The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren did not conceal his worries. He told of the many doubts he had about the guardians’ insanity to those around him.

The general view was that there was a hidden hand behind all of this, and what happened in the Plane of Dreams had something to do with it. Lily was more than happy to make this hidden hand the source of all problems and be blamed for all the troubles in the future. Everyone was delighted to finally find a guy who could not possibly wash its hands off the matters.

But they had yet known the identity of this hidden hand.

Before that, Hao Ren had studied the insanity of the guardians in his own way. Other than the noticeable changes in appearance, he did not find any negative forces in the guardians. But he knew his investigation was not comprehensive, as proven by the corruption of Yggdrasil. What happened to Yggdrasil began from an illusory level, from where the corruption spread into the real world in its final stage. Since the discovery of this hidden corruption, could it be that other guardians also experienced similar condition?

Whitey floated around the Throat of Toka, first lamenting about the size of her compatriot before plunging headfirst into the bottomless abyss.

When Whitey jumped into the cave, the nerves in the Throat of Toka was responding. Lights came up from the cave, hopping along the tentacles, and causing a burst of electric arcs at the nerve-pulse needle towers. Hao Ren did not know what method Whitey was using to test the enormous creature that had a symbiotic relationship with the planet, but he knew Whitey had found something.

It was ten minutes later that the energy surge around the Throat of Toka finally subsided, and a white shadow emerged from a tentacle next to Hao Ren. “The situation down there is messy. This is the first time I have ever seen the internal of other First Born that is so different from mine.”

“Whitey? How come you become a formless light again?” Hao Ren was stunned.

Whitey froze, only now realizing that she had lost her human appearance. Embarrassedly, she asked, “How did I look like before?”

Everyone was speechless.

It seemed that Whitey was affected after entering the body of Toka, her memory was confused. But thank goodness, the MDT had the record of her image and Whitey was able to restore her earlier ‘humanoid interface.’ Hao Ren could not wait to know what she had found.

“It’s kind of hard to draw conclusions,” Whitey said apologetically, shaking her head. “He has neither brains nor soul. I could only detect the primitive nerve impulse deep inside the planet. But there is no way to determine if there is a tendency of depravity in the nerve impulse.”

Disappointed, Hao Ren had hoped the First Born as unique as Yggdrasil could find clues of the corruption of the other First Borns.

He had thought about Godslayer, who was familiar with the corruptive evil forces and had found the source of corruption in the spiritual world of Yggdrasil. Unfortunately, the sword had lost most of its power. It could only sense whether there were corrupting forces homologous to itself only after entering the spiritual world of the target. But just now, Whitey had mentioned that Toka had no brains and thinking ability. The sensory ability of Godslayer was useless here.

Even if Dr. Hao would like to repeat his feat of treating Yggdrasil on Toka, Toka had no brain.

“But it is not without any findings,” Whitey suddenly said.

“Stop letting us guessing!” Hao Ren said.

“It is only a suspicious lead, not something concrete,” Whitey said with a poker face. “I found some traces of suspected corruption in several ganglia of Toka. Those ganglia with traces of violent thinking were immersed in the lifeblood that has gone bad. The brain might have been removed, but the mental energy of the First Born is strong enough to leave behind these traces.”

“Signs of corruption? The lifeblood that has gone bad?” Hao Ren froze. “That is not right. I have left probes on this planet conducting a check on every inch of Toka before but found nothing.”

“The corruption doesn’t have to be serious enough to cause visible symptoms.” Whitey glanced at Hao Ren. “The lifeblood is the source of life Mother created. Every minute change of the lifeblood would manifest many messages. You might find some changes normal and part of the evolution, but to us, it could be abnormal. Well, it is something difficult to explain clearly.”

“There is nothing difficult to understand,” Lily said, cutting in suddenly. “As the old saying goes, ‘insider knows the ropes, while outsider just comes along for the ride.’ Two men holding hands may be a loving picture to me, but Mr. Landlord may find it unpalatable.”

“Is that how you interpret ‘insider knows the ropes, while outsider just comes along for the ride’? Hao Ren asked, glaring at the husky while other was stunned.

“Is this phrase description of corruption?” Whitey asked Lily after thinking for a moment.

“Yes, definitely! It is extremely appropriate,” Hao Ren and Nangong Sanba said in unison.

“Spare me, please! Can you guys say something more serious?” Vivian said.

Hao Ren hemmed. “Whatever. At least it is now certain that the guardians went insane after the goddess was killed not because they were enraged—at least not the sole reason. It was the self-proclaimed Cosmic Progenitor the hidden hand that had caused the current situation. I personally think that the way it interfered is similar to how they tempted the treacherous children—they magnified the negative emotions inside the guardians.”

“But what I know is still too little,” Whitey said. “Toka is not a good sample for the study. I need a more complete sample to understand what happened to the Guardians.”

“I have one,” Hao Ren said, smiling. “I have a large space station in the Plane of Dreams where two First Borns are held. The best thing is, both are alive.”

Whitey was delighted but only for a while. “I can’t go back to that world. You know, the condition of the Wall of Reality could no longer tolerate individual like me to cross again.”

Hao Ren patted Whitey on her shoulder, but his hand swooped through her. Embarrassedly, he retracted his hand. “You are right, it is difficult to send you back to the Plane of Dreams now. But I can let you get in touch with things in the Plane of Dreams. In fact, this is exactly the reason I have placed the Nine Worlds in this area of the nebula. Do you know what this place is?”

“The Scarred Nebula,” Whitey replied. “I was not born yet at that time, but I knew when Blackie entered into this world, she tore open a similar crack!”

“Yeah, I’m going to reopen a passageway to the Plane of Dreams here,” Hao Ren said with his arms crossed, looking proud. “It will be right on the border in the center of the Scarred Nebula. Of course, considering the condition of the Wall of Reality now, even with this passageway, an individual like you who is closely related to the goddess of creation couldn’t just cross the gate like that. But the passageway will change the environment of the entire Scarred Nebula, and the nebula will be the overlapped area of the surface world and the Plane of Dreams. The people of both worlds would be able to interact with each other without a problem.”

Whitey listened and was amazed, hopeful, and then doubtful. Expressions changed on her face rapidly.

Hao Ren had not noticed the changes on Whitey’s face. He was too excited by what could have changed the course of history. He could not wait to see the opening of the Scarred Nebula.

The ‘connection’ process between the Nine Worlds and Inferno took three days and three nights.

Under the heavy bombardment of propaganda and influence of staged public opinion, the Sun people of Inferno and the Twilight people of the Nine Worlds began to calm down and accept the changes in their worlds.

When the connection was finally established, the Nine Worlds would become a spectacle scenery over Inferno. And in turn, the planet Inferno would also hang over the horizon of the Nine Worlds, becoming the Hanging Kingdom that many years later humans in Midgard knew.”

Both kingdoms hung above each other’s cumulonimbus clouds. The strange optical illusion produced by the gravitational distortion created an aurora curtain between the two worlds. Yggdrasil extended from Niebelungen his biggest root, which became a space elevator—the Heavenly Tower—connecting the two kingdoms. For the next millennium, the Heavenly Tower was one of the greatest miracles between Inferno and Yggdrasil. The humans of the two worlds visited each other through this tower, surviving all temptations, cognition, wars, peace, unity, division, and together entering the space age—all these would happen man years later.

When Yggdrasil and Toka built the new world together, a passageway began to take shape in the eye of the storm of Scarred Nebula.