Crystal bullet were still ravaging his body. Death Qi cracks like spiderwebs crawled across half his face.

His left arm, from the elbow down, had the withered texture of dead wood.

But his eyes burned with terrifying intensity.

Golden vertical pupils locked onto the surging Spirit Energy clusters around them.

Long Hao didn’t look at Lin Fan. Didn’t say a word.

He simply opened his mouth and inhaled.

His gray-black Death Domain spread out in an instant, colliding head-on with Lin Fan’s Cultivation-Absorption Domain.

Two completely opposing forces began a frenzied war over the same sea of Spirit Energy.

Lin Fan seized the life clusters—absorbing them meant power.

Long Hao seized the life clusters too.

But the Spirit Energy, transformed by his Death Domain, became something else entirely.

Gray-black Death Qi spirit sources, thick with the stench of decay.

Violently filling his cultivation base just the same.

The two stood face to face, barely a dozen meters apart.

Neither had time to spare for the other.

450,000.

500,000.

Lin Fan’s Mental Strength and physical condition skyrocketed in tandem.

Her white hair stirred without wind in the Spirit Energy storm. The dark green light around her grew denser and denser.

So dense it began overflowing as materialized life energy.

She felt it.

That threshold.

At 500,000, both her physical condition and Mental Strength hit the ceiling at once.

Like slamming into an invisible wall.

Spirit Energy continued to pour in, but it no longer converted into increased strength.

The excess energy rampaged through her body, unable to find an exit.

“Fragmented Progenitor of Life.”

Those words on the system panel had now become a shackle.

Her bloodline was incomplete.

Something was missing—something that prevented her from advancing even half a step further.

Half-step Level 10.

That was the ceiling.

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Lin Fan tilted her head and glanced at Long Hao.

He had stopped too.

The gray-black Death Qi spirit source within him had expanded to its limit, likewise stuck at the ceiling of Level 9 peak.

There was no surprise on his face, nor any frustration.

He had known all along.

“You can’t reach Level 10 either,” Lin Fan spoke.

Her voice had regained that lazy, cool clarity.

Long Hao raised his head to look at her.

“Neither can you.”

“Then what was all this for?”

Lin Fan tilted her head.

“Devouring the Spirit Energy of two worlds and still not reaching Level 10—you schemed for three hundred years just to stand here and fight me?”

Long Hao didn’t answer.

His gaze passed over Lin Fan’s shoulder, landing on the translucent arc of light behind her that had expanded to fifteen meters.

The door.

That half-open door was being pried open bit by bit by the energy fluctuations released by two Half-step Level 10 lifeforms.

Lin Fan caught the direction of his gaze.

She turned around.

The scene inside the light arc was now more than ten times clearer than it had been minutes ago.

The light behind that door—light she had never seen before—was seeping outward.

Not Level 10.

What Long Hao wanted had never been Level 10.

“You want to open that door.”

Lin Fan turned back, her eyes locked on Long Hao.

Long Hao smiled.

That smile resembled certain expressions Lin Fan had seen in mirrors.

The excitement of a hunter spotting its prey.

“Smart,” he said.

“But too slow.”

Black Death Qi exploded from beneath his feet.

Long Hao’s entire body transformed into a shadow, a full-power punch backed by 550,000 points of physical attributes driving straight at Lin Fan’s face.

Lin Fan sidestepped.

Her left hand caught the incoming fist.

550,000 against 550,000.

A collision of perfectly equal force yielded no victor.

Only destruction.

The shockwave spread spherically from the point of contact between the two.

The laboratory’s remaining equipment turned to dust in the first instant.

The walls of the white circular space cracked and peeled away.

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Then came the rock layers.

A hundred meters.

Two hundred.

Three hundred.

The entire mountain began to collapse from within.

Lin Fan kicked off Long Hao’s chest.

At the same moment, Long Hao drove a knee into her abdomen.

Both were sent flying in opposite directions, tearing through the mountain and shooting into the sky from two sides.

The mountain collapsed three seconds after they flew out.

Not an ordinary collapse.

From peak to foundation, the entire mountain was leveled.

In its place was a circular pit over a kilometer in diameter.

At the center of the pit’s floor, that arc of light floated quietly.

Untouched.

Two figures faced off in the high sky.

White and black.

Lin Fan’s white ancient-style robe was mostly shredded, revealing a slender body that concealed terrifying power beneath.

She wiped the blood from her lips, those starry eyes burning with fighting intent.

Long Hao’s condition was worse.

The withered-wood texture on his left arm had spread to his shoulder, the conflict between Death Rule and Life Aura still tearing at his body without pause.

But he still stood perfectly straight.

Their gazes met.

Then they moved at the same time.

The second collision.

Fist against fist.

Knee against knee.

Elbow against elbow.

No Domain, no Rules, no innate abilities.

Just pure physical combat—550,000 against 550,000.

Every collision detonated a mushroom cloud of air pressure in the sky.

The crater on the ground was repeatedly pounded by shockwaves, digging deeper and deeper.

Three hundred kilometers away.

Lu Yuan supported Zhou Ming as they stood on a hill.

Everyone was stunned.

On the distant horizon, two streaks of light flickered alternately.

Accompanying them came a series of dull, thunderous booms.

With every boom, the ground beneath their feet trembled.

Zhu Yan’s golden vertical pupils were locked onto that direction.

“Two… half-step Level 10.”

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Her voice was trembling.

“This is no longer the kind of force humans can produce.”

Lu Yuan swallowed hard.

“What about that mountain?”

“Gone.”

Zhou Ming collapsed to the ground, all six of his wristbands extinguished.

There wasn’t a single spot on his body that wasn’t bleeding.

But he tilted his head back, gazing at the sky in the distance that had been churned into chaos by the aftermath of the battle.

The corners of his mouth curled upward.

“Lily… keep going.”

Above Hangzhou.

After the seventeenth collision, the two each retreated.

Lin Fan gasped for breath.

Long Hao was panting too.

Even a half-step Level 10 body still gets tired.

Especially when facing an opponent who is your complete equal.

“You can’t kill me.” Long Hao wiped the blood from his face.

“And I can’t kill you either.”

“Then let’s keep fighting.”

Lin Fan shook her numb right hand.

“I’ve got plenty of time anyway.”

“But the door won’t wait.”

Long Hao suddenly stopped fighting.

His gaze fell once again to the bottom of the deep crater beneath his feet.

The suspended arc of light had already expanded to twenty meters.

The light behind the door was growing brighter and brighter.

“It’s absorbing the excess energy from our battle.”

Long Hao’s tone was flat and matter-of-fact, as if he were commenting on the nice weather.

“Every time we fight, it opens a little wider.”

Lin Fan’s eyes flew wide open.

She looked down.

The expansion rate of the light arc indeed matched the frequency of their exchanges perfectly.

“You did that on purpose.”

Long Hao looked at her.

In his eyes reflected the nameless light from behind the door.

“Lin Fan.”

He called out her true name.

“Do you know what’s behind that door?”