The Record of Unusual Creatures

The storm died down as suddenly as it had first appeared.

The blood-red tornado dissipated out of thin air, and all sorts of things that were rolled into the sky were crackling down. However, as all of them were evacuated in advance or escape in time, these objects falling from the sky did not cause any harm. Lilly had been up in the sky for half an hour when she finally landed — literally smacking into a nearby wall and sliding down, getting up dizzily and taking two steps before deciding that it was more comfortable to lie down…

And most people’s attention was still in the center of the tornado: there, Hao Ren was holding seemingly unconscious Vivian standing on the only intact ground, looking confused.

“Landlord, are you all right? How’s Vivian?” asked Nangong Wuyue.

“I just heard the big news… Vivian’s fine, but she’s too tired. We need to find her a place to rest and she’ll probably wake up in a few minutes. Where’s Lily?”

Lily, who was too tired to get up, wagged her tail as she heard Hao Ren’s voice and answered faintly, “I’m over here… Let me rest for a while… I feel like throwing up…”

Hao Ren handed Vivian over to Nangong Wuyue, and then checked on Lily to make sure that her problem was minor before coming to Hilda, a little embarrassed and said, “It looks like the experiment ended up going a bit awry.”

“It’s ok, don’t worry,” the elven queen said with a slight smile on her face as an accident of this magnitude is nothing to them. “It is beyond the imagination of any elven to perform a summoning ritual on this scale, and compared to this incredible ritual, the last minor incident is quite negligible. The tower’s power was cut off just in time, and the damage was confined to the hall, leaving other structures unharmed. Someone will fix it later, and at most tomorrow the function will be restored.”

Hearing this, Hao Ren felt relieved, but still a little sorry. “I will let my robots clean it up for you. They are more efficient.”

“That’s great.” Hilda did not reject Hao Ren’s offer, nodded and then looked at the direction of Vivian. “I think you better take care of her first.”

Although the energy storm summed by Vivian looked powerful, due to the timely response and Vivian’s control over the scale of the storm, the damage caused by it was limited. A group of magic instructors and engineers were quickly called to repair the hall, while others took Vivian, who was still sleeping, to rest.

Looking at Vivian, who was sleeping soundly, Lily’s mind was full of question marks, pulling Hao Ren’s arm and bombarding him with lots of question. “Landlord, what on earth is going on? What’s the big news? Why does the bat fall asleep suddenly? Why did she suddenly lose control? Didn’t we say the Crimson Moon was completely under control? What did you see on the Crimson Moon? And…”

Hao Ren used all his strength to pull this husky apart. He had as many question marks in his head as Lily. “Don’t hit me a bunch of questions at the same time, will you? I’m also baffled. Just now after entering the Tornado, Vivian told me that the Goddess of Creation is the leader of the god-slayers, and then she fell asleep directly. I guess now only she knows what it is.”

And now everyone was baffled.

“I really wanna slap her awake, she owes us an explanation,” Lily muttered as she looked at Vivian, who was lying on the bed now.

“What do you think Vivian means?” Nangong Sanba asked his sister.

“How do I know it? I actually suspect that the landlord had misheard it. After all, there must be a lot of movement in the tornado. How can they have time to communicate when they can’t even stand still?”

“My silly sister, it’s quite calm at the center of the tornado. Told you to read more books…”

Hao Ren did not pay attention to whatever happened around. He just sat beside Vivian alone, thinking about what he saw in the illusion.

The figure that appeared at the end of the illusion, sealed with the crystal throne… Was she the Goddess of Creation?

If so, why was she sealed on the crystal throne? The place did not look like the Star of Creation at all. Where was it? What did it have to do with that crystal jungle in the Crimson Moon Sea? If that figure was not the Goddess of Creation, then who was she?

And, why did Vivian say that ‘the Goddess of Creation is the leader of the god-slayers’ out of the blue? Recalling Vivian’s unwavering expression and clear eyes when she said this, Hao Ren firmly believed that what she said was true.

This seemed to mean that Vivian suddenly recovered some kind of memory, but it was clearly an accident. So what was the cause of this accident? Was it related to his falling into the illusion? Did he turn on a switch when the Crimson Moon Sea touched the crystal jungle?

All these questions gave Hao Ren a headache, but the good news was that Vivian, the key person who could answer the most crucial question, finally woke up.

She did not sleep very long. Lily was holding a brick, swinging it around Vivian and muttered, “Battie isn’t going to sleep for another 200 years, is she? Landlord, do you think that if I drop this brick on her, would she… Oh, I’m just kiddi–”

“Battie is awake!”

Everybody immediately gathered around Vivian, asking about her situation, especially the last words she left before falling asleep.

Hao Ren was sitting by the bed. He immediately grabbed Vivian’s hand and asked, “How do you feel? Are you hungry?”

“I’m all right.” Vivian laughed awkwardly and sat up on the bed with Hao Ren’s help. “I didn’t expect that the energy expenditure to be so great, but I recovered after a nap.”

Hao Ren looked into her eyes and asked, “You… Have you recovered some of your memories?”

“Yes,” said Vivian with a sigh, “about the Goddess of Creation… It’s not my own memory, but the message passed down with the part of the ‘blood’ that the Goddess of Creation left me.

“So it means…”

“The Goddess of Creation was corroded by the Mad Lord. It happened in the final battle between her and the Mad Lord. This is the truth we have been looking for – the truth of the unusual behavior of the Goddess of Creation.”

Hao Ren, “…”

At this moment, he suddenly realized his lack of vocabulary. There were so many meaningful, emotional and powerful words in the world that could be used, but at this moment, there was only one expression appeared in his mind –”WTF”

Vivian knew that everybody was waiting for her explanation, so she did not waste any time and tell them everything she knew.

“It’s a secret that nobody knows – not even the closest guardians of the Goddess of Creation and the ancients because the erosion she suffered took place in the deepest part, and she did not realize it until the end, and even if she did, she could not tell the truth… The power of the Mad Lord had been implanted into her body many years ago and spread outward with every step she took to create life and explore the universe. The entire Plane of Dreams was thoroughly infected tens of millions of years ago. Except for a few native ecological planets, all the places where life and the Firstborns existed had the shadow of the Mad Lord. They’re all the extension of the Mad Lord.

“Even though the body of the Mad Lord had been defeated and sealed, its power had never ceased to spread. On one hand, the Goddess of Creation won the battle, but on the other hand, the Mad Lord never failed, or even worse… The war was never over.

“That’s why the Firstborns went mad after the god-slaying incident, and the guardian giants had undergone that terrible mutation. The power of the Mad Lord magnified all the negative effects. It’s not that someone had done something in the guardians’ mental network, it’s that the mental network itself had a problem.

“But these infections were trivial, and the real fatal infections were still on the Star of Creation…”

Vivian paused here, seemingly in search of a more appropriate way of expression. Finally, she frowned and shook her head. “The Goddess of Creation was split into two.”