The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren, of course, did not forget what had happened on the Scarred Nebula.

Two months ago, he, together with two senior inspectors, Galazur and Antony, went to work on the historical legacy of Yggdrasil. After that, they went to the Scarred Nebula and prepared to create an artificial stable gate on the rift of the ancient Wall of Reality to enhance the connection between the Surface world and the Plane of Dreams. However, this ambitious project encountered a major setback at the beginning of the project:

The core crystal used to open the gate was bombarded with information from the Plane of Dreams and crashed immediately after leaving the spacecraft’s control, falling straight into a large fissure in the center of the Scarred Nebula. Its whereabouts were still unknown.

The ancillary projects they left behind near the Scarred Nebula continued to operate. Autonomous robots and building units had been working round the clock, setting up lots of outposts and data centers around the fissure, as well as tens of thousands of space turrets and factories. Yggdrasil, which docked near Inferno, served as the main monitoring station for the Scarred Nebula system. It was responsible for maintaining and advancing the continuing progress of that ambitious project.

However, the most important door crystal was still missing, which led to the awkward situation of the whole project: all the preparations for it were almost finished, but the core of the project was still nowhere to be found.

The only clue to the crystal was a sample of information. At the moment that the large fissure in the center of the Scarred Nebula opened, Anthony heard some brief signals coming from the depths of the Plane of Dreams. These signals came from somewhere around the point where the crystal fell behind the Wall of Reality.

In the past two months, Hao Ren had turned on all the monitoring systems in the Plane of Dreams. From Crapple Research Station to UAV fleets, from the free radar station in space to deep-space detection antennas on the surface of planets, countless automated devices scanned the universe day after day. Now, at last, the huge search project was making progress.

A remote sensing signal from the new frontier overlapped with the information sample recorded that day. The coincidence degree of the two was over 90%. After the information comparison, the Crapple Research Station immediately sent the news to Hao Ren.

The Crapple Research Station, as always, gazed down at the vast land below like the eyes of the gods. In the background of this giant space station, the stars of the universe are still shining. Those mysterious galaxies and nebulae lived forever in darkness. The disasters that happened in this universe seemed to have no effect on the operation of the world at all.

Everyone in the family came to the main control hall of the Crapple Research Station. Boring days had been too long, and now something interesting finally popped up, so everyone came and join in the fun.

Of course, everyone had their excuse to come here. Lily’s excuse was to be Hao Ren’s bodyguard, and Rollie’s reason was that Hao Ren had not walked her for a long time…

Muru returned to the space station from the ecological monitoring base of Tannagost to meet Hao Ren. The guardian giant had now fully demonstrated his ability and reliability, so Hao Ren gave him the total freedom and some daily maintenance and documentation work on the space station. The ecological reconstruction project in Tannagost was coming to an end, so the guardian giant now had tons of free time available. As a demigod created by the goddess of creation, Muru had a good learning ability, so he quickly mastered these techniques.

Normally he ran between the planet’s ecological monitoring base and the space station, but now he replaced the space station host to explain to Hao Ren.

“The coordinate sending from the monitoring station is a barren area 2.2 billion light years away from here,” Muru said, turning on his recorder. “I’ve been paying attention to that rift these days… Look, here it is.”

The recorder showed a star map. According to the map’s markings, they could see that it was a ‘pre-scan’ with sub-standard accuracy, and the galaxies on the border were not being corrected for starlight. Clearly, this star map came from the border of the UAV fleet detection area. A monitoring station found this place on the boundary of the observable universe. It had not had time for a further deep space refinement scanning.

Hao Ren frowned and said, “…This position doesn’t seem to be on the extended route of the UAV fleet.”

“Yes, we almost missed it,” the UAV fleet’s collective consciousness answered. “The original expansion of the UAV fleet passed this region by, but at your command, we began to proliferate into the ancient dark regions of the universe. The forward nest thus partially altered the direction of detection, and this area fell right on our new detection path. This stars region is quite old, and all stars are at least twenty billion years old. Most interstellar dust has entered the cooling period. The number of new stars under one billion years old accounts for less than three percent of the total number of stars.”

Hao Ren looked at the map carefully and suddenly found something strange. “Where is the rift? It’s not marked on the star map?”

“No rift. In fact, we found nothing there.” The answer was surprising.

“Nothing?” Hao Ren raised an eyebrow.

Muru nodded. “I was a bit surprised at first, but after comparing the data from a number of monitoring stations at the outposts, it was confirmed that there was no problem with the radar. The region where the sample signal overlaps with the feedback signal is a celestial vacuum belt. There’s not even a speck of space dust there, let alone a rift.”

The giant enlarged the star map while he was speaking. Hao Ren saw the specially marked area at a glance.

It was located at the boundary of two ancient galaxies, an abnormally abrupt dark area. It was empty, and within a span of 10000 light-years, vacuum enveloped everything.

Y’zaks bent down in front of the map, looking grave. “… Not really, there’s a blank space here.”

The old demon’s words sounded strange at first, but everyone was quick-minded, and soon everyone knew what it meant.

At the intersection of two ancient galaxies that are merging, ‘nothingness’ itself was the most striking ‘thing’. It should be filled with turbulent celestial dust and newborn stars from dying nebulae. In any case, a vacuum that spanned tens of thousands of light-years was impossible.

“There must be something there. It’s blocking the radar,” said Vivian.

“There’s something that can interfere with the surveillance system of the UAV fleet?” Nangong Wuyue found it hard to believe. She had a visceral admiration for Hao Ren’s high-tech gadgets. The siren never thought that those high-tech gadgets would fail.

“The UAV fleet uses only civilian version probes,” the data terminal interrupted. “Of course, even a civilian version would be superior to the technology of most human civilizations, but they are still not omnipotent. Things left behind by the goddess of creation and the technology of guardians could influence the judgment of the fleet.”

Hao Ren thought for a moment and connected his ship. “Nolan, get ready. I’ll go and see for myself.”

Nolan’s hologram immediately appeared in front of them. “Okay. But I have a stomach upset. Wait until I reset the energy crystal lattice and we’re ready to go! Five minutes at most!”

“Okay.” Then he heard a noise coming from below. When he looked down, he saw Lil Pea jumping around his feet happily.

He wondered whether he should take the baby fish to the ‘vacuum zone’. But in the end, he decided to take the kid with him.

There’s a reason for that: If Raven 12345 was right, the opening of the Wall of Reality on the side of the Plane of Dreams should lead to the remains of the goddess of creation and the strange vacuum seemed to confirm this. Lil Pea had been shown to have a significant impact on the lifeblood. She may also have some subtle ‘resonance’ with other creations of the goddess of creation.

With this kid around, maybe he would find some small details that were usually overlooked.

Of course, in this process, he must always pay attention to the baby fish so that the baby fish would not accidentally kill itself…

Hao Ren’s eyes turned to the other side: Lily was holding a jar in her hand, and Noobie was tearing a pile of old newspapers inside.

He decided to take the little one with him because she was somehow related to the goddess of creation, and more importantly – if there was any power left over from the goddess of creation, what would happen if an evil mind met the primitive power of the goddess?

Noobie had shown partial intellectual tendency after being irradiated by Vivian’s moonlight (modified version), so if she was exposed to a higher level of primitive divine power, was it possible for the evil mind to be completely “normalized”?