The Record of Unusual Creatures - Chapter 696

Chapter 696: Vivian’s Secret

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The blood sample stayed quietly in the tube just like any other liquid—it was probably strange to describe the fluid 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 were in space. “No wonder you couldn’t recognize it. It 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 undoubtedly 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 definite 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. But tests showed that it was a distinct chemical substance and had no living cells. 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 crystallizing 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 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 although 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 your question, that would be embarrassing to you,” Raven 12345 said and let out a sigh. “I can divulge a little though—Vivian is an exceptional existence, different from all otherworldlings.”

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 to be 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 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 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 the death of the Goddess of Creation.”

Hao Ren was stunned this time. He did not expect Raven to know it. “You know the specific time of the 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 appeared 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 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 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 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 otherworldlings and the Plane of Dreams would be lost as 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. 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 of each other ensure that things stay where they are in the universe and allow the universe to determine the authenticity of each of them. That 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’ during the Earth’s Methodological Era are only 1KB worth of data—the same storage space anyone 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, it would only affect the virtual world in the program. There are 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.”

Chapter 697: Them

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Cold sweat began to trickle down his forehead again. Although he could not wrap his head around many things that Raven 12345 said, he could sense that many of them were pretty nasty. “On the verge of spilling over? What does that… mean?”

“She has a large amount of information that looks like garbled characters. It’s a small file with only two lines of text, but a dozen GB of volume.” Raven 12345 had been trying to explain what happened to Vivian in words that Hao Ren could understand. “The extra information could be anything—her memory of the Plane of Dreams, her massive inner personality, her implicit curse, or… symbols that some half-baked goddess left on her. But before that information comes into effect, nobody can tell what it is. At this moment, I can only say that the information is harmless… at least ever since I began to pay attention to this matter. There hasn’t been any undue effect so far.”

“Just like the cause and effect entanglement that some people talk about?” Hao Ren frowned. “Nonetheless, it’s definitely not a good thing to have so many extra things in the body. Any way to get rid of them?”

“You are not even sure what that information is, and how dare you decide to remove it?” Raven 12345 glanced at Hao Ren. “That’s why I suspect Vivian has some connection with the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams. The information tangled up in her body has exceeded the ‘regulation’ of mortal species and is more Gold-like. Although she is no divine, the complexity doesn’t help but let people think so. Perhaps God makes her. Maybe… Well, forget it, you won’t understand it anyway.”

“Perhaps she a God’s creation is buried inside her, isn’t it?” Hao Ren suddenly hit the nail on the head as he had guessed what the Goddess wanted to say. “Why are you only telling me this now?”

Raven 12345 stated directly into Hao Ren’s eyes. “You seem to care a lot about her.”

Hao Ren was startled. His voice was became somewhat unnatural. “Err… yes, a bit. After all, we have been together for so long, you can’t really say we don’t care about each other at all.”

“There are things I do know better than you, including Vivian,” Raven 12345 lowered her head slightly. “But I hope you better believe it: I didn’t tell you that was because I want to protect both of you.”

Hao Ren forced a smile and shrugged his shoulders. “This sounds like a classic excuse. Why not you talk about the benefits of not telling us?”

Raven 12345 ignored him. “If the ‘truth’ would cause the information she carries to overflow? What if the excessive information Vivian carries is a seal and the key to unsealing it lies in her memory or her self-awareness? Or what if she possesses the hidden ability to retrieve keywords from the memories of people around her? I can’t unpack her information right now, so I’m not sure the information I have now could be a trigger. So I have to be careful.”

Hao Ren was dumbfounded. “It sounds like something out of Arabian Nights.”

“But this kind of thing could really happen,” Raven 12345 was very serious. “I have seen enough things. The universe is vast place. Dangers you don’t know are everywhere.”

Hao Ren was silent for a moment as he realised that he could only believe what the Goddess said now. But he also had doubts. “Then is it okay for you to tell me this?”

“I didn’t tell you anything substantive,” Raven 12345 blinked, she sounded freaking sarcastic. “I believe that even if Vivian knew what I told you today, she wouldn’t ‘overspill’. I have calculated it perfectly.”

Hao Ren raised his hand and surrendered himself. “Okay, okay, let’s assume that you’re right. But then again, I thought that Goddess should know all, and I’m surprised that you don’t know so many things.”

Raven 12345 pursed her lips. “That depends on what knowledge. Within the scope of mortals’ knowledge, true God is indeed omniscient and omnipotent, because everything those mortals can perceive is a ‘subset’ of the episode of the true God, but outside this range, for example, it involves another real God… I’m just like you, I can only explore.”

The two of them were silent for a while, and then almost spoke simultaneously,

“Is the excess information harmful to Vivian?””Don’t worry about the girl for now.”

“I knew you were going to ask this,” Raven 12345 said, ploughing her hair in an unsightly manner, as if a decadent who only ventured outside once every two months. She yelled in a lazy tone of voice, “Don’t worry, I love my people, I treat my soldiers like my children… whatever it is, I will not let you fall into danger. The excess information had been with Vivian for more than ten thousand years. But there have been no problems in the past, it should be just fine in for now as well. As long as you find the whereabouts of the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams, I guess the maiden would be fine.”

Hao Ren could only hope things would go as per what the Goddess said. Just when he fell into silence, Raven 12345 reminded him. “Although theoretically there will be no any problem, but don’t you ever try to mention this to Vivian. Mental pressure may cause those information spillovers.”

Hao Ren suddenly came to his sense and nodded heavily. “Got it. I won’t tell her.”

Raven 12345 smiled, and patted his shoulder with the same force the iron man would normally unleash on the villains. “Good! You too, don’t fall into mental quagmire. I’ll keep investigating. If there’s anything… I’ll tell you in the first instance. I know how it feels when something is hanging around your head.”

“I trust you,” Hao Ren forced a smile, temporarily set the matter aside. Then a question that flashed across his mind during the conversation earlier came to mind. “Wait a second. You have mentioned Vivian came to Earth 48 hours before the Goddess of Creation fell. That is to say, the first hole in the Wall of Reality had appeared before the large-scale cracks happened. Is it not the fallen of the Goddess the cause of the arrival of otherworldlings to Earth?”

“I have the same question,” Raven 12345 unconsciously drew a circle with her finger on the round table. “To tell the truth, I was startled when I finished tracing the timeline. Though I was not aware of the deicidal incident at that time, I have always guessed that something might have happened to the Goddess of Creation that damages the Wall of Reality. But now it seems that the damage has already occurred before the deicide. The deicidal incident had only aggravated the size of the fissure. Although the two events happened just 48-hour apart, there was a time difference.”

“Could it be that during the brutal battle, the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams was hanging on for a very long time—from the beginning of the brutal assault to her death, she bored a hole in the Wall of Reality and threw as many otherworldlings as possible to the other side while installing a compressed file on Vivian…”

Raven 12345 looked at Hao Ren with a wacky look. “She did so many things at once? She wasn’t growing but dying at that moment, you know?”

Only the Goddess could come up with such an analogy.

“Okay, I also know my theory is too far-fetched,” Hao Ren said. “According to what the guardian said at the time, the Goddess couldn’t do so many things at the same time considering her circumstance right before her death. And also it looks like the Goddess didn’t even know the existence of the Wall of Reality either.”

Raven 12345 suddenly looked at the sky. “Oh, it’s getting late. Do you want to stay for dinner?”

“Still need to look at the sky to know the time in this place?” Hao Ren squinted at his goddess. “And you’re now on leave. You didn’t even cook noodles today. Are you expecting me to drink just cold plain water? I better go home and eat Vivian’s home-cooked food.”

Raven 12345 giggled. “Good. You had better leave now. Saving me the hassle of cooking you dinner.”

Hao Ren got up and said goodbye. As the MDT opened up the portal, Raven 12345 suddenly said, “Remember, don’t tell her too much when you get back there. Trust me, nothing will happen.”

“Then I also hope that you can solve the case as soon as possible so that I can have peace of mind.”

After Hao Ren disappeared in the teleporting light, Raven 12345 breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s hard to appease workers nowadays…”

Before her voice trailed off, a ring of light had appeared under her feet. The next moment she knew it, she had already come to an empty space.

It was the room located in the lower part of the mansion, separated by a myriad of columns, and as wide as an endless, marvellous hall, the goddess’ storage room.

Raven 12345 snapped her fingers slightly. The two pillars in front of her began to ripple. Under this illusionary wave, some neatly arranged things slowly emerged.

As the elusive ripples subsided, those things emerged one by one: they were coffin-like crystal containers. Dozens of them lined up in a row, suspended, and tilted at an angle in mid-air. Through a transparent lid, one could clearly see the content inside.

Each container contained a girl who was quietly sleeping inside. Each of them has exactly the same looks, same long red hair, same exquisite facial features, as well as the beautiful features of Eurasian, and the pale, almost perfect, beautiful, porcelain-like skin.

Vivian, there were more than twenty Vivians slept here.

“Don’t ever create trouble again…” Raven 12345 sighed. She grumbled but still examined each container carefully. “Suddenly throwing tantrums and destroying my garden… Now it seems they are slept again.”

After making sure all sleeping individuals were safe, she came to the last crystal container, which was empty.

Raven 12345 quietly watched for a while and put the blood sample that Hao Ren had collected before into the empty container. “Well, this one…represents the fallen.”

Chapter 698: Peaceful Day

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Actually, Hao Ren already had a vague feeling that the vampire maiden possessed many secrets earlier on. This was not only his intuition at work, but there were many signs that were hard to ignore.

Frequent sleep and loss of memory, a completely different habit from that of a normal Blood Clan member, a series of abilities that only she herself could master, and her weird “body”, which could divide itself into transcendent bats. All of this was enough to make Vivian a particularly special individual. What made it even more interesting was the sculpture they found in the ruins of Olympus, and the recent “evil spirit” incident. With so many incidents, who would not have suspected it?

However, Vivian had lived for over 10,000 years and she seemed completely fine.

After leaving Raven 12345’s place, Hao Ren had not felt much relaxed. The excess information that Vivian had bothered him very much. He couldn’t help thinking about the ‘entangled causality’ argument. In most stories, entangled causality might not seem like a good thing.

The ‘causality’ entangling Vivian all seemed to point to the Plane of Dreams. Perhaps after revealing the secret of the Plane of Dreams, everything would become clear.

“My advice is that don’t let yourself fall into the quandary for too long,” the voice of MDT woke him up from his deep thoughts. “People would be suspicious of you if you keep looking that way. Entangled causality…. Sounds scary but it is nothing more than getting you entangled in troubles. As long as you have enough ability to solve problem, entangled causality is usually not fatal. Or you have no self-confidence?”

Hao Ren looked up and saw the doorstep of his house not far ahead. He patted his face and threw aside the things that he could not solve for a moment. “Screw it! Problems are meant to be solved!”

The MDT buzzed into his head. “This is it!”

Pushing the door open and stepping into the house, the oncoming cool breeze carried the heat and upset feeling that had accumulated along the way away. Hao Ren took a deep breath and felt that he was like standing in front of a waterfall—it was very pleasant. He flung himself into the sofa contentedly. His eyes closed as he sighed. “Good to be home…”

Before his voice trailed off, he heard a meow, followed by a flash of cold light in his peripheral vision. Something scratched his face. He scrambled to the side, only to see that Rollie was sulking angrily on the arm of the sofa, and her tail rested on where he had just sat—obviously, he had sat on the cat’s tail.

“I’m sorry I didn’t see you… Hey, wait a second. How many times have I told you, don’t ever squat on the handrails! Do you know how heavy you are now?”

Rollie stared at Hao Ren, baring her teeth before she turned away and continued fiddling with the remote control.

The MDT’s voice came from the side. “You’ve come to a situation where you found yourself were forced to apologise to your own pet, and the most humiliating was she seemed to not give you a hoot.”

“Shut up.”

However, he was thankful to Dumb Cat; Hao Ren had completely come out from his stress and anxiety. He did not have to worry that other family members would see how messed up he was. He sighed, shook his head, stepped forward to push Rollie’s tail to one side, and then sat in his usual customary position and turned to discuss with his cat. “Can I watch TV?”

Dumb Cat hid the TV remote control under her clothes. “No.”

Hao Ren sullenly buried his face in his hand. He did not only have to apologise to his pet, but also even have to get his pet’s permission in order to watch the TV. Right now, he really missed the time when Rollie had not transcended. At that time, the cat was so much easier to deal with; he would just have to grab the cat by its neck and throw her outside…

He could not help turning around and staring at the cat-maiden, as if looking for the right angle and position where he needed to grab and toss her away. But he quickly sighed: now the shoe was in the other foot, there is no way for him to do that already. If he were to slap the cat now, probably all the anti-animal cruelty, feminist, and human rights organisations would show up protesting in his doorstep.

Rollie felt an unexplained chill behind her neck. She was scared a little and looked at Hao Ren with a puzzled look. Her eyes were reflecting her master’s lazy face. “Big boss Cat, were you in bad mood? Are you okay now?”

It was called animal’s intuition. The demonic cat who had yet fully shed her animal instinct could already feel the slight changes in Hao Ren’s mood. The cat-maiden’s concern for him had pleasantly surprised Hao Ren. He could not help but smile back, reached out, and cuddled her ear. “I’m fine.”

“Oh, so I will get little dried fish today?”

Hao Ren: “…”

Every time his impression about Dumb Cat changed, it would be ruined by her dried-fish obsession.

At this time, Vivian was rubbing her hands as she walked out from the kitchen. She had sensed the Hao Ren was back home so she came out to meet him. “You’re back! I thought that the Goddess would ask you to stay for dinner. Dinner will be ready in a short while. Doggie and I had gone out to the market just now.”

Seeing Vivian, Hao Ren still could not help but think of what Raven 12345 had said to him. He instinctively took a few glances at the vampire maiden, as if he wanted to ‘see’ what information she was carrying in her body. Of course doing that made no sense.

“Why are you staring at me like that? Oil on my face?” Vivian was baffled, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

Hao Ren quickly came out from his thought and steered away from the subject. “Oh, nothing. I just want to say you look good in this dress.”

Vivian was even more baffled. She looked down at her body; apart from an old dress, there was a new apron that she sewed it herself. So she was rightly mistaken. “Oh, you like the apron…”

Hao Ren did not know what the maiden was thinking. He looked her. She was in her human form. There was no ice and cool air. He was a little surprised. “Are you not responsible for making cool air today?”

Vivian lifted her finger and pointed in the direction of the stairs. “They are the one on duty today. The two girls want us experience icy ocean breeze.”

Hao Ren did not notice anything else in the living at first. Now when he looked up the stairs he was shocked. Two giant snake tails were lying on the stairs all the way down from the upper floor. He looked up. It Nangong Wuyue and Ayesha were lying side-by-side on the stairs baring their tails, which covered the entire stairway and emanated a humidly cool breeze that wafted through the entire house. Now he only realised the unusual humid cool air that differed from the dry and cold air that Vivian usually made.

“The house looks like a zoo all day,” looking at this bizarre scene, Hao Ren’s various geeks in movies began to roll out in his mind. “For the unaware, they would jump out of their skin if they see this… By the way, why do you guys have to lie on the stairs just to make some cool air?”

The tail on the ground floor that belonged Nangong Wuyue lifted up and waved as her voice was heard from the first floor. “It’s therapeutics. Lying on a slope and stretching tail cures insomnia, mom taught me that. She said it is called Gravity Therapy.”

Hao Ren was startled for a moment, he was thinking he had better not to dive deep into the habits of the demonic girls. But he still asked quietly, “How should people get up the stairs?”

Nangong Wuyue kept swinging her tail. “Mr. Landlord, let’s try it. I can roll you up. It’s definitely better than the elevator.”

“Then what about getting down the stairs?”

As soon as his voice fell, he saw Y’lisabet jumping on the landing on the first floor. The little girl motioned to the two sirens before she sat down directly on Ayesha’s tail, and screamed excitedly while sliding all the way down. These unusual creatures’ outside-the-box creativity made him speechless and impressed, for better or worse. He thought that he wouldn’t be surprised if one day his house’s stairs could transcended as well.

As he was thinking, Y’lisabet already cheerfully let Nangong Wuyue roll her up the first floor as she screamed in excitement. He quickly could only correct what he thought: it could be a transcending slide.

No matter how much trouble the outside world was wait for him, Hao Ren’s house was having another peaceful day as always.

At least for now.