The Record of Unusual Creatures

The blood sample stayed quietly in the tube just like any other liquid—it was probably strange to describe the liquid as “quiet”, but it would not have been difficult to imagine why if you saw the living lifeblood. Raven 12345 was holding the tube up to her eyes and shaking it gently. The red liquid refracted light into a rainbow of colors under the skylight. It looked like blood, but one with a strange texture.

“Dead lifeblood is very different from living lifeblood,” Raven 12345 said. With a snap of her fingers, the tube broke apart and floated steadily up into the air. The liquid formed into a sphere and stayed right there as if it was in space. “No wonder you couldn’t recognize it. This is a wonderful substance. Once it goes from life to death, its basic structure will start to transform dramatically into something else.”

Hao Ren watched but could not wrap his brain around it. He had certainly seen “living” lifeblood before. The red viscous liquid crept and moved on its own like a living thing. Even when it was calm, it would always stay at a certain temperature and have a clear breath of life, unlike the one before him now. To tell the truth, when he first collected the blood sample, he was wondering whether it was related to the lifeblood. However, instrumental tests showed that it was a distinct chemical substance and no living cells were found inside. It seemed he had underestimated the mystery of this thing.

“Lifeblood could die?” Hao Ren had a ton of questions in his mind but did not know where to begin. He picked one not as hard. “I have tried various methods to process the lifeblood, including radiation and temperature variations. Other than turning into ashes under ultra-high temperature and crystalizing by psionic energy, it never lost its vitality…”

Raven 12345 restored the tube and the sample, and tossed it up and down in her hand. “So this must be the first time you see dead lifeblood. I can understand your surprise.”

“Why did the evil spirit become lifeblood after it died?” Hao Ren could not wait to get the answer. “She looked exactly like Vivian! Does…does Vivian also have something to do with the lifeblood?”

Raven 12345 looked into Hao Ren’s eyes and remained silent for a few seconds as if she was pondering something. At last, she shook her head slightly and said, “I’m afraid there is. But you should focus your attention on the Plane of Dreams for the time being.”

Hao Ren’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you hiding something from me?”

He did not expect to get an answer; the Goddess was always tight-lipped during the critical moment despite she looked like a madcap. Surprisingly, Raven 12345 was very frank this time. “Yep,” she answered.

This lunatic even had the nerve to admit that! Hao Ren did not know how to react. “What is—”

“I can’t tell you.”

Hao Ren forced a smile. “I haven’t asked anything yet…”

“If I refuse to answer only after you have asked, that would sound embarrassing,” Raven 12345 said and let out a sigh. “I can divulge a little though—Vivian is a very special existence. She is different from all otherworldlings… She couldn’t even be considered as one of them.”

Hao Ren remained silent; he knew Raven had not finished yet. Sure enough, after pausing for a moment, Raven continued, “In fact, I started paying attention to Vivian long ago, much earlier than you think… Although only intermittent observations, I still found her different; she is closely related to the lifeblood and the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams.”

Hao Ren was wide-mouthed. “Are you telling me that Vivian is actually the reincarnation of the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams?”

“Of course—not,” said Raven 12345 wittily. “I knew there was no deity in her long ago. She is not a Goddess of Creation who has lost her memory nor a reincarnation of her. A few days ago, I’ve successfully traced the timeline of the Wall of Reality and the time when Vivian entered this universe…”

Hao Ren blinked. “When?”

“She is indeed the first one to come to Earth, earlier than the time of death of the Goddess of Creation.”

Hao Ren was really stunned this time. He did not expect Raven could have known so many things. “You know the specific time of death of the Goddess of Creation?”

“I didn’t witness it personally, but I can still determine the moment of major historical events by tracing back the signs of the impact left on the Wall of Reality.” Raven spread out her hands and drew an amazing virtual image in the air, like a wall splitting light into two. “For your ease of understanding, I use this to represent the Wall of Reality and the two universes. I found a series of successive collapse points here, and the information is ambiguous. They are the biggest source of damage to the entire wall. The most important historical event in the Plane of Dreams is only the moment when the goddess fell. So, these collapses must only happen when the goddess fell…”

In the simulation, the cracks on the Wall of Reality was marked in red. In real life, the Wall of Reality was not a three-dimensional and physically visible wall. Hao Ren knew it. He examined the cracks marked in red carefully because these little details represented the moment of the fall of the Goddess.

“Though these cracks formed within relatively close intervals, it is still possible to tell that they formed at different times.” Raven 12345 pointed to a small crevice in the Wall of Reality. “The cracks appeared about forty-eight hours before the goddess fell. The timestamp of Vivian’s existence in this universe began at the exact same moment.”

Hao Ren felt cold sweat trickling down his forehead. He just realized he was listening to the most ancient secret. “In other words, at least 48 hours before the goddess fell, Vivian was already on Earth?”

“That’s right, so she could never be the Goddess of Creation, and not a reincarnation or things like that, because the Goddess of Creation was still alive when Vivian arrived on Earth and probably fighting with the treacherous children until her death.” Raven 12345 looked into Hao Ren’s eyes. “My calculation won’t be wrong. Ten thousand years may seem long for you, but it is not long enough for me to make a mistake. The damaged marks on the Wall of Reality are clear… at least very clear to me.”

“But you said that Vivian is related to the lifeblood and the Goddess…”

“Yeah, you must have already known why,” Raven 12345 pointed at the blood sample in her hand. “The evil spirit on Earth that looked exactly the same as her formed from the lifeblood. But I’m still investigating her relationship with the Goddess. I can only confirm that the information stream on her is far beyond ordinary creatures. That amount of information is not something that a single individual should have possessed, and that information has until now been pointing to the Plane of Dreams. The information link between ordinary aliens and the Plane of Dreams would be lost after they crossed over. But Vivian seems to remain the same as when she had just passed through it. Her connection with the Plane of Dreams has not been interrupted.”

“Oh, hold on a second…” Hao Ren waved his hand frantically, interrupting Raven. He had a crappy understanding of the Grand Unification Theory. Every time the MDT tried to teach him about this, it was like rocket science to him. Now he was no less confused. “Information stream is a bit out of my depth; can you explain it in human language?”

Raven 12345 glanced at Hao Ren, and then sighed. “I knew it. It is not hard to understand, really. Think of this universe as a virtual program that runs on your computer. Because in the Grand Unification Theory, everything in the world is a stack of information, the extensive descriptions and relationship formulas between each other ensure the operation of all things in the universe, and allow the universe to determine the authenticity of each. This is how the whole world works. In this case, humans—and everything else—can be seen as a set of data.”

Raven 12345 paused for a while, and then continued, “Under normal circumstances, the same level of things should have roughly the same amount of data. Emperors and officials, heroes and laymen, and even the ‘Gods’ which were worshiped during the Earth’s mythical era are only 1KB worth of data—the same storage space any one worm in this world occupies, in the eyes of the world management system.”

“So small?”

“Well, figuratively speaking of course. But that’s how it seems. After all, whether the power of a virtual character in the computer is 9999 or 00000 can only affect the ‘world’ within the program itself, it is only two numbers that occupy the same storage space.”

“So Vivian’s amount of information…”

“Almost at the limit that a mortal can carry,” Ravens 12345 shook her head. “Figuratively speaking, it is on the verge of spilling over.”