The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

Hao Ren and the rest waited outside for quiet a while before a shapeless arcane orb floated out of the hall to summon them back in to the hall.

In the hall, the giant sat cross-legged beside the crystal prism as he maintained the posture of speaking to the First Born while the holographic displays from the prism was still. The atmosphere was rather depressed. Hao Ren came before the giant and let out the most convincing smile he had. “You’re done?”

The giant nodded without a word. The First Born’s voice then rang throughout the hall. “Why…”

Nangong Sanba interjected subconciously. “Why what?”

“Why would they kill Mother?” The First Born’s voice was distraught. “Mother was kind to all. She loved everything in this world… Why would they kill Mother?”

“For some, kindness is a meaningless concept.” Y’zaks spoke. “When they are seeking for something beyond their station, the mortal races are prone to do things that is too disgusting to describe. Foolishness is a great sin indeed, and sadly, such sinners are just too many.”

The First Born went silent again, and this time the silence was so long that the atmosphere turned slightly awkward. Hao Ren could only break the silence by speaking first. “Ahem… so do you have any other plans after this?”

“Yes, I do.” the First Born spoke again, its voice was weak. “Mother is only asleep right?”

“Based on the information that we have, the Goddess of Creation’s powers are still active within this universe and her will will still answer her follower’s call. So there is a high chance that she’s just asleep.” Hao Ren rubbed his chin. “Besides, based on what I understand, even the witnesses of that war did not really see the Goddess perishing. What they saw was the Star of Creation exploding and the entire battlefield was sucked into a place called the Umbral Realm. That means there is no concrete proof that the Goddess had perished in the war. So there is a good chance that she’s still alive.”

“Will you help me find Mother?”

Vivian smiled. “Not just to help you, that was our goal from the outset.”

“Then I’ll wait for her return.” the First Born spoke. “Before that, if there’s anything I can do, I will help you.”

Lily looked up at the prism and after a good while decided to ask. “So about that, when you heard what happened in the past… You’ll be very agitated right? If you have anything to say, just say it now, we are from another universe, and have almost nothing to do with the Second Born here. If you have anything to say, you can talk to us, you don’t have to pent them up.”

The giant looked towards Lily without a word, he was clearly in disagreement with Lily’s “We have almost nothing to do with the Second Born” proclaimation, but he ultimately kept silent.

The First Born’s voice was calm. “I am angry, and distraught, but Mother had told me, do not be like the other siblings. I must listen to Her, and Muru had already said, the rebels have already received divine retribution, so that’s no need to pursue the matter.”

“Muru?” Nangong Sanba asked subconciously again.

The giant’s thundering voice rolled. “That’s my name.”

“Oh Oh! I was feeling that something was missing… I forgot to ask your name when I last spoke to you.” Hao Ren slapped his forehead as his body shuddered by the sudden blast of wind. “Please watch where you are talking. That wind is just too strong. Since we now know the giant’s name, how do we call you? We can’t be calling you the First Born all the time no? It’s just weird.”

The last part of his words were directed towards the prism. As what remained of the First Born was its spirit, this facility was taken as its mode of communication.

“Me? I don’t have a name. We are all solitary beings in the universe, unlike the giants. We do not have a society, so we do not need names.” the First Born sounded rather troubled.

“Uh.. did the Zomnites gave you any name?”

“They did give me a lot of titles, but those were not names.”

Hao Ren gave it a brief thought before understanding what was going on. As the sole being of its kind on the planet, a name is not particularly useful. It was the only First Born on Zom, and what the humans called it, the Roots of Origin, the World Tree, The Ancient God or what not were immaterial. Even a simple ‘it’ was not an issue. There were nothing around the First Born that could be compared to, and the concept of names just faded away. As to how the Goddess and the Guardian Giants communicate with these ‘ecosystem managers’, it was mainly a form telephathy with morse code included.

“Then lets call you Zom.” Hao Ren pondered. “Lets use the name of the planet that you lived on before, as a form of memory.”

“Sure!” The First Born agreed wholeheartedly.

After confirming that the matter with the Goddess fall was settled amicably, Hao Ren was now worried about the question with the sixteen billion souls and the Zomnite ecosystem datavault (the virtual world data). “So lets talk about the data vault. We have managed to save the Dream Ark’s blueprints. So what do you plan to do next? Will there be any changes to the souls within the ark?”

The First Born pondered for a bit. “Based on my original plan, it was to use the lifeblood to recreate the ecosystem, but now that my body is nothing much ashes, it will be difficult to return tothe real world. So I think I could only keep simulating a virtual world after this. But the souls of my brothers and sisters… the limiter has been destroyed, and they will awake very soon. It will be quite a task for them to accept their current situation.”

Hao Ren heard a new term. “A limiter?”

As the First Born explained, Hao Ren finally understood what the ‘limiter’ and ‘awakening’ was all about. The former was referring to the machines on Zom itself and they were the main instrument in keeping the Zomnites in deep slumber!

Most mortal souls are intricate yet fragile, and their lifespan is the biggest issue of them all. All mortal races could not be immediately brought back to life. They need complex training and strengthening of the spirit to allow their souls to withstand the elongation of their life. This was the technique that the Xiling Celestials used for the ascencion and improvement of their followers. Yet, the Zomnites have no such experience in this field, and no time to explore the technology at all. The question they faced after boarding the ark was not death, but survival. A question of what to do when a mortal with a lifespan of a mere hundred years was suddenly given immortality.

They would tire, and lose their sense of self before going insane and ignoring the world itself. There were even more serious consequences. For those who had enjoyed a stable life within a virtual heaven, they would wish to stay on in the world and forsake the feeling of the real workd. “A deep, peaceful slumber” was indeed a wonderful inducement, but it was also the foretelling of a race’s doom. The Zomnites had forsaw this, and that was why they had placed a failsafe on the Dream Ark, that was the ‘limiter’.

“Their memories are frozen after ten years into their slumber. That was went the human spirit is at is most active and strongest. After that, their soul begun a memory-less samsara cycle and every cycle took about ten years, to ensure the activity of the spirits.” The First Born explained patiently. “If the dream cycle takes too long, then history will start to distort, and there will be an excess of data of everything that happened on the planet, so there was this need to reset the stage every now and then. This was all designed by them, a brilliant race they are!”

“So this is the truth behind the cycles…” Nangong Sanba blinked in awe at the grand undertaking the Zomnites had took. “So, that means when the Zomnites wakes up their memory will return to the times ten millenais ago, not long after their entry into the dream world? While this sounds good, does that mean the experience and happenings of the past ten thousand years be forgotten? A shame if they were to lose them.”

“They won’t, those harmless memories are stored and these experiences will be useful in the future when they rebuild their society. Their brain capacity is enormous, and they could remember a lot of things. Upon their return to the real world, everything that happened in the cycle will be fresh in their minds. But those memories have undergone some filtering, so they will appear like photographs or movies, while plenty, will not affect their psychological state.”

“So by cutting off the ‘personal experience’ while retaining the knowledge… so by the time everyone gets back to the real world they’ll be genuises, but as the knowledge did not accumulate as whole, they probably will be no match for Nolan.” Hao Ren mumbled to himself. “But the limiters are gone, and they will awake within the virtual world, and live on for eternity.”

“So can you help me create a new limiter?” the First Born asked. “You seemed to have a very advanced level of technology, you should be able to do it.”

Hao Ren smiled as he heard that. “Rather than that… won’t it be better to return to the real world?”

The First Born did not know how to respond, and Muru too threw a curious glance in Hao Ren’s direction.

“After the apocalypse, many planets have been reborn, and this universe is filled with fertile planets that are unhabited.” Hao Ren said as he activated a holographic display, showing the scenes on Tannagost. “How abou this one? Use it to welcome the new era of life.”

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