Cross through Teyvat, and you'll become stronger by taking the hits!

"Huh? Who's awake?"

"Lonely?"

Upon hearing Alice's reminder, Lu Li couldn't help but press for more information.

However, when faced with Lu Li's question, Alice tilted her head slightly.

"Has the time already gone...?"

"Well, I've given all the necessary reminders, so it should be fine..."

Alice muttered something, then shook her head and snapped her fingers.

"These are all rare items that I've only seen once before. Maybe I can use them next time..."

The next moment, all the artifacts used in the magical ritual to anchor the soul rose into the air and were stored away by some kind of storage magic.

"Ms. Alice?"

Lu Li tried calling out to Alice in confusion, but she didn't respond. After putting away her things, she turned and left.

"Hello? Ms. Alice, can you still hear me?"

Lu Li quickly followed, but no matter how he called out to Alice, there was no response.

Left with no other choice, Lu Li stepped forward to stop her, but Alice simply passed right through him.

After walking a short distance further, Alice muttered something to herself as she used magic to disappear from the spot.

"Could it be that she can no longer see me...?"

Seeing that Alice had disappeared, Lu Li could only scratch his head in confusion.

"Pretty much. You're already exiled, and the longer it goes on, the harder it will be to anchor you back."

Just as Lu Li was wondering, a slightly familiar voice suddenly rang out from the side.

Lu Li turned around in confusion and then saw a mini white dragon floating in mid-air.

"Where did this little one come from? You're so cute!"

The next second, the little white dragon was already in Lu Li's arms, with one hand stroking its head.

"...You can call me Nibelungen."

Raising its paw to push away Lu Li's hand, the little white dragon revealed its name.

"Huh? You're Ronnie?"

Lu Li paused for a moment, then lifted the little white dragon up by its armpits and looked at it in surprise.

If someone had seen the demonic dragon that Lu Li had transformed into before, they would have noticed that this little white dragon was almost a bleached, miniature version of that demonic dragon.

But Lu Li didn't look in a mirror at the time, so he didn't know what he looked like.

"Lanni..."

The Nibelungs were speechless when they first heard this title.

"So Ms. Alice was talking about you. I didn't expect you to wake up. You always looked half-dead before."

Lu Li then understood what Alice had just said.

He had heard the voice of the Nibelungs a few times before, and the whispers of the abyss were quite easy to distinguish.

After all, he had experienced many people speaking in his mind before; the system, Nico, Nocturne, and Abyss had all spoken in his mind.

"Because what you heard before wasn't entirely me, but just a wisp of consciousness left behind in the wreckage."

Nibelungen shook its head, then struggled free from Lu Li's grasp, flapping its small wings and flying beside Lu Li.

"So, according to Ms. Alice... you're not going to eat me, are you? To eat me to strengthen your own soul, or to possess another body and be reborn?"

Lu Li nodded knowingly, then couldn't help but speculate, but he didn't seem scared at all.

"..."

"You're so cute, it wouldn't hurt to take a bite..."

"?"

Nibelungen remained silent, while Lu Li covered his cheek somewhat awkwardly, which made the silent Nibelungen tilt his head involuntarily.

"Aren't you curious about why you came into contact with me?"

After a moment, Nibelungen chose to change the subject.

"...A bit. What you said earlier was a bit of a riddle; I didn't understand it."

Upon hearing this, Lu Li stopped thinking about being bitten by the Nibelungs.

The miniature Nibelung looks like a tiny white baby dragon, even smaller than a baby Dulin. It looks so cute and cuddly that you wouldn't feel any pain even if you were bitten...

"..."

"This story begins thousands of years ago..."

Nibelungen felt that Lu Li's gaze was somewhat aggressive, but it could only pretend not to see it and began to explain to Lu Li.

"At that time, in order to find a way to fight against the great enemy of darkness, I boarded a spaceship and traveled to the outer reaches of space..."

"Did you go there in a spaceship? Can't you fly in space?"

As Nibelungen was speaking, Lu Li suddenly raised his hand to interrupt him and asked a question out of curiosity.

"...Of course, it is possible, but spaceships can eliminate all the complicated procedures, after all, it is in the desolate starry sky, drifting for thousands of years at a time."

Nibelungen was speechless for a moment, knowing that Lu Li didn't know much about space travel, so he still explained.

For him, a thousand years or so is nothing, but flying for a thousand years in the empty universe is a torment comparable to torture.

It's better to just hibernate inside the spaceship.

"Oh... travelers are like that too."

Lu Li nodded in understanding; he hadn't really thought of that.

"During my long journey, I stumbled upon the birthplace of the stars."

"There, I met the late Father of the Stars, who is also, in theory, your father."

"At that time, you were a vague consciousness without a body or a soul. In order for you to be born, I offered my flesh and blood and part of my soul to the stars as the material for your birth."

As Nibelungen spoke, he scratched at his chest with his little paws, making a motion as if to remove flesh and blood.

However, at this moment, its claws didn't even look very sharp.

"So that's how I was born..."

Lu Li looked down at his "body".

Although he didn't understand why the timeline didn't match his memories, he finally understood why he had become the new Dragon King.

Because his flesh and soul originally came from the primordial Dragon King.

"But unfortunately, by then I had already been tainted by the dark shadows, and those flesh and souls also carried some of them, which were imprinted into the essence of your existence."

"Because of this mistake, the Children of the Stars, who should have been the greatest hope in the fight against the enemy of the shadows, are fundamentally weak because of the power of the abyss..."

"Just like the people of Fontaine, as I learned from the fragments of your memory, because they were born from the primordial seawater, they lose their form upon encountering the primordial seawater."

Then, Nibelungen explained why Lu Li feared the power of the abyss.

He does possess the power to purify the abyss, but once he comes into contact with it, his resistance to the abyss is even weaker than that of some ordinary human warriors, and he easily falls into hallucinations.

"I see... "

Lu Li scratched his head. He knew that he was in a bad state every time he touched the abyss.

But in reality, he was never really worried. Relying on his "regression principle," he never took the matter to heart.

However, Nata's incident serves as the greatest lesson. After being driven mad by the power of the abyss, he even forgot that he possessed the principle of reversion.

……