novelraw Chapter 197
Chapter 197
Chapter 197: The Evil Dragon and the Mysterious Person
Going abroad to buy an identity is indeed a feasible method.
It’s just that, for the current conditions, it’s still a bit harsh.
Actually, Xia Li himself knew very well that this matter couldn’t be rushed. The more anxious he was, the more likely it was to go wrong.
This society is very complex, with layers upon layers, interlocking with each other, unlike Azure Continent, which can be easily swept away with a sword.
If you want to lay a good foundation for the future, you must proceed step by step.
During the New Year, Xia Li patted his chest and assured Xia Yuanjun that he would handle this matter safely without touching the red line. Why did he become anxious after only a short while?
Calm down.
Xia Li repeated the words ‘Don’t be anxious’ several times in his mind.
Then he put his hand on the keyboard and continued typing. He had thought about opening the webpage again to search for information about those remote small countries, but he held back several times.
【’Record of Experiences from Azure Continent’ ━ Chapter 196】
After nearly four months of serialization, Xia Li’s book has reached 600,000 words.
As a part-time job, it can be considered very hard work.
Some time ago, because of the influx of organic traffic, it became a small hit on the platform. Now the popularity has subsided, and the data has gradually stabilized.
Xia Li’s 600,000 words contain a large number of setting collections and folk tales. The actual main story is not even half of it.
Although there were many readers who scolded the author for padding the story at the beginning, considering that those setting stories were not charged, they didn’t say much more. Instead, they accepted this novel serialization method. Every day, there were even more people discussing the foreign girls from the other world than those discussing the main storyline itself.
Doing this increased reader engagement, but it was a bit of a waste of time.
Xia Li sat in front of the computer, scratching his head.
Now that the story had progressed to the middle and late stages, Xia Li had written down all the things that had actually happened and the historical events he had heard of. The rest of the content was filled in by his own imagination.
He originally wanted to write this book based on his own personal experience, but Xia Li found that his three years of travel couldn’t support this story at all… His life was too ordinary, basically training and studying every day, with too much repetition. It wouldn’t be interesting to write it out.
Xia Li didn’t dare to write down the few dragon-slaying experiences in detail, for fear that some readers who already regarded it as dragon literature would scold him for reversing the natural order.
After sitting in a chair and thinking for a long time, Xia Li finally figured something out…
The target audience of this book was not to read about his legendary journey as a brave hero.
He had spent so much effort portraying the cute and positive image of the silver dragon girl, why not make use of it??
Leaving aside other things, the largest faction in this book was actually the ‘raising a daughter’ faction.
“Stinky Dragon, come here for a bit.”
Twisting his slightly sore shoulders, Xia Li activated the Great Evil Dragon Summoning Technique.
“I’ll come here twice!”
Lucia, who received the order, flashed to the door of Xia Li’s room and peeked inside through the door frame.
Then she went back to the living room, picked up Little Cotton, and returned to Xia Li’s side.
… What a strange little game.
Xia Li muttered to himself and patted his leg for the evil dragon to sit on.
The evil dragon refused to sit.
Xia Li’s legs were hard and uncomfortable to sit on.
“Do you have any interesting stories to tell me? I need them to fill in the plot.”
“Padding the word count?” Lucia sat on the bed, swinging her little feet.
“That’s asking for divine retribution,” she said.
Lucia was also a reader of human cultural works. She had watched so many movies and TV series, and the thing she disliked the most was watching the director pad the runtime. A scene would be repeatedly switched and stagnated, making Lucia clench her little fists in anger.
“Heaven and earth can be my witness, I haven’t padded a single word,” Xia Li turned around and said, “Writing your story is the main storyline, writing mine is padding for them… They all like you very much.”
“Is that so? Hehe…”
Xia Li didn’t know if he was deliberately saying this to praise Lucia, but anyway, after hearing this sentence, Lucia couldn’t help but cover her mouth and chuckle.
She was probably the most popular dragon in the world, right?
“My story is also quite boring… And, aren’t you writing other plots? It’s not good to suddenly insert my story, right?”
“It’s okay, anyway, my book is not a traditional novel, the narrative style is different, I can insert other content at any time…”
Xia Li paused and said, “Have you seen Naruto? He keeps inserting flashbacks throughout the whole story, even more ruthless than me. However, doing this can establish the character of each supporting role and make the story more exciting.”
“Oh…”
Lucia didn’t understand these writing styles.
She searched in her mind for a while.
There were many memories inherited from the silver dragon lineage. Many of these memories were about human events, but due to the perspective, the content was too subjective, basically plunder, war, evil magic experiments, horrifying alchemy… These scenes.
Lucia knew that these were memories deliberately deepened by generations of ancestors to hate humans.
It was the same reason that human historical documents kept smearing the dragon race and shaping the image of dragons as violent and evil.
Filtering out those prejudices in her mind, Lucia squeezed Cotton’s soft little paw and thought for a long time before speaking.
“…Playing with mud.”
“Playing with mud, PASS.” Xia Li said decisively.
Lucia looked over with a puffed-up face, and Xia Li added, “Your image in the book is no longer suitable for inserting this kind of plot. If you were a little dragon, it would be fine, but a big dragon playing with mud, what would that look like?”
“But that’s the only happiness I can think of…” Lucia muttered.
Although she had lived for a hundred years as a dragon, before coming to Earth, there were very few things that could bring her happiness.
It was either playing with mud or blowing up fish, or chasing all kinds of magical beasts or animals all over the mountains…
She didn’t feel bored when she was a dragon before, but now that Lucia had the impact of modern electronic products, she felt that she was so uninteresting back then.
If that kind of thing was considered freedom…
She would rather be locked in Xia Li’s small dark room and eat, drink, and play with her phone every day. That was real freedom.
“Think again… For example, the friends you made, besides that female fire dragon, tell me about other contacts? It doesn’t have to be a dragon, other races are fine too.”
Xia Li created a new chapter, ready to start writing.
If he squeezed a little more, Lucia might still have some…
After all, she had lived for a hundred years, and she must have experienced more things than Xia Li, the little brave hero with a three-year journey.
“No other races… Would humans be okay?”
Lucia lifted Cotton up and held her above her head, suddenly as if she had thought of something.
“Contact with humans? That’s even better!”
Xia Li turned his chair towards her: “Your story of contact with humans, not to mention that they want to hear it, even I want to hear it… However, it’s best not to be bloody, violent, or anti-human, otherwise the book will disappear on the spot.”
“Not bloody,” Lucia shook her head, “It’s a very ordinary thing…”
Looking at the expectant expression on Xia Li’s face, Lucia fell into memory:
“That was my first time directly contacting a human…”
◈◈◈
“What was that forest called again? I forgot, I only remember that the trees around were taller than me… It may also be because my body hadn’t grown up yet. Anyway, I got lost there, the towering plants blocking my view. I think I must have been poisoned because I accidentally ate poisonous mushrooms.”
When she said the word ‘accidentally’, Lucia said it very firmly.
The corner of Xia Li’s mouth twitched.
He knew without thinking that she had swallowed it on purpose.
She probably relied on her strong body and wanted to try everything.
“Then, I found a human in the depths of the forest… That person was actually roasting lamb!” Lucia said excitedly.
Xia Li stopped typing and looked at her.
“You must have been hallucinating, right? The kind of forest you described, it’s obviously a magical beast forest… How could there be sheep?”
“It wasn’t a hallucination, that human even gave me lamb to eat. He had a storage magic item on him, so it’s reasonable to take out a sheep.” Lucia retorted.
“Then he must have wanted to capture you,” Xia Li thought, “He knew you liked to eat sheep, so he deliberately used lamb to lure you in, then captured you, drained your blood, pulled out your scales, cut you into pieces, and sold you.”
Xia Li deliberately made it sound cruel.
Although it was a bit of hindsight, it was indeed necessary to scare this evil dragon.
Her sense of precaution was too weak.
Wasn’t this an obvious trap?
Lucia was too naive when she was a child, which could be seen from the fact that she, a dignified pureblood silver dragon, hid in the farmer’s house and stole sheep to eat.
“Impossible!” Lucia disagreed with Xia Li’s statement, snorted and said, “I’m not sure about other humans, but that human really had no malice… This is also what I find strange.”
Lucia told the story of how she got lost in the forest after eating poisonous mushrooms, had a stomachache, and then met a kind person who helped her, gave her meat to eat, and even gave her healing potions.
She didn’t spend much time with that human, they said goodbye on the third day.
The kind person also pointed her in a direction, saying that if she flew in that direction, there was fertile land, the land was an isolated island, with no owner.
It was on that land that Lucia settled down and spent the most comfortable period of her dragon life.
He was indeed a good person.
If she hadn’t been poisoned and had no strength at the time, and the lamb roasted by the other party was really delicious, she would have eaten the kind person in one bite instead of eating his three roasted sheep.
“Male or female?”
Xia Li thought that the evil dragon’s first direct contact with a human was quite interesting.
But, interesting as it was, Xia Li still honestly asked the question he cared about the most.
“I don’t know,” the evil dragon shook her head, “That person was wearing a black cloak, I couldn’t even see their face, their height was probably… about the size of one of my claws.”
As she spoke, Lucia raised her hand, her delicate fingers glowing white under the light, she grasped the air, roughly gesturing to a position at the middle of her elbow.
… Such a description couldn’t let Xia Li imagine the other person’s height at all.
“And their voice seemed to have been magically processed, I couldn’t tell if they were male or female.” Lucia said.
“Isn’t this just a trap??? You ate the lamb and didn’t even faint??” The more Xia Li listened, the more strange he felt.
But Lucia’s attitude remained firm.
“Maybe the poisonous mushrooms affected my senses… Anyway, I left safely. However, I still don’t know what the other person’s attitude was. Maybe as you said before, they were a reclusive master, so they didn’t care about a little silver dragon like me at all.” Lucia said in a dejected tone.
Did this count as her first human friend?
Probably not…
After all, they really didn’t communicate much. She was sleeping on the side, and the mysterious person was roasting lamb next to her, occasionally muttering to himself. When the lamb was roasted, Lucia sat on the ground and ate.
It was still raining lightly in the forest that day, the raindrops pitter-pattering down the gaps in her dragon scales, there was also some fog in the air, the surroundings were very illusory.
Lucia’s memory was very vague, and her impression of that person was like being separated by a wall, but she only remembered that the roasted lamb was very delicious.
… Could it be a dream caused by eating poisonous mushrooms?
Lucia wasn’t sure. But as a short story that Xia Li wanted to write into his book, it was enough.
“Anyway, you’re making up stories, just treat it as me making up a story… And I’m not stupid, that person was very strange at the time, always talking to himself, I thought he was not quite right in the head and safe, so I didn’t attack him.”
“Alright…”
Xia Li started writing.
He planned to just write a mysterious cloaked person in the book.
Since even Lucia couldn’t tell the gender, he would default to a young lady… No, a child.
Lucia’s teenage years…
Xia Li sighed. At that time, he was probably not even a ball yet, right?
It took him three hours to finish writing the story.
Lucia only gave a general outline, the details of the story were all made up by Xia Li himself.
He wrote a heartwarming story about a reclusive archmage and a lost little silver dragon in an ancient forest in the rain.
As for the passerby who didn’t show their face, Xia Li adapted them into a little girl.
Otherwise, the readers wouldn’t accept it, and Xia Li himself would be jealous.
◈◈◈
After splitting the new story into three chapters, Xia Li now had new drafts.
Today’s task was completed. After setting the scheduled update, Xia Li clicked on his comment section.
Daily Patrol （1/1）
As the promotion subsided, there were fewer comments recently, he could see the bottom after flipping through a few pages.
Xia Li turned to the private message interface and replied to a few messages urging him to update ━ maintaining a good relationship with the readers was also an important part of serializing a novel.
Just as he was about to close it, Xia Li vaguely saw the black avatar at the bottom.
That guy was actually alive.
Xia Li had a deep impression of this person.
He was the first person to privately message Xia Li and ask if he was a transmigrator.
Xia Li replied with a ‘yes’ at that time.
This private message made Xia Li think of many possibilities, so he waited for several days, but that guy didn’t show up during the New Year.
Xia Li then treated this matter as a farce and gradually forgot about it.
Now, he actually saw a new message from him.
【Hehe. 】
【Then your life is really good. 】