The Record of Unusual Creatures

The night sky was hanging low on this planet as the light of civilization had disappeared on the planet a long time ago. The rapid-growing virgin forests and vines had long reclaimed the land once covered by metal and cement, and the skyscrapers of thousands of years ago had turned into steel skeletons, collapsed bridges had become dreck at the bottom of gorges and riverbed. Even the indestructible buildings that were once regarded as miracles were not imperishable after all; they had crumbled to the ground in the jungle, been lying deep under the yellow sand and submerged under the ocean. Only some of the exposed bleak ruins still pointed to the sky like the skeleton of giants.

Moss and vines had covered these grim bones, and the green that signified life seemed to have given these lifeless ruins a thriving makeover—without the participation of humans after the demise of civilization.

The faint glow from the two round moons sprinkled down from the sky, illuminating the world where artificial lights had gone off. This world was so dead quiet that even the sounds of breeze blowing past the cracks and holes in the ruins were audible. Occasionally, there were some short screams, and rustling sounds came from the corners of some plants. The sounds came from the fight between predators and small animals at night.

But such a peaceful night was suddenly shattered.

Over the ruins of a city almost wholly swallowed up by the forest, the glow of the two round moons flickered as the starry sky began to ripple like the water surface. Starlight distorted and formed into a whirlpool accompanied by a series of flashes. A gigantic object suddenly rushed out from the most distorted sky; it was a silver-white spaceship with thick and sharp lines. Blue energy veins were flashing on the belly of the spacecraft. The rear of the spaceship was billowing black smoke as metal fragments and sparks spurting like blood and organs out of a monster. The spaceship adjusted its angle in the air; it seemed that it was still under control. But then something in the belly seemed to have been overloaded. As a wave of explosion ensued, armor plates and components began to fall out of the fuselage. The spacecraft tilted, slid in a downward arc toward the southeastern direction.

The thunderous sound of explosions and fire had never stopped as the spaceship went down, startling the wild animals that lived in the woods and ruins. They ran out of their hiding places and fled toward the nearest water sources. It was as if this kind of explosion and fire falling out of the sky was not the first of its kind, they had learned to run to the shelters that offered the best survivability.

But the spacecraft did not explode over their heads, nor did the spaceship drop any explosives from the sky. It just glided in a very exaggerated trajectory, lowering its height while slowing down at the same time before it landed, or rather crashed, way away from the ruins of the city, in the level wasteland.

Shortly after the spacecraft crashed, the earth began to shake slightly before a loud noise was heard. A group of wild animals that had already reached and even hidden in the water looked up. When they saw no disaster coming, they calmly went back to their lairs and nests.

It seemed that they were no strangers to this thing.

The impact of the ‘landing’ was not as strong as thought. The inertial stabilizer of the spacecraft was overloaded, but it still managed to minimize the force of impact when the spaceship touched the ground. Everyone, however, felt it pretty rough onboard. After all, watching a land suddenly appear out of the blue in front of the eyes and crashing toward it was horrific enough. It was especially so for the Nangong siblings and Rollie, who seldom flew.

But Lily appeared a lot calmer than others. After all, she had just experienced flying up to 90,000 miles rubbing shoulders with the sun.

She scrambled to her feet and still had time to tidy up the hair on her tail.

“Have we landed?” Nangong Wuyue carefully poked her head out of her ‘tail ball’ and felt disoriented. “Am I or the place spinning?”

Hao Ren nodded while checking the damage report of the spacecraft. “Good news, we have landed smoothly.”

“You call crashing on a planet from outer space a smooth landing?” Nangong Sanba muttered as he helped Nangong Wuyue untie her tail. He was still in a state of shock. “I just f**king thought I was going to die.”

Hao Ren’s mouth twitched. “Okay, we have crashed safely. At least we are standing on the land now.”

The projector on the console flashed a few times, and then a distorted image appeared. The image kept flickered for a few seconds before it became clear. It was Nolan, the brain and consciousness of the spaceship. “I appreciate your humor, but as the one who has crashed, it hurts.”

“Have your functions restored so quickly? That just saves me the trouble of checking it myself. How is the spacecraft?”

While talking to Nolan, Hao Ren bent down and got hold of a furry tail under the chair. He grabbed and pulled it out. It was Rollie, who had curled herself up in a ball of hair. “Wuyue, could you please examine this dumb cat to see if she is injured? I think she has hit her head.”

It only took a while for Nolan to complete a preliminary self-diagnostic. “The situation is a little bad. A divine shock wave that was as powerful as the main psionic gun had saturation-bombed us while we tried to go into warp jump. All shield systems are damaged, the armor structure is still there, but the charging module is fried, and it will take a while to recover. The warp drive is finished as it is physically damaged. The navigation computer is down and rebooting twice is unsuccessful. Probably physical damage too. Other than that, the power reactor is still running, but there is a problem in the energy output. I need to cut off two-thirds of the power lines and redirect the energy to the central computer and maintenance system. The fire control system is still usable, but the weapon array is offline. The main conventional engine… there is no more main conventional engine. It just fell off when we crashed. I just found out that it is my engine.”

After reporting a ton of bad news, Nolan shook her head. “The only part that is still in good condition is the labs and living cabins. These are the core areas that have a separate energy shield. But they cannot make me fly again.”

Hao Ren’s brows knitted together. What he had heard was the worst kind of news. He could not help but interrupt Nolan. “Is there any good news?”

“There is. It seems we have shaken off the divine storm now.” Nolan nodded. “You are right, the divine storm is confined only in space. It only blocks off space while down here, the planet is safe.”

“Well, at least there is good news.” Hao Ren sighed. “Can you repair the damage?”

“All the damages on the spacecraft are reparable. In theory, even if a steering wheel was the only thing left of the spacecraft, the autonomous robots can still fix it, and you can fly it at superluminal speed again in no time. The spaceship also can self-repair even without the help of the autonomous robots.” Nolan’s voice sounded better now as if her central computer system is slowly recovering. “But the problem is that it all takes time. The engine and some of the power centers are damaged, and these are the most difficult parts to fix. It will take at last a week before I can fly again.”

“As long as they are reparable,” Hao Ren sighed, “and better than waiting for rescue from the drone cluster. We have more space for maneuvering. But never again we should go out into deep space so recklessly. The only safe place is within this planetary system.”

“That goes without saying.” Nolan lay on the console, moaning in pain. “I do not know if I could fly again. I mean after all these scary encounters, having the mental trauma seems freaking ridiculous for a spacecraft. I was still thinking to race with the bunch of kids from the Azadim Civilization Sphere in two months.”

Hao Ren shot Nolan a look. “What mental trauma are you talking about? You are only a shipboard computer, remember? And you are still thinking of racing in this situation?”

Nolan pouted and said no more.

Hao Ren looked around the flight deck; the self-repair mechanism of the Petrachelys had begun to work. A faint glow appeared on the damaged part on the flight deck, and the cracks on the metal wall were squirming like flesh and blood as self-repair was in progress.

But not every place could self-repair as quickly as this place. The engine and power center could only heal in a much slower pace than this.

Before Nolan could take off again, she must first figure out the situation in the surroundings. At least, she needed to know where she was.

Most of the spacecraft’s functions suffered some form of damage. The spaceship was impossible to carry out space missions now. But it contained a solid core compartment, which could act as an operation base on the ground. At least, the integrated computing center, survival module, and armors were functioning.

The use of radar was crucial in exploration. The primary radar array of the Petrachelys was designed mainly for space missions, but she also had a set of instruments specifically designed to scan the surface of planets while in the atmosphere. Hao Ren only needed to make some modification to the instruments to detect the environmental readings around the crash site.”

“A habitable planet; how fortunate we are. The atmosphere is fairly hospitable. Oxygen content and atmospheric pressure are higher than the earth, but given the physiques of you guys, it should not be a problem at all.” Nolan reported the preliminary scan results. “No hostile energy was detected. It seems monsters and beasts do not exist on this planet. It is an ideal place to farm.”

Hao Ren regretted; he should not have downloaded all his online novels into the spacecraft computer. Apparently, Nolan had read them all.

“I think I have seen something when we fell out of the sky. It was a city ruin or something.” Lily raised her hand. “It should be right behind us.”

“You did not see it wrongly,” Nolan said as she called up a few holograms, showing the remains of buildings that the forest had almost wholly reclaimed. The images were somewhat blurry, and black smoke and metal fragments also blocked their view. But it was not hard to see that those things were man-made structures. “Human-made structure; there may be something interesting there.”

Hao Ren scratched his chin. “It seems that it is time to set up an expedition team now.”