The Record of Unusual Creatures

The spherical flying craft ferrying Hao Ren and his team steadily approaching the huge purple spatial rift. As it got closer, the sheer size of the breach began to look intimidating. It was like a horrible scar in space. The space barrier that had been damaged by the light cannon of the demon hunters seemed terrifying. On both sides of the crack, which was hundreds of kilometers long, were irregular and sharp lines. The warped dimension distorted the distant starlight around the rift. Inside, it was filled with light and illusory images. The scenery of Asgard could be vaguely seen behind it.

The journey into the rift felt like falling into a bottomless abyss. The distorted and chaotic lights formed the cliffs on both sides of the void. As the flying craft descended rapidly, Hao Ren saw the scene outside was becoming bizarre. He looked up and saw that the last starlight in space was quickly blocked by a cloud that seemed to appear out of nowhere. As the cloud completely blocked their vision of the outside space, they finally sank into the lost world of Odin completely.

Half a minute later, some clusters of light spots began to appear around the spherical flying craft.

It was just a few light spots in the beginning, but they quickly gathered in groups. As if fireflies in the summer night, the light spots circled around the flying craft. But almost immediately, the light spots turned into flame and storm. As if the flying craft had flown into a massive fire tornado, it struggled to stay on course. Then the fire tornado became a thunderstorm and then inverted river, and then meteor fire. As if the uninvited guests had angered the guardian of this place, the endless illusion filled the space in the blink of an eye and drowned their vision completely.

In the next moment, Hao Ren felt the platform under his feet was shaking violently. As if the flying craft was getting out of control, it spun into a mountain of cloud not far away. The shield of the flying craft suddenly shattered followed by cold wind rushing into the cockpit like millions of icy blades. He seemed to have heard some noise in the flying ship. As if it was overloaded, a series of explosions were coming from deep within the platform.

“The flying craft is fine!” Anthony Alfonso shouted in the storm. “We are still in the illusion.”

Hao Ren held Lily close to him. She looked as if going to jump out of her skin at any moment. He tried to concentrate. The impact of the illusion immediately weakened. He felt the spherical flying craft had regained its stability and the transparent shield above him was back in one piece again like a movie rewound itself. Behind him, Nangong Sanba and Nangong Wuyue had cold sweat trickling down their forehead. Shrouded in mist, Nangong Wuyue had form shifted into a sea snake. “That’s so scary!”

The flying craft continued to descend in the dense cloud filled with illusions. More supernatural forces began to gather from all directions, filled with blind hostility and anger, they tried to stop the invaders. Galazur whispered a magical dragon word, and then a layer of golden-red light shrouded her eyes, thin pale-gold scales appeared on her cheeks and forearms, and a powerful aura spread out in all directions. She carefully controlled her own power so that it would not go too far and agitate Yggdrasil. But space within the influence of her aura, the illusions were suppressed.

They descended rapidly through the thick layer of clouds. Thunder and whirlwinds were raging while rolling thunder mixed with some kind of indescribable roar could be heard coming from all directions. Hao Ren began to notice that the clouds had become thinner and the rolling thunder and roar were behind them. The illusions had failed to stop them. Despite the souls that had merged with the Asgard barrier were roaring at the top of their lungs, they could not prevent the uninvited guests from coming into Asgard. The fluffy tail of Lily had calmed down. Glancing at the scenery outside, Lily saw a pale-golden glow coming from the up ahead. She exclaimed, “I see land! It is the Garden of Asgard!”

“Don’t get too excited! Let me take a look.” Vivian shoved Lily aside. Carefully looking down the land below, she breathed a sigh of relief, her voice filled with nostalgia. “That’s right, this is Odin’s domain.”

Just like Mimir said, the souls of the dead in Asgard feared the power of their master, and the illusions would not affect the Garden of Asgard. When the spherical flying craft gradually descended and left the clouds above behind, Hao Ren saw the glorious but desolate land stretching out in front of his eyes. He saw a ring of majestic mountains in all directions, lit up in eternal aurora. At the center of the mountain range was groups of majestic ruins. Standing among the ruins was palace complex as large as a city. But this city was entirely different from the human-built cities.

The palaces of the gods of Asgard seemed to be built of gold and silver; they reflected skylight with a brilliant glow. Though most of the buildings were severely damaged and some had even crumbled to the ground, those ruins still looked majestic and intimidating.

This was the residences of the former Norse gods, a paradise built by the ancient gods under the leadership of Odin. Known as the Garden of Asgard, this city was once one of the most magnificent cities on the planet during the era of chaos and ignorance thousands of years ago.

It was a city that humanity was prohibited from entering.

Hao Ren once visited an Olympus mysterious realm in the Athens’ sanctuary. The cloud temple in the mysterious realm was absolutely astounding, but it was still pale in comparison to the ruins before him now.

“It is all destroyed.” Vivian stood on the edge of the flying craft, her hands pressed against the shield staring out. “The place of Thor… Oh, that is Frigg’s garden… Odin’s Golden Palace. How beautiful! But now only half of them left standing.”

“This is Asgard?” Lily was wide-eyed. She did not lament about the past as Vivian did. Instead, she was interested in the ancient city that she had only read about in mythology. “It’s so beautiful. I have seen it in the story!”

“Looks like there is a mythical version of the story on your planet?” Anthony Alfonso looked at Hao Ren curiously. “About this place?”

Hao Ren nodded. “As you already know, due to historical reasons, the phenomenon of the otherworldlings appeared as mythical stories on my planet. In Norse mythology, people think that the universe is supported by a giant tree. This giant tree is called Yggdrasil. It is the World Tree, which has nine roots. These nine roots support the Nine Kingdoms, aka Nine Worlds in the universe. They are the upper Asgard, Vanaheim, and Alfheim; in the middle are Midgard, Jotunheim, Svartalfheim; and the lower worlds of Hel, Niflheim, and Muspelheim. These nine kingdoms are actually nine different dimensions. Odin, the leader of the ancient otherworldlings and the Vanir family, joined hands to link the nine dimensions to Earth, creating their own myths and belief systems, where Asgard was the kingdom of Odin and the other gods who built a god city known as the Garden of Asgard inside a shield. When the Twilight of the Gods finally befell at the end of the mythological era on Earth, a great battle unfolded on Vigrid in the Garden of Asgard. Over there, that it is.”

Hao Ren pointed to the edge of the ruins, at the end of a pile of golden bricks, across a piece of scorched earth where blast craters and molten ruins dotted the landscape.

“Ahh, it is a mythological story.” Galazur shrugged. “We are talking about a myth! It is fortunate that our goddess is open-minded.”

While flying the flying craft in a circle above the Garden of Asgard, Anthony Alfonso asked, “Where should we go now? To the ruins, or look for the roots of Yggdrasil?”

Hao Ren looked up into the distance, the sky above the mountains, where many huge tentacles were reaching up into the air. He shook his head. “We are looking for Mimir’s spacecraft. But since we are here, there is no harm checking out the battlefield first. Maybe we will find something. MDT, can you locate the signal of Gungnir?”

The MDT floated out of his pocket. “Locating… Its position is locked, just 37 km away— a straight line.”

The direction where the MDT pointed was right on the scorched earth of Vigrid.