The Record of Unusual Creatures

The wounded gray wolves lay on the ground in the pine forest. Hao Ren was moving around, treating their injuries. He was secretly glad that he did not come up with the idea of ​​grilling wolf meat earlier. More importantly, he had just wounded the wolves, not killed them. Otherwise, things may not have been so amicable.

The wolves’ injuries were serious but not life-threatening. Hao Ren did not use his high-tech medical pod, instead, he used two autonomous robots and some portable living tissue repair equipment. While he was busy treating the wolves, the werewolf maiden followed him closely and babbled, “Oh yeah, you are awesome! Oh yeah, the things you carry are awesome! Oh yeah, you know how to treat the injured wolves. Awesome! Oh yeah, are you hungry? Oh yeah, can we be sworn-brothers now?”

“Can you not say ‘oh yeah’ every time you speak?”

“Oh yeah, it’s an old habit,” Lily said while scratching her head. “I haven’t talked to anyone for a long time, I’m a little excited.”

“You come from a human settlement?” Hao Ren asked, looking at the “old version” of Lily. He tried not to sound like he had known her for a long time. He spoke as if they were meeting for the first time. It would avoid arousing suspicion. He knew Lily well. She was foolhardy but quick-witted, having sensitive beast-like instincts. That was why Hao Ren had to be very careful not to act suspiciously lest the husky would run away.

However, considering how easily the maiden got acquainted with people, Hao Ren began to wonder whether this audacious husky was vigilant at all.

It seemed Lily had been an avid socializer since the beginning.

While Hao Ren was having these thoughts, Lily already started to babble, “I have stopped living with the humans a few years ago. By the way, I bet you are not human either judging from your ability. Am I right? That means my worry is unfounded. I forgot to hide my ears and tail when I lunged out from the woods just now; not until we were halfway in fight and damn, I was goosey.”

Now, Hao Ren understood why the husky acted like a werewolf in the open. Lily severely lacked vigilance and never thought of disguising herself. She was lucky to be born in the post-Mythological Era. Had she lived in the Mythological Era, the demon hunters would have smelled her out.

“I… uhh, not really a human. But you totally lacked alertness. Many non-humans are many times more dangerous than humans,” Hao Ren said and looked up at Lily. He knew that she was only a ‘projection’ in history. But he still wanted to remind her. “There is a group called the demon hunters who specialize in killing the otherworldlings.”

“Wow! That is dangerous?” Lily was wide-eyed.

Hao Ren twitched his mouth while in his mind, he was analyzing the behaviors of Lily of this era. It seemed that Lily had just left the village she had been living in since birth. The villagers drove her out when her adopted parents passed away. She had no clue of the outside world and lacked the vigilance of hiding her identity. She only knew that she had to tuck her ears and tail because they would cause panic in the village, not because she had to stay under the radar of the demon hunters. Right now, Lily was hiding in the wilderness, living by controlling the wolf pack. Hao Ren wondered what led her to go to the human world later.

While thinking of it, Hao Ren threw Lily a seemingly innocent but a probing question, “Oh, by the way, do you live in this snowy place all this while?”

“No,” Lily replied with her ears flicked. “I used to live in a village. But then when my parents died, the villagers were scared of me. So I ran away. At first, I planned to go to the south because I heard that there were big cities where many people lived together. It sounded interesting. I believed that I could achieve something in my life there.”

“You want to achieve something?” Hao Ren was stunned. “What do you want to achieve in the human world?”

“I want to be a great eating artist,” Lily said while placing her fist on her chest and confidence filled her eyes. “I heard that food in the human world in the south is delicious. I have a big appetite.”

Cold sweat trickled down Hao Ren’s forehead. He could not fathom what was in the mind of the naive husky. Her understanding of the human world was utterly wrong. And how the hell the husky came up with the term ‘eating artist?’

But this question was nothing compared to what Hao Ren had quickly realized later.

Lily had planned to go to the south at where human cities were. But she was in Siberia.

Hao Ren carefully analyzed what happened after discounting the automatic correction of his translation plug-in. He found that that Lily was speaking Mandarin in a heavy northeastern accent, totally unlike the standard accent that she had in the later years. This could only mean one thing: Lily departed from the northeast.

“Did you just say you wanted to go to the city in the south?” Hao Ren asked. He was not sure how to explain the problem to the husky. “Do you know where you are now?”

“I have no idea,” Lily replied. “I was lost when I left the village. There were mountains everywhere. When I came out of the mountains, there was either snow or forest everywhere. How could I know where I was? But I asked the wolves. They told me to go this way to head to the south.”

How on Earth would wolves know how to differentiate the north from the south and the east from the west? They know the directions but not what the word ‘south’ means , Hao Ren said to himself.

Hao Ren could almost imagine how Lily asked the poor wolves for direction. She must have bared her fangs and showed her claws, intimidating the wolves with her ‘alpha’ demeanor. The poor wolves trembled and bowed, simply pointing to a direction never mind that they knew not a thing about what ‘south’ meant. They just wanted to please the alpha. And indeed, the alpha was delighted, but she had gone all the way from the northeast to the freaking Siberia.

“What’s wrong?” Lily asked as she seemed to have noticed something wrong with Hao Ren’s expression.

“Do you know that this place is called Siberia?” Hao Ren asked with a hopeless look.

“Siberia?” Lily had never heard of this place.

Hao Ren let out a long sigh and said, “Do you know that you have gone in the wrong direction?” You are going north and will soon arrive at the Arctic.”

“Whoa!”

“What is the Arctic?” Lily asked.

Hao Ren was speechless.

It took Hao Ren a long while to finally let the Lily understand her situation. He wondered how this dumbo with no sense of direction, naive, and a weird life perspective could dominate the literary world and graduate four times from Peking University. Lily who would later rub shoulder with Zhou Shuren, the leading figure in modern Chinese literature, was initially aspiring to become an ‘eating artist’ in the human world. It was a ridiculous world.

“Oh yeah, I have gone in the wrong direction all this while.” Lily blinked. “I have been wondering why it just became colder when I traveled south. So if I turn around and walk all the way I would find a big city. Am I right?”

Just like that, Lily had a new goal. She could not care less that she had wasted a good part of her life going in the wrong direction.

She did not even have the slightest urge to whack the wolves that duped her earlier.

“Thank you, haha,” Lily said. She was happy to find a new goal, and that was written all over her face. “Without you, I would not be able to find the big city in this life. Shall we become sworn-brothers?”

Hao Ren’s heart missed a beat. “Why do you care so much about becoming sworn-brothers?” he asked.

“Because you are awesome! And you have helped me so much,” Lily said with a serious face. “I look up to you as my big brother!”

Hao Ren quickly waved his hand. “Don’t! You will become a great person in the future. I am not going to be your sworn-brother.”

While saying, Hao Ren suddenly realized something: if he wanted to find Vivian in this vast snow land, he got the best tracker in the world before him right now. Lily was not only a good tracker but also familiar with this place since she had been here for quite some time. What was more—the wolf pack under her control could be of help.

It all came in handy.

“Let us first not talk about sworn-brotherhood. I need you to do me a favor,” Hao Ren said.

“Just tell me, big brother,” Lily replied while swinging her hair.

“Oh, come on. Don’t call me that. My name is Hao Ren. You can just call me Hao Ren.”

“Hao… ren, well, I have memorized it,” the werewolf maiden said. “I also have a name! You can call me Lily.”

Hao Ren knew the name of the maiden a long time ago, but he was still somewhat surprised. She was already known as Lily this early. That meant she had never changed her name all this few hundred years. “Beautiful name! What is your surname?”

“I don’t have my last name,” Lily replied.

“No surname?”

“I was abandoned in the woods and have no idea who my parents are. My adopted parents gave me my name. At first, I adopted my adopted father’s last name, Liu. But for a long time, I hardly grew. And I could understand the language of the wolf. So the villagers said that I was a kid of the monster and must not adopt the last name of human lest I would bring bad luck to the village. But my dad was a powerful figure at that time, the villagers did not dare to say it in the open. But after my parents died, I no longer used my last name.”

Perhaps Lily had been living in isolation for too long that she sometimes spoke incomprehensibly. But Hao Ren still understood what she meant. “Then your last name shall be Liu. The villagers are stupid. Don’t be bothered by what they say.”

Lily nodded, but god knows if she understood it. She had not forgotten about Hao Ren’s request though. “What favor do you ask of me?”

“I am here to look for someone.”