The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

When Hao Ren heard Galazur said that, he realized suddenly that he rarely spoke to his colleagues, such that he did not even know about these happenings. Galazur did not keep Hao Ren in suspense when she saw Hao Ren’s reaction. She tapped her IDT, and Hao Ren’s IDT pinged shortly after, signaling an incoming message. A series of charts was projected in front of him.

These were simple charts. Even an amateur like Hao Ren could understand them.

“The Wall of Reality is invisible to normal people, but its activities leave all kinds of traces in the universe. Larger ones are like the dimensional rift in the scarred nebula, while smaller ones are, for example, minor spatial distortions. By monitoring these areas with these spatial distortions, we can deduce the stability of the Wall of Reality. Before you jumped into missions regarding the Plane of Dreams, third-party investigation companies had relied on this method to monitor the activities in the Plane of Dreams,” Galazur explained the origin of these charts since Hao Ren would not have guessed by just looking at the numbers. “We had been accumulating observation data for thousands of years, but few inspectors had the patience to gather and consolidate them. Fortunately, I am a dragon who is interested in numbers. This red line here indicates the activity at the spatial distortion points for the past millennia. These points were all the result of the Wall of Reality’s activities. The other lines around the red line are from individual large cracks within the same period.”

Hao Ren studied the clear lines on the chart. He could see that the lines started off mostly stable with rhythmic fluctuations. This was the relatively peaceful period that Raven 12345 spoke of. A few hundred years ago, these minor fluctuations suddenly became amplified. That was the turbulent phase.

From the time two universes clashed into each other and gave birth to the Wall of Reality, about fifty million years ago, Hao Ren could make out a few monumental events that affected the condition of the Wall. Before the goddess of creation fell, the Wall of Reality was at its most stable state — this was the phase of absolute stability. Shortly after the goddess of creation fell, the Wall began to exhibit strong activity and allowed unusual creatures to cross the Wall — this was the phase of near-collapse. From then until a few hundred years before today, the Wall of Reality remained active but not excessively so — this was the phase of relative stability. In the last two to three hundred years, for some unknown reason, the Wall of Reality became worryingly active once more, enough to make Raven 12345 concerned — this was the phase of turbulence.

“I am sending to you the observation results from the last few years,” Galazur said as she manipulated her IDT.

In the new charts, Hao Ren saw sharper fluctuations. However, these fluctuations seemed to die down moving towards the current day.

“I noticed the pattern by accident — ever since you started your job, the past two years or so did not see any new large cracks forming, and no reports of unusual spatial distortions. The old ones remained where they are, but they did not grow larger or smaller. It was like they were frozen in their current state. So long as no daredevil goes near them, no one is at risk. Hence, the point here is this—how did you do it?”

Hao Ren stared with his mouth open wide.

He thought Galazur’s idea was preposterous, but he also knew that the dragon lady had no reason to mess with him. He looked at the numbers again, knowing that they were hard to be tampered with, and found that the charts looked authentic by all means.

“I didn’t do anything.” Hao Ren said honestly. “I was only doing my job in the Plane of Dreams… Just like the rest of you.”

“Then the key is not in what you have done, but in having you do it.” Galazur mused to herself softly, but Hao Ren heard her.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just my speculation.” Galazur laughed it off. “A female dragon’s sixth sense, that’s all.”

After that, Hao Ren and the dragon queen discussed more events related to the Plane of Dreams. Despite not being the inspector in charge of those events, Galazur with her thousands of years of work experience managed to be familiar with most of the details. Her knowledge of things behind the scenes and the strange phenomena happening in the furthest parts of the universe gave Hao Ren some much-needed insight. The conversation went on enthusiastically and ended with Galazur promising to notify Hao Ren as soon as they found signs of Yggdrasil.

The IDT ended the virtual meeting. As the signal was disconnected, Galazur’s figure on the sofa dispersed into numerous tiny dots of light, leaving a strong and dignified impression to her audience.

“… Long-time inspectors are really helpful.” Hao Ren looked at the IDT, who was slumping on the tea table, pretending to be a coaster. “She’s not assigned to the Plane of Dreams, but she still knows a good deal about the Wall of Reality.”

The IDT buzzed from the tea table. “That’s why I suggested you to discuss with your more experienced seniors.”

Hao Ren nodded. The PDA was usually unreliable to say the least, but it seemed it was capable of being reasonable when it came to official matters. He remembered something Galazur told him about. “Why do you think the Wall of Reality stabilized in the last few years?”

He remembered when he first started on his job, Raven 12345 has told him that the Wall of Reality had never been so unstable as it was back then. The Plane of Dreams and the Surface World were crossing over each other at an unprecedented speed. Hao Ren had prepared himself for the worst, but he never imagined that things were now so… “optimistic”. The Wall of Reality had begun to stabilize when he started working, much to his surprise. He did not the reason for it, but it was still good news for all.

Nevertheless, why did Raven 12345 neglected to mention this to him?

“I am only a PDA. What would I know?” The IDT replied dismissively. “Since our dear boss, Raven, did not tell you about it, I’m sure she has her reasons. Gods are powerful beings. Her every word could shape the reality of the universe. Perhaps she was believed that revealing too much to you could affect the balance between the Plane of Dreams and the Surface World. After all, since you are traveling between the two places so often, you are already a huge information carrier already.”

Hao Ren labored over the problem and saw no clear solution. In the end, he filed the matter away and rested his eyes on the sofa.

Rollie had been staring at Hao Ren all this while. When she noticed Hao Ren finally relaxing, she immediately pounced on him and pawed his eyelids. “Big Boss Cat! Big Boss Cat!”

Hao Ren opened his eyes and looked at the cat girl lazily. “What? I’m taking a break…”

The cat girl pointed at her face. “Whiskers!”

Hao Ren focused and noticed that the stupid cat had drawn six black lines on her face. They looked like whiskers, drawn symmetrically on her cheeks. The silly cat flaunted them eagerly. “I have whiskers again!”

“Clean them off!” Hao Ren picked up a piece of cloth from beside him and shoved it into her face. “You’re a mess!”

Rollie snarled. “No! I want my whiskers! I get stuck in holes when I don’t have ’em!”

“You’ll get stuck even with the drawn whiskers!” Hao Ren knew that his nap was over when the cat interrupted him. He decided to take care of the dumb companion first, and so he rubbed the cloth against the cat’s face and yelled, “On the other hand, what hole are you planning to crawl into?!”

“I haven’t tried the basement’s trapdoor!” Rollie wriggled desperately. “Don’t wipe! I want my whiskers!”

Hao Ren pressed down hard on the dumb cat’s head with his hands and put his knees on her belly. He scrubbed the silly cat’s face and yelled again, “Don’t move, we should get it off before it dries! Vivian’s going to shoot you when she sees you!”

The dumb cat screamed pitifully. “No! No! Give me back my whiskers! I want my own whiskers back, or I’m not rubbing these off!”

While they deep into it, the door to the room was suddenly pushed open from outside. Lily, freshly awaken from her nap, made her way lazily into the room. “What is going on in here, I’m trying to sleep… Oh no! The landlord’s f*cking the cat!”

“…The f*ck?!” Hao Ren felt like his head was bursting.

Lily continued to shout in confusion, “This is bad! Mr. Landlord’s admitted it!”

The Hao Family continued their joyful lives at home…

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