The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

The Solenne Gateway: It was originally a very unique system, it had a massive stellar system and a nebula had continued to create new planets. A gravitational springboard one must pass through if coming from the outer system towards the Star of Creation. The nebula before Hao Ren now is actually just a part of the Solenne Gateway, but it was probably the most significant part, the part that creates nebulas.

All around the nebula were territories that were once protected by the Guardians. This was their home turf, the place where the Goddess would run her experiments, it was her inner sanctum and palace. The planet Solenne was the first of many gateways into this sacred zone. The place where the Nebula of Creation overlooking every starlight across the system. This was also the place where a few fortunate mortals were able to directly be in touch with the Goddess,; a holy land.

During the apocalyptic battle, this gateway was the first to fall, and based on what Muru said, even when the gateway had been taken, there were still ferocious combat on and around the gateway. The treacherous children’s army swarmed every inch of terrirtory with the the Solenne Gateway while the surviving guardians found on tooth and nail from the remaining citadels and strongholds on the planet, hoping to turn the tide and help their mother. This heroic battle lasted until the very last moment, until the entire Solenne Gateway and the Star of Creation was plunged into the Umbral Realm. As no one could see what’s within the Umbral Realm, no one knew what became of the guardians who stood their ground to the very end. Muru too had no idea what had happened after the fall of the gateway that it had turned out this way now.

Now, the gateway was a dimensional wreck there the timeflow had gone haywire. The entire nebula was now stuck in a very peculiar state of contradiction. The laws of the universe does not seem to exist in the place, and the past grandeur of the gate into the holy land was no longer apparent.

The Petrachelys stopped at the edge of the timeflow flux, Nolan ran multiple scans and tests to determine the situation ahead, and now everyone at least know the radius of the flux, and that the timeflow distortion worsens the closer it is to Solenne. For that planet, time had slowed to a pace where it had practically stopped.

“Basing on prelimenary calculations, the timeflow distortion is the worst on the surface of Solenne itself. One hour there is literally a thousand years elsewhere.” Nolan’s voice was tinged with surprise. “And seems like it had been in this state for a very long while, probably from the time where the dimension started skewing.”

Y’zaks crossed his arms over his chest as he stared intently at the images on the holographic display. The wonders of the universe reminded him of his passion for exploration back in the days. “This how extraordinary the universe is… I cannot fathom what sort of energy could cause time to distort as such.”

Hao Ren kept silent the moment he heard that the timeflow had been distorted, as a torrent of thoughts finally started to take shape within his mind. A few minutes later, he suddenly knocked against the control dais, agitation in his voice. “Do you know what this means?”

Lily thoughts for a bit. “So.. we can wait for the final chapter of Detective Conan here?”

Hao Ren smacked the husky’s head without second thought. “That means the God-slaying war on that planet had only just passed the ten hour mark! Means that the treacherous children’s army had only left the place ten hours ago! Maybe some are still there!”

A pall of silence fell on the bridge, even Y’lisabet was gawking at the revelation. Belatedly she exclaimed, “… Wow this is so cool!”

“Can we head in there?” Hao Ren stared at the MDT that was playing dead on the control dais (playing dead to prevent anyone from taking it off the socket). “Under the condition that we are able to ward off the time distortion.”

Hao Ren thought that this was a rare opportunity and wanted under any circumstances to head on to Solenne to see what was going on. But the time distortion is a fatal problem, especially when an hour on the planet equates to thousands outside. This means that by the time he let out a sneeze on the planet, the people on Earth probably had already colonised Mars. As this was something he had never enconutered before, Hao Ren felt that was a particularly tricky question.

Yet the MDT’s responsed was relaxed. “Of course. No problem. We can negate the timeflow distrotion, but this is a one-time only and cannot be reversed. Using the ship’s void engine will do.”

“Negating the timeflow distortion?” Hao Ren’s was stunned. “On what basis?”

“The Xiling Celestials are immune to the negative effects from any disruption to the law of the universe. And any of their creations are equipped with the same ability. The basis of which that after ‘jumping’ out of a planet one would be in contact with the ‘void’. The MDT tried to explain this complicated question. “Do you know what is the concept of ‘worlds’?”

Hao Ren blinked as he started to recall what he had previously studied. “It must be within a space-time continuum that is self-contained and yet compatible with the universal manifold? A series of information is able to self-, and is fully equipped with all the data it requires. It is a massive continuous self-deductive mathematical equation that works under series of mathematical laws to conduct internal calculations and cycles. Externally it is the activities that happen within the universe. This system is called a ‘world’.

“There’s a few mistakes here and there, but there’s the gist of it.” the Mdt flashed twice to signal that Hao Ren was correct.” The world is a self-consitent model, and the void is the primal chaos outside this model. Touching the void means you’re out of the world, and are no longer bound by the world’s rules, this includes perception and any physical laws. Time itself is what? No matter what it is, it can only affect what is within this world. Once something out of the world appears, it will be destroyed, and subsequently reset.”

Hao Ren suddenly understood what it mean. “So when we set the ship for void travel, and ram directly into the place…”

“We could negate whatever form of time distortion. But this process will also destroy the distorted structure there and once the void engine shuts down the area around Solenne will reset to the normal timeflow. This ‘normal timeflow’ will match the surrounding universe.

Lily blinked as she listened on to the borderline metaphysics discussion Hao Ren and the MDT had. Even if she was the most educated of the lot, this was something out of her league, and she could only nodded, feigning understanding. “Can this work?”

“Simple, brutal and effective.” the MDT was confident. “We’re just hitting the circuit breaker of the timeflow here to reset it. Well, since the the slowdown was not caused by gravity or anything, it’s just a programming error, this sort of ‘bug’ can be fixed easily.”

Hao Ren nodded and gave Nolan an order. “Activate the void engine, we’ll smash our way through. Stop on the signal from the MDT.”

The MDT’s methods was simple and effective, but it was slightly on the brutal side of things. It was using a ‘foregin object’ to pass through the time distortion to force an area-wide reset of the timeflow. This was almost a hail mary sort of treatment, as the void engine’s activation will cause a great amount of stress to the world, and the engine needs to be stopped before the world disintegrates into binary codes.

The Petrachelys reacted almost immediately, as the center portion of the ship armor glowed in a radiant blue grid. The void engine was now active, and the blue grids quicky turned illusory and placed the ship on standby to jump out of the universe.

Strictly speaking, the ship now was not something the rule of this world was able to comprehend, and yet as it forcibly stayed on, that triggered a chain reaction. The skewing point of the nebula shuddered, and the light around it faded away as if was swallowed by omething. And even some of the stars and planets slowly lost their form in the shuddering and became almost like two-dimensional art clip.

The ship was now headed straight for Solenne.

Hao Ren nervously looked at the scene outside as he mumbled out his orders. “Nolan, slowly, slowly… Lower the engine power output… WAH! Easy on the clutch! Treat this like a walk… No, don’t step on the accelerator! Legs off! Alright, just like this, slowly, steady, mind the speedometer…”

Nolan had enough. “Shut up!”

Solenne’s image was fading by the moment, and was just about to disintegrate into merger binary integres, but just as it was about to totally fade from the shuddering caused by the void engine, the MDT barked the order. “Cease!”

Nolan immediately slammed the brakes… oh, she didn’t. She just merely cut off the power to the void engine and just as the ship was about to descend into the void, the Petrachelys floated precariously on the world’s edge. After a short buzz like a TV with poor reception, the ship form was restored.

Solenne and and the surrouning area too had been restored. The light was slowly stabilising and while the dimensional distortion is still there, the timeflow of the place had started moving again, at the usual pace.

The Petrachelys arrived slowly on Solenne’s orbit. On this very planet, the god-slaying war had just ended ten hours ago.

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