The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren had doubts about the strange vision he had experienced when he left the forest.

So far, all the visions he has experienced have had their carriers – either the gold disk, or the palace of the goddess of creation, or the goddess’ blood. So where does the twisted, dim starry sky come from?

Hao Ren easily associated it with the scepter, because that was the last thing he touched before he fell into the illusion.

Now that Raven 12345 had used her divine power to dispel the disguise of the core of the scepter and reveal the nature of the cosmic fragments, and his guess was confirmed. He was almost certain that the piece of starry sky he saw was something in the fragment: a ripped universe.

Raven 12345 put the fragment in her hand and released a little of her power to try to penetrate it. She tried very carefully because she could feel that it was quite unstable. As a ripped universe, it was rapidly ‘self-evaporating’. Its incomplete information structure was constantly collapsing in the real world due to its inconsistency. After several attempts, she stopped trying and said, “There’s something left in the fragment, but my power cannot penetrate it: this damned thing is part of the Plane of Dreams. Just like I can’t intervene in the Plane of Dreams, I can’t intervene in this thing too. It’s too resistant to foreign powers.”

Hao Ren was not surprised. He just nodded and said, “But I think my guess is quite right.”

“Yes, it’s right to trust your intuition at times like this,” said Raven 12345, returning the fragment to Hao Ren. “You might as well keep it with you. You have some kind of strange abilities that allow you to resonate with the products of the Plane of Dreams, and if there’s a man who has a chance to unlock the secrets of this, it’s probably you.”

Hao Ren took the fragments, but his eyes fell on the god-slaying sword not far away. “If the fragments still have the physical structure of the universe, then this sword… Is there something in it, too?”

The god-slaying sword was spinning around in a boring circle. It shivered when it heard it and said, “Are you going to stab me open? I don’t like to stab anyone, and I don’t like being stabbed at either. I tell you…”

“Shut up! Who said I want to cut you open?” Hao Ren said while giving it the side-eye. “Keep spinning and don’t talk.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve kept sample information of the cosmic fragment,” Raven 12345 said. “When I get back, I’ll give the information to my superior’s data center and ask the guys over there to analyze it. Maybe they’ll find a way to get you back in. Before that, keep the god-slaying sword and this fragment with you. They have been purified and will not cause any harm in the future.”

“Ok,” Hao Ren said and kept the two things carefully.

Then Hao Ren and Vivian left the place together.

For the next few days, everything seemed calm.

Summer had come to an end. The hot weather that had lasted for nearly two months gradually cooled down. There was an autumn rain last night, and the air after the rain was particularly fresh. Hao Ren sat in his favorite chair in the living room and looked out of the window.

From here, Hao Ren could see the empty space behind the house, which had now completely become the territory of Y’lisabet. The little girl piled up all the old appliances she had collected from miles and miles away and dragged her father to build a colorful steel shed on the vacant lot to protect her treasures. Now Y’lisabet was playing with her collection, checking to see if the rain yesterday had poured into the shed, and Rollie was following her around just like when she was still a cat: jumping up and down in all sorts of high and low places, looking very dangerous, but she had a good time.

Y’zaks was standing not far away, looking helplessly at his precious daughter. The plan he designed for his little girl, ‘The Demon Queen Training Program’ was completely ruined. At present, there was no hope to train the little girl into a qualified demon queen in 300 years. The old demon had been reflecting on his education problems lately, but that did not help.

Hao Ren took his attention back from the window and fell back on the scroll in his hand.

This was the second scroll. The first scroll had been analyzed and recorded. From today on, he would deal with the second scroll.

Although Raven 12345 threw the hot potato at him, she was not completely unhelpful. The goddess gave Hao Ren some assisting tools and instructed him how to read them more safely. There were three main tips: Don’t learn too much at once; Don’t read the scrolls and think about anything about the Mad Lord at the same time; Recite the name of Raven 12345 before reading the scroll.

Hao Ren translated it this way: don’t read it all at once, don’t think too much while reading, and think about his boss before he read it.

And the last tip was weird…

Hao Ren shook his head, took out a crystal and put it on the table. After the soft light of the crystal spread, he began to read the rest of the scroll:

“… The war reshaped the order of the universe. The foreign god gained supreme authority and sealed the Mad Lord in the darkest depths of the universe. The tyrant’s howl shook the stars, but it could not get out: for the stars were silent, and there was no way to escape. After the war, the foreign god felt sorry for the chaos of the universe and decided to completely change the rules of the star…

“The god visited the ancestors among the stars. Those ancestors were the race born from the earliest order of the universe. They had been ruled and enslaved by the Mad Lord, but now they were free. These ancient creatures came out of the refuge and called the foreign god ‘the pioneer’. They decided to follow the new god to build an orderly world… Hundreds of centuries later, the universe entered the idyllic age of order…”

Hao Ren put down the scroll and knocked on the data terminal. It immediately projected the interface of notepad, showing the notes line by line. Hao Ren started a new line at the end of his notes and wrote down the following words: the ancestors among the stars = the denizens of the stars?

He looked at the crystal on the table. The crystal was still emitting a constant light, but the boundary of the light was already undulating. Maybe a short paragraph, he thought.

“… The order grew among the stars, and the ancestors formed a firm alliance with the new god. They began to clean up the scars left by the Mad Lord. And at the same time, the Mad Lord kept crashing its cage. The tyrant was not content to be trapped. Its power spread from the darkness. So stars were extinguished, the matter was torn apart, the core of the universe was gradually cracking…

“…The new god sensed this change in time and strengthened the prison. The new prison was an emptier and silent space with ninety-nine layers of barriers. A powerful wall of divine power was set up every 33 floors. The Mad Lord was locked up in the deepest layer of the wall. The ancestors chose the most tenacious ones who volunteered to become the eternal prison guards of this cage, watching the eternal prison in the dark… When the new god saw that the world was working properly, the new god rested in the palace and delegated authority to the heir…”

The light around him suddenly faded. Hao Ren looked up and saw the crystal on the table was flashing, and the light released by the crystal had shrunk.

This crystal was given to him by Raven 12345. Its function was to constantly purify the distorted force of the scroll released in the process of being read and to give him a warning. When the crystal began to flash, it meant that the distorted force released by the scroll had reached a dangerous threshold. At this point, the crystal could still purify it, but Hao Ren had learned too much taboo knowledge at one time, so he must stop now.

So he rolled up the scroll, stretched himself and put it into his Dimensional Pocket.

Although he was curious about the second half of the scroll, he knew exactly what he was doing. As a demigod, the mesmerizing power of temptation unleashed by the scroll did not work for him, and he could easily resist the urge to read on.

After a short break, he woke the data terminal up again. The MDT had recorded the latest scroll resolution data and there were a few more lines of notes automatically added by the system in the notepad. He added a sentence at the end of the record:

The goddess of creation was allied with the denizens of the stars, and none of the histories so far has appeared in the record of the guardian giants.

Then he thought a moment and added:

Are the guardian giants and the First Borns really the first creatures created by the goddess of creation?