The Record of Unusual Creatures

The style of the deicide had always been distinctive. Perhaps it was their obsession of wanting to be God that drove them to be particular about every detail, making them stand out. Whether it was the intricate runes and murals engraved on the armor plates of the spaceship or the functionless sculptures and shrines in the spacecraft corridors, they were all rarely seen in other civilizations.

The style of their runes and reliefs were impossible to imitate.

Hao Ren had thought of this earlier. But he only saw it on the spaceships, not their buildings. Since time had eroded the ruins in the forest, even the most magnificent golden palace had now collapsed into a pile of broken bricks. Blackened by rotten leaves and mud, these things now looked far from what they looked like during their glory days. That was why Hao Ren could not identify them at first glance.

However, when changing the grayish-black color to gold, their distinctive features were hard to miss.

Vivian also seemed to have recognized it. Her expression changed as she quietly went up to Hao Ren. “Do you recognize it? It’s that race.”

“The deicidal race.” Hao Ren nodded gently. “It seems that L’Haronne is an extraordinary place.”

Apparently, the ruins were of permanent buildings on the ground, not of a spacecraft. It meant that those people had settled here. So, the identity of the ancient civilizations mentioned in the legend of L’Haronne was crystal clear; there was no one else other than the deicide.

Was L’Haronne the home planet of the deicide? Was this planet close to the Star of Creation originally? And this planet had also plunged into the Umbral Realm during the explosion of the divine realm?

Hao Ren could not help but look up at the sky. At this moment, the sky was not dark yet, and the broken divine realm had not moved into a position where it was visible in the sky. But Hao Ren knew that the planet fragments were orbiting close to L’Haronne, and the distance between two was defying the law of physics. By roughly calculating the distance, the planet fragments were on the higher orbit of L’haronne and the gravitational pull of the planet fragments was strong enough to cause several-thousand-meter-high tsunami and earthquake on L’Haronne, triggering another round of mass extinction event. But in reality, all these phenomena did not happen. Hao Ren had also learned from the previous materials that planet L’Haronne was geologically stable. Aside from the Great Pit, which was classified as a supernatural disaster, there were few natural disasters on this planet.

When taking into count the fact that the planet fragments were the remnants of the Star of Creation, everything became explainable with the divine power of the goddess of creation.

The only thing that Hao Ren found it unbelievable was that the home planet of the deicidal race was so close to the Star of Creation. Regarding this point, Muru and Zorm had never mentioned before.

“It is just the ruins. Perhaps it does not explain anything.” Vivian had the same thinking as Hao Ren, without saying a word. Her brows were knitted together as she shook her head. “Muru has never mentioned that the home planet of the deicide is just next to the Star of Creation. He would have told us such important information if this were true. Perhaps this was just the stronghold of the deicide near the Star of Creation.”

Hao Ren nodded in agreement. “Could be.”

While Hao Ren and Vivian were discussing, Rheia had finished examining the magical energy lingering around the ruins. The mage turned around and waved at them. “Hey! What are you two doing there? We should move on!”

“We will get back to this later. Let’s first collect more information.” Hao Ren whispered to Vivian. He then replied Rheia, “Here we come. We were just guessing the origin of the ruins. You should know more than we do.”

With a little flattering, Rheia immediately took the bait. “Of course, I am a scholar specializing in this field. But I am surprised that you all have not heard about the Anno ruins. I thought you were all explorers?”

“Anno ruins?” Hao Ren was startled. He vaguely remembered the terms that he had glanced upon in Rheia’s library that a couple of days ago. But he did not give any attention because the book was tough to understand and needed many basic knowledge and side notes to read alongside. Hao Ren thought that it was not a common knowledge that everyone in this world would know. Now, he was surprised to hear Rheia mentioning it.

“Oh, it is normal that you do not know about it. After all, it is an archeological terminology. Not every adventurer is interested in this thing.” Rheia waved her hand. “The Anno ruins do not belong to any of the already known ancient civilizations. They are a general classification of ruins of which have no known historical background and commonality.”

“They are not classifiable, coming from unknown eras, have no commonality?” It seemed things had somewhat deviated from his expectation. Hao Ren could not help but ask, “That is to say, there are many different types of ancient ruins in this general category? How many are they?”

“How should I put it? Scholars believe that there are many ruins of Anno, but few have been discovered by humans. Most of them are hidden away from the human world, and some of them are even located in areas where no humans could reach, such as the bottom of the Sea of Mists and the top of the mountain peaks,” said Rheia while fiddling a strand of hair with her finger near her ear. It was her little habit when she was in thought. “Over the years, archaeologists have compiled the system of civilization evolution by excavation and research of ancient ruins all over the world. Whether it is the human or the abhuman civilization, the scholars can systematically sort them out and find their corresponding ancient relics. But there are always some special relics that do not fit into this system. They are distributed randomly around the world, and the text or portraits found do not belong to any known categories. If you must to say it, this situation of mismatch is their only commonality.”

Rheia paused as if she was searching through her memory. A few seconds later, she continued. “At first, it was a scholar named Anno who compiled the statistics and categorized them into one. So, these ruins were later collectively referred to as the Anno ruins. The existence of these ruins has always been a nightmare-like challenge for archaeologists. The ruins of Anno are like phantoms emerging out of thin air; going backward, they have no origins; going forward, they have descendants. It was as if they were extraterrestrial visitors who suddenly came to this world, built their houses in a hurry, and then disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a pile of ruins to torture the mind of experts and scholars like us.”

Rheia would become loquacious whenever she talked about topic in which she was interested. She could be parading her knowledge, or merely enthusiasm for sharing. Whichever the case, she had unknowingly entered into preaching mode. After a long speech, she suddenly stopped and let out an embarrassed smile. “Why am I telling you so much; few people are interested in this.”

“No, we are interested,” Hao Ren said quickly. “And I like your last analogy. Perhaps it was the extraterrestrial visitors who left behind the ruins.”

“You guys are interesting.” Rheia looked at Hao Ren up and down. “Speaking of extraterrestrial visitors, there is really a school of thought that thinks of it as a serious theory. This school of thought believes that our world has experienced a special period that had almost changed everything. From the broken divine realm in the sky to the Anno ruins, they all formed during the period. The scholars think that there have been a large number of extraterrestrial visitors landed on the ancient continent of L’Haronne. These visitors have all disappeared during a sudden change of event and left behind various things of wonder. Later, due to the impact of the laws of this universe, the creations the visitors left behind lost their timestamp, and the native civilization of L’Haronne only appeared after that.”

Hao Ren and Vivian exchanged a look with each other.

There were really many scholars in the L’Haronne continent.

At this time, Nangong Sanba acted inadvertently and chimed in. “Miss Rheia, do you know other Anno ruins that are different from the style here?”

“Ahh, as far as I know, there are the black pyramids in the Golden Sea, the Lunar Temple in the elven territory, and the statues near the south coast of the Sea of Mists,” Rheia said as she looked around at the ruins in the surroundings. “Those things are massive and well-preserved. So, they are famous. There are also smaller Anno ruins scattered around, just like what we have found here. I guess there are at least dozens of them lying around Longwind Peak. Of course, ruins with magic energy reactions are still the more precious one.”

“is that what it is?” Hao Ren pretended to have listened attentively. “I didn’t know that.”

It seemed the theory that L’Haronne was the home planet of the deicide had become even less possible. The deicide had only built the structure on the planet, and what they left behind was only one of the many mysterious ruins in L’Haronne.

Rheia smiled smugly. Getting to know a new friend who loved learning seemed to be satisfying her scholarly soul. She turned to hole in the ancient dome and said, “That’s all for today’s lecture. We still have other things to do. I have just checked the strength of this thing; it looks shaky on the outside, but its structure is pretty stable. Next, our mission is to go down from this hole and find its heart.”

Hao Ren smiled. “Then what are we waiting for? We are here for this.”