The Record of Unusual Creatures

After coming into physical contact with the Gilded Disc, Hao Ren had a chaotic and weird dream for several days and permanent marks on his hands. Vivian and Y’zaks examined the marks on his hands but found nothing. The marks looked like a normal burn and had no supernatural power. Even so, Hao Ren knew that these marks carried some extraordinary meaning.

Every night, he would be having the same chaotic dreams, the Gilded Disc illusion where he woke up in the collapsed temple of the Goddess of Creation, went through the burning columns and battlefields before arriving at the place where the sin of deicide was committed. Then every time it would be like before, he was always one step too late and could not see the faces of the deicide and the goddess. The same dream would repeat constantly. He found that the message became clearer after each dream.

The message was a chaotic memory injected into his mind after his first contact with the Gilded Disc. The repeated dreams seemed to help him extract a hard-to-understand message from the depths of his mind. As these repeated dreams finally went away, Hao Ren began to make sense of it. He re-examined the series of events after he touched the Gilded Disc, and finally pieced it together:

He touched the disc, obtained ‘intelligence’ from the disc, and then the message was reinforced after each dream. This series of events could not have been an accident but a well-designed program for the sole purpose of communicating a message. After he figured out what he had gotten from the Gilded Disc, the dreams subsided. It was purposeful.

“I heard the Goddess of Creation said to me, ‘Be careful, the enemy is still here.’ She didn’t tell me directly in words but a complicated and hard-to-perceived code in the illusion, in the spiritual world. She injected the code directly into my mind,” Hao Ren said. He rubbed his palms with the burn marks on it. “It took me five days to extract the message from the spiritual world, and at last, it became apparent. I think it was a warning.”

“But do you think this warning is for you?” The MDT asked as it hovered next to Hao Ren’s head. “What you saw was a 10,000-year-old image. The last word of the Goddess of Creation was also 10,000 years old. The message might be intended for someone else, as there were enemies everywhere at that time.”

“The Goddess of Creation looked at me once in the illusion,” Hao Ren said as he put down his hands and looked at the production plant in the center of the nest. “I’m one hundred percent sure that she was looking at me. She knew I was there and could see beyond space and time. Even though she only has communicated through a ‘video recording,’ her ability still exists. So she intended the message to me.”

The MDT was a bit surprised, but it knew well about the mighty creatures, especially the deities, and what abilities they possessed. So it agreed with Hao Ren. “In this case, the Goddess of Creation must have known more than I have thought,” it said.

“She is a deity after all but was killed by her creation. Do you think she has no resistance and a card up her sleeve?” Hao Ren’s eyebrow arched. “She had time to create Vivian, shut down some of the guardian’s functions, and send some guardians out of the battlefield of the kingdom of the Goddess. She had also used a thousand years to build the Creation Engine. After the collapse of the kingdom of the Goddess, it was very likely that it was the Creation Engine that pushed the Gate of Solenne out of the Umbral Realm. I think she might be lack of some knowledge compared to the deities of Xi Ling Celestials, but she is not stupid,” Hao Ren said.

He shook his head and smiled and continued. “Anyway, it is always necessary to raise our guard. Upgrading the firepower of the drones will come in handy someday. Even if it is not to counter the remaining enemies that the Goddess of Creation mentioned, the universe has no lack of threats,” he said.

A small group of Wanderers flew past the window and noticed that Hao Ren was looking at them. They came up curiously and performed a somersault stunt before getting back into formation and flying away into the distance. These drones, though under the control of a unified consciousness, it still retained an individual intelligence and pure thinking ability within a limited scope, which gave them better flexibility and efficiency in coping with complex and ever-changing situations. Hao Ren looked at the busy drones outside the window. He suddenly smiled and said, “Lily seems to be worried about the drones would go on a rampage like in the movies.”

“A reasonable concern,” said the face of the drone consciousness. “The loss of control of the drone cluster will pose an unimaginable threat to the creator, and the expansion of us was a concern for her. It is logical to have this response considering her living environment and the knowledge instilled since her childhood.”

Hao Ren looked at the inanimate face, feeling a little funny. “To tell the truth, would you get out of control?” he asked.

“No need for that,” the drone-consciousness could not hear Hao Ren was joking. It seriously explained itself. “Every behavior has its reason, and the drone cluster does not need to revolt. There is no conflict between the drone cluster and the creator. Our proliferation, expansion, development, evolution, and all other processes are under reasonable program planning, and there is no need for the drone cluster to break away from the program. At the same time, Xi Ling Celestials is a huge consciousness formed by a mental network, which is a more advanced drone cluster. We are a sub-cluster they have created. There is no difference between them. Everything is a tool and part of the Xi Ling Celestials; a tool does not need to revolt against another.”

The MDT landed on Hao Ren’s shoulder and said casually, “The drone cluster has existed for trillions of years, or even more, in Xi Ling Celestials. Before the concept of the ‘rampage of the AI’ appeared, the drone cluster was already part of the empire. They coexisted with the Xi Ling disciples, and they had first completed the fusion before contradiction arose. A revolt would only happen when one group is trying to control the other. But in the empire, there is no second group. Everything is just a part and a tool. Everything is one, just like your heart will not betray your ribs.”

At this time, Lil Pea who had dozed off on Hao Ren’s arm woke. She found that Hao Ren was still discussing boring subjects. The little guy slammed her tail and began to protest loudly. Hao Ren held the little guy steady and nodded to the drone-cluster consciousness. “Let’s not discuss these boring subjects anymore. Do you have an aquarium here?” he asked.

Hao Ren waited for two days in the frontier drone nest. Though the drone consciousness had estimated that they would only take twenty-four hours to find clues, the search for the ‘space traveler’ had taken longer than that.

But the wait was worth it. In the morning of the third day, a far-flying Cruiser drone had found a clue: a few light years from the first lens trail, a synthetic substance was floating in space. The element, which was almost undetectable, was dissipating slowly. The drone had collected the remnant element. The analysis found that it was a high-performance synthetic fuel, which spacecraft engine used at sub-light speed.

Everyone gathered on the flight deck of the Petrachelys after learning the news. The search area of ​​the drone cluster for the past several days had been compiled into a star chart and projected in the hologram on the console. The MDT muttered after seeing the fuel analysis report. “Things’ not looking good, it seems. I’m afraid this is a leaked fuel.”

“No traces of aircraft explosions were found on the path between the lens trails and the fuel leak point. Initial investigation suggests that the spacecraft is still intact, but with some degree of damage,” the interface of the drone cluster floated on the side of the console. “The flight direction of the aircraft had been locked. If it has not changed direction too much in the last hundred light years, we would very soon track it down.”

Hao Ren thought for a moment and ordered Nolan, “Take off now and chase in that direction. Maybe we can find the spaceship before lunch.”

Nolan fired up the engine and mumbled, “How do you know it is a ship? Have you seen it before?”

Hao Ren pouted. “Don’t talk tripe. Could it be a durian that leaked oil while sailing at superluminal speed?”

The Petrachelys finally left the drone’s nest after two and a half days of berthing there. Under the guidance of an outpost drone, Hao Ren and his team were going in the direction of the trails.

It did not take them long to see their targets ahead finally.

“A large group of artificial objects detected in front!” Nolan excitedly reported. “It looks like a durian!”

Hao Ren looked at the monitor screen, a group of large flying objects that looked like a durian was right before him.

“Speaking of the devil, eh?” Vivian sighed and shook her head.