The Record of Unusual Creatures

Basically, each and every sculpture was damaged and some were even broken to the point of no recovery; even the MDT’s superior calculation ability could not restore the sculptures and embossings’ missing parts out of thin air.

Hao Ren could only let it restore their original looks, as close as possible.

The MDT floated in the air as a ray of blue light was projected over a wide radius before it. In the light, time seemed to have reversed as the broken sculptures and embossings were reformed and placed back into their original locations. Vines and moss were cleaned up by the sweeping purification system and revealed the sculptures’ original looks.

Hao Ren noticed the humanoid sculptures: males, female, old and young of many races arrayed neatly by the side of the hallway; seemingly to display the standard human appearance.

Further ahead was the star map. It was carved into a five-meter-wide metal plate, and the metal plate stood like a screen before the humanoid sculptures. On it was not only the positions of the planets and stars but also many markers for different things. The MDT, after translating the symbols understood that the markings were to explain the meaning of the star map.

“It seems this place is somewhat of a ‘visitor’s book’,” Hao Ren said as he rubbed his chin. “I think there are probably more of this sort of building on this planet… perhaps most major city centers have one of these… ‘museums?”

Vivian shook her head. “We’ll only know once we find more of them.”

The four of them stopped before the last set of embossing.

“It’s probably this.” Lily raised Flame-effing-joy towards the surface of the embossing, her golden iris glowed.

Through the identical projection the MDT had displayed, Hao Ren saw a very familiar scene. Giant tentacles burst out from the deepest recess of the land and it shook the foundation of the continent, causing catastrophic floods and earthquakes. The cities wiped out before the catastrophe, towers fell, bridges broke; many wondrous buildings lost.

After a series of natural disasters, then came the Blood Tide: The embossing detailed the scene rather graphically as a massive cloud of darkness shrouded the human realm and many living creatures melted away within the darkness and became chaotic lines and blocks. Anyone seeing this for the first time would probably be very confused, but Hao Ren knew it as soon as he saw it. This was the scene of the Blood Tide harvesting and consuming all life.

The last part of the embossing, Hao Ren saw how the indigenous people of the planet fought back. They had built massive iron fortresses and hoped to ward off the First Born’s attacks by cutting contact with the outside world, but like what happened on Tannagost, these iron fortresses fell in quick succession. They had also sent out massive robotic armies to attack the exposed tentacles, but that could only so slightly delay the inevitable catastrophe. This was because they were living on the catastrophe itself, and the enemy was the world they lived in. The enemy was everywhere, and there was no place to run.

“Look,” Vivian pointed towards the end of the embossing. As that part was particularly damaged, the restoration done by the MDT was still blurry. But even blurry one could still understand what was being detailed, and one of the drawings showed a spacecraft taking off. “They seemed to have built a massive spaceship and sent a huge amount of people and material into space. There’s nothing after that.”

Hao Ren was deep in thought as he by reflexively tried to touch the embossing, but his hand went through the projection before touching the metal plate’s rough layer. “Based on these images, the civilization on the planet was indeed destroyed and until the very end, the First Born was overwhelming… but after a few thousand years and something happened leading to the planet being what it is today. The ecosystem had seemed recovered. Even when the First Born is still active but it did not continue to destroy the ecosystem and…”

“And there are those ‘survivors’ in the bombers.” Nangong Wuyue’s tail slapped against the ground. “There must’ve been something that happened after the end of the timeline in the embossing and changed the direction of everything.”

Hao Ren nodded. “This planet is different from the past ones, and looks like we need to study it properly.”

In the search after that, they had scoured the entire building, and while there were some new findings, none were actually valuable clues.

At the top of the building, they found a sealed secret room that was covered in a special type of alloy. After slicing the outer shell open, Hoa Ren found a set ancient equipment ruined beyond repair and probably the remains of the facility’s operators. After some scans, the MDT confirmed that all had committed suicide.

The secret room was totally sealed. Not only it could not be opened from outside, and it looks like once the facility is sealed, even those inside could not get out. It was a veritable graveyard from the outset. Vivian surmised that those within the room were probably the last of the city’s defenders and they were controlling the last defensive capabilities of the city from here. And once all were destroyed, they ended their lives in this ‘safe room’.

For the parts of the buildings that had already sunk into the ground, Wuyue, using her control over water managed to find some half-flooded machine room and reactor. They were probably the brains and heart of this ancient facility. As they were submerged in water for a very long time, the machine room was pretty much a room full of worthless scrap metal. Hao Ren had hoped to find some data storage devices in the machines but was left disappointed.

As for the ruined reactor… the MDT determined that the reactor was probably a high-efficiency fusion reactor, but it was impossible to restore it.

The search continued until dark.

After completing the search in the building, Hao Ren had also gone to check on a few other places in the city and found a mound of ruined machines and weaponry. Lily even found a rather intricately made ship model and Vivian thought it was probably a child’s toy. From an archeological perspective, their finds were rather fruitful, but in the wider search for the truth, only the objects in the ‘hall of sculptures’ was of value.

With the First Born’s presence confirmed, the outdoors were clearly unsafe and Hao Ren abandoned the idea to pass the night amongst the ruins and the forest. Upon letting the MDT and Nolan establishing contact, the party teleported back to the ship.

The crew was pretty much bored out of their wits throughout the day. As the mainframe was damaged, Nolan had to shift all her calculation capacity for the repairs and those who stayed behind did not even have the luxury to watch a movie. That bored everyone to death, especially the energetic Y’lisabet, the little lass was wandering around the ship with her screwdriver in hand and scared the living daylights out of Nolan.

The only exception was probably Rollie, as a cat, at least in spirit, she did not pick up too many human habits and most of the time was content to just lay on the floor snoozing or playing with the ball of yarn. And to be frank, everyone on the ship was envious of her and her simple-mindedness; being able to entertain herself oh so happily with just a ball of yarn…

When Hao Ren and the rest returned, they somewhat cheered up Y’lisabet, Nangong Sanba and the rest. Even Lil Pea bounced over onto Hao Ren’s shoulder asking what did he find.

“I actually found quite a few things, but can you give me some breathing room.” Hao Ren waved his hand to chase Y’lisabet, Nangong Sanba away. After getting comfortable on his captain’s chair and surveying the bridge, he noticed that most of the damaged objects had ‘regrown’. “Nolan, everything smooth?”

“Much better than expected.” Nolan’s voice echoed. “As there was no outside interference, the repair works is going at maximum speed.”

“Detected any other signals from the indigenous civilization?”

“Aside from the air units you ran into earlier in the day, there was nothing else.”

“Hmmm…. alright, it’s not urgent anyway.” Hao Ren waived off. “We have found some information left behind by the ancient people here..”

The crew converged around the bridge as they listened to Hao Ren, Lily, Vivian, and Wuyue detailed their exploration of the city. Aside from Lil Pea and Rollie who were there to make up the numbers, everyone fell into deep thought trying to decipher the meaning behind the embossing and the information gleaned from the aircraft in the day.

Y’zaks was the first to speak. “The embossing is probably the records left by the last of the defenders and once the spacecraft had taken off they retreated to the city and until the very last moment left these sculptures and embossing. This could explain why there was nothing after the spaceship had taken off: the people who made the embossing had no idea what happened afterward.”

“I’m of the same mind.” Hao Ren nodded. “The launch had probably only managed to take with them a part, probably less than ten percent of the population. The rest were left on the planet and these people fought for a time after the launch, right until the First Born annihilated all defensive lines. In this time, they had time to leave behind enough information for those who would come later.”

“But the city was not totally destroyed by the First Born, while it is a ruin, it was more due to damage caused by the passing of time. If it was the First Born, the destruction would have been total.” Nangong Sanba interjected.

If it was the latter, Hao Ren and the rest would have come to an even more desolate world.

Vivian then brought up another matter. “So those aircraft during the day, what do you think of them?”

“Survivors.” Lily shrugged. “What else?”

“Survivors are all fine and dandy. But the key question is… where did they come from,” Hao Ren tapped his fingers on the armrest. “Are they the descendants of the planetary resistance or… the group of people who were sent to space?”