The Record of Unusual Creatures

Someone was there!

This shocking fact stunned Hao Ren, but his reaction was not slow. He was just as fast as the shadow that flashed across the top of the wall. “Catch him!” he shouted.

A white figure flew past Hao Ren, followed by a swarm of bats that smelled of blood. Hao Ren, Vivian, and Lily had scaled over the collapsed stonewall as a tall, agile figure was fleeing from the corner of the building. They were in a high-speed chase. They moved so fast that the surroundings faded past them like ghosts. But the shadow was quick; even Lily had a hard time catching up. It eluded Lily’s pouncing maneuver and changed directions as it weaved through the collapsed walls. The shadow was familiar with the environment, and it added a challenge for Hao Ren and the rest.

But they somehow managed to reduce the distance. Vivian turned into a swarm of bats in the air, the walls on the ground were not obstacles to her anymore. She started to fire icicles and lightning from the sky. Her aerial attack caught the mysterious man off guard. He used magic shadows to counter Vivian’s long-range strike, but this had significantly affected his speed.

At last, the shadow scaled over a wall and was out in the open. The man rolled on the ground and dodged the Lightning Strike move of Vivian. Bouncing up like a monkey, the man drew a short knife from his waist to perform a desperate counterattack. At this moment, a sudden loud bang came from the side. Debris and dust were flying everywhere as Lily smashed through a megalithic building and came before them—she had lost patience negotiating the corners, so she chose the most direct route.

“Don’t move!” Lily, covered in dust from head to toe, shouted as she raised a slate of at least one tonne heavy. “I can hit the bullseyes with this piece of brick. So you better don’t run.”

Now, Hao Ren could see the figure. It was a tall, muscular young man, dressed in a strange costume that looked like an animal skin, with green paint stripes across his face. His hair was draped over the back as the Red Indians did. He had a short bow and a sharp knife, but he seemed to have dropped his quiver while he fled.

Lily’s action had this weird man rooted to the spot. Apparently, in the man’s worldview, a creature that could plow through a three-story stone wall with bare-headed and was still able to hold up a tonne-heavy stone while jumping around did not exist in this world. The man did not seem to understand what Lily said though. He thought she was making a roar before throwing the stone at him. So he kept running.

Hao Ren took out his spear and blocked his escape route with a plasma flare.

“Grukkak! Talta Talu!” The man, who looked like a Red Indian, said something. But no one understood him. The man turned and ran in another direction.

Hessiana’s two sidekicks lunged out from the shadows. Turcan moved like a ghost before the mysterious man and blocked him with an aristocratic sword while Kassandra was up in the air holding a bloody red magic spear aiming straight at the enemy on the ground.

The man had no escape now.

“Calm down. Put down your weapon. We’re not a threat,” Hao Ren said as he inched slowly toward the native. At the same time, Lily waved her hand and slowly put down the giant brick. “I know we have a communication problem. But it will go away soon…”

Nangong Sanba teleported himself up beside Hao Ren and said, “Since you know he doesn’t understand you, why did you talk so much?”

Hao Ren gave him a sideways look. “Oh come on, it’s called SOP.”

By now, Nangong Wuyue had climbed out from the other side of the wall. She came out now because she knew the danger was over.

They narrowed the encirclement, and the indigenous man seemed to know these people were going to ‘catch him alive.’ He wielded his short knife and retreated nervously. Judging from his movement and the way he held the knife, he was a warrior. The man kept uttering some words in his mouth, but no one understood it. But the translation plug-in was working quickly.

Reading the mind, bridging the brain waves, reorganizing information–all these happened in a split second. Hao Ren uttered a few words, with trials and errors, the first language library was ready.

“Please lay down your weapon. We are not hostile. If you cooperate, I can guarantee your safety.”

Hao Ren spoke but was in the man’s language this time.

The man was startled. He shouted. “Demon! You stole my language!”

Hao Ren was startled too. And, he forced a smile. “The native of this land seems to be very imaginative,” he thought.

“We are not demons,” Nangong Wuyue said. She finally took up the courage though still hiding behind Hao Ren. “We are… well, an expedition team. We are passing by, and we don’t even know someone is living here. You see, we have put down our weapons.”

The man, unconvinced, looked at Lily cautiously. His face was like “you are kidding me.” With the advantage of size, Lily did not even need a weapon, he figured. Lily did not even look at him as she shook the dirt off her body.

They were now in a stalemate. It would be difficult to let the man ease himself. But it was no surprise. The Extra-ethnic Conflict Reconciliation Skills and Communication Methods in Special Situations manuals that he read came in handy now. Now the man started to calm down, and it was only a matter of time before they could talk. So he took it easy. At this time, a swarm of bats came from above and descended next to Hao Ren before it transformed back into Vivian.

“Wow, things seem to become weirder by the day,” Vivian said. “I couldn’t believe there are people in this world. Inferno, the mysterious realm, the world with only grass and flowers now has a human! I wonder those old coots back home would believe what I’m going to tell them.”

She then turned and looked curiously at the indigenous man who painted his face like a tribal warrior.

At the same time, the ‘tribal warrior’ also looked at Vivian’s face.

The man suddenly seemed to have gotten the shock of his life as the short knife in his hand was glowing in red. The tribal warrior instinctively knelt and greeted Vivian with great reverence. “Goddess, you have come! You have come to this world!”

Vivian was also getting the shock of her life too. She bounced back several feet and hid behind Hao Ren. “What’s wrong with this man?”

Now it perplexed Hao Ren. At this time, Hessiana came up from a distance—in fact, she had already arrived earlier, but she was standing guard from afar, in case there were more such indigenous people nearby.

The tribal warrior was stunned when he saw Hessiana. He was confused about this woman with Vivian.

His short knife also glowed in red albeit a little lesser when Hessiana came close.

Everyone exchanged a look as if saying “what was going on here?”

“Can we talk nicely now?” Lily had finally dusted the debris on her body. She was still a straight talker though. “Battie, he seems to have mistaken you as someone else.”

“He just mentioned ‘Goddess,'” Hao Ren said. He seemed to have figured out something. “Those slates mention about the Goddess too… I think we have hit the jackpot!”

There was only one Goddess as far as the faith of the people on the planet where the First Born existed concerned.

It was the Goddess of Creation.

Raven 12345’s words echoed in Hao Ren’s mind.

Vivian was not the Goddess of Creation, but she had everything to do with it.

He finally found the connection between Vivian and the Goddess of Creation on this planet!