The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

As expected, Wendell was surprised to see the spherical spacecraft. Obviously, this advanced universal space shuttle was somewhat beyond his expectation. Soon, however, the old man recovered from his surprise. “There are also machines in the Twilight Capital that can fly in the sky, but I have never seen anything like this… Asgard is the kingdom of ancient gods, so this thing was passed down from ancient times, wasn’t?” asked Wendell.

“There’re machines flying in the sky in the Twilight Capital too?” Hao Ren was surprised. “Now I’m really curious about the social circumstances of Twilight Capital.”

Wendell joined them on the spherical spacecraft. Under Anthony’s control and the guidance of Vivian, the spacecraft flew toward another Bifröst. As the end of the earth gradually appeared in the distance, those huge tentacles also gradually came into sight. The Firstborn’s tentacles were the only thing that survived in this purgatory and other than that, there was no trace of life in Vanaheim.

Looking at such an environment, it was hard for everyone to imagine how Wendell’s people survived.

“Tell us about the Twilight Capital,” Nangong Wuyue looked at Wendell and asked curiously (she was now in the human form). “What kind of place is that? How did you survive the collapse of the world?”

“The sky and the earth had collapsed…” Wendell said in a low, hoarse voice. “The war of more than 2000 years ago, you all knew about that disaster. I don’t know how much history has been preserved in Asgard, but in the Twilight Capital, there are many ancient books that record it, and there are also many scholars who specialize in these things: after all, they are trapped in the protective barrier, and they have nothing else to study. As far as I know, the war of the gods has broken the balance of the world. Nidhogg’s gnawing weakened the great Yggdrasil, so the other gods took advantage of it and ignited the world. The fire burned for three years, and all the light of the whole universe has been burnt out. So the night fell, and there was only a scorching heat in the darkness. Midgard was also shrouded in scorching heat. Within a few days, the population had dropped sharply to less than 10%. All the life in the world was about to be destroyed, but then an ancient saint suddenly appeared in the crowd. This ancient saint was called ‘the traveler’. He aroused some kind of great power sleeping deep in the earth, forming a barrier with the force of the earth, blocking the poisonous and evil fire in the endless night. And inside this barrier is the Twilight Capital.

“For us, The Twilight Capital is not a city, but a kingdom. Although smaller than any other kingdom in ancient times, we still survive in it and have survived for more than two thousand years. The Twilight Capital was first connected by several city-states. The enveloping limit of the barrier is only that big, and all the places outside the city-states were destroyed. Over time, we have been building our homes in the barrier, and there is no spare land in the Twilight Capital. The biggest impression I have of there is that it’s crowded. Crowded and antiquated. The buildings of all ages, from a thousand years ago to a hundred years ago, are all in disarray and crowding together. Smoke and dust are everywhere in the air. The whistle of the steam workshop often sounds in the middle of the night. The big gears rattled. Locomotives sometimes rumble through the mid line of the Twilight Capital, causing a tremor that almost makes us suspect that the whole city is going to collapse. The clothes hanging outside the windows are often blown down by the strange wind that passes the block—all the way down into the oldest abyss of the city. The city was built too big, too high, too old, and even the city’s builders and planners didn’t know what the structure was under the stacked houses, let alone me. All I know is that our city is like a nest piled up one by one, almost touching the barrier of the sky. Every time I open my eyes, I feel that the dim sky is going to collapse.”

Lily said to herself, “It doesn’t sound safe.”

“Yes, it’s very unsafe, but few people think so,” muttered Wendell. “Everyone’s used to it. Nobody thinks there’s anything wrong with a city like this. Anyway, everything looks stable at the moment. But people who study ancient books and machines don’t think so. We know that Twilight Capital has its limit, and the lifespan of the city is even more limited. The world has been extinguished for more than two thousand years. We have survived for too long on a little ember. Once that ember is extinguished, it’s over.”

“Is that why the Lightseekers appeared?” Vivian asked curiously.

Wendell nodded softly and answered, “That’s one of the reasons.”

Ever since the day the Twilight Capital was built, people had always kept in mind the fact that the outside world had been burned down. They were afraid of the long dark night outside. They feared that the light in the city would eventually die out. They feared that the whole world would sink forever, and fear gave rise to courage, and the Lightseeker was born. These brave, curious and discontented men were the eyes of the Twilight Capital. With the blessings and expectations of others, they bravely entered the darkness and looked for other lights in the wreckage of the world, such as another twilight capital, or a pure land which had not been destroyed by evil fire, or…

A sign of dawn.

“Some scholars believe that the long night will end,” Wendell said slowly, “and Yggdrasil is not dead. It’s just healing. When the sacred branches complete their transformation, the universe will be re-lit. That is the dawn after the long night, and the dawn will first come from Niflheim. An important mission of the Lightseeker is to look for signs of the dawn, but to tell the truth… Not many people hold this hope, including the Lightseekers themselves. Most of them were just looking for another twilight capital.

At this point, Wendell sighed. “Even so, there are fewer and fewer Lightseekers and fewer people supporting us. In the past, the Lightseekers had a lofty position and were regarded as the warriors who challenged the endless night. Our predecessors were once engraved on the bottom cornerstone of the Twilight Capital. Slowly, however, the light-seeking journey turned into an unintelligible reckless act because batches of people who broke into the darkness either eventually got swallowed up by the endless night or became insane. Very few people can bring back anything from the night. It’s a heavy burden for the Twilight Capital to support such an expensive team. The headquarters of the Lightseekers was originally the most magnificent building in the city, but now it has become a dark lane in the bottom of the city…”

“Forget it, let’s not talk about it,” the old man said with a low voice.

“To be honest, this is an inevitable choice for the community.” Galazur shrugged. “Not even ignorance. For the survival of the whole community, most intelligent races would be too cautious and bystanders would think that such caution would lead to missed opportunities. But in most cases, it prolongs survival in a desperate situation.”

Wendell looked at Galazur with an odd expression, thinking that her detached way of speaking was weird. However, this was the most pertinent and sincere evaluation made by an investigator accustomed to the rise and fall of civilization.

Because of Galazur’s comments, they continued the latter part of the journey in low spirits.

And on this dreary journey, they saw the real situation of the space chain of Yggdrasil after the Twilight of the Gods.

It was worse than they thought.

Hao Ren formed a wrong first impression from what he had seen in Asgard previously. He thought that the situation of the nine worlds after the Twilight of the Gods was not so tragic, but when he began to penetrate into the different layers of them, he realized how destructive the big explosion that ran through the nine layers of them was. Just as a warhead enters a target, it produces a wound inside the target body that is far more terrifying than the surface, the damage caused by the demon hunter’s beam cannon and the explosion of the demonic energy has a similar effect. The deep space of the nine worlds had been severely destroyed.

Vanaheim became a wasteland shrouded in toxic gases and radiation; Svartalfheim had been completely torn apart, and the whole continent was floating in a void, with only those tentacles that penetrated the continent connecting the broken earth; Alfheim was in turmoil, and a storm called ‘Madness’ raged in the darkness. The storm, which had been running in the space for 2000 of years, had now completely ground everything on the continent into powder…

They also saw the kingdom of giants, Jotunheim. It was a hopeless desert, silently stagnating there for thousands of years. The crazy heatwave poured out of the ruins was still scorching the land.

But Jotunheim was nothing compared to Muspelheim, where two-thirds of the continents were covered by lava lakes.

All these worlds have one thing in common: they were shrouded in darkness.

Smoke and clouds covered the sky and the rage of magic energy destroyed the sources of light in every kingdom. Seeing the situation in those kingdoms, Hao Ren finally understood why Wendell called the days after the Twilight of the Gods “the endless night”.

As it literally means, after the end of the world, the endless night fell and eight out of the nine worlds were ruled by darkness. In that darkness, only the embers glowed, scorching and deadly. The survivors were hiding and shuddering under the twilight barrier. Anyone who dared to take a step into the darkness was treated as a brave fighter, not to mention the Lightseekers who dared to cross the nine worlds.

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