The Record of Unusual Creatures - Chapter 717

Chapter 717: Ulyanov

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Ulyanov wore his full face helmet all the time except when he was back in the base. The helmet was part of his signature appearance. He wore the helmet not to look cool, or use it as armour. He wore it to keep himself alive, and cover up his horrifying face.

A man with a face even a mother could not love sat behind a desk and fiddled with his equipment. His face was hardly human; large patches of skin were gone, and metal grew within his exposed muscles and bones. Electronic circuits connected to one of his eyeballs, preventing it from dropping off. A metal tube with a valve was fixed where his nose once was. From it, another tube connected it to a cylinder next to the desk. What was left of his teeth was just a row of metal.

Under the helmet, Ulyanov’s true, hidden face was that of a cyborg—a combination of man and machine. It was so strange and terrifying that even Hao Ren was shocked despite having seen many strange things before.

“You are…” Hao Ren could not hide his surprise. “What happened to you?”

“Sixty-five years ago, I worked near the sea of Nano studying whether the Nanomachine Swarm could be used to develop space colonies,” the remaining muscles on Ulyanov’s face twitching with the flexible metal, seemingly smiling at Hao Ren. But the smile was even more terrible than Y’zaks was. “I didn’t manage to escape when the Masters computer hung. One third of my body melted.”

While saying, Ulyanov opened his coat slightly, revealing a transparent chest plate underneath. Malformed internal and artificial organs slowly pulsating in a pale pink solution, as if a cyborg walking out from a horror movie.

“I am one of the few survivors of the disaster. May the longest living one too,” said Ulyanov, pointing to the bed next to him to motion Hao Ren to sit down. “Ahh, you probably won’t be interested about this. You find me for something?”

Hao Ren had just recovered from shock. He as suddenly lost for words. He sat down on the bed nervously and then said, “I just want to ask… Who should I inform if I need to leave the base?”

“Leave the base?” Ulyanov’s voice puzzled. “Where are you going?”

“Just take a stroll, and check out my new home,” Hao Ren shrugged. “And I can’t keep bothering you all the time. I’m not planning to join any group. I’ll leave when the time comes.”

“I know Nolan’s character. She probably wouldn’t mind if you stayed here because she couldn’t have cared less,” Ulyanov said with a coarse voice, which was not coming out from his mouth but a resonance tube in his throat. His vocal cords had become part of the Nanomachine Swarm decades ago. Now, machine had replaced more than half of his physiological functions. “I understand your circumstances. I can go out with you if you don’t mind; it’s my downtime, and furthermore, this place isn’t that safe.”

“No, no, I don’t want to bother you. I was a soldier. I can take care of myself,” Hao Ren waved his hand frantically. “I’m here to find out what else I need to do in order to leave the base. After all, this is a military base.”

Ulyanov laughed silently. “Relax. Grey Fox doesn’t have so many rules, because Nolan is the only rule here. As long as you don’t get into trouble with her, no one will bother you.”

Hao Ren nodded slightly. Ulyanov took something from his pocket and tossed it to Hao Ren. “Take it. Even if you were not one of us, the Grey Fox identity would save you a lot of trouble. You need to have ‘military background’ to be deemed a human; those without an identity are just ‘slags’ from the factory.”

Hao Ren caught the metal plate from Ulyanov. It was a dog tag laser-etched with an insignia of the Grey Fox mercenary regiment. In the chaos of Black Street, a strict set of rule divided and governed people by hierarchy. The leaders and cadres from Zero City were first-class humans. Soldiers and brokers of military background were ‘citizens’. Those without an identity and combat ability were labourers; they were slugs, whose laborious job the Nanomachine Swarm could not replace, working in the filthy factories, and suffering from respiratory and other pollution-related diseases. They relied on coarse food and anaesthetic that Nanomachine Swarm produced to keep them living their short life.

Without a military guarantee, visitors who came to Black Street would be sent to the factories in three days. Those who could come out in one piece were rarer than hen’s teeth. Even if they could escape this, surviving in the slums of Black Street was no better than the ‘slugs’ in the factories.

This was the human society after the collapse of civilisation.

Hao Ren had learned a thing or two about Black Street from the internet. He knew about the rules and environment, so he knew that the dog tag was actually a gift from Nolan. To an outsider, this was an extremely valuable item. He carefully kept the dog tag in his pocket and then looked at Ulyanov curiously. “Are other mercenary groups just as amiable as you are?”

“Other?” Ulyanov laughed, his course voice sounding like a broken old bellows. “You either join them or be thrown into the factories. Most mercenary groups are also human traffickers. You should be grateful that you have met Nolan. She is the toughest and most unruly mercenary here. She set the rules herself; she is the rule. Anyone who get her approval, that person would be safe in Black Street; people respect her.”

Nolan’s face flashed across Hao Ren’s mind; the grey-haired, emotionless mercenary girl, whose eyes had cast an indelible impression in Hao Ren. Whenever he thought of her, he thought of the indescribable alienation and vicissitudes in her eyes, as if a detached person who saw through the world looking at life like an unconcerned spectator. Goose bumps would rose from his back every time he thought of these details. He believed that he had seen in Nolan’s eyes something that did not belong to her theoretically. “Nolan…how old is she?”

“Seventeen, at most eighteen,” Ulyanov said as he looked at Hao Ren’s eyes. “Don’t ask any more. That is all I know. The warlords in this place fear Nolan; they fear her age. It was said that she assassinated two mercenary heads, barehanded, in the cruellest way when she was thirteen. Perhaps you might think you saved her from Khiton, but in fact Nolan has more than one hundred ways to kill all the ambushers she met today.”

Hao Ren was stunned. “Is she a superwoman?”

“Some say she is actually a ‘third-generation Evolved’ but disguising as first generation. Some say she was actually a soldier created before the Far East Alliance fell. You can search for War Men’s Plan’, it was as real as it could get,” Ulyanov shook his head, put the adjusted breath filter back into the helmet, removed the breathing tube from his nose and put on the helmet again. “But I suggest that you better don’t believe it and don’t ask Nolan to ask it too. Though she is usually very good-tempered, you don’t want to anger her because she is unbeatable. Ahh… It feels so good to have the helmet back on my face again.”

After putting on his helmet, Ulyanov connected several wires extending from his jacket to his helmet. He then pulled up the alloy zip on his coat, covering himself up from head to toe becoming a biker-like weird soldier. His helmet provided him with a breathing assistance and continuously released electrical signals to ensure that his severely damaged brain could continue to function. He had a layer of armour beneath his coat that released another signal to suppress the Nanomachine Swarm remnants to prevent those lethal little things from completely cut off his spine. These devices and the artificial organs in the body together formed a strangely deformed body that had prolonged his life for sixty-five years. As long as his brain lived, the body would continue to live longer than any human being could.

Sixty-five years ago, he lost one-third of his body. Sixty-five years later, eighty percent of his body had been renewed and transformed. This level of transformation was unique even in the second generation Evolved. It was difficult to say whether Ulyanov was still a human or a cyborg. But one thing was certain was that this old soldier was still alive until this day.

Why did he insist on living to this day?

Hao Ren looked at Ulyanov’s not so burly body. He knew that this disfigured veteran soldier certainly had more stories. But, he had not the opportunity to get to know more. He thanked Ulyanov for telling him so many things today before he left.

Chapter 718: Waking Up

Hao Ren threw the MDT cum dead body into his Dimensional Pocket. He did not want anything to happen to the carrier while he was away from the Plane of Dreams. After he deliberately greeted several mercenaries, he left Gray Fox with swagger.

He was not worried about someone finding the body in the room missing: Firstly, he would only be away for a day, so the mercenaries would unlikely break into his room. Secondly, he had left an autonomous robot behind in the place. If someone broke in, the robot would alert him immediately as it delayed the intruder for a while. He would be able to sneak back in time.

However, his hunch told him that these things were probably not going to happen.

After he left the base, Hao Ren came to a junction leading to the town where Khiton’s body was hung. His body was suspended from a lamppost with a big sign below it, which read “This Is What Happens to Those Who Betray Gray Fox”.

“I still can’t believe Nolan’s only 17,” Hao Ren muttered in a low voice, passing below Khiton’s body. “Since Ulyanov can live so long with the help of artificial organs, Nolan’s age may not be her real age.”

“If only I can fully function,” the MDT spoke in his head, “I’d be able to scan the girl and know what she’s thinking. Unfortunately, I can’t even figure out my own body right now…”

Hao Ren walked down the street full of potholes into the town. After he passed through the last sentry post of Gray Fox, he made a turn into a winding alley. There were only three areas in Black Street: the factories, barracks, and slums. He was now near the borders of the slums, and pungent odor filled the air. Rusted tin houses had old clothes akin to rags hanging on them. The streets were always wet. Dirty and toxic sewage leaking from the factory pipes flowed out in the open. Hao Ren had to weave around the alley carefully. He noticed someone in a nearby tin house was peeking out; trepidatious eyes peered from behind the windows because someone in a clean and tidy dress with a mercenary dog tag was intruding into their neighborhood. They sensed something was not good.

Hao Ren ignored the snoops and finally found a quiet corner. Making sure no one saw him, he whispered. “Get me out.”

Vertigo and weightlessness struck. Hao Ren felt a moment of blackout before waking up on his familiar bed. He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of his bedroom. Despite only staying in the dream for over half a day, there was a stark difference between the two worlds. When he saw his home and became a little emotion: Home is the best place in the world.

It was nightfall. There was no light in the room. It was dark even in the living hall. Probably everyone had fallen asleep. Hao Ren fumbled to find the light switch. As soon as he got himself up, a pair of golden eyes glowed in the dark staring at him. “You’re awake! Mr. Landlord!”

Shocked, he looked carefully at it and only found Lily was in front of him. There was nothing wrong with the werewolf maiden except her pair of golden eyes that glowed in the dark, almost like a pair of will-o’-the-wisp! He reached out and pressed his hand on the furry head of Lily. “Are you out of your mind? What are you doing here in my room in the middle of the night?”

Lily pushed his hand away, arms akimbo staring at him. “I was waiting for you for dinner!”

Hao Ren turned the light on and saw the steaming hot food that Vivian had reheated many times on the small table next to him. He looked at Lily, who could no longer hold her eyes open, feeling surprised and touched. “I’ve never thought of that. Thank you. Where did Vivian go?”

He could understand it if it was Vivian waiting for him, but he could not fathom it—why Lily? Thoughtfulness had never been part of the husky. Her mind did not work that way. Now, her arms still akimbo. “Battie is taking a night stroll outside. She asked me to wait here. And I have reheated the meal for you; the MDT had just informed me that you were about to wake up.”

Knowing Vivian had arranged the meal, Hao Ren felt his worldview normalized. The husky would not be on her initiative. He suddenly felt hungry, as he had gone without a single drop of water from noon to midnight. But when he came to the table, he froze. “What happened to this bun?”

Lily turned her head away. “I took a bite…”

Hao Ren: “…”

Lily gritted her teeth and took out a pack of spicy strips from her pocket. She gave it to Hao Ren. “For you. It’s so much more delicious than the steamed bun.”

Hao Ren took the spicy strip with a forced smile, thinking that she was indeed a straightforward maiden. While having his late dinner, Hao Ren glanced out the window at the night sky. “What time is it now?”

Lily sat down on the bedside, swinging her legs boringly as she yawned. “Half past ten. So you had gone to the Plane of Dreams again? The MDT said that you were exploring a new world. What does it look like?”

Lily’s eyes glowed as the sleepiness in her eyes quickly disappeared. Her standard biological clock would have her drowsing after ten at night, but weirdly, she had not. So there was more to keep the dinner warm for Hao Ren than meets the eye. She was waiting for stories.

Hao Ren rolled his eyes. “Let me finish eating first. I’m starving. Can you stop sweeping the bed with your tail? Do you know hard difficult it is to clean up the hair?”

After he finished eating, Lily graciously cleaned the table up. Meanwhile, Vivian just happened to come back from outside. The three of them in Hao Ren’s room. Hao Ren knocked the MDT that still played dead on the bedside table. “Wake up, wake up! You’re just a freaking PDA; don’t pretend you’re still in a trauma!”

The MDT had not been moving since returning to the surface world, but the flickering lights on it suggested that it was alive and kicking. It was not until Hao Ren poked it that it staggered to get up. “Phew… my previous and perfect body! Got it back finally! I was enjoying it just now!”

Hao Ren felt goosebumps rose on his skin. “You found like a sexual pervert.”

The MDT was pissed. “It’s better than necrophilia.”

Lily suddenly looked at Hao Ren with an odd expression. “Necrophilia? What were you doing in the Plane of Dreams, Mr. Landlord?”

The quizzical sights of Lily and Vivian jittered Hao Ren. He could not help thinking of how the MDT had turned into a dead girl in the Plane of Dreams, and how people mistook the brick as his girlfriend. It was such a ball-ache as he thought of it. He buried his face in his hand. “On, don’t mention it, I screwed the pooch…”

As his voice trailed off, a silver light flashed across the room. Lily had gone hiding under the bed, only leaving her head poking out cautiously. “Mr… Mr. Landlord, a bachelor dog has dignity too! You can’t take advantage of…”

Hao Ren: “…”

He stepped forward, grabbed Lily by the ear, and pulled her out from under the bed. “Sit still here! I’m saying that I screwed up things in the Plane of Dreams. Hey, please don’t bite!”

Biting in Hao Ren’s wrist, Lily voice mumbled in her throat. “But it’s sexual harassing!”

Vivian folded her arms across her chest, watching in excitement. She let Lily gnaw on Hao Ren’s wrist for a moment before she opened her mouth. “Mr. Landlord, for so long you have been living with a bunch of demons, haven’t you learned?”

Hao Ren forced Lily into a chair. Vivian’s interruption had made forgetting about the frustration for now. He began to narrate his and the MDT’s encounters in the Plane of Dreams, most importantly, about the suspicious things during the operation. He wanted to know Vivian and Lily’s thoughts on this.

Lily’s might look like a sloth, but mentally, she was no slowcoach at all. She was witty, able to offer better suggestions to difficult questions than Vivian could sometimes.

There had been many question marks raised for their voyage in the ‘dream.’ Whether it was into a strange planet or dream, sudden and uncontrolled teleportation was abnormal. The most bizarre of all was what had happened to the MDT—a highly sophisticated gadget that was even more reliable than the human brain had had mental abnormalities.

Hao Ren poked at the MDT floating in front of his eyes. “But I do think that this bugger has never been normal since day one. So nothing would surprise me anymore.”

The MDT suddenly hit on Hao Ren’s head in protest.

“Please be reminded that you’re no longer a girl now. I wouldn’t think twice to hit you back!” Hao Ren snorted.

Lily looked at Hao Ren curiously. “Mr. Landlord, you said you had got a mercenary dog tag? Could you let me take a look?”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you’re weird,” Hao Ren said, reaching for the identity tag he had should have brought out from the Plane of Dreams. “This is… Oh wait, where is my dog tag?”

Chapter 719: No Take Away

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, Hao Ren found another unexplained problem. “It’s gone. MDT, your new body is gone.”

“I don’t miss the body,” 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 leaned over, amazed by what had happened. “You have met many strange things this time?” Lily asked, wagging her tail excitedly.

“The mapping relationship between the Plane of Dreams and the real world could have changed, and the change was 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, it was the interface the drone clusters used to communicate with their creator. Hao Ren gave the drone clusters this interface not long ago because he felt that his sentinels should look more appealing. At least a holographic human would be much better than some figures and charts.

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

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

“Understood. Searching now, please wait a moment,” the drone’s consciousness replied and then went silent for a few seconds. “Data has been sent. The drone clusters found no observable variation in the universe. All distortion readings of the basic parameters are within 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.