Skinwalker Belle – Chapter 554 – Three Hundred Years, and I Have Finally Returned

(Two chapters today, entering the final countdown now. If any generous patrons could send gifts, we’re almost at 50+1. The illustration comic was made by the author himself using AI—creation isn’t easy, thanks for the support.)

(Just to say in advance, the ending is a HAPPY END.)

Bare feet padded across the cold tiles of the corridor, her white hair trailing behind her in a pale arc.

Lin Li didn’t know why she was running so urgently—only that an invisible thread was tugging at her chest, pulling until her heart burned.

The door to the intensive care ward wasn’t fully closed.

Lin Li shoved it open.

The monitor’s alarm shrieked, the brainwave curve on the screen leaping wildly like a thing possessed.

The black-haired man on the hospital bed had already opened his eyes.

His eyeballs were shot through with blood vessels, his pupils contracting to pinpricks in the dim light.

Their eyes met.

Before Lin Li could even speak, the man on the bed sat up with a violent jerk.

He pushed himself upright, snapping the IV line connected to his arm, clear fluid spilling across the floor.

His right hand spread open, and a layer of gray-black mist visible to the naked eye spread from his palm. The temperature in the ward plummeted; the water glass on the bedside table cracked outright, the liquid inside freezing into shards of ice.

“Lin Fan!”

His voice was hoarse, carrying the fractured quality of someone just emerging from a deep coma, but the hostility radiating from him was dense enough to split the air.

“If you have a problem, come at me. Don’t hurt the people here.”

Lin Li froze.

She stood in the doorway, barefoot, white hair spilling over her shoulders, her iridescent eyes filled with bewilderment.

She had heard her own name.

No—the name she couldn’t remember.

Rapid footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor. Lei Li was the first to burst into the ward, followed closely by Sun Jing and Chu Chen.

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“Lin Fan!”

Lei Li shouted the same two characters, but she was calling to the man on the bed.

She stepped in front of Lin Li, one hand pressing down on Lin Li’s shoulder to shield her behind her, the other reaching out toward the man on the bed in a calming gesture.

“Calm down! You just woke up—don’t move around!”

The man on the bed stared at Lin Li’s face, the gray-black mist still churning in his palm.

“Lily, get out of the way.” His voice was hoarse, but his tone brooked no argument. “She’s not something you can block.”

“Block what?” Lei Li was getting anxious. “She’s not the enemy!”

“Not the enemy?” The man’s gaze swept past Lei Li’s shoulder, locking onto Lin Li’s face. “Do you know who she is?”

“Her name is Lin Li,” Lei Li said.

The man’s expression froze for a moment.

“What?”

“Lin Li.” Lei Li repeated, her voice softening slightly. “She was pulled from the rubble the same day as you, a week ago. No spiritual energy fluctuations at all, no combat ability either.”

She paused, the tips of her ears flushing an unnatural shade of red.

“She lost her memory—doesn’t remember her own name. I… took the liberty of naming her. Your surname, my given name.”

The ward fell silent for two seconds.

The man’s gaze shifted from Lei Li’s face, landing back on Lin Li.

This time, his eyes changed.

The hostility was still there, but layered over it was scrutiny and confusion. He attempted to probe with his mental strength, the force silently enveloping the entire ward.

Lin Li felt it.

That mental force swept over her body, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, leaving no corner untouched. It was like being scanned from the inside out by a precision instrument.

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Then, another force, colder and more sinister, followed.

A gray-black mist drifted out from the man’s palm, silently winding its way to Lin Li’s feet like a snake testing its prey, slowly creeping up along her calves.

It was the lingering trace of the Death Rule.

Chu Chen’s brow furrowed, but he remained silent.

Lin Li looked down at the gray-black mist coiling around her ankles. She didn’t dodge, and she wasn’t afraid. The moment the mist touched her skin, it was as if it had encountered something inconceivable—it dissipated on its own.

The man’s movements stopped.

No Spirit Energy. No Mental Strength. No energy fluctuation of any kind. Even the Death Rule couldn’t attach itself to her body.

This woman’s body was as clean as a blank sheet of paper.

The gray-black mist in his palm slowly receded.

He leaned back against the headboard, as if all his strength had been drained. The suffocating pressure vanished without a trace, replaced by an overwhelming exhaustion.

“You really… don’t remember anything?”

He looked at Lin Li, his voice barely a whisper.

Lin Li shook her head.

“I only remember a very bright door,” she said. “And then I woke up here.”

The man stared at her for a long time.

So long that even Lei Li felt something was off, and she waved a hand in front of his face.

“Hey, what exactly—”

“Lily.”

He suddenly called out.

Lei Li’s hand froze mid-air.

He wasn’t looking at Lin Li anymore. He turned his head, his gaze landing on Lei Li’s face. In those bloodshot eyes, the hostility was gone, the wariness was gone—all the calculation and coldness were gone.

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What remained was something Lei Li had never seen in those eyes before.

“Jing’er.”

He looked toward Sun Jing at the door.

Sun Jing froze. She opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say.

Lin Fan’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

He raised his hand, reaching toward Lei Li, but it trembled violently in mid-air, unable to reach her no matter how hard he tried. The residual fluid from the IV dripped down his wrist, mingling with another liquid.

Tears.

From eyes that hadn’t been wet in three hundred years, they poured out without warning.

Not silent weeping—his entire body was shaking, the trembling of his frame rattling the whole bed.

“I…”

His voice broke.

“I’ve finally come back.”

Lei Li had never seen him like this.

From the moment she’d known him, this man had always been calm, precise, calculating everyone down to the last detail.

She’d never imagined this expression could appear on his face.

Lei Li walked to the bedside.

She didn’t ask why he was crying. She didn’t ask what “three hundred years” meant.

She simply reached out and took the trembling hand in mid-air.

Then she wrapped her arms around Lin Fan’s head, pulling him into her chest.

“Coming back is what matters.”

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Sun Jing stood at the door, biting her lip, her eyes reddening.

She came over and joined the embrace.

Chu Chen leaned against the corner of the wall, slowly pulling the lollipop out of his mouth.

He wasn’t looking at Lin Fan.

He was looking at Lin Li.

The amnesiac white-haired woman stood in place, barefoot, perfectly still. There were no tears in her eyes, but those iridescent pupils were fixed unblinkingly on the man in the hospital bed.

Her right hand unconsciously pressed against her own chest.

That spot was burning again.

Chu Chen put the lollipop back into his mouth and turned to walk out of the hospital room.

He didn’t stop until he reached the end of the corridor, where he pulled out his phone and brought up the brainwave comparison data Xiao Yao had sent.

The peak brainwave reading from when Lin Fan had woken up moments ago, and Lin Li’s real-time brainwave peak at this very moment.

The two curves overlapped almost perfectly.

And in that instant when Lin Fan’s tears fell, Lin Li’s heart rate had spiked by forty percentage points in sync.

Chu Chen stared at the numbers on the screen, chewing his lollipop twice as fast.

The connection between these two went far beyond overlapping brainwaves.

He put his phone away, took two steps back, and glanced through the crack in the hospital room door.

Lin Li was still standing in the same spot—she hadn’t moved closer, hadn’t spoken.

But she had raised her right hand, her fingers brushing against her cheek.

It was wet.

She clearly hadn’t been crying.