The Record of Unusual Creatures

Lily’s memory began with snow in a cold winter.

She could not remember the name of the place, the location of the mountain, and the country she was in at the time. She could not even remember the face of her adopter. All she could recall was that she woke up by the side of a hut in the middle of a forest, and that year was freezing.

In the cold winter season, on the snow-covered mountains, where snow was weighing down the century-old trees and had erased the sleigh marks on the ground, she was awakened by a gust of cold wind on blanket and straw mat in a kennel.

A group of furry pups was squirming beside her.

In the earliest thoughts of her life, Lily knew that the pups were her own brothers and sisters, but soon these vague thoughts disappeared as her spiritual world continued to reshape. Within a few seconds, after she opened her eyes, her “human personality” had completely replaced the “beast’s personality.” For many years after that, she believed that she was a human, and then a werewolf, but Lily did not remember that she used to be one of the squirming furry husky pups.

An old couple, who were the owners of the hut in the forest, awakened by the noise of the dogs. They went out to check it out and found a little girl crawling out of the kennel. They were dumbfounded but quickly realized that she was a gift from God.

Lily’s mind was floating in the fragments of memory that she was about to forget.

She rarely mentioned these to others. Her memories were as bad as Vivian’s. The cold and remote village and the endless mountains outside the village were always a vague image in her mind. From a very young age, her spiritual world was fragile and unsettled, as if it was continually undergoing transformation and reconstruction. Frequent fainting and amnesia, as well as a slow response to external stimuli, had once made the old couple who adopted her think she was an intellectually-challenged child. They believed that it was this reason why she was abandoned. Lily did not learn to speak until she was five, and could not interact well with the other children in the village until she was ten. She usually spent more time with the sled dogs. Her adoptive parents lived in a forest some distance from the village, so the group of sled dogs was an essential asset in the family. The time Lily spent with dogs was more than the time she spent with people.

When she tried to huddle with the dogs and put the sled rope on herself, her adoptive parents finally realized that the child’s eccentricity was not in her intelligence. They now remembered the early years, the kennel, and the missing little husky.

When Lily accidentally ventured into the forest, lost her way and became panic, her ears and tail grew out of her. From that moment, she realized that she was different.

Guided by Ymir, Lily’s memory continued to wander. She saw herself wrestling with the beasts in the mountains. She saw herself slowly learning to interact with people and hide her different side of herself. She saw the horror on the faces of the villagers when they discovered her face that had never aged and her unusual physical strength. She then saw herself leaving the village to some far places. She saw the small town at the border of Russia, and the cooking smoke from the houses in Heilongjiang across the border. She saw war, chaos, warlords, gentry, and a country that survive in turmoil, the collapse of its city wall and the rise of a new one.

The voice of Ymir suddenly sounded in the depths of her memory. “Little girl, you’re going in the wrong direction. It’s not the modern times, but trace backward.”

Lily was startled for a while and realizing what she was doing. She quickly grasped her thoughts that had begun to wander off and returned to the starting point of her life.

On that cold winter morning, in that little kennel, she was dragged back by Ymir and tracing back time, skipping across the point of birth. Lily instantly felt that he had broken free. She found that she had lost her physical body and was floating over the vast ice sheet of Siberia.

As time was wound back continuously, she drifted past Siberia and across the Arctic Circle under the aurora but above the earth. Watching the ice crystal bunker in the cold wind, the intermittent memories finally emerged.

“There is a curse, Vivian’s name is erased. The sword must be jealous of her. I probably won’t live for long, but Vivian will definitely come back. I have to leave something behind.”

“It’s all over, it’s all over. We should have listened to her… The sword is cursed, it’s all over…”

“What you all do is very dangerous! Something is not right with this sword; I feel upset when I see it. There are so many good things in this ruin, why are you all only interested in a strange sword?”

“There are treasures everywhere here! Patriarch, this is a vast piece of ruins! We can not only spend the winter here but also settle here permanently! Though getting food is a problem, it can be shipped from outside! At least, it is safe here…”

Lily’s memory walked through these chatters. She could hear that these were conversations of different people at different times in a reverse timeline.

Finally, her memory came to the ‘starting point’ that Ymir knew—the earliest memory that Ymir could bring her to. It was a cold morning, just as cold as the morning when she was born as a ‘werewolf Lily’ in the kennel.

Vivian Ancestor was sitting in front of her. This mother of all vampires was holding a bowl of steamy soup in her hands, her face had the happy look of a well-fed stomach. “The ice giant is coming again, you can’t beat them. Oh, yes, I know a place where it’s safe, and it’s not cold! You can go there in the winter! I call it Coldpath, where I accidentally discovered when I was chasing the light in the sky…”

With the sound of glass shattering, the runes in the secret chamber fell. Ymir and Lily almost woke up at the same time.

“Have you got it?”

Those who were watching the ritual asked in unison. Even Y’zaks was on edge all this while.

Ymir blinked and said, “This little girl is indeed the first sage, but it is very different from reincarnation or rebirth in the normal sense or the words.”

“What difference?” Hao Ren and Vivian asked in unison.

“As I said before, the first sage was injured by Vivian’s crimson moon and eventual she succumbed to the injury,” Ymir said, his eyes turned to Vivian. “The crimson moon tore her soul apart, which is the key. But her broken soul did not dissipate. Instead, it stabilized by the space-time distortion energy of the Netherrealm Clock Tower. Part of her soul was wandering in the tower, becoming the so-called ‘Holy-spirit Echo,’ while the other part—”

“Floated on the outside?” Vivian cut in without waiting for Ymir to finish.

“Yup. This part of the soul had been wandering in the Arctic for many years and was getting weaker, but it had never really dissipated,” said Ymir, blinking instead of nodding in affirmation. “As the connection of the remnant soul and the icy fortress weakened, she freed herself from this place and floated somewhere between the border of Europe and Asia, and finally… finally…”

Ymir’s words suddenly choked in his throat. Hao Ren could not wait and ask, “Finally what?”

“I don’t know how, but finally the soul of the first sage went into a new-born husky.”

Everyone was struck dumb.

The atmosphere suddenly became quiet. Hao Ren thought for a moment and felt that there was nothing wrong with it. He said, “It’s normal. Isn’t Lily a husky? Anyway, I’ve got used to it. At least we know how her family came about.”

Baring her fangs and protesting to what Hao Ren said, but her cute-looking, fluffy tail that wagged in the air did not look threatening at all.

“Then why didn’t she know all this?” Y’zaks asked, scratching his jaw. “The rebirth of the soul is the best way of rebirth. It is enough to retain most of the memory even if there is only a small part of her soul retained,” he said.

This was something that even someone as knowledgeable as Ymir could not wrap his brain around. The experts of parapsychology and occultism could not come to a conclusion. At last, Hao Ren smacked on the table and said, “The reason is simple: she’s only got a brain the size of a dog’s.”

Again, everyone was dumbstruck.

Hao Ren shrugged his shoulders and said, “However great the mind of the first sage was, it was not going to help when it was stuffed inside the husky’s brain. I guessed when the first sage went into the body of a husky, some thorough transformation process must have taken place until both the sage and the dog were gone, leaving Lily as the final product.”

“Though that sounds ridiculous, I do think that it makes sense,” Vivian said. She looked at Hao Ren with a wacky face and pointed at Lily who was just beside him. “Be careful, she’s going to—”

“Arf!”

“…bite you.”