The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

There were many questions in Hao Ren’s head, but apparently, he did not expect Noobie to answer his questions.

The little thing’s actions were based on her instincts. She did not need a reason to do anything, and she did not even know what the hell “reason” meant.

Hao Ren and Vivian could only guess. In fact, guessing was the only thing they could think of right now, considering the strange things that happened to Noobie and the bizarre nature of the Great Pit.

Looking at Noobie rambling about nearby, shrilling and waving her hands threateningly at no one but the air from time to time, Hao Ren said thoughtfully, “I think the problem lies in Noobie’s mad nature. Although Noobie is now harmless (she always was), she is a creature catalyzed from the power of the Mad Lord. Naturally, she is resistant to the power of chaos and decay.”

Vivian looked at the Great Pit not far away as Hao Ren’s words began to strike home. “Do you suspect that it was the Mad Lord who created the Great Pit, and because Noobie’s power is of the same nature as the Mad Lord’s, the two won’t fight each other?”

“That could be the most likely answer, as it conforms to the pattern of things that we have been working on all this time,” Hao Ren said. “And not to mention that it matches our idea of the Umbral Realm since the beginning. The Umbral Realm was the place where the goddess of creation died, and the forces of the Mad Lord and the goddess—the two main things in the Umbral Realm—met in the great battle. Now, if we regard the vibrant ecosystem on L’Haronne as the embodiment of the power of the goddess of creation, then the opposing side must be the Great Pit. Perhaps, the Great Pit is a form of existence of the Mad Lord’s power in the Umbral Realm.”

Vivian thought for a moment. She could not think of a more convincing explanation. “This interpretation is easy to understand. But we still need to figure out what is at the bottom of the Great Pit. Since even you cannot fight off the phagocytosis of the Great Pit, and things like the probes will lose their signal after entering the Great Pit, we must think of a way to explore it.”

Hao Ren certainly knew that it was a matter of urgency, and in fact, he already had an idea.

He laid his eyes on Noobie, who was happy being left alone.

While running around nearby, Noobie suddenly noticed that someone was staring at her. She stopped shooting aimlessly with her shadow bolts and looked back nervously. When she saw Hao Ren, she uttered, “Yee yee!”

“Is this little thing not resistant to the Great Pit?” Hao Ren smiled at Vivian and then waved at Noobie. “Come here, I am not going to eat you. Otherwise, I will send you to Raven 12345!”

“Yee!”

“Do not spook her. You need to use a carrot-and-stick approach when dealing with kids.” Vivian immediately shot Hao Ren a look before turning to Noobie with a smile. “Come here. Do not be afraid. We will not bully you.”

Hao Ren could not help but shot Vivian a glance. “I could not believe that people like you who have forgotten about your kid for four hundred years still have the nerve to teach parenting. I wonder how will Hessiana think when she sees this.”

Vivian rolled her eyes at Hao Ren while letting Noobie climb onto her arm. “It was not that I did not care about Hessiana; it was just that I had a bad memory last time. I admit that my parenting approach has been problematic in the past. That is why I start calling Hessiana regularly and let her come to have a short stay at my house. Back to the topic; are you planning to let Noobie explore the Great Pit?”

Hao Ren nodded. He then took out another probe from his Dimensional Pocket. “I have been contemplating it, and it could possibly work. Have you noticed that the clothes that Noobie wears are still intact after coming out from the Great Pit? This is the clothes that you made for her, not originally hers. It seems that she was not immune to the devouring of the Great Pit but could also keep things on her body from getting swallowed. Look, I have switched the probe into recording mode, and we can tie it on Noobie’s body.”

The little guy immediately roared at Hao Ren when she saw him taking a silver-white gadget coming to her. “Ghsss… Hiak!”

Vivian looked down at Noobie, feeling helpless. “It is a brilliant plan, but the problem is that she seems to be uncooperative.”

It was a problem, and Hao Ren had realized this. Noobie had made significant progress recently. She had not only gained feelings and was capable of showing emotions, but she also understands language. But it did not necessarily mean that she would listen. What could they do if this little guy was not cooperative?

Hao Ren tried to persuade Noobie, by hook or by crook, but she did not budge a bit. Hao Ren was frustrated. He had quarreled with his goddess, a PDA, and now a probe, and the best part was that he lost.

Noobie won the argument because she simply could not speak.

At last, Hao Ren still tied the probe on Noobie’s body. It was not that he had succeeded in convincing Noobie, but because Vivian used a meat slice as a diversion while Hao Ren took the opportunity to grabbed Noobie and duct-taped the probe on her back.

Noobie was indignant. But after eating two slices of meat, she had forgotten about her anger.

Hao Ren tossed her into the Great Pit that filled with endless darkness.

While waiting for Noobie to return, Hao Ren and Vivian were chatting casually. Their conversation quickly turned to what Rheia had said about the ruins of Anno and the speculation of the extraterrestrial visitors.

“We can basically confirm that this world is not the home planet of the deicide,” said Hao Ren. “There are not only the remains of the deicide here. In fact, they are the minority here. Except for their splendid temples, there are a large number of traces of other unknown civilizations. According to the information that Rheia provided, these ancient ruins seem to not belong to the indigenous races of this planet.”

Vivian got a mind of her own. “Some of them may be ancient civilizations that have completely disappeared.”

“Yes, the lost ancient civilizations have vanished without a trace. But these are not all,” Hao Ren said. “There are many Anno ruins, and we cannot explain quite a few of them simply with a disappearance. They could be coming from outer space.”

“You mean some time during the deicidal period, different races including the deicide, suddenly visited this place and then suddenly left, leaving behind their respective traces of civilizations?” Vivian shook her head lightly and frowned. “It does not make sense nor fit our understanding of the deicidal race. We have theorized that this world is the vault that preserves the world’s species, and the only reason why the deicide has come is to destroy it. How could they arrive along with other races and left just like that, leaving a bunch of ancient ruins behind?”

Hao Ren scratched his chin in thought. “Perhaps they blew up their own achievement to recycle the resources before the final battle.”

“Stop playing games, especially those that cause you to lose hair.”

“Too many things are unexplainable in this world, and incongruity abounds.” Hao Ren then shifted away from the topic. “I am concerned about another thing.”

“What is it?”

“Do you still remember what we have found about the Great Pit in Rheia’s library?” Hao Ren reminded. “How the books describe the Great Pit?”

Vivian replied, “Full of poisonous gas, and monsters wander inside. Some part of the Great Pit, after excavation, would taint a vast area of the surface world. And once the contamination dissipated, the area would turn into the black forest. But according to Rheia, these studies on the Great Pit were done in the ordinary caves outside the Great Pit. It is the descriptions of the features of the contaminated caves.”

Hao Ren looked around and said, “We are now in such a cave. This underground temple and the caves here are directly connected to the Great Pit, completely matching the description in the book. But where are the poisonous gas, the monsters, and the strange sounds? We are only in an empty underground temple, and we could even camp here.”

It was not difficult to see that many things did not fit in here. It was just that Hao Ren and his teammates knew too little about the Great Pit. The only information about the Great Pit was based on folk science. So, those who first came into contact with the Great Pit would not be able to tell the difference. But Hao Ren could sense something was amiss based on experience.

The Great Pit he saw was completely different from what the book described.

Although Rheia had once dismissed the studies of many scholars as nonsense, it seemed that on some fundamental issues, such as whether there were poisonous gases and monsters in the Great Pit, the scholars could not have made such outrageous claim. All the more so when their claims were consistent with each other.

“Perhaps not everywhere in the Great Pit,” Vivian said. “Poisonous gas and monsters are probably not standard specs, I guess.”

Hao Ren’s mouth twitched. “I definitely feel something, somewhere is wrong here. Let us look for more information after we get back out. After all, we have only read so many books, and we should take Rheia’s words with a pinch of salt. Rheia is a fast talker. By the way, how long has Noobie been down there?”

“Quite a while.” Vivian looked at the Great Pit. “She should be coming back up.”

After staring at the crevasse for a moment, Hao Ren suddenly smacked himself on the forehead. “Sh*t! That little guy has no concept of action plan and time at all! What if she finds the place fun and does not want to come back up? Where are we going to find her?”

Vivian had also realized this problem, and her facial expression turned grim. “Should we not have tied a rope on her?”

Hao Ren waved his hand. “It is useless. Noobie’s anti-phagocytosis zone is small; rope extending out of the protective range would be swallowed.”

“What if she could not find her way back?” Vivian looked worried. “No one knows how vast the bottom of the Great Pit is. She could have gotten lost.”

“Can you retrieve her directly, just like how you retrieve your little bat?” asked Hao Ren. “Never mind the probe.”

“She is not a bat, and she is unruly. I can only retrieve her at close range.” Vivian looked at her hands. “She might fly very slowly, but it has been over ten minutes, and she could be out of range now.”

Hao Ren tried to collect his thoughts. He reached into his Dimensional Pocket and rummaged for something inside. “She will not be far. I know it. She is roaming in a small area even if she could move freely. I try to get her out.”

Hao Ren said from his experience. He had asked the MDT to gather enough data on Noobie’s activities and behaviors. Probably due to her small body size, her concept of distance was different from those of ordinary people. Running in a ten-meter-radius circle was akin to traveling around the world for Noobie.

Vivian looked at the thing in Hao Ren’s hand and fell into a daze. “Are you sure this thing will work?”

Hao Ren waved the fishing rod and nodded confidently. “Don’t worry. Nothing is more attractive to her than this thing.”

He took a campstool and sat down on the edge of the Great Pit with the fishing rod in his hand. It was a real fishing rod, but the only difference was that he did not use fishing bait but a small slice of raw meat. He did not use sharp fish hook but make a knot on the rope from which the meat hung to prevent hurting Noobie.

Hao Ren hung the bait half a meter above the dark field of vision so that the darkness would not swallow it. But considering that raw meat was a non-living thing, it would not trigger the swallowing reaction of the Great Pit.

Vivian took a gander at the raw meat hanging from the rope, and then looked at Hao Ren. “I am not talking about meat. I mean, what is in your mind that you have come up with such an idea?”

“It shows that you are not a Chinese demon. That is why you cannot relate it to the trope of Grand Duke Jiang fishing.”

“Are you sure you got the idea from Grand Duke Jiang and not because of spending too much time with Lily and caught her quirky mental bug?” Vivian looked at Hao Ren disdainfully. “People call that an allusion!”

“A modern trope was known as an allusion in ancient times. Language evolves with time,” Hao Ren said matter-of-factly.

Just as Vivian was about to say something, something was moving out of the Great Pit.

A shadow bolt shot into the air in Brownian motion, accompanied by a small figure that flew out of the darkness to catch the meat slice in midair. Noobie hung on to the meat and would not let go, no matter what.

“It really works!” Vivian exclaimed.

Never mind that the fishing idea of Grand Duke Jiang was like asking for the moon, it worked like a charm. Hao Ren had gotten Noobie back, and the probe that was tied on her back looked still intact.

It looked like this little thing could things in and out of the Great Pit although Hao Ren had no idea how it worked.

“I have got data!” Hao Ren carefully removed the probe from the back of Noobie while she still hung on to the meat. After examining the memory status of the device, he was elated. “Just as I have imagined, the probe has worked perfectly under the protection of Noobie. We have got images!”

The MDT floated over to Hao Ren without him telling it. “Give it to me!”

The MDT quickly retrieved the images from the probe and projected them onto a holographic display.

Apparently, the environment inside the Great Pit was not an ideal place for video shooting. Even with the excellent intelligence acquisition module of the probe, the images still contained heavy noises. It was only after the MDT restored the photos using a power decoder that the footages became more viewable, albeit still pretty blurry and dim.

But at least there were images.

Hao Ren could, at last, confirm one thing; there was debris floating in the Great Pit, and the ruins of buildings that the last probe captured by camera indeed existed.

But there were not only things floating in the Great Pit.

Something large was seen moving across the screen. Considering that the camera was mounted on a nitwit that spun around while flying, Hao Ren could not ask for more. The MDT screen-captured the high-value part of the images, sharpened and zoomed in. Now, Hao Ren could see clearly that the more massive shadows floating in the darkness were city and plains.

They were broken temples, cities, lands, and even things like spaceships. They spun and collided with each other as they drifted in the darkness before getting annihilated and reborn. Sometimes, these things looked as if phantoms, sometimes real as they even hit the camera lens—it was Noobie who accidentally hit the debris as she flew around.

Hao Ren and Vivian looked intently at the images that the MDT had processed. They contained a large amount of information that seemed to reveal some of the secrets of the Great Pit. Hao Ren felt something was indeed amiss in the images, and he had quickly figured out what it was all about.

“The scale. The scale is wrong.”