The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren suddenly came out from his daze. “Unusual phenomena? What happened?”

“Let’s start with my recent work,” White Flame stepped aside, signaling them not to stand outside. “Please come in. The room’s a bit messy, I hope you don’t mind,” she said.

When they entered the room, the condition of the room left a deep impression on Hao Ren for the wrong reason. It was as if White Flame had not cleaned her room for a hundred years. Nothing was in the right place. Comic books and magazines of different languages were all over the floor. It seemed that White Flame knew many languages.

The shelf on the wall filled with garage kits was probably the neatest place in the room. It was the only place where it was kept correctly. Hao Ren did not know much about these things, but he roughly knew those garage kits were rare items. Never underestimated the ability of a demon hunter intoxicated by anime; living a long life with endless energy, there was nothing that she could not get her hands on.

After all, Vivian had once demonstrated such ability. To get the royal amulet of a small kingdom in Europe, she once lurked for a hundred and forty years on the edge of the imperial city, waiting for the empire to fall before digging out the amulet from the mausoleum. These supernatural creatures would do anything to satisfy their hobbies.

Fumbling in the room for a while before White Flame found a few chairs. After everyone was seated, she sat directly on the bed. “Sorry, I’m not in the habit of cleaning up my room. You know, I’m a warrior and not as meticulous as an ordinary girl.”

Hao Ren rolled his eyes. What does a messy room have to do with being a warrior? he thought.

“Tell us about Coldpath,” Vivian said. If they kept talking about the room any further, it would get on her nerves. “Hasse has told me, you have been busy in Coldpath.”

White Flame nodded. “Yes, we are understaffed now, even master demon hunters like me have become the backbone of the Council of Elders. I recently led a team of people cleaning up the upper realm of Coldpath. The suspended temples of Coldpath could be roughly divided into three areas, namely the lower realm near the Stellar Spire, the middle realm with a large number of normal temples, and the upper realm made up of Netherrealm Clock Tower and the surrounding buildings. As the middle and upper realms have many energy nodes and been heavily bombarded by demonic artillery, the realms are now heavily polluted. So far, the reconstruction work there is the slowest. I found some strange phenomena when inspecting those contaminated areas. Describing them is hard. They look like spatial rifts, but none of the current methods could detect their internal structure, and there is no way to know where the cracks lead to. Now even demon hunters, master in dimensional manipulation, were helpless.”

“Just a spatial rift?” Hao Ren was a little disappointed. He was not there for the stupid spatial rift but for the goddess of creation.

White Flame shook her head and repeated what she had said earlier, as though she could not make it clear enough. “It’s not as simple as a spatial rift. I was saying that they look like spatial rifts. Those things appeared near the energy pipes of large facilities, completely out of thin air. I suspect that the energy nodes of Coldpath triggered something when they went offline collectively. Probably that’s what you’re after: the ancient power.”

“Divinity is not the same as the ancient power that you understand, but what you said makes sense too,” Hao Ren said, scratching his head. “Well, let’s see how those cracks look like,” he said.

White Flame nodded. “Sure. The investigators in the temples near the Netherrealm Clock Tower should still be there, let’s go now.”

While saying, she turned off the game console and the TV. Hao Ren glanced at her curiously as White Flame took out a disc titled “XX Hunter” from the game console. Baffled, Hao Ren asked, “As if you have not enough little monsters to beat in real life, you even play that in the game?”

White Flame was almost stumbled. “It’s empathy,” she said.

Vivian and Lily glared at Hao Ren. “Who are the little monsters you are talking about?”

Hao Ren quickly realized he had a Freudian slip; he almost forgot that the ‘little monsters’ were the otherworldlings.

With White Flame leading the way, they soon returned to the endless darkness of Coldpath.

“I didn’t expect to come back so soon, this place is really a mess.”

Looking at the magnificent floating temples, Hao Ren sighed softly. They were now in front of a temple nearest to the Netherrealm Clock Tower. This temple was once the final battlefield. The demonic army and the Council of Elders clashed in a brutal battle here for two days and two nights. Though the mortal war could not destroy this temple built by the god, the traces of war remained visible. The air was filled with visible arcane energy, the green stains of the demonic artillery were still on the walls. Broken obsidian and weapons were everywhere, and some of them had been blown away by explosions and becoming the wreckage belt floating outside the gravitational field of the temple.

These things would take a long time to clean up.

Some demon hunters had launched an electromagnetic field in the gravity-free zone around the temple to capture debris that floated in the void. Others had erected huge stone obelisks engraved with mysterious Letta runes in the square. When activated, these obelisks would immediately sense the arcane as well as demonic energies lingering above the square, and they would glow and become crystal clear.

The personnel there were all shrouded in a thin layer of protective halo. Obviously, they could not work in the environment without some kind of protection.

“This is the most magic-polluted place,” White Flame reminded. A silver-white sacred flame rose on her body. After the flame faded, a protective halo covered her whole body. “Put on your shield before going in,” she said.

Hao Ren had the life-support collar snapped on the cat, dog, and bat. Though Vivian also had her own protective magic, the life-support collar was obviously more superior. After everyone had put on their collars, Hao Ren looked at Lil Pea, worried: what about this little guy? He thought.

Lil Pea got out of Rollie’s collar. She looked at this beautiful place with excitement. Raising her hands in the air, she yelled, “Wow, big house!”

White Flame was startled. “You cannot let her go in without protection.”

Flipping in the air, Lil Pea stopped when she heard what White Flame said. The little guy looked at them with a pair of sparkling eyes and immediately knew what she had to do. She rubbed her hands, and a silver-white sacred flame popped out of her hands. Just like White Flame, the fire engulfed her before a layer of magic shield covered her.

Her magic shield was even more robust than that of White Flame.

White Flame’s jaw dropped. “This fish knows the sacred flame trick?”

Hao Ren was just as surprised and marveling at the cleverness of the little mermaid. He knew that she was entirely self-taught. Nangong Wuyue, who burned her hair every time using the sacred flame trick, had not taught Lil Pea this. Lil Pea developed this talent naturally.

Hao Ren pushed the little mermaid forwards and said in a proud voice, “This is a demon-hunting fish. I tell you what, she has purer demon-hunter blood than all of you. She got it directly from the Sacred Relic of Origins.”

White Flame’s face turned pale. “Don’t tell me you guys are experimenting with demon hunters! Is this a new species that you’ve cloned?”

“You should read fewer comics. I’ll explain later,” Hao Ren said.

Hao Ren turned around and flew in the direction of the temple. White Flame was rooted to the spot. She could not help but ask Vivian. “Is it really a human subject test?”

“You really have to quit reading comics,” Vivian said.