The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

The next morning, while Hao Ren was having his breakfast, news came that Zorm had intercepted a broadcast signal from deep space. This time, with the aid of the crystal resonant antenna, he successfully locked on the radio signal source.

Everyone was very excited. Hao Ren put down his rice bowl and asked the MDT to patch the call to him. The interactive image of Zorm—this time, a super annoying dog head—appeared on the hologram. “That radio frequency has reappeared! It is 20,000 light-years away from us, and the position is obvious!”

“Send the drones to the warp-jump acceleration track. Nolan, please warm up the engine,” Hao Ren ordered. He then asked curiously, “Does the crystal resonant antenna work? Can it receive the crystal signal from space now?”

“No, it can’t.” Zorm’s voice appeared puzzled. “I only received signals from some unknown sender. I did not find any crystal signal except for what we sent out.”

“It is still not functional.” Hao Ren’s brows knitted together. “How could it be? Isn’t the antenna problem-free?”

“I have also studied the system you made; there is nothing wrong with it.” Zorm was just as confused as Hao Ren was. “I am using this antenna, and it works perfectly.”

Hao Ren clucked. “The hardware is fine, and the working principle is just as simple as a straight line. But somehow, it could not receive signals that are so loud and clear. This is freaking strange.”

Lily, who rolled up all the noodles from her bowl on the chopsticks and ate as if they were a drumstick, looked up and said, “Mr. Landlord, you as a pope yourself is already the strangest of the strange. It is strange that something is stranger than you.”

Nangong Sanba thought for a moment and said, “Since the crystal signal can go out from this planet but not coming back in, could it be due to feng shui… I mean geographical location?”

“Do you mean this planet or this planetary system is blocking the crystal resonant signal?” Hao Ren was impressed by the analytical ability of Nangong Sanba although combat ability-wise, he could not have been more hopeless. “It is possible. But why? I do not see what is so unusual about this planet.”

The MDT chimed in. “It is indeed just a regular, mildly habitable planet, which is in a planetary system that shows no abnormality itself. The only thing worth paying attention to is that there is a First Born on the planet. But then, every habitable planet in the Plane of Dreams has a First Born. Ahh! I remember that a crystal smashed this planet once and the First Born went mental after that. Could this be the reason that the crystal resonant signal from outer space takes a detour around the planet?”

“I don’t think it is because of such comical reason.” Hao Ren frowned and waved his hand. And then he got to his feet. “Forget it, let this matter to another time. The most important thing now is to go to the radio signal source that Zorm has just found. Maybe there is another survivor civilization. They sound like they are still alive and kicking, which is not easy.”

Hao Ren meant that it was not easy to find survivors who are alive and kicking in the Plane of Dreams, but Lily understood it from a different angle. “Yup, it seems that we won’t see corpses this time around.”

Hao Ren grabbed the tail of the husky and gave it a hard pull. “Stop the crap and eat your meal!”

As everyone knew in the regular stories of monster girls, those long-tailed creatures, once caught by the tail, their reaction would be one of shame, down-and-out, and enthrallment. But this one here was not normal; Lily’s first reaction was to gobble up the last of the noodles in the bowl and jump to her feet. She was ready to bite.

But when Vivian shoved her another bowl of noodles, she sat back down.

Nolan had completed the preflight preparation. If it were just another joyride, there would be no preparation needed. She could just stomp on the accelerator, and there the spacecraft sped off without hesitation. But Hao Ren had analyzed the content of the conversations he had intercepted and made out that those guys sending the signals were in grave danger. It did not matter whether it was the First Born or some other things that threatened them, they must be fully prepared for combat.

So, Nolan had spent a little time calibrating her weapon control system to ensure that it was in tip-top condition.

“Still, there will be only a few of us going this time.” Hao Ren stood beside the Petrachelys, glancing at Vivian and Lil Pea who lay in her arms, and the Asurmen crystal that floated not far away waiting to get onboard. He sighed helplessly. “Before I could fix the divine blockade, you guys have no choice but stay back on this planet.”

“Come on, it is super boring to stay at the base.” Lily was a little unhappy, her tail drooping. The fact that she missed two times of excitement had considerably dampened her husky enthusiasm. “When will the goddamn divine blockade be turned off?”

Vivian shot the husky maiden a sideways look. “Is watchdogging not your expertise?”

Lily immediately glared at her. “Have some common sense, please! Our expertise is in sledding!”

Vivian could not find the words to respond.

Ever since she let loose of herself completely, this dog had won every argument. Her provocation seemed to have less and less effect on the husky.

“There is nothing wrong with watchdogging,” Y’zaks got to his feet and said. “The Executors have sent a message; they will send a team down here to try to make the first contact with the gentle planet devourer while studying the environment of the home planet. We can play host to them.”

Hao Ren nodded. “Then I will leave it to you guys.”

Ten minutes later, the Petrachelys had left the thick atmosphere of the home planet into space.

In the vast distance between the planet and the moon, a large number of temporary structures had been built. Except for the most eye-catching crystal resonant antenna, which looked as if several towers had twisted together, most structures were related to the drone cluster. Things such as the drone armed fortress, command center, assembly workshops, garages, beacon towers and stuff like that had formed a complex three-dimensional structure in space as if a loosely-stacked space city.

A massive accelerator track extended from the edge of the space city. But the accelerator track looked more like a dozen rings, from small to big, arranged in parallel, forming a continuous ring hole of over hundreds of kilometers in length. A large number of armed drones had gathered in front of the most massive ring at the starting point of the track, densely packed, like a swarm of bugs.

This track looked as if a slingshot device, used to orient a physical unit to launch it in a particular direction into space. But it functioned more complexly than that. The multiple ring structure did not increase the flight speed of the projectile but enhance the warp jump speed of the unit going through it. Each ring had an independent dimensional conversion computer and a powerful coordinate reorientation device. These instruments could temporarily erase the three-dimension-world coordinates of the projectile that passed through it so that the projectile could skip most of the calculation and startup exhaustion during the warp jump. This would allow the projectile to initiate warp jump with minimal energy consumption, and there was also no worries of massive energy loss when a large number of units performed warp jump simultaneously.

Apparently, the warp jump accelerator was not a directional launcher per se.

When conditions allowed, letting the drone cluster build a warp jump accelerator would greatly improve the efficiency of combat unit deployment. But this device had an obvious shortcoming: it only worked with vessels with warp drive. If it is a conventional power ship…

If a conventional spacecraft entered the rings, its only ending was the erasure of its coordinates in the physical world. The spaceship would become a quantum phantom forever, floating in the main material world. It would only be liberated at the end of the world.

Nolan slowly adjusted her heading and merged into the position that the drones had deliberately cleared out for it. Following that, this mighty army slowly entered the first ring of the accelerator.

“Warp drive is engaged. Establishing a connection with the accelerator.”

Vivian petted the little head of Lil Pea and asked, “What do think we will see when we get there?”

“From what we could infer from the content of the conversations, they are hiding or fleeing from something. Their communication technology is likely inseparable from those of the resonant crystal. I think their threat does not come from the First Born,” Hao Ren said. “The resonance crystal is a natural enemy of the corrupted First Born. So, the one threatening these survivors is probably even more dangerous.”

“When did you think of this?”

“Just now.” Hao Ren twitched his lips. “I do not know if it is an intuition; I somehow feel that this signal source and the war that happens somewhere out there are related to each other. After all, they all have crossed paths with the resonant crystal.”

Vivian said nothing. She just watched the image of the accelerator ring on the hologram appearing bigger and bigger as it glowed brightly.

All the rings of the accelerator had begun to glow, which formed parallel lines connecting the rings together. Inside each ring, rippling light film as if water surface appeared, reflecting the distorted starlight on its surface.

The Petrachelys and the drone cluster began to accelerate and entered the ring array.

Whenever a ring was passed, the drones and the spacecraft faded a little. The faster they got, the more transparent they became. When the group reached the last ring, the entire fleet disappeared in space without a trace.

After a short one-minute warp jump, which was incredibly fast compared to conventional warp jump, lights began to appear in space around the Petrachelys.

“All drones engage the stealth function and disperse,” Hao Ren quickly ordered as he switched on the superlight search device. The coordinates that Zorm provided were of dynamic value and had a deviation about two astronomical units. To prevent falling into unfavorable situations after the warp jump, Hao Ren specifically had the target jump point deviated even farther. So, after the jump, he first needed to find and lock on his target.

At this distance, the search capability of the Petrachelys was more than enough to locate the target.

Sure enough, Nolan’s holographic image popped up in just a few seconds. “Target found! At 32 light minutes away from the flank of the fleet!”

Hao Ren and Vivian said in unison, “Patch the visual over.”

A cosmic sky flashed on the hologram as a massive structure resembling a celestial body appeared in Hao Ren’s field of vision.

At the same time, a large group of armies was surrounding the celestial wreckage.

“What the heck is that?”