Nalan Li

Nalan Li is a Bi Xing ace agent who becomes the principal native coordinator of Du Ge's campaign against the Alien Star warriors and the Hill Civilization. Initially responsible for testing, monitoring, and assigning missions to the newcomers, she rises from liaison director to commander of the Strategic Defense Bureau's Dark Division. Comprehensive genetic modification later lets her keep pace with the superhuman forces she organizes, culminating in her command of thousands of gene warriors at Dewei Base.

Biography

Testing the first official recruits

Nalan enters the newly formed Strategic Defense Bureau as an ace agent whose range of specialties is so broad that Luo Yan says there is probably nothing she cannot do. She immediately tests the supposed player Lin Hong through a handshake, applying at least three times an ordinary person's grip and discovering that he can overpower her effortlessly. The encounter gives her direct evidence of how quickly Alien Star warriors can transcend native physical standards. Rather than accept Luo's simple proposal to suppress keyword growth by banning visible trends, she points out that official prohibition cannot stop people from continuing those trends in private. (Chapter 459)

Her first recruitment operation establishes both her institutional role and her judgment. Nalan identifies herself to Xu Wan as director of the Liaison Office, responsible for task allocation and coordination, and rebukes the warrior for using a fourteen-year-old girl's body in a sexually provocative test of the authorities. She then uses a calf dagger to test Xu Wan's claimed imitation ability. Xu Wan reproduces the finger exercise perfectly, but the result cannot prove the keyword because any experienced warrior with strong mental power could imitate such a simple movement. Nalan's method is disciplined and practical, yet the failure reveals how unreliable conventional interrogation can be against veteran contestants. (Chapter 460)

Nalan quickly expands from testing individuals to managing a developing security emergency. She tracks new Battle Network figures, projects their combat records for the team, and warns that rumors already attribute the abnormal activity to a conscious network or Hill infiltration. During the Mo Shengmin operation she volunteers to face the dangerous suspect in Luo's place, then arranges the site seal and cleanup once the confrontation ends. These actions make her the bureau's operational hinge: Luo sets policy, Alien Star warriors supply unusual power, and Nalan turns both into field movement, records, communications, and containment. (Chapters 461–463)

Exposing the limits of surveillance and founding the Dark Division

Luo assigns Nalan as Lin Hong's regular liaison after the first operations. She recognizes that the arrangement may also be intended as a beauty trap, but refuses to cultivate a personal attachment because the player crisis demands her full attention. Her professional distance does not mean uncritical trust. She rapidly identifies the real-world address of the online figure Questioning Truth, refuses to release additional targets without Luo's approval, and warns Lin Hong not to act before the government decides its policy. When he tries to enter the Academy of Sciences on his own terms, she insists that a strategically sensitive institution cannot admit him without bureau authorization. (Chapters 464, 466, and 469–470)

That caution is tested when Mo Shengmin is assassinated inside the bureau. Nalan reviews the surveillance and determines that the intruder entered, killed him, and escaped in only three seconds while following an exact route, suggesting access to internal knowledge. She checks Lin Hong's watchers, retrieves the university's surveillance, traces the Masked Hero's route through the capital, and personally visits the training ground to look for blood and question him. Du Ge's Deeply Hidden skill, speed, prepared alibi, and ability to monitor his observers defeat every check. Nalan correctly identifies the scale and precision of the threat but cannot connect it to the man she is investigating. (Chapters 470–471)

The confrontation nevertheless changes the political arrangement. After Lin Hong argues that constant surveillance makes cooperation impossible, Nalan withdraws the watchers and helps persuade the president to delegate authority. She and Du Ge become the covert counterpart to Luo and Xu Wan's public bureau: Nalan formally leads the Dark Division, supplies intelligence and resources, and can act independently of Luo, while Du Ge serves as its principal Alien Star warrior and de facto strategist. Her first strategic program is to identify contestants through Battle Network signals, travel records, and coded messages, then eliminate some and divide or recruit the rest before they can consolidate. (Chapter 472)

Nalan demonstrates the new division's coercive recruitment model with Fan Lie. After reconstructing his expenses, communications, and the theft of mecha parts, she confronts him with a choice between joining and death, threatens to freeze his credit and Battle Network access, and refuses to reveal the identities of existing members. Once he yields, she records his keyword, skills, origin planet, and limitations, then assigns him immediately to help recruit the next target. The bluff works because she combines the federation's data and administrative reach with the implied force of hidden Alien Star allies; it also confirms that the Dark Division's authority depends on those systems and on Du Ge's deterrent strength. (Chapter 473)

Holding together a fractured federation

As Nalan recruits more warriors, she remains the nominal captain but recognizes that she cannot personally compel them. Du Ge must carry her through Xin Tianyang's mirror space because its combatants move too quickly for her eyes to follow, while she tries to establish official authority by displaying her credentials and opening negotiations. She still questions Du Ge's hidden keyword, warns that Ying Fei's gambling power could grow beyond his control, and alters the skill record he orders her to falsify only after debating the strategic risk. Her position is therefore neither ordinary command nor passive assistance: she provides legitimacy and coordination to a force whose actual obedience rests on Du Ge's power. (Chapters 475–477)

The Dark Division grows by allowing Ying Fei, Fan Lie, and others to call in compatriots while Nalan monitors their statements, rankings, and Battle Network movements. She is physically exhausted by continuous work and uses military energy medication to stay alert, but still calculates how many warriors each faction can plausibly recruit and reports the spreading involvement of army groups. After the president places most operational authority behind Du Ge, she follows his plan to publish the real identities of tracked warriors. The disclosure forces contestants into the open but also triggers factional warfare, leaving Nalan to confront the civilian cost of a strategy she helped execute. (Chapters 478–482)

Within two days, Nalan uses large-scale data analysis to sort hundreds of contestants by likely planet and identify roughly three hundred still hidden. She also reports on troop deployments, rebellious army groups, and civilian conditions across Bi Xing, enabling Du Ge to choose which crises to address. When New Jinhua City is devastated, however, the analytical distance collapses: she begs him to stop treating civilians as pieces in the warriors' contest and demands another solution. Her response reasserts the native purpose of the bureau at the moment its methods most resemble those of the outsiders it was created to contain. (Chapters 483 and 489–490)

Nalan carries the coalition into active operations against the rebellious factions. She brings the Alien Star team before the Seventh Army Group, repairs the political damage after Du Ge assaults its commander, transfers intelligence, and publicly announces the alliance between the bureau and the Doomsday Cult. When the possibility of infiltrators seizing the orbital front arises, she opposes handing it to self-interested contestants and focuses on protecting Bi Xing's population. Even after Luo is compromised and helps enemy warriors target her command vehicle, her first inference is that the president may be in danger; the reaction shows that protecting the federation remains her priority over settling the internal rivalry. (Chapters 490–491 and 494–497)

Becoming a gene-warrior commander

Nalan's unmodified body eventually becomes the limiting element in the Dark Division. Repeated operations leave her bloodshot, dependent on stimulants, and unable to follow the speed of the warriors around her. Du Ge therefore orders Fan Lie to modify her, and she receives the most comprehensive biological package: genes from eagles, cats, tardigrades, Hill people, and other life forms. The change removes her chronic fatigue and restores her energy, but she declines mechanical integration because she does not want to feel less human. The modification is a practical response to operational strain rather than a named cultivation breakthrough. (Chapters 478, 483, and 494–495)

After the procedure, Nalan speaks and works with renewed confidence. The Dark Division absorbs the public Homeland Defense Bureau, leaving Luo as director in title but effectively her deputy, while Gu Qingyan and Shen Yuning become Nalan's own deputies. She continues tracing disappearing warriors, manages the high-standard press conference at which Du Ge reveals his identity, and pushes Fan Lie to accelerate the gene-warrior program. Her concern extends beyond the immediate contest: if the battlefield ends before an expedition can defeat the Hill fleet, the gene warriors will remain Bi Xing's last independent defense. (Chapters 495 and 501–503)

At Dewei Base, Nalan leads thousands of gene warriors in mechas and converts them into an identification and crowd-control force. On Du Ge's order, she forms dozens of medical-inspection channels; wounds that fail to heal mark ordinary natives as safe to enter the base, while rapid recovery exposes likely Alien Star warriors. When Du Ge is thrown into space and the trapped contestants move to seize the base's weapons, she orders every gene warrior to stop them and authorizes covering fire if necessary. The command risks hostages, but reflects her judgment that allowing unstable warriors to control strategic weaponry would threaten far more lives. (Chapters 507–508)

Du Ge returns before the struggle destroys the base, and Nalan is the first to recognize him. She immediately shifts from combat containment to rescue, contacts base personnel for medical assistance and clothing, and directs the aftermath. Her final actions preserve the role she built throughout the crisis: not the coalition's strongest combatant, but the commander who turns state systems, enhanced soldiers, intelligence, and Alien Star power toward Bi Xing's survival. (Chapter 508)

Appearance and personality

Nalan is a young woman approximately the same age as Luo Yan and is introduced without elaborate ornament as a working ace agent. Her physical presentation is practical: she carries a concealed dagger at her calf, a wrist-mounted or portable microcomputer, and field communications equipment. Following genetic modification she deliberately refuses embedded machinery, drawing a personal boundary between accepting biological enhancements and becoming what she calls a mechanical girl. (Chapters 459–460 and 495)

She is observant, assertive, and willing to place herself in danger, but her confidence is tempered by awareness of what she cannot control. She challenges policy assumptions, notices inconsistencies in Du Ge's cover, and continues asking for contingencies even after he has repeatedly succeeded. Her loyalty is fundamentally to Bi Xing's civilians: she accepts ruthless recruitment and exposure tactics while they appear capable of containing the crisis, then openly resists plans that treat the planet or its population as expendable. (Chapters 459, 461, 475–476, 489–490, and 495)

Nalan's growing attraction to Du Ge is not wholly voluntary. His Spring Heart Awakens skill unconsciously draws associated women toward him, and its effect gradually changes her professional distance into relief, protectiveness, and admiration. She still argues with him and defends Bi Xing's interests, but outside observers eventually note that her judgment has shifted toward near-blind trust. The distinction matters: her affection builds on respect for his repeated successes, yet a supernatural compulsion intensifies it and weakens the skepticism with which she began. (Chapters 478–479, 483, 492, 494, and 503)

Keywords, skills, and cultivation

Nalan is a native of Bi Xing rather than an Alien Star warrior. She has no keyword, derived skill interface, ranking, or battlefield cultivation system, and her mental power is not numerically quantified. Her advancement comes through elite training, access to the federation's technical infrastructure, practical experience with contestant abilities, and later biological modification. She therefore cannot reproduce keyword effects herself and must plan around powers whose conditions are often concealed from her. (Chapters 459–460, 472–478, and 494–495)

Ace-agent conditioning and close combat

Before modification, Nalan already has at least three times an ordinary person's grip strength, sufficient dagger dexterity to spin a blade around her fingers and tap rapidly between them, the agility to scale a university wall, and enough composure to remain calm with a mecha cannon pointed at her forehead. These feats establish exceptional native conditioning and nerve, but not parity with developed warriors. Du Ge overwhelms her handshake with a fraction of his strength, and combat inside mirror space becomes a blur her eyes cannot track; without his protection she cannot directly engage its owner. (Chapters 459–460, 471, 473, and 475)

Intelligence analysis, surveillance, and counterintelligence

Nalan can use the federation's Battle Network records, communication logs, travel information, financial systems, public surveillance, and high-speed computing to identify possessed natives and reconstruct faction movements. She deciphers coded recruitment signals, locates Questioning Truth within hours, profiles Fan Lie from spending and damaged police mechas, and sorts hundreds of contestants by origin. She also performs rapid forensic analysis, measuring the Mo Shengmin intruder's three-second route and recognizing that its precision implies inside information. This capability is strongest when targets must act publicly to develop keywords; disciplined pairs who avoid abnormal online behavior can escape her analysis, and supernatural concealment defeats ordinary cameras, scent checks, and watchers. (Chapters 466, 470–473, 483, 494–501)

Recruitment, interrogation, and command

As liaison director and later Dark Division commander, Nalan records keywords and skills, assigns missions, isolates incompatible recruits, arranges battlefield cleanup, negotiates military access, and issues operational orders to both warriors and conventional personnel. Her recruitment of Fan Lie shows how she weaponizes state authority: account bans, frozen credit, exposed coordinates, and the prospect of pursuit make refusal costly even before force is used. The method can compel cooperation but not loyalty, so Du Ge's deterrence and the recruits' self-interest remain essential. Against skills that distort minds or behavior, even senior bureau personnel can be compromised, forcing her to verify decisions through independent intelligence and distributed teams. (Chapters 460–473, 483, 491, and 495–508)

Comprehensive genetic modification

Fan Lie's biological fusion incorporates eagle, feline, tardigrade, Hill-person, and other genes into Nalan. Its clear result is sustained energy: the fatigue that had accumulated through days of work disappears, and she can accompany enhanced forces through the remaining operations without returning to stimulant dependence. The component organisms form a deliberately broad enhancement package, but Nalan does not display isolated eagle eyesight, feline jumping, tardigrade regeneration, vacuum survival, or a measured durability increase. Her operational advantage is therefore endurance, while the other possible traits remain undefined. She also retains an explicit limit by refusing mechanical components. (Chapters 478, 494–495)

Mecha-supported gene-warrior deployment

By the Dewei Base operation, Nalan commands thousands of gene warriors equipped with mechas and uses a mech's external speaker herself. The armor conceals her body when an anomalous effect strips clothing, although it does not prevent the effect itself; the formation gives her the manpower to establish inspection lanes, maintain order, contest strategic weapons, and direct rescue work. Her effectiveness here is organizational rather than that of an ace pilot: she has no named personal machine, signature maneuver, or solo victory. The authorization of covering fire also shows the harshest limitation of mass deployment—crowded battlefields can force choices between immediate hostages and preventing a civilization-level threat. (Chapters 507–508)

Susceptibility to external skills

Nalan's training does not grant immunity to keyword effects. Du Ge's Spring Heart Awakens works unconsciously on women associated with him, strengthening attraction and making his presence relieve Nalan's anxiety; its influence is subtle enough that she rationalizes or simply fails to recognize the change. Other large-area abilities at Dewei Base also affect her despite genetic modification, although her mecha limits their practical exposure. Her mental discipline lets her continue functioning, question Du Ge, and prioritize Bi Xing, but it cannot by itself cancel supernatural compulsion. (Chapters 478–479, 483, 494, and 507)

Power progression

Relationships

• Du Ge: Nalan begins as Lin Hong's tester, monitor, and reluctant handler, repeatedly challenging his concealed motives. Their partnership deepens when she accepts command of the Dark Division and he supplies the force needed to make her plans credible. His protection and genuine strengthening of Bi Xing earn her admiration, while Spring Heart Awakens intensifies that respect into involuntary attraction and weakens her original distance. Even so, she continues opposing any course that treats Bi Xing as expendable.
• Luo Yan: Luo is Nalan's original director and entrusts her with liaison, intelligence, and field coordination. The president later separates their commands so that Nalan's Dark Division can counterbalance Luo's public bureau. Their information sharing deteriorates, and Luo's compromise by an Alien Star skill confirms the danger of concentrating authority; after the Dark Division absorbs the bureau, he retains his title but effectively becomes her deputy.
• Xu Wan: Nalan is responsible for assigning and coordinating Xu Wan after her recruitment. Their first interaction highlights Nalan's insistence that possessed bodies and official power carry social obligations, while the failed dagger test teaches her how easily veteran mental power can imitate ordinary technique. Xu later remains one of the enhanced combatants Nalan deploys and supports, although Nalan never treats her claimed abilities as trustworthy without verification.
• Fan Lie: Nalan coerces Fan Lie into becoming the Dark Division's first outside recruit and remains openly wary of his self-interest. His fusion and Gene Mutation skills nevertheless become crucial to her survival and Bi Xing's future: he performs her comprehensive genetic modification and creates the gene-warrior force she later commands. She uses his abilities while rejecting his willingness to threaten Bi Xing through control of the orbital front.
• Ying Fei: Nalan accepts Ying Fei's plan to gather warriors from the same planet and serves as the official captain around whom her group can organize. She also recognizes that a civilization-scale wager could make Ying Fei too strong for Du Ge to suppress, so her cooperation remains paired with contingency planning and controlled records.
• Gu Qingyan and Shen Yuning: After receiving genetic modifications alongside Nalan, the two students join the National Strategic Defense Bureau as her deputies. Nalan's command gives them access to the real conflict beyond academy training, and they later serve among the gene-warrior forces at Dewei Base.

Items

• Calf dagger: Nalan conceals a dagger against her lower leg and handles it with enough precision to use a rapid finger exercise as an imitation test. Du Ge also uses the dagger to pick a flower for her, an incident that later returns to her thoughts as her professional detachment begins to weaken. (Chapters 460, 464, and 477)
• Portable microcomputer: Her principal intelligence and administrative tool projects dossiers, accesses surveillance, records recruits' keywords and skills, traces Battle Network activity, and carries strategic data. Its connection to centralized systems gives her extraordinary reach but also creates a security weakness, leading Du Ge to order false records when he fears sensitive skill information may leak. (Chapters 460–476 and 483)
• Field radio and communicator: Nalan uses radios and phones to call cleanup teams, coordinate agents, warn Du Ge, contact military commanders, and direct rescue at Dewei Base. They let her convert analysis into immediate orders, though mirror space and other isolation effects can cut ordinary signals. (Chapters 462, 466, 475, 489, and 508)
• Energy-boosting medication: Before genetic modification, she uses low-side-effect military stimulants intended for ace pilots to remain functional through prolonged operations. The medicine temporarily counters exhaustion but cannot solve the accumulating physical strain, which is why Du Ge later treats genetic modification as necessary. (Chapters 478 and 494)
• Gene-warrior mecha: At Dewei Base, Nalan operates from protective mecha armor with an external speaker while commanding similarly equipped gene warriors. The machine shields her body, carries battlefield communications, and supports organized firepower; it is standard field equipment rather than a named personal model. (Chapters 507–508)