The Record of Unusual Creatures

Cold sweat began to trickle down his forehead again. Although he could not wrap his head around many things that Raven 12345 said, he could sense that many of them were pretty nasty. “On the verge of spilling over? What does that… mean?”

“She has a large amount of information that looks like garbled characters. It’s a small file with only two lines of text, but a dozen GB of volume.” Raven 12345 had been trying to explain what happened to Vivian in words that Hao Ren could understand. “The extra information could be anything—her memory of the Plane of Dreams, her massive inner personality, her implicit curse, or… symbols that some half-baked goddess left on her. But before that information comes into effect, nobody can tell what it is. At this moment, I can only say that the information is harmless… at least ever since I began to pay attention to this matter. There hasn’t been any undue effect so far.”

“Just like the cause and effect entanglement that some people talk about?” Hao Ren frowned. “Nonetheless, it’s definitely not a good thing to have so many extra things in the body. Any way to get rid of them?”

“You are not even sure what that information is, and how dare you decide to remove it?” Raven 12345 glanced at Hao Ren. “That’s why I suspect Vivian has some connection with the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams. The information tangled up in her body has exceeded the ‘regulation’ of mortal species and is more Gold-like. Although she is no divine, the complexity doesn’t help but let people think so. Perhaps God makes her. Maybe… Well, forget it, you won’t understand it anyway.”

“Perhaps she a God’s creation is buried inside her, isn’t it?” Hao Ren suddenly hit the nail on the head as he had guessed what the Goddess wanted to say. “Why are you only telling me this now?”

Raven 12345 stated directly into Hao Ren’s eyes. “You seem to care a lot about her.”

Hao Ren was startled. His voice was became somewhat unnatural. “Err… yes, a bit. After all, we have been together for so long, you can’t really say we don’t care about each other at all.”

“There are things I do know better than you, including Vivian,” Raven 12345 lowered her head slightly. “But I hope you better believe it: I didn’t tell you that was because I want to protect both of you.”

Hao Ren forced a smile and shrugged his shoulders. “This sounds like a classic excuse. Why not you talk about the benefits of not telling us?”

Raven 12345 ignored him. “If the ‘truth’ would cause the information she carries to overflow? What if the excessive information Vivian carries is a seal and the key to unsealing it lies in her memory or her self-awareness? Or what if she possesses the hidden ability to retrieve keywords from the memories of people around her? I can’t unpack her information right now, so I’m not sure the information I have now could be a trigger. So I have to be careful.”

Hao Ren was dumbfounded. “It sounds like something out of Arabian Nights.”

“But this kind of thing could really happen,” Raven 12345 was very serious. “I have seen enough things. The universe is vast place. Dangers you don’t know are everywhere.”

Hao Ren was silent for a moment as he realised that he could only believe what the Goddess said now. But he also had doubts. “Then is it okay for you to tell me this?”

“I didn’t tell you anything substantive,” Raven 12345 blinked, she sounded freaking sarcastic. “I believe that even if Vivian knew what I told you today, she wouldn’t ‘overspill’. I have calculated it perfectly.”

Hao Ren raised his hand and surrendered himself. “Okay, okay, let’s assume that you’re right. But then again, I thought that Goddess should know all, and I’m surprised that you don’t know so many things.”

Raven 12345 pursed her lips. “That depends on what knowledge. Within the scope of mortals’ knowledge, true God is indeed omniscient and omnipotent, because everything those mortals can perceive is a ‘subset’ of the episode of the true God, but outside this range, for example, it involves another real God… I’m just like you, I can only explore.”

The two of them were silent for a while, and then almost spoke simultaneously,

“Is the excess information harmful to Vivian?””Don’t worry about the girl for now.”

“I knew you were going to ask this,” Raven 12345 said, ploughing her hair in an unsightly manner, as if a decadent who only ventured outside once every two months. She yelled in a lazy tone of voice, “Don’t worry, I love my people, I treat my soldiers like my children… whatever it is, I will not let you fall into danger. The excess information had been with Vivian for more than ten thousand years. But there have been no problems in the past, it should be just fine in for now as well. As long as you find the whereabouts of the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams, I guess the maiden would be fine.”

Hao Ren could only hope things would go as per what the Goddess said. Just when he fell into silence, Raven 12345 reminded him. “Although theoretically there will be no any problem, but don’t you ever try to mention this to Vivian. Mental pressure may cause those information spillovers.”

Hao Ren suddenly came to his sense and nodded heavily. “Got it. I won’t tell her.”

Raven 12345 smiled, and patted his shoulder with the same force the iron man would normally unleash on the villains. “Good! You too, don’t fall into mental quagmire. I’ll keep investigating. If there’s anything… I’ll tell you in the first instance. I know how it feels when something is hanging around your head.”

“I trust you,” Hao Ren forced a smile, temporarily set the matter aside. Then a question that flashed across his mind during the conversation earlier came to mind. “Wait a second. You have mentioned Vivian came to Earth 48 hours before the Goddess of Creation fell. That is to say, the first hole in the Wall of Reality had appeared before the large-scale cracks happened. Is it not the fallen of the Goddess the cause of the arrival of otherworldlings to Earth?”

“I have the same question,” Raven 12345 unconsciously drew a circle with her finger on the round table. “To tell the truth, I was startled when I finished tracing the timeline. Though I was not aware of the deicidal incident at that time, I have always guessed that something might have happened to the Goddess of Creation that damages the Wall of Reality. But now it seems that the damage has already occurred before the deicide. The deicidal incident had only aggravated the size of the fissure. Although the two events happened just 48-hour apart, there was a time difference.”

“Could it be that during the brutal battle, the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams was hanging on for a very long time—from the beginning of the brutal assault to her death, she bored a hole in the Wall of Reality and threw as many otherworldlings as possible to the other side while installing a compressed file on Vivian…”

Raven 12345 looked at Hao Ren with a wacky look. “She did so many things at once? She wasn’t growing but dying at that moment, you know?”

Only the Goddess could come up with such an analogy.

“Okay, I also know my theory is too far-fetched,” Hao Ren said. “According to what the guardian said at the time, the Goddess couldn’t do so many things at the same time considering her circumstance right before her death. And also it looks like the Goddess didn’t even know the existence of the Wall of Reality either.”

Raven 12345 suddenly looked at the sky. “Oh, it’s getting late. Do you want to stay for dinner?”

“Still need to look at the sky to know the time in this place?” Hao Ren squinted at his goddess. “And you’re now on leave. You didn’t even cook noodles today. Are you expecting me to drink just cold plain water? I better go home and eat Vivian’s home-cooked food.”

Raven 12345 giggled. “Good. You had better leave now. Saving me the hassle of cooking you dinner.”

Hao Ren got up and said goodbye. As the MDT opened up the portal, Raven 12345 suddenly said, “Remember, don’t tell her too much when you get back there. Trust me, nothing will happen.”

“Then I also hope that you can solve the case as soon as possible so that I can have peace of mind.”

After Hao Ren disappeared in the teleporting light, Raven 12345 breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s hard to appease workers nowadays…”

Before her voice trailed off, a ring of light had appeared under her feet. The next moment she knew it, she had already come to an empty space.

It was the room located in the lower part of the mansion, separated by a myriad of columns, and as wide as an endless, marvellous hall, the goddess’ storage room.

Raven 12345 snapped her fingers slightly. The two pillars in front of her began to ripple. Under this illusionary wave, some neatly arranged things slowly emerged.

As the elusive ripples subsided, those things emerged one by one: they were coffin-like crystal containers. Dozens of them lined up in a row, suspended, and tilted at an angle in mid-air. Through a transparent lid, one could clearly see the content inside.

Each container contained a girl who was quietly sleeping inside. Each of them has exactly the same looks, same long red hair, same exquisite facial features, as well as the beautiful features of Eurasian, and the pale, almost perfect, beautiful, porcelain-like skin.

Vivian, there were more than twenty Vivians slept here.

“Don’t ever create trouble again…” Raven 12345 sighed. She grumbled but still examined each container carefully. “Suddenly throwing tantrums and destroying my garden… Now it seems they are slept again.”

After making sure all sleeping individuals were safe, she came to the last crystal container, which was empty.

Raven 12345 quietly watched for a while and put the blood sample that Hao Ren had collected before into the empty container. “Well, this one…represents the fallen.”