The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren clearly remembered he had brought out the Gray Fox dog tag. According to his previous experiences in the Plane of Dreams, a spiritual body entering the world could still carry personal belongings through the Wall of Reality—an incredible and truly unique feature of the Plane of Dreams. He had discussed this phenomenon with the MDT and thought that things probably occurred at the information level. The instant one crossed the Wall of Reality, both the spiritual body in the surface world and the Plane of Dreams would experience changes simultaneously. Whether it was addition or reduction in mass, the whole process was akin to cloud synchronization. However, when he carefully examined himself, he discovered that the dog tag was gone.

“Could you have dropped it somewhere in the slums?” The MDT hovered over to him and scanned him with a blue light beam. “There’s no metal tag on your body.”

“I remember hanging it here,” Hao Ren said, pointing to his chest. “I was touching it before I ‘logged out’… Oh yeah, I even took off my shirt and bandaged your wound with it in the Plane of Dreams. It seems that there were no traces left on the clothes.”

If experience were anything to go by, things such as mud or injury the dreamer picked up from the Plane of Dreams would appear on the dreamer’ body upon returning to the surface world. But Hao Ren had found nothing unusual.

“Could there a problem during log-out?” Vivian pulled her brows together. “Interference and the like?”

“No… Oh wait!” something crossed Hao Ren’s mind. He quickly checked his dimensional pocket. He remembered before leaving the Plane of Dreams, he had the MDT’s new body in the dimensional pocket. The dimensional pocket that was made using the Empire technology should be more reliable compared to carrying things in the hands.

But after searching high and low inside, Hao Ren faced with another the unexplained situation. “It’s gone. MDT, your new body is gone.”

“To be honest, I don’t miss the shell,” blue light on the MDT flashed rapidly. “But this phenomenon is alarming… Now, it seems that you haven’t brought anything out from there. Right?”

“What happened in the Plane of Dreams didn’t seem to affect the surface world,” Hao Ren looked down at his hands, puzzled. “But that hadn’t affected anything I brought in from the surface world; gold was still gold.”

Lily and Vivian all leaned over, amazed by what had happened. Lily’s tail shook excitedly. “You have met many strange things this time?” she asked.

“The mapping relationship between the Plane of Dreams and the real world could have changed, and the change had been bigger than we thought,” Hao Ren said while taking the MDT in his hand. “Contact the drones. I need the most recent cosmic background radiation readings of the Plane of Dreams and any other data that may be useful to see if there is any significant change from the previous period.”

The MDT was no slack this time. It quickly switched on the hologram. A continually changing human face appeared in the visual. As already mentioned before, the drones that Hao Ren had released were rapidly multiplying in the universe of the Plane of Dreams. The human face in the hologram was just the consciousness of the drone clusters, or simply put, the interacting ‘interface’ the drone clusters used to communicate with their creator. Hao Ren had set up such an image for the drone clusters not long ago because he felt that his sentinels should have a more appealing appearance rather than a pile of cold and boring charts. At least a holographic human face looked so much better than a bunch of figures and graphs.

“Good evening, inspector,” the holographic human greeted him with a stone face, voice emotionless. “The drone clusters are functioning properly. Would you like to check the recent expansion parameters?”

“No, I need something else,” Hao Ren said, letting the MDT transfer the data package.

“Understood. Now searching, please wait,” the drone’s parent consciousness replied and remained silent for a few seconds. “Data has been sent. The drone clusters found that there is no observable variation in the universe. All distortion readings of the basic parameters are within the acceptable range.”

“No changes?” Hao Ren could not fully understand the complex data report, but he could still see that the two curves in the chart at least looked the same. “How about the mapping relationship between the Plane of Dreams and the surface world? Is there a change?”

“The Wall of Reality is a virtual barrier. The drones cannot observe it. The drone clusters apologies.”

Hao Ren was stunned. He slowly waved his hand to the drones’ consciousness. “Well, continue with your observation mission.”

The holographic projection dimmed, and the voice of the MDT sounded. “At least from these observations, there has been no change in the Plane of Dreams recently. If there has a major fluctuation in the mapping relationship of the Wall of Reality, it would have surely shown up in the basic parameter readings of the Plane of Dreams, which, after all, means that the laws of physics of both worlds collide again.”

Hao Ren folded his arms across his chest, not a word he said. His head was full of questions. At this time, Lily suddenly said, “Why not you do some experiment?”

“Experiment?” Hao Ren looked at Lily, thinking that maybe the witty maiden had thought of something.

“Go to Holletta, let the hibernation pod preselect a location, enter with your spiritual body, and then see if you can bring something out from inside,” Lily said as she stared at Hao Ren with scornful eyes. “Even I could think of this. I wonder why no you?”

Hao Ren smacked on his forehead. “…My brain jammed!”

Now that if he entered through the dream, he would invariably enter to the war-torn Zorm. But the hibernation pod had the record of the ‘dream channel’ to Holletta; it could preselect the destination and send Hao Ren to Holletta. Through the ‘dream channel.’

Hao Ren decided to take a jump. He was going to do the test according to Lily’s suggestion. But Vivian was somewhat worried. “Do you want to do it tomorrow? You have done the ‘teleporting’ once today, are you okay to do that again?”

Lily held Hao Ren’s arm and said, “She is right, Mr. Landlord. Let’s do it tomorrow! I feel so sorry about your black eyes.”

Then she yawned so hard that she was almost teary.

“I see. You’re the one sleepy,” Hao Ren said, poking Lily’s forehead with his finger and hurrying her back to her room to sleep. “You go to sleep. Vivian will be here watching. I’m just doing a test bringing back some random stuff. No big deal.”

Lily forced her eyes to stay open. “Then I’ll wait until you finish…” yawning again.

The loyalty of a dog touched his heart. So Hao Ren decided to get it done quickly.

Hao Ren took the MDT with him and came to the basement with the two girls. Setting the working mode of the hibernation pod, he lamented before lying down inside. “I haven’t used this pod for a long time. Since we found the Tannagost crack, we have been entering physically.”

Lily nodded and then slept-standing up before Hao Ren’s eyes.

The lid of the hibernation pod slowly closed, but reopened in less than a few minutes: As what Hao Ren had said, he had gone for just a while. Probably he just simply grabbed whatever within reach and headed home.

Vivian came up. “How?”

Hao Ren sat up in the ‘coffin’ with a subtle smile on his face. He then raised his hand, holding a beautiful crystal cup.

“I borrowed it from Becky,” Hao Ren said, looking puzzlingly at the cup he had just brought out of the Plane of Dreams. “I could bring things out from Holletta.”

Hao Ren and Vivian were confused, but not Lily, who slept standing up. They both could not believe it and retried multiple times. With the help of the hibernation pod, Hao Ren had gone to different parts of the Plane of Dreams, including the steppe in Holletta, Tannagost, Io and an asteroid that just happened to fly by Io. Hao Ren ‘logged out’ from these different places back to the real world, bringing out a variety of bizarre stuff, including plants from the steppe, gold nuggets of Tannagost, and seawater of Io. Crossing the Wall of Reality with those things was reasonably easy.

Except that, he could not take anything away from Zorm.

In the last test, Hao Ren returned briefly to the planet of Zorm and found the Gray Fox dog tag there miraculously. He was still in the same attire the time he left the slum. This time, he held a piece of broken metal he had picked up in the slum. But his hand was empty upon returning to the surface world.

Things on the planet Zorm could not come to the surface world. Some power seemed to have sealed off the information from leaking out from the planet.