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3700 years ago, following the fall of the guili assembly, morax and the adepti led their people south of mount tianheng, where they established liyue harbor, and morax created a contract with the adepti to defend it. however, among these adepti, the foxes who had just lost their home in the plains and their lady of dust, rejected his proposal out of anger and grief. as punishment, morax sealed their divine powers into pieces of cor lapis hidden in their mouths, lowering them to the shapes of ordinary foxes (albeit extraordinarily long-lived, and with a jewel embedded in their body), and banished them from the harbor, for in the new age of war he intended to wage to protect humanity, he could not afford to have any weak links among his forces.

fleeing across the treacherous ocean to what would later be established as inazuma, what foxes remained established themselves in dens beneath the earth across the archipelago, for they would always feel a kinship with geo over that of the hazardous electro present throughout the land, even if they no longer possessed access to the inner eyes to wield the power of stone and soil as they once had.

years and generations passed along with the events of the archon war, where many foxes forgot that which they had once been and the potential that lay dormant in their blood, reverting wholly to a base beast form. but not all did. as new litters were brought forth and branches of the clan established, a few white and wizened foxes continued to pass down the tale of their people to their kits so that the memory would not be lost, the hope that they would one day be able to return home with morax’s favor now physically out of their grasp due to the barrier of the electro-infused ocean separating them.

min was a kit born to her mother, fen, who had been a part of the generation who crossed the sea. their life consisted of almost constant travel due to the treacherous land, where home wasn’t a single place, but found in the skulk itself. one particular den, however, brought the foxes close to a shrine, where min was fascinated by the sound of the bells as mikos performed the kagura dance and various other ceremonies. in a cruel twist of fate, however, a nasty storm season brought a bolt of lightning down upon the shrine, starting a devastating fire, where one of the young mikos — whom min had so adored watching — dropped her bells down the steps amidst the chaos and in an attempt to flee to safer territory. driven to return that which had been so precious to the girl, the young fox grabbed the bells in her jaws and charged back up to the shrine.

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(somewhere in here she eventually was able to transform into a human and returned to that shrine as minato once it was rebuilt, where those same bells were. and she ascended the ranks. many generations later, she faithfully remained at the shrine, where she grew to love dancing itself more and more. due to this change, the mikos somehow chimed in together or arranged something so that she could travel to the capital and pursue a higher education as a courtesan. she took on the name himari, then).

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as himari cradled the cor lapis tooth of her kin in hand and grasped the edge of the statue, willing herself home with everything that she had, there was a rush of energy, and she found herself suspended in darkness, stars glittering all around. taking pity upon the wayward fox adeptus, celestia allowed her — upon the earning of her ninth tail — to access the waypoint once, instantly transporting her across the sea to liyue harbor.

acting as a proxy for her late mother, fen, morax granted the divine fox who had come so far in order to serve a new name based off of that root. fēnlí, a verb meaning “seperate, detach, segregate, dissociate, sever, depart.”