The Record of Unusual Creatures

Witnessed by the three inspectors, the watchful eyes of the unusual creatures, and the thousands of sensors onboard the three spacecraft, the crystal with enormous energy, enough to tear a crack in the barrier of the world, plunged through the hollow of the universe and disappeared without a trace.

A few minutes later, Hao Ren wiped the cold sweat off his forehead. He realized that he had just lost the super-powerful and dangerous thing.

Hao Ren had wanted to cry in the public channel of the universe: my friends, have you ever made a mistake in your work, screwed up your life, met something unforgettable? Let’s take a look here; all you have encountered are nothing compared to mine. I have just tossed a divine artifact used to control the equilibrium into the crack of the universe and lost it!

“All detectors, please send the monitoring data again! Nolan, please re-look into your memory!” With years of crisis handling experience under his belt, Hao Ren smacked his forehead and quickly calmed down to organize his thought. “Galazur, Anthony, could you please check the surveillance records on your side? Something’s wrong. The crystal’s missing, and it seems to have gone straight through the crack!”

The dragon queen could not care less about space surfing now as she had quickly come back into her spacecraft. Anthony Alfonso was glowing in an arcane light as he paced back and forth on the flight deck, checking all the recorded data and footages. Obviously, even the veteran who had thousands of years of experience like him was a little flustered now.

Everyone around Hao Ren had no clue what to do. Vivian’s brows knit together tightly, Nangong siblings were looking at each other, and so did Y’zaks and his daughter. Even Lil Pea was clinging to the MDT, frightened. Jumping up and down with her puffed up tail, Lily was the only one who could still give opinions. “Oh my gosh! How could it disappear? How could it disappear?”

All of them could do nothing to help.

Meanwhile, Ymir, who was waiting in the garage, had also been watching the ‘gate opening ceremony’ closely. He was waiting to meet his brother as this incident happened. But the old giant was calm, even the way he spoke. “Is there any emergency tracking function in the ‘core’?”

“Ahh, you have reminded me. Let me check the instruction manual.” Smacking his head, Hao Ren took out the manual, but his face quickly turned green. “There is only one line in the manual!”

He had forgotten that the user manual that Raven 12345 handed to himself contained only a straightforward sentence: Just toss it in.

But dear goddess, what if it disappears after tossing it inside?

“Are you sure this is abnormal?” Galazur said as she busily browsed through the surveillance records. “After all, it is something made by our goddess. Maybe this is normal?”

“Do you believe it?”

“That’s funny!” Galazur, in humanoid form, appeared on the monitor. “I have checked back all the monitoring data. It is confirmed that the crystal core completely disappeared after the sixth seconds entering the crack. Besides, the data of the crack indicates that the crack has a weak tremor at that moment. I have sent the data of tremor intensity over to you.”

“My data is consistent with that of Galazur,” Anthony Alfonso said through his message. “Besides, I have also found some feedback that is not of this world near the crack. If I’m not mistaken, it comes from the Plane of Dreams.”

Hao Ren checked the data in Nolan’s memory against those from the two seniors. His last hope was shattered; the crystal core had indeed disappeared under the watchful eyes of everyone, and no tracking and monitoring instrument had tracked it. As far as the current situation is concerned, the core was likely to have fallen into the deep space of the Plane of Dreams.

Among all the intelligence, Anthony Alfonso’s was the most valuable. The old magician had opened an extra channel when he listened to the data. By doing this, he had received an information feed from the Great Fissure the moment the core disappeared. This concise signal was perhaps about a material attribute, or it might tell of a moment of space-time. But anyway, it came from where the core had fallen.

The data recorded by Anthony Alfonso was probably the only clue that could lead to finding the divine artifact.

“Let’s not play the guessing game.” Galazur sighed. “We have lost the thing and should tell the goddess. Hao Ren, what about the rest of the project?”

“Stop all work temporarily while I report to the goddess,” Hao Ren said after thinking for a while.

He then hung up, took the MDT from Lil Pea, and then started sighing.

Seeing her daddy’s frowning face, Lil Pea thought that she had done something wrong and quickly came up to him, poking his arm. “Dad-dee not happy? Lil Pea didn’t spoil this glowing brick…”

“Call me MDT,” the MDT said. “And your dad-dee is obviously not worried about me.”

“Whatever. Connect me to the heaven,” Hao Ren said, knocking on the MDT.

The MDT started dialing. A moment later, a voice was heard on the other end. “Hello, this is Raven 12345, the sunshine goddess. If you want to praise me, please press 1; faith conversion, please press 2; complain, please press 21564879645413215…Ouch…”

“Stop messing around, goddess. Who would have a ringtone that sounds like biting one’s own tongue?” Hao Ren said listlessly.

“Aah haha… Hao Ren, what’s up? I am compiling a personalized ringtone here…” Raven 12345 sounded a little embarrassed.

“Did I not tell you I’m constructing a gate in the Scarred Nebula?” Hao Ren said, still sounding listless. “There is good news and bad news; which one do you want to hear first?”

“The bad one first.”

“The bad one? Err… maybe I should first tell you the good one,” Hao Ren said, sounding helpless. “The good news is that I have tossed the fine crystal bearing your logo into the space crack, exactly according to your instruction manual.”

“What about the bad news?”

“The bad news is that the crystal has gone…”

There were a few seconds of silence before Raven 12345 responded. “The crystal what?”

Hao Ren told of what happened. After all, there was nothing he could hide, and after being honest with her, he felt better. After all, he had the nerves of steel, and since it was Raven 12345 who made the core and came with an instruction manual that sounded more like a joke, even if he lost the core and blew some places up, as a result, he was not going to feel guilty about it.

But as he finished talking, he still could not help but worry what if the neurotic goddess sent him a ‘blessing’ over the air. As it turned out, his worry was unnecessary; Raven 12345 did not send him ‘blessing’ over the air.

Because she came over personally.

“Oh, my crystal!” Looking at the messy Great Fissure, Raven 12345 lamented in an exaggeratingly. “I have spent two hours cutting it into perfect shape!”

Cold sweat was trickling down his spine, as Hao Ren could only see that the crystal was anything but perfect. In fact, that thing looked more like a rock. The most amazing things about the crystal were the absence of two ridgelines, and its surfaces were asymmetrical. Anyone could have more than a reasonable reason to believe that the maker of the crystal core had used an unbelievable blind-chopping technique in cutting the artifact.

But since the goddess had insisted that she had cut a perfect crystal core and was saddened by the valuable loss, Hao Ren as a pope could only play along—it was easier to join the neurotic than to reason with her.

“This is the earlier monitoring information.”

Raven 12345 was almost mad, but Hao Ren did not feel a thing. He waited for her to calm down before handing her the recordings.

Raven 12345 took the recordings and watched.

“It had indeed fallen into the Plane of Dreams,” the goddess said, pulling her already messy hair. “But that shouldn’t have happened in theory. It should be activated the moment it entered the space crack, and then stuck between the two worlds, opening itself to become a gate, unless… unless something is interfering with it on the other side of the space crack.”

“The problem lies on the other side? What could be on the other side?” Hao Ren asked, his eyes brightening up.

“The only thing that could interfere with that core, I’m afraid, has something to do with divine power,” Raven 12345 said, squinting. “One divinity could easily affect another divinity.”

“The legacy of the goddess of creation?” Hao Ren said, this time entirely on edge.

Raven 12345 nodded but not saying a word.

“Is there any navigation or beacon function in the crystal core?” Hao Ren quickly asked. “Can you restore contact from here?”

“No, even if there is such a setting, I would have turned it off for you,” Raven 12345 said, glancing at Hao Ren. “It is the most dangerous moment during the process of opening a passageway. It is like drilling a hole again on the most vulnerable spot in the Wall of Reality. During this process, no redundant signal exchange should occur on both sides of the passageway, and the most important function of the core is to shield off the flow of signals during the process, and it would not emit any unnecessary signal. To prevent some uncontrollable factors from causing the core to send out signal unexpectedly, it would automatically shut down all messaging modules after it is released, and would not be reactivated until the passageway is fully open.”

Lily came up and said, “But I somehow feel that your setting is a bit stupid.”

“Boom!”

A punishment from heaven struck Lily as Vivian looked at her feeling pity for her turning into a black stupid woofy.