The Record of Unusual Creatures

The young vampires certainly had no idea what Hessiana was talking about. What the heck did she mean by “my family is a mess?” Even the little bat had a hard time explaining that. “My mom and dad just killed my aunt. But my aunt’s probably my sister, My mom and I are probably sisters too, genetically speaking. So probably, it was my sister and my stepdad or brother-in-law who killed my aunt or sister.” Hessiana had lost the thread with this messy relationship in mind. But this problem was not new. The proposition of seniority amongst Vivian’s splits was already an ethical one. This question had been bothering Hessiana since she was old enough to know better. It was hard for her to not harp on it, but she had stopped thinking about it at last. But then, humans developed cloning technology, and the question smacked her in the face again. When Hessiana thought of it, she could not help but feel like killing the scientists who developed cloning technology. Recalling the battle in the ancient city of Ertos, Hessiana suddenly felt like her head was full of water.

However, it was clearly all in Hessiana’s head. The seniority problem of Vivian’s splits had never crossed the minds of others. Even Vivian never thought about it as the poor ancient vampire had enough problems of hunger and cold to deal with in the past.

Vivian’s comment of Hessiana had been consistent all this while: much ado about nothing.

After Hao Ren and his team returned to the main material world, the collapse of the lost dimension lasted for four hours, during which the entire mining site could feel the continuous tremor. In the last hour, the quake reached its peak and even caused another small crack and landslide on a mountainside.

After that, the cave leading to the other dimension disappeared.

The city that once flourished on Earth finally passed away with the yellow sand. The Mythological Era did not even leave a record of it. Only Hao Ren and his men were its last witnesses who retained the memory of the city.

After bidding farewell to Hessiana, everyone returned to their home in Southern Suburbs. They brought back not only a piece of blood spar, but also a ton of questions about the strange phenomenon of the Malevolence.

Nangong Sanba and Nangong Wuyue were hooked to the exaggerated recount of the adventure of the lost city of Ertos by Lily. For the siblings who had never experienced the Mythological Era, listening to the adventure in the alien dimension was like seeing Mythological Era walking into reality. What amazed them was that one of Vivian’s Malevolences had turned out to be the protagonist of the mythical story. Nangong Wuyue shook her in disbelief and said, “I thought that the Malevolence did not have its own thinking and was not communicable. It is a surprise that this earlier one could talk although she had gone crazy at last.”

“Our understanding of Malevolence has been entirely based on a few encounters. But Raven 12345 has over twenty specimens of Malevolence; God knows what characteristics they possess,” Hao Ren said while shaking his head. “And we found some clues on the planet Inferno before. Think about the demon-god Vivian; she once was the guardian of the native people there. So we could speculate that the Malevolence is sane during the early stages. But now it seems that sanity is only temporary.”

While Hao Ren spoke, Noobie had come out form her mouse hole. Staggeringly, she climbed onto the table, looked around her surroundings, and then raised her hand at Rollie. “Ghsss—”

Rollie blinked at Noobie, and reached out her hand, pinned Noobie on the table, began to slap her.

Vivian glanced at Noobie thoughtfully. “Maybe the insanity of the Malevolence is also temporary,” she mumbled.

“What did you say?” Nangong Wuyue asked.

“No, nothing,” Vivian replied while shaking her head. She then looked at Hao Ren. “I am more interested in the divinity of Ertos than the sanity of Malevolence.”

Hao Ren intervened and stopped the ‘domestic violence’ of Rollie. He picked Noobie up, sorted her messy hair and then nodded. “Yes, the divinity is the most special attribute observed so far.”

“How could Malevolence possesses divinity?” Nangong Sanba asked. He was wide-eyed. “Are you sure that you did not make a mistake?”

“I am a professional quack with a work permit. What say you?” Hao Ren glanced at Nangong Sanba. “I am 100% sure that it is divinity, not the inferior divinity of the divine objects or other creation of God. It is proper high-end stuff, the direct derivative of the goddess of creation, which is higher in terms of composition than a pope hand-picked by the true God like me.”

“If it was so powerful, how could you have killed it?” Nangong Wuyue asked in disbelief.

“Divinity does not determine strength, just as a diploma does not represent one’s ability. It is all about wisdom and skill when it comes to combat,” Hao Ren said. “Of course, it was mainly because I was too impressive for it.”

Everyone was like eye-rolling.

“Hey, Battie.” Lily poked Vivian’s arm and said, “Actually, I have something in mind.”

Vivian looked quizzically at the husky who always had an oversized brain hole. “What is it?”

Lily counted her fingers and said, “Look, the goddess has mentioned that there is something amiss about you: you are a creation of the goddess of creation but have none of her divinity. Is that not suspicious? And then every Malevolence has a different attribute, and then every time a Malevolence you split out from you, you will lose a certain amount of power. But then, when you absorb the remainder of the Malevolence, you master another skill.”

“Let’s get straight to the point. What are you trying to say?” Vivian said with a frown.

Lily held her chin with an inscrutable look. “I think that when adding all the Malevolences together will they be considered a whole. Every time a Malevolence split out from you, it will take away one of your characteristics, and divinity is only one of the attributes of this whole. The relationship between you and the Malevolence are not of a mother and split but should be equal. Just that you are more rational and occupying a larger proportion of the whole. So whether it is the Malevolence or yourself, it is no longer the complete creature that the goddess of creation has created in the first place. It must be the sum of all of you to count as a whole.”

The husky maiden clapped her hands and continued. “So you have no divinity. There is no divinity in every other Malevolence, because divinity is only one of the characteristics, and it is assigned to Ertos the master.”

Y’zaks scratched his bald head and said, “I got what you mean. It really explains the problem of Vivian lacking divinity. But why do you have to emphasize that Vivian is just a ‘fragment’ like all the other Malevolences? As you said, all the Malevolences split from Vivian, so could we not treat Vivian as the ‘mother’?”

Lily took a piece of biscuit out of her pocket—she always stuffed many snacks in her pockets. “Because from the first division, the whole is no longer complete. Strictly speaking, the complete individual has disappeared and become two pieces of unequal size. Just that Battie is the larger piece. Smaller pieces are separating from her, but she could not be counted as the original. Just like this biscuit, I am going to break it evenly into ten pieces.”

While speaking, Lily broke a small piece from the biscuit.

“When the first piece comes off, it becomes two pieces of biscuit.”

Lily broke the biscuits one by one and eventually there were ten pieces of similar size.

“Look, what is the difference between them now?”

Y’lisabet’s eyes brightened up. “Ahh, I got it! Some have cream, and some don’t!”

Lily was stupefied.

“Did you sole study philosophy during your four times in Peking University?” Hao Ren said, shooting Lily a glance.

“It has nothing to do with philosophy! It is a simple aggregation question!” Lily said, banging the table. “We used to always equate Battie with the creature created by the goddess of creation, and think that she had all the clues with her. We ignored the question of incompleteness. If we do not reverse this thinking, we will be going nowhere!”

“Can you not bang the table when you speak? Look at the crumbs, they are all over the table!” Hao Ren snorted.

Lily lowered her head and licked the table clean. “Now, is it clean enough?”

Vivian was silent. She was in thought while her eyes moved continuously as if she had thought of something.

“What happened?” Hao Ren asked.

Vivian was only jolted out of her thought when Hao Ren repeated his question. “Ohh, nothing, nothing. I have just thought of something.”

Hao Ren looked at Vivian for a while and then shook his head. “Let us leave the question of divinity for later when we see Raven 12345. Meanwhile, I care more about another matter. Vivian, do you remember the first time when you saw your Malevolence?”

“I remember it!” Lily said and raised her paw at once. “Did we not find a magic book? We tried to summon evil spirits with that stuff, and it turned out to be Vivian’s Malevolence.”

Hao Ren nodded his head. “Yep, that was our first encounter with the Malevolence. It was also the first time that Vivian met her Malevolence. At that time, Vivian did not see the face of the Malevolence. She saw the Malevolence was shrouded in a gauze-like fog. She was so surprised when she learned from us that the Malevolence looked identical to her.”

“Yes, that was the case,” Lily said while nodding.

“But since then, Vivian could always see the face of the Malevolences,” Y’zaks said. “Whether it is the demon-god on planet Inferno or Noobie here, Vivian see them all.”

“And in Ertos, a third scenario occurred. We all saw the Malevolence as a blurry mass. Only Vivian could see the monster clearly,” Hao Ren said, picking up from where Y’zaks left off.

He looked at everyone and said, “I think something is amiss here.”