The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren had a shocking conjecture after he read the notes.

Firstly, the Ancient Magic Empire not only used advanced biochemical technology but also divinity when it created the demon hunters, who were also the Ancients. Hao Ren believed that the magic empire in the past did not have enough ability to harness the real power of the gods. What they were exposed to should be the product of the further decay of this power. Nonetheless, it was enough to show that the mage emperors were indeed carrying out studies on divine power. They called their research outcome the Divine Cells, which they could manipulate and reproduce.

Secondly, their research turned out to be under God’s decree!

The last paragraph of the note was not some balderdash. Those who left these records had mentioned the divine decree and the goddess of creation and even said that it was under the blessing of the goddess that they could make progress. It confirmed Hao Ren’s earlier speculation that demon hunter was not a product of blasphemy but created on the premise of having faith in the goddess. The revelation greatly exceeded Hao Ren’s expectation.

The mage emperors not only created the demon hunter with their firm belief of the goddess, but even the goddess of creation ordered for the project to be carried out?

Did the goddess ask them to make these “perfect creatures”?

“Let me see, let me see!” Lily saw Hao Ren was in a daze, she could not hold back her curiosity. Taking the notes from Hao Ren, the husky maiden quickly flipped through the papers and finished reading them in one minute. She was wide-eyed.

“That means the goddess of creation ordered the making of the demon hunters?” Lily caught on as well. The husky maiden might be a little dumb, but her judgment and observability were better than others. After all, these were her instincts. “The notes clearly mentioned the process of making a demon hunter. Wait a minute, Mr. Landlord! Something’s missing here!”

“What’s missing?” Hao Ren was startled. He did not see it. Instead, it was Lily who found a clue.

“This ruin is the location of the R&D of the demon hunter, right? Time here had stood still and only resume flowing recently, right? The equipment here is only a semi-finished Sacred Relic of Origins, and there is no way to successfully create the demon hunter, right?” Lily asked a series of questions without expecting answers. “And look at the notes, at the moment when the place shut and time stood still, those guys had not been able to successfully create a demon hunter.”

Hao Ren had understood the meaning of it before Lily finished.

“That means this is not the place of the final creation of the demon hunter, but just an experimental base in the early stage of the project.” Hao Ren looked at the tidy laboratory equipment, his brows gradually knit together. “The project reached its most crucial step, which was the successful synthesis of stable ‘divine cells.’ But it was suddenly abandoned, and the entire experimental base was frozen in time. Those people evacuated with the test data and transfer the final part of the project to another place before they finally created the first-generation demon hunters aka Ancients.”

“That should be the case,” Vivian said. “I didn’t expect Doggie to have such a sharp observation.”

“I’m smart, aren’t I?” Lily had gotten used to the nickname Doggie a long time ago. The husky maiden wagged her tail, and her beautiful pointed ears flicked.

“Then please explain why they suddenly gave up this place,” Vivian said with her eyebrows arching. “Why did they abandon the place when the experiment was going smoothly? The entire experimental base looks intact.”

“That I know,” Lily said. “Maybe it an order from above stopped the experiment. Anyway, it was 10,000 years ago. Who should I ask?”

“There are some details that I don’t understand,” Hao Ren said. His eyebrows still pulled together. “The experimental projects here seem to have suddenly stopped. The still-running magic circles and alchemy containers that Master Hymer saw could confirm it. But there seemed to be sufficient time when those people evacuated—they took all the research materials and left us with only those irrelevant notes. How do you explain this?”

Hymer, who was silent all this while, began to speak. He was still confused by the ancient secrets that Hao Ren and others mentioned, but it did not prevent him from sorting out the information and coming out with his conjecture. “Those people took away the research data means that they had reaction time. Or perhaps the experimenters had received the evacuation order several hours beforehand. Leaving the reaction vessels and magic circles that were still running because it was not easy to stop them abruptly. You may not know; some experimental magic equipment with chain reactions could not stop instantly because most magic circles have a self-sustaining feature during the operation. Forcing them to stop suddenly could easily cause an explosion and bite back on the spell caster. As long as the personnel evacuated and took the research materials with them, it was irrelevant whether the equipment was still running. Those machines would stop after exhausting the energy. Of course, letting those things run without supervision was dangerous, but compared with the consequences of forcibly shutting down the equipment, it was a choice much easier to live with.”

Having an expert on Holletta’s magic to do the explanation, things quickly became evident. Hao Ren nodded in amazement as he listened. “But leaving the experimental equipment running doesn’t sound like what a sophisticated magic lab would do.”

“But if there was an emergency, then it was a forced choice,” Hymer said. “There must be some unexpected event that happened. The experimenters could only gather the research materials but had no time to wait for the equipment to stop.”

“What kind of change would it be?” Hao Ren said as he looked around the buildings. From the surface, it was hard to know what could force the total evacuation from the experimental base.

Lily’s ears flicked. She could not help but look in a direction. Her eyes crossed the lab door and landed on the door at the end of the chamber.

“What are you looking at?” Vivian glanced at the husky maiden.

Lily’s ears kept tilting. “Could the answer lie behind the second door? The people here evacuated in a hurry, but they were still careful in making sure that each door was locked. Locking the outer door is understandably normal. But why did they seal every door on the inside? The deeper it goes, the harder it gets to open them. Hymer has also said that the second door is far more difficult to deal with than the main entrance of the base.”

Hao Ren could not help but respect Lily’s sharp intuition. He suddenly had a new realization: it was something that happened on the inside instead on the outside that triggered the evacuation.

They quickly came to the second door. Everyone was nervous.

The door was made of an unknown superhard alloy, five-meter tall, and painted with a decorative pattern of the Ancient Magic Empire. Tiny sparks were dancing in the gap between the gray-white metal door and door frame and the straight grooves on the door. It appeared to be in a fluid-like texture.

This door was deemed a precious legacy to the current alchemists and magic-powered installers. Any discerning eyes would have noticed the door had reinforced charging, runic encryption, energy deflecting layer, stress shield, and other clever designs. It was no wonder that Master Hymer, the rising star of the Royal Mage Guild, was helpless when he came to this door. He had achieved little progress for the past several days and only figured out its charging principle recently.

“MDT, can you handle it?” Hao Ren took out the MDT and asked it to scan the energy flow of the door.

“It’s not that hard, but I still need some time,” the MDT replied after briefly scanning the door and figuring out its mechanism. “Give me 30 minutes. It’ll be faster if you can give me a couple of HEIAP (high-explosive incendiary/armor-piercing ammunition).”

Hao Ren yanked the MDT to the door and said, “Get real, and start working!”

“Eww, what an abusive guy.”

The MDT grumbled, but still obediently came before the second door. It connected itself to the magic conduit on the door and began to crack the encryption with standard procedures.

As standard as it was, the computing speed of the MDT was much faster than that of Hymer and his team of apprentice combined.

Master Hymer and the apprentice mages were stunned looking at the door, on which the energy flow began to slow down. It was a sign of the disabling of the magic-alarm circuits. What they had failed to do for the past days, the MDT, which looked like a piece of brick, did it in just a moment.

But Hao Ren could not care less what Hymer and his apprentices were thinking. He looked at the super-alloy door silently and wondered what had happened inside the base back then. He guessed that it was an internal problem that caused the evacuation, but he felt something not quite right: the chamber looked too tidy.

The emergency evacuation might have caused some mess, but there was no visible damage or destruction around the base. Even there were no signs of damage to the doors. Had there been an accident in the base, how could there be no leakage?

It was indeed not the 10,000 years that had erased the evidence—time had been standing still in this place.

While Hao Ren was in deep thought, the MDT had finished the decryption process. The runes on the door began to dim. It seemed that the door was going to open.

“Everyone, fall back!” Hao Ren had shown his vigilance at the critical moment. There might be something dangerous lunging out from behind the door.

The door emitted a series of squeaking noises before it gradually slid open in the middle.

A strong sense of danger hit them!