...

Opening his eyes, Zhang Ze saw a long strip.

Li manifested her true elongated form, flying back and forth in the sky, sometimes stretching into a straight line, sometimes twisting into a figure-eight.

She was having a good time.

Zhang Ze watched for a while, then suddenly shouted mischievously.

"Oi! Your tail is off track!"

Li was startled by Zhang Ze's voice and quickly turned to look at her tail, realizing she'd been tricked. She angrily rammed down with a headlong rush.

Zhang Ze lightly jumped and landed on Li's head.

"You really are that square train engine..." Zhang Ze marveled.

The so-called 'shed skin' that Zhang Ze rode to the Ancestral Temple was once Li's body, or something she possessed.

Li angrily tried to shake Zhang Ze off, but after a few attempts couldn't break free. Helplessly, she sighed and said.

"What can I do? The warehouse leaked at the time. If it wasn't immediately plugged, half the supplies of that starship would be gone.

"There were no extra hands at the time, and it was too late for repairs, so they filled me, just a newborn, in there.

"Later, that starship was scrapped, and the warehouse was directly transferred to Startrack One.

"Startrack One is that train you saw; from then on, I was both the administrator of the warehouse and the warehouse itself."

Though she sounded somewhat pitiful, Zhang Ze couldn't help but imagine, back in the primordial times, a square train engine resembling a pig rampaging across the land, swallowing anything in sight, daring whoever crossed its path, claiming to be a dragon. This thought made him want to laugh.

But Zhang Ze is a professional; he can hold back when needed.

Just as he was suppressing his laughter, Zhang Ze suddenly remembered something else.

According to Li, she was appointed as the warehouse administrator before she could even crawl, which would mean she never actually had a proper elongated form.

And Zhang Ze remembered, what he summoned from the Stone Pill wasn't the Iron Egg Train Hero nor the strong square pig, but the roundish Li.

Which means, this round shape was likely Li's form when she was just born, before she was used to plug the warehouse.

So...

Has Li been chubby since she was young? And will she always be chubby?

Because Zhang Ze clearly recalled seeing two kinds of amber dragons in the dream just now: one elongated, the other a big stomach...

'Hmm....'

In the end, Zhang Ze didn't voice this conjecture, which would undoubtedly make Li flush with anger.

He listened to Li's bragging, quietly resting on her head while they flew together to the edge of the primordial.

This was a dream, where whatever Li said goes.

And their first stop in the dream was the Northern Territory.

At that time, the Four Continents didn't even have an atmosphere; it was just a bare rock ball, making the Northern Territory no different from anywhere else.

The ground was scorched black, with lava everywhere.

As Li flew, Zhang Ze soon saw a 'gigantic tree.'

No, to be precise, it wasn't a gigantic tree but a starship embedded in the scorched earth, resembling the flagship of the Exile Fleet.

"What are they doing?" Zhang Ze asked curiously. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"To be reborn, the first step is to reshape the ecological environment of the planet," Li calmly explained.

As Li spoke, that semi-organic starship continued to slowly penetrate the earth. The outer layer of amber crystals dissolved, and light blue liquid oozed from wounds, cooling the surrounding lava.

The rear of the warship split open, and a flood of clear brilliance sprayed into the sky.

Zhang Ze, "Is this how you usually reshape planets?"

Li shook her head.

"No, in our most glorious past, we had a specialized device called the Ring of Stars for such tasks.

"Operating that device wasn't difficult; even children could easily follow the instructions."

"However, almost eighty percent of the Rings of Stars perished with the Empire."

Zhang Ze, "Then doesn't the Exile Fleet have one? I remember you initially planned to colonize."

Li, "We did, but they were lost too.

"The Rings of Stars we carried were dismantled in the early-period of exile to repair the fleet.

"And later, as the Earth Sea constantly rose, the fundamental rules of the universe began to change, rendering much of our knowledge and equipment blueprints obsolete.

"So, we can only use this one-time cumbersome method."

The dream was accelerated by Li.

At this moment, aside from a few starships still hovering above the Four Continents, almost all others crashed into the earth, penetrating various locations across the land.

These amber dragons, fused with the starships, used themselves as nourishment for the planet, accelerating the otherwise impossibly lengthy ecological restoration.

For a moment, Zhang Ze couldn't tell if these were tombstones or milestones pointing towards the future.

"So, was there a problem with this process?" Zhang Ze asked.

Li shook her head, "No, the first step of the rebirth plan went quite smoothly; the problem wasn't with us."

Zhang Ze, "Then who's to blame?"

"I wouldn't call it blame." Li sighed, "The reason the plan failed lay with the Four Continents themselves.

"It was at some unknown point that it gained consciousness."