The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren knew that Raven 12345 had good judgment. But still, he could not help but interject with a question. “Is your intuition sound at all?”

Raven 12345 rolled her eyes at Hao Ren. “Crap! With the intuition of a woman and a god, what do you think?”

Hao Ren thought for a moment. The goddess should have added the “intuition of a neurotic” too , he said in his mind. “In your opinion, what’s missing from this network? What is it for?”

“Didn’t I tell you earlier. I have no idea.” Raven 12345 frowned. “What I know is that the network is not functioning properly. It’s not because you haven’t excited it hard enough but because it’s fundamentally incomplete. Just look at the proliferation and forwarding process of the information: all data exchanges are meaningless. It just follows the physical structure of the network to perform some copy and paste actions between the nodes. After passing on the data through a certain number of nodes, the data dies out. There is no effective data processing and no storage links in the whole process.”

Hao Ren seemed to be in thought before he said, “That’s why I couldn’t decipher the network.”

“Well, it is the key to the problem,” Raven 12345 said. “The network is missing a ‘program’ or an ‘operating system.’ It lacks something that coordinates the overall operation, a source code that issues instructions to the nodes, or an automatically validated set of calculation rules. But I am not sure whether the source code exists physically or virtually.”

“What is the difference between the two?” Hao Ren was curious.

“If it is in physical form, it could be a specific node, such as a planet or a giant computing center in space, functioning as a CPU. If it exists virtually, it could be a special set of code stored in the network. But now there is no trace of the two. It is hard to tell whether the source code was destroyed or simply that the goddess of creation had no time to build this thing before she was killed.”

While speaking, Raven 12345 shook her head. “But in any case, there are doubts about the network. The main way for the goddess of creation to communicate with the universe was the network of the First Borns. By monitoring the information sent back by each First Born, she was able to monitor most part of the universe. She had no reason to build a new information network, all the more so when she had to do it behind the back of the guardians.”

Hao Ren’s heart missed a beat. “Maybe she had begun to lose trust in the First Born spiritual network. Or she had noticed that someone was working on the First Born spiritual network to interfere with the external communication of the divine realm. So she had to secretly establish an alternative. This would also explain why all nodes of the divine burst network are located away from any ecospheres. This way, she could physically isolate the network from those of the First Borns.”

Raven 12345 pondered for a moment. At last, she still shook her head. “Unlikely. The actions of the goddess of creation at the end of the deicidal war suggested that she did not realize that someone had compromised the spiritual link of the First Borns. And the structure of this divine burst network is far too complex simply for data transmission. It should not be a substitute for the First Born spiritual network but something with a new purpose.”

Hao Ren sighed. “Unfortunately, we have too little information and no way to analyze for what this stuff is.”

“As long as you keep your eyes open, the truth will resurface one day. Let’s think of it this way: it is better to do something than doing nothing at all.”

Hao Ren looked at the goddess in amazement. “Whoa, I’ve never heard you saying something so philosophical and sensible at the same time.”

Raven 12345 raised her hand and summoned a Lightning Ball. “You have three seconds to rephrase your sentence. When was I not sensible?”

Just when the goddess summoned the Lightning Ball and before Hao Ren could say anything, a cluster of bright electric lights appeared out of nowhere in the hall. Numerous figures began to emerge before materializing into physical bodies. Very quickly, the ten volunteers, including White Flame and Lorissa came back from the super-dimensional state to the main material world. They all appeared disoriented for a while. When the volunteers finally recovered, the first thing they saw was that the goddess was about to slam the Light Ball that burst in lightning down on Hao Ren.

Raven 12345 quickly put the Lightning Ball out and looked at the volunteers in embarrassment. “Hey, you all are back!”

White Flame was curious and wanting to ask what was going on between them both. But the female demon hunter held back her curiosity at last. “Yeah, we are back. Is the examination over?”

“It is over,” Hao Ren said quickly when he noticed that Raven 12345 seemed to have forgotten what he just said. “How do you feel? What was it like to be in the transformed state?”

He was very curious about the super-dimensional sensory that Raven 12345 mentioned.

“It is an unforgettable experience. Wonderful but hard to describe in words,” Lorissa said. The empress clone was the most experienced person in occultism as well as an experimental subject; naturally, her words were more authoritative. “I feel like I have lost my body. My soul floated in this building, and I lost my bodily senses. I did not feel claustrophobic or fearful. Instead, I gained the ability to see my soul from a higher perspective. Even though I lost the ability to look at the outside world, I could observe myself from a third-party perspective. It was incredible.”

“Other than this?” Raven 12345 looked at other volunteers and asked.

“I have heard some sounds,” Hassel said. “Of course, I did not really hear with my ears. Just as Lorissa said, we had no bodily senses in that state. I just felt some things appearing out of thin air and was injected into my consciousness, like extra memory, or inexplicable knowledge. I could not figure out what it was. I did not even know if I had come into contact with it. But…”

While speaking, Hassel raised his right hand. Without needing to recite an incantation, a group of pure-white light appeared out of thin air in his hand.

The light had the color of the sacred flame, but it was apparently not the sacred flame. It was a divine light, purer than the purest divine light, and even containing a hint of divinity. When this light appeared, Hao Ren could sense that his divine power began to interact with it.

This phenomenon was enough to prove that the light ball was an extremely pure divine spell.

Hao Ren had already guessed what it was, but he still asked, “What is this?”

“As I said before, the demon hunter is a fake divine node. When they are immersed in the power of the goddess of creation, instead of being ejected, they will be accepted,” Raven 12345 said. “They get extra energy in the process. But the power that mortals could carry is limited, even if they possess the artificial divine signatures. So they will not get the kind of power that is outside the rules.”

The demon hunters had no idea what ‘fake divine nodes’, ‘energy infusion’, or ‘divine power’ was all about. After all, they still did not know the truth of the event of 10,000 years ago. But this ignorance did not prevent them from knowing that they had gained some extra ability out of thin air. So every one of them looked pleasantly surprised. Hao Ren looked curiously at the light that Hassel summoned. “It is a divine ability. How powerful is it?”

“Enough for lighting use,” Raven 12345 said after a moment of thought.

“What?” Hao Ren could not believe what he heard.

“It is very bright.” The goddess nodded.

Hao Ren and the volunteers were struck dumb.

“I am serious,” Raven 12345 said while spreading out her hand. “Safety first during experimentation. I have filtered the energy in this hall. Otherwise, if some of them blow the earth up accidentally, how would I explain to my superior? Experimental accident? Who is going to believe that?”

The goddess was absolutely right. But the faces of the volunteers looked like they were swearing. Raven 12345 quickly took notice and tried to brighten them up. “Don’t be disappointed. At least you all have got the experience of the super-dimensional senses, it will come in handy when you practice the magic of the soul. And you don’t just look at the lighting function alone; it is a god-like ability. I tell you what, the first chapter of Genesis says that let there be light; you all have acquired that ability by doing nothing but just staying here for two hours.”

It was hard to talk to a goddess who had a pit in her brain, and the volunteers soon realized it. Compared with Hao Ren, who spent two months to recognize this fact, the volunteers were more pragmatic. It was time to go home after the examination.

Since Hao Ren was the one who brought the volunteers here, it was only natural that he was responsible for sending them home.

White Flame and several demon hunters were going back to Coldpath. The other demon hunters in the tour group, who had not been selected for the divine experiment, had returned to the North Pole earlier. They were probably bragging about their experience in front of their compatriots now. It was the reason why White Flame and the rest could not wait to leave. After exchanging pleasantries, they stepped into the portal that Raven 12345 had specially arranged for them and returned to the demon-hunter headquarters.

Lorissa and the Ancients had different plans.

The Ancients, who responded to Ophra’s call, could not stay in this world for too long. However curious the Ancients were about the alien world, these people seemed to be somebodies in Holletta and had to return as soon as possible. Hao Ren gave them some souvenirs and sent them back to the Plane of Dreams.

Lorissa did not have to go back so early though. She did not belong to this era and she had no commitments in Holletta. Furthermore, when Hao Ren invited Lorissa to participate in the experiment, he had promised to show her around Earth for a few days.

With all these being done, Hao Ren finally rounded off the family visit and the auxiliary matters.