The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

It turned out that Vivian grew hungry in no time.

Hao Ren and Lily overlooked the valley for a while. The sounds of explosion and destruction gradually subsided. The smoke also dissipated when a strong wind suddenly blew across the valley. Lily nervously grabbed Hao Ren’s arm; she used so much force that sparks began to burst from Hao Ren’s Steel Membrane Shield. “Hao-Hao Ren, has your friend calmed down?”

“It seems so.” Hao Ren wiped the cold sweat off his forehead. He appeared calm the entire time, but deep inside, he did feel a little nervous. Vivian’s extreme grumpiness had totally caught him off guard. But thankfully, it was Siberia. Even if there was a nuclear explosion, no one was going to notice. Otherwise, the noise that Vivian created would have caused widespread panic.

The two of them were on the lookout for a while. After they made sure that there were no more dangers in the valley and the grumpy one was not releasing hostile energy anymore, only then did they begin to walk back to the valley carefully.

The valley looked like it had just experienced a saturated bombing. Traces of the violent explosion were everywhere. The shockwaves from deep inside the valley had blown the snow away, exposing the ground underneath. It had radial cracks and folded lines. In between the terrain were potholes, billowing in green smoke. To Hao Ren, it was a familiar sight; it was likely the aftermath of a Thunder Strike.

On the other end of the catastrophic scene, a flat, black boulder was miraculously intact. A cold-looking girl with dark hair was sitting quietly on top of the boulder. She was wearing a tattered black dress and holding a piece of metal in her hand. She looked confused as she stared at the object in her hand. It looked like she was trying to remember something but was drawing a blank.

Such was the first sight Hao Ren came upon when he found Vivian in his back-to-the-future journey.

Vivian sat silently as if she was alone in the world. Surrounded by the scorched earth that she inadvertently created, Vivian was wholly immersed in her own bubble, as though her perception of the outside world had utterly dimmed.

However, the approaching Hao Ren and Lily finally caught the attention of the dark-haired girl. She looked up slightly at the two “strangers”, feeling confused. Half a century of hibernation had numbed her mind a bit. It took her a while before she could focus her attention on Hao Ren. “What year is it? Who is the tsar now?”

“I have no idea.” Hao Ren had a thousand words to tell her, but in the end, he could only utter a short sentence. He could tell from Vivian’s eyes that he had not been able to trigger her self-awareness as he had expected. The Vivian of this moment was still the Countess from history. She was immersed in her memory blockade, and her mind was stuck at the moment of awakening in the Siberian snowfield. “The people are probably about to overthrow the tsar. Maybe they’ve done it.”

“Overthrow? Have the humans ended their own era?” Vivian frowned, her voice so soft as if she was sleeptalking. “Who are you?”

Vivian had apparently just realized that the appearance of these strangers there was strange. “Ordinary people would have run away by now. You seem to be waiting for me here. Are you one of my old friends, or did the other vampire families send you to find me?”

Hao Ren quietly looked at Vivian, and finally smiled. “I’m an old friend of yours.”

“Old friend?” Vivian slowly turned her neck. “I apologize. I can’t remember you. But if you are my old friend, you should know that my memory is hopeless… Huh?”

Vivian finally noticed Lily.

Lily jumped up in joy when Vivian finally looked at her. “Arf Arf Arf! Hello, my name is Lily! I’m a new friend to your old friend! Nice to meet you. Hahaha, you’re really a one-of-a-kind sleeper.”

Vivian’s facial expression suddenly changed. “You’re a werewolf!”

Lily was still clueless. “Arf?”

“Why is a werewolf here?” Vivian suddenly rose from the boulder. Her quiet temperament had turned cold as she summoned a large amount of dark-red blood spheres around her. Her voice was cold as winter. “Which family are you from? Why did you trespass my place of hibernation? Did you just break my seal?”

Hao Ren knew that things were not looking good when Vivian uttered the word “werewolf”. It reminded him of the first time the two enemies met. He should have anticipated this eventuality, but because Vivian and Lily had become a pair of quarrelsome friends, he had overlooked the situation. The Vivian of this time still had a deep hatred towards the entire werewolf race.

While Lily was still in confusion, Vivian braced herself for combat. Sensing things were going south, Hao Ren quickly stood between the two and pleaded, “Calm down, Vivian! This werewolf has nothing against you. She’s a wild one! She doesn’t belong to any family!”

Lily’s mind was still muddled. “What does he mean by wild? What family are you talking about?”

After half a century of dormancy, Vivian woke up only to find a werewolf standing in front of her. With vigilance and conditioning from years of battle, she would not hesitate to launch a preemptive strike even though Hao Ren was standing between them. After all, Hao Ren was only a stranger to her despite his claims of being an old friend; all the more so when he was with a werewolf.

So, Hao Ren could do nothing to stop Vivian from attacking. But one thing had prevented Vivian from doing so.

A sense of frailness suddenly hit her. One moment, Vivian was floating in the air, the next moment, she tumbled and dropped like a fly to the ground.

Lily was shocked. “Whoa! Did your friend have a heart attack?”

Hao Ren rushed up to Vivian and examined her. “Vivian, are you—”

Vivian sat up and muttered two words from her throat, “So hungry.”

Hao Ren was flabbergasted.

A moment later, a bonfire began to rise in the diseased forest, and the aroma of barbecue wafted through the air. Lily had led her wolf pack on a hunt for fresh prey in the woods. Hao Ren had also taken out some prepared food from his Dimensional Pocket. It was not a gourmet meal by any standard, but for a starving Vivian, it was the most delicious meal in the world.

Before the wild boar’s legs were fully cooked, Vivian had torn a large chunk off and stuffed it in her mouth. She basically inhaled the meat but still maintained a minimum level of elegance and polite demeanor. Hao Ren had never seen a person who could wolf down food and still remain as graceful as Vivian at the same time. Not a hair was out of place.

“Eat slowly.” Lily handed Vivian more roasted meat. “There’s a lot more where that came from. My wolf pack hunted a large wild boar. The three of us can’t possibly finish it.”

Vivian looked up at Lily with a quirky stare, and there was a sense of wariness in her eyes. But filling her stomach mattered much more than fretting over the “werewolf”. With 10,000 years of life experience came a high level of tolerance. Moreover, the innate hostility of otherworldlings never affected her one bit. So Vivian could not care less about looking for trouble. She even thanked the husky faintly after she took the grilled meat from Lily.

Lily looked at the mysterious woman curiously and asked matter-of-factly, “Why did you want to attack me just now?”

“Werewolves and I aren’t friends.” Vivian wolfed down a large chunk of meat and said, “Plus, I got into trouble with some of the werewolves shortly before I went into hibernation. I thought those werewolf families sent you here to seek revenge.”

“Arf. Then, I am not your enemy,” Lily said, holding a large chunk of barbecued meat in her hands. “I wasn’t born yet at that time.”

Vivian did not comment on it but continued to annihilate the food in her hands. At one point, she choked, and Hao Ren quickly handed her a bottle of mineral water. “Here, drink some water. No one will take the food away from you.”

Vivian thanked Hao Ren politely. She gulped down half a bottle of water before she noticed the bottle’s exquisite appearance. “May I ask, this thing doesn’t look like glass or crystal. It’s very strange. Is this a new thing that humans have made?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Lily suddenly said in a proud manner, as though she was the inventor of the plastic bottle. “Hao Ren has plenty more weird gadgets! He’s impressive!”

“Hao Ren? Is that your name?” Vivian glanced at Hao Ren. Suddenly, something seemed to cross her mind. “I apologize for not getting your name earlier. I was too hungry and made an awful gaffe.”

Vivian’s politeness made Hao Ren uncomfortable. He felt like there was a great distance between Vivian and him. “You’re welcome. You’ve never been so polite when we were together.”

“Is that so? I’m sorry, I can’t remember in the slightest.” Vivian frowned slightly. “How long have I been asleep?”

“I’m not very sure,” Hao Ren said. “I don’t even know what year it is now. The one next to me is even more clueless than I am. She’s never been to the outside world and has no idea who the tsar is.”

“Were you asleep for a long time too?” Vivian looked at Hao Ren curiously.

“Well, it’s complicated. I can’t explain it all in a few words,” Hao Ren said as he piled more food in front of Vivian. “Let’s first eat.”

Since Vivian did not regain her memory after she saw her old acquaintances, Hao Ren had to move on to Plan B: build rapport with Vivian and conduct more stimulation tests. Hao Ren had kept Hessiana’s advice in mind when it came to building rapport.

He was to do nothing but buy Vivian breakfast, lunch, and dinner. His mission was to first feed the pauper who had been hungry for 10,000 years.

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