The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

Similar to the Crapple Research Station, CARS, the main structure of the sacred mountain of Asurmen was also constructed from crystals. Different types of druse, crystal towers, and walls constituted the complex structure within the ancient spacecraft. But unlike conventional spaceships, many of the cabins in Asurmen were not directly connected. Perhaps, some extreme security requirements had necessitated such a sealed design for the key compartments from the outset. The only way to access these compartments was through the gatekeeper or defeating Asurmen’s security system. Through a portal, Lady Gloom brought Hao Ren into the Energy Circulation Hub.

It was a pyramid-shaped chamber, where lavender druse grew in all four corners. As soon as Hao Ren entered this place, he saw a massive crack above the chamber running through the wall of the sacred mountain. Looking through the crack, Hao Ren saw the gloomy sky outside. There was a white crystalline conduit, broken in half and flickering with sparks, just below the crack. The floor in front of the conduit had crumbled and sunk. A crystal, different in material compared to its surroundings, was lying quietly in the pit.

Perhaps the crystal had changed in shape and color when it passed through the Wall of Reality, because there was no way Hao Ren could have known the nature of the crystal just by looking at it. Nevertheless, his heart skipped a beat when he saw two lines of text on the crystal.

“Hearts and arrows.

“Exquisitely designed.”

Hao Ren was dead sure that the crystal did not have this “logo” when he dropped it into the Scarred Nebula. This text must have only appeared when it went through the Wall of Reality. So what was this text about? Was it the mark the goddess left for herself? Was it a credit cookie the goddess left behind after cutting the crystal? Or was it simply the manifestation of her neurotic obsession with hearts and arrows?

Whatever it was, Hao Ren was now sure who caused the situation in Asurmen—it was him.

Cold sweat was trickling down his forehead onto his toes. He had never prayed to the goddess before, but this time, he could not help but call out her name in his mind.

While having that thought, Hao Ren became conscious, quickly looking up and around. But there were no signs of divine lightning punishment. Instead, he saw a golden-white object floating at the top of the pyramid chamber.

It was a tablet, about one-meter square, and half an inch thick. It was unevenly edged and had a light on its surface. When he looked at it, Hao Ren could not help but feel a sense of tranquility.

He even felt his divine power, diffusing in a pale white halo from his body, resonating with the tablet. Two similar divine powers from different sources seemed to be interacting with each other. “Hey, bro, what’s up there?”

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from another universe where there’s a goddess. I’m a fragment falling off her body.”

“Oh, what a coincidence; there’s a goddess in my world too, but somebody has stabbed her.”

“Holy moly!”

Of course, Hao Ren made that up in his mind; he had no idea what the two divine powers talked to each other. But the truth would not be far, he figured.

Lady Gloom wanted to stop Hao Ren but was surprised to see that there was nothing bad happening to him. “You can even stare at the Tablet of Commandments directly?”

“That’s the Tablet of Commandments?” Hao Ren knew, but he asked for the sake of asking.

“That’s right. It’s something that the goddess of creation made. But I have never seen a mortal who could not only survive before it but even look directly at it without a problem. The tablet releases the thoughts of the goddess. Except for non-living things like me, normal living creatures could not stand before it.”

“When did I say that I was a mortal?” Hao Ren’s eyebrows arched. “Can you take down the tablet for me? Forget it if it’s an important component of Asurmen.”

Lady Gloom hesitated for a moment before she raised a finger in the air, and then the tablet descended slowly. “It’s not part of Asurmen. No one knows what is the goddess’s purpose by leaving it here. She placed it here without leaving behind any instruction.”

Hao Ren curiously came close to the tablet, both sides of which had some engravings. On one side was an unknown, complicated pattern. On the other side were a few lines of textual inscription.

“Who am I? Why am I here? What should I do? Do I have any meaning? What is around me? Where are their boundaries? Why do they appear like that? Are they meaningful?”

Was this what the goddess left behind?

Hao Ren’s brows knit together. Suddenly, he felt a slight burning sensation on his right hand.

A red scar appeared on his right hand, once burned by divine blood.

A thought came to mind. Hao Ren carefully reached out his right hand and touched the golden-white tablet with the side of his hand that once stained with divine blood.

But the vision Hao Ren was envisaging did not appear. He just felt that some disorganized information drifted past his shallow consciousness. The info gave him some knowledge about some unexplained things, but upon careful analysis, those were merely trivial information. It was about the creation of life and scenes about the early universe, which was useful but not something that Hao Ren was expecting from the tablet.

It was unlikely that the information stored in the golden-white tablet was irrelevant. Most likely that the decoding method was incorrect, or the tablet had some protection mechanism, in the form of a higher access right, perhaps.

Thoughts flashed across Hao Ren’s mind. But he did not waste time on it. While examining the tablet, he kept an eye on the Energy Circulation Hub that the crystal key had damaged. He was figuring a way to fix it.

According to Lady Gloom, the hub could self-repair. After removing the crystal, the facility should be able to restore. But it took time, so he wanted to speed up the process.

While thinking about that, a question suddenly came to mind. “Lady Gloom, if removing the crystal could let Asurmen restore itself, why didn’t the gatekeeper fix it earlier? Did you not say that non-living things like you will not be affected by the Tablet of Commandments?”

“We can’t get close to the crystal,” Lady Gloom said while pointing to the ‘hearts and arrows’ lying quietly on the floor. “It has some self-protection mechanisms. In the past few months, Number One and I had been discussing many repair options, but they were not successful because of the existence of the protection mechanism. Had you not shown your understanding of this piece of debris, I wouldn’t have let you come. As logical AI, we don’t play dice.”

So the problem was that ordinary humans could not get up to the top of Asurmen, and the two AIs that could get there could not approach the alien crystal.

As if to prove what she said was true, Lady Gloom inched closer to the crystal key. When she was about a dozen meters from away from it, a shield suddenly shrouded the crystal. The repulsive force of the shield was so great that it forced Lady Gloom to retreat. And then, there were some words on the shield.

“Piss off!”

It was Raven 12345’s style of magic through and through. This magic, categorized under the heading of “Field Protection—Goddess’ Will” in the bible that the goddess gave Hao Ren, was commonly known as Truth Protection.

The purpose of this magic was to prevent the crystal key from falling into the wrong hand. In this respect, it was a well-thought-out plan by the neurotic goddess.

Hao Ren was trying to disable the “Piss-off” magic.

For him, lifting the magic was a piece of cake.

While communicating with the magic in his mind, Hao Ren released a few autonomous robots from his Dimensional Pocket.

The autonomous robots shuffled around the damaged energy conduit and the underlying pedestal, scanning the damages.

The failure of the Energy Circulation Hub was mainly due to a damaged transmission medium, but the base was relatively okay. In theory, when the crystal key was removed, it would clear the entire circulatory system of interference. Once the energy conduit was restored, the hub would be back in normal operation.

This method would not restore the system to its original condition, but it would function without issue. After the emergency repair, Asurmen would slowly self-repair and take some time for the system to be back on track.

Just as Hao Ren was fiddling with the protective mode of the crystal key, he felt a tremor under his feet.

“What’s happening?” Hao Ren turned his head and looked at Lady Gloom.

“The intruders are breaking through the barriers in the Final Protocol Zone,” Lady Gloom said. “They are close to the Ark of the Sacred Covenant.”

“I don’t think they can open the Ark of the Sacred Covenant with the ‘plate.’” Hao Ren frowned. “How much time we have?”

“About 10 minutes.”

“Enough.”

Just as Hao Ren’s voice trailed off, the shield around the crystal key disappeared.

He quickly tucked the problematic crystal into his dimensional pocket, and then directed the autonomous robots to connect their tentacles to the crystal conduit. The crystal conduit, which was self-restoring slowly, recovered with an even quicker speed as the robotic arms attaching to it supplied it with greater energy.

“You can activate the will hub now,” Hao Ren said to Lady Gloom as he wiped away the non-existent sweat on his forehead. “Let’s meet up with Calaxus and others, then head to the Final Protocol Zone.”

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