The Record of Unusual Creatures

Maggie, the tiny girl was floating in the air. She stared at Hao Ren and blinked as Raven 12345 happily introduced her. Her face was filled with curiosity, and her bright eyes were full of boldness and inquisitiveness.

“Croak!” The tiny girl greeted him enthusiastically with her arms akimbo. She would habitually make the croaking sound every time she spoke. “I am Maggie! I know you, you are Hao Ren, the demolition man!”

Hao Ren was dumbstruck by another epithet. “This again—”

“It is just an epithet,” Raven 12345 immediately cut in, interrupting Hao Ren. “Going around the universes, you need a loud name.”

Hao Ren knew who gave him this perverted epithet. Glaring at Raven 12345, he said, “Is this really necessary?”

The goddess turned her head away and looked into the sky, pretending not to hear.

“She is…” Vivian broke the silence and pointed at Maggie. “She’s also a god-goddess? A real god?”

The grand entrance of Maggie was still vivid in Vivian’s mind. Raven 12345 would not call the tiny girl crow goddess for nothing; she must be a true god to be worthy of that title. But Vivian was not so sure: she had not seen any goddesses so small! The palm-sized girl was even shorter than Lil Pea even with her hands and legs stretched straight.

Raven 12345 just nodded. “The crow goddess is the god of storms and shadows, also the god of dimensional phenomena and messengers. Though very tiny, she is a true goddess responsible for conveying information between universes and diverting the multi-cosmic grid. I have known Maggie for thousands of years. When she just hatched from the egg, we both—”

The crow goddess immediately jumped to her feet. “Croak!”

Hao Ren and Vivian’s jaws dropped on the ground, speechless.

He stared at Raven and the crow goddess. “You two got together because of you both are the same species?”

The goddess, the bigger one, arched her brows. “Raven is a military title! I am not coming from a crow!”

But that did not stop Hao Ren from imagining. “Despite from the same crow species, you two are so different in body size. So are you two belong to the rank of raptor in Xi Ling Celestials?”

Without a word, Raven 12345 rolled up her sleeves and about to come at him. “Stand still, I’m going to give you a buff!”

Hao Ren stopped from irritating her further. He quickly pointed at the giant ball in the air. “Let us talk about that thing!”

As if broad-mindedness was part of her neurotic personality, Raven 12345 quickly put the anger at the back of her mind. Turning and glancing at the golden giant ball, she pouted at Maggie. “The crow goddess is an expert in break-ins and intelligence-gathering. Aside from hellish places like the Plane of Dreams, there’s no place in the void where she can’t get into. I invited her over to help study the core of this giant ball. She should be able to figure out this thing without damaging it.”

Maggie’s attention was back on the ball. She stretched her neck and sighed again. “Croak, that’s a big egg!”

Hao Ren was dumbfounded. “Why does she keep saying that?”

Raven 12345 smacked herself on the forehead. “It is her ancestor’s fault. They were gods who were promoted from the crows by the king of the gods, so their biggest hobby is brooding eggs — all kinds of eggs. These guys have a strange mind; in their eyes, all round things are eggs. It’s too hard to explain what is in their minds. Maggie, don’t think about it, this is not an egg. I promise that you will not get to eat any leaves in the next two hundred years if you try to brood it! Help me extract the information from this ball.”

The tiny crow goddess croaked in disappointment. She did not say anything just looked up before flying toward the golden giant ball.

Then she went into the giant ball just like that without any hindrance.

Raven 12345 was unable to access the ball with her will. Same went to Hao Ren, who had exhausted all means but still unable to pry open the ball without damaging it. But, this tiny, palm-sized goddess just swaggered into it, not through the gaps the thick divine-cast metal plate.

A moment later, strange clinking and dinging sounds came from inside the golden giant ball, as if a bunch of metal parts was being thrown into a large iron bucket.

Worried, Hao Ren asked, “Is that normal? It sounds scary.”

“Do you know what I am thinking?” Raven 12345 bent her slim finger tapping her chin. She did not directly answer Hao Ren’s question. “The goddess of the Plane of Dreams spent several thousand years to create the Creation Engine. When the deicidal war broke out, her engine was almost finished. She did not put this most vital core into the engine but left it to her descendant. There was only one reason she did this.”

Vivian was nervous. “What was it?”

“Let her descendant finish what she has left off,” Raven 12345 said, looking at Vivian. “She knew that she was going to die and that she was not going to complete the Creation Engine. But the goddess insisted on building it until her last breath. She was determined to finish her plan. So she created a descendant with her own divine blood and then sent the descendant and the core of the Creation Engine to another universe. Her purpose was clear.”

“Let me finish it?” Vivian’s eye wide opened. “How am I going to do that?”

“That, I have no idea,” Raven 12345 threw her hands up. “I am just giving you an idea. For now, you might not have the ability to finish the Creation Engine, but the Goddess of Creation had faith in you when she left the ball to you. At least, it seems so.”

Hao Ren looked at Vivian, stunned. How is the pauper going to accomplish a project as massive as this? he thought. This pauper had been living in poverty for the last 10,000 years. All the wealth she had since the invention of money was not even enough to build a toilet, let alone the Creation Engine.

“Let’s see things from another perspective,” Raven 12345 said. “Now, we know that it was the Goddess of Creation who sent the engine core and Vivian to the Surface World. What are the reasons that are preventing Vivian from completing this engine?”

Hao Ren thought for a moment and came up with three reasons. “One, she’s forgetful, which will lead to her forgetting her mission; two, her strength is declining, which will lead to her failure in completing the mission; and three, I think because she’s poor.”

Raven was speechless.

“That is to say, these three factors were things that the Goddess of Creation did not foresee. Or in other words, these three factors are there to disrupt the action of the goddess,” Raven 12345 said. “There must be a force hostile to the Goddess of Creation, probably the same ‘whispering voice’ that influenced the treacherous children to kill her in the Plane of Dreams. This force has put three shackles on Vivian. The purpose is clear—”

Hao Ren looked up at the golden giant ball. “To stop the completion of the engine.”

Raven 12345 nodded lightly. “If we can figure out what this engine is for, we may be able to guess who the mastermind behind this is.”

“Then we should finish this thing. With our technological capability, it shouldn’t be difficult,” Hao Ren said.

Raven 12345 did not say anything. After a while, she gave a noncommittal reply. “Let’s not rush into it. We should wait and see what Maggie can find.”