The Record of Unusual Creatures

It was not due to Hao Ren’s imagination running wild, but after coming into contact with so many supernatural phenomena, he had gotten some insight on this bizarre world. He now understood the properties of anything that had to do with the divine. Gods were such a powerful source of information, and millions upon billions of information as well as data naturally revolved around their activity that even after their fall, it remained so.

Raven 12345 had clearly said this before, the Godslayer and the causality of the goddess would lead Hao Ren to the Star of Creation. So, this gave him grounds to suspect that everything that had to do with the deicide would from now on be affected by the Godslayer.

Under such circumstances, not knowing anything about the sword did not sit well with him.

“Every time I pick up the sword, there’ll be a ‘voice’ echoing deep within my mind. It’s vague and hollow, like someone sleeptalking a super complicated sentence on repeat,” Hao Ren spoke in a soft tone to Vivian. “But in truth, it’s not even a voice, more like some foreign ‘thought’. While the MDT didn’t detect any sentience in it, I suspect that there’s a will within this sword… However, its operations are non-biological and even illogical. They can’t be detected by normal scans. But since I can hear its voice, I think I can talk to it.”

Concern flashed through Vivian’s eyes. “Won’t it be dangerous?”

“This sword has already been blessed by Raven 12345.” Hao Ren smiled. “While the goddess is unreliable at the best of times, her abilities are 100 % reliable.”

“So how do you plan on doing it?” Vivian looked at Hao Ren curiously. “You don’t even understand what it’s saying.”

Hao Ren shook his head. “I wasn’t paying attention to it because I was consciously resisting it. But now that I’ve decided to try to listen to its voice… Taking something that I don’t understand to look for clues about the goddess just isn’t sitting right with me. I need to change that.”

Seeing that Hao Ren was adamant about it, she did not press the matter further. Nodding gently, she reminded him, “Be extra careful.”

Hao Ren gave Vivian a curt “Yeah” before he sat down cross-legged. He held the Godslayer in front of him, blade skywards, and placed the cold, weightless blade gently on his forehead. At the same time, he gave the MDT an order, “Monitor my spiritual defense. Maximum Alert.”

As he said this, his body relaxed, as though he simply fell asleep. With a slow breath, he slowly entered a meditational trance.

Vivian was rather surprised at the sudden change in Hao Ren’s temperament and recalled some ancient spiritual control techniques. Hao Ren’s current state was similar to those techniques. Giggling to herself, she said, “This boy… He hasn’t been slacking off after all.”

A swarm of small bats materialized from the darkness and after circling Vivian for a bit, they formed into a floating sitting mat. Vivian then quietly sat beside Hao Ren, just meters away, and looked over him quietly.

Only then did Rollie, who was gnashing her teeth earlier, clumsily relax her guard and carefully make her way towards Hao Ren. She wanted to use her head to nudge and see if her appointed “poop scooper” was still alive. But Vivian immediately pulled her by the collar back. “Don’t interrupt, just sit there and watch.”

At that very moment, Hao Ren was fully immersed in his own spiritual world. He could still sense what was going on around him, but Vivian’s voice sounded like it was miles away, and the chill of the cold night wind as well as the feeling of the ground under him faded away. He was now floating in a sea of chaos. This was a spiritual realm that was difficult to describe, and everything that did not belong to the place appeared very disjointed.

The vague murmurings had been amplified by orders of magnitude, and they echoed across the sea of chaos.

Hao Ren’s consciousness floated in the spiritual world, and this was the first time he had successfully “dived” into such depths of his spiritual world. Credit should go to the MDT’s guidance and the tips he received from his fellow inspectors, but of course, it was possible that the credit should go to the Godslayer’s powers as well. The sword’s hum was like a beacon, leading him ever deeper into the chaos.

Hao Ren stopped in a middle of what looked like an ocean. The sea underneath him exuded a mysterious blue color as if the ocean in the dream world had been distorted. The surface oscillated in a quiet, slow motion, like a video being slowed down. Following the bizarre and piercing “noise”, Hao Ren finally managed to locate the “thing”. And its form within the spiritual world astounded Hao Ren to no end.

“Looks like this is the Godslayer’s appearance in the spiritual world.” Hao Ren carefully approached the monstrous thing. He maintained extreme caution even when he was within his own spiritual realm. Hao Ren knew he still lacked experience in the techniques of spiritual control, and he was scared as hell that a mistake would turn him into a second Lily. “It looks pretty scary, but it’s rather benign… Not sure if it was in this form when it invaded the minds of the demon hunters with its humming.”

No one could respond to Hao Ren’s musings in the spiritual world, and he mumbled to himself as he circled the massive shard to inspect it. Simultaneously, a series of wayward emotions started to emanate from the shard, creating some sort of illusory resonance within the dimension.

Hao Ren focused his mind, trying to decipher the vague message.

“…Chaos… Mutation… Order… Balance… Conflict… Falsehood…”

“A whole load of meaningless thought fragments…” Hao Ren mumbled again. He felt that the Godslayer was probably long “dead”, and the resonance was just an echo left behind by the souls that were reaped by the accursed blade.

Nevertheless, he shook his head. He had already spent so much effort on this. It was not something for him to just sigh about.

Hao Ren carefully approached the shard again and placed his head on the obsidian shell. “What are you trying to say…”

“That depends on what you are trying to listen to.”

Hao Ren was stunned and was thrown about a hundred meters back. “Motherf—?!”

“What are you running for?” the grumbling noise from across the area suddenly vanished, and a muffled, slightly robotic voice rang in Hao Ren’s ears. “Didn’t you allow me to speak?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute… is it you who’s speaking?” Hao Ren immediately calmed himself down as he gawked at the black “mountain” on the surface of the sea not too far from him. He did want to “talk” with the Godslayer, but he never thought that the latter would speak just like that. Thankfully, his heart was strong, or else he would have needed to drown a bottle of aspirin. “The Godslayer?”

“Godslayer? I don’t know who that is. Is that my name?” the voice still rumbled within the dimension, but Hao Ren noticed that it was getting much clearer, like someone waking up from a dream. “Who are you?”

Hao Ren was stunned. “You don’t know who you are?”

“I don’t,” the voice sounded very blunt, very honest. It was answering Hao Ren’s questions in a serious manner, and it answered more than what Hao Ren asked. “I… have always been like this. I’ve never met something as strange as you… You are the first thing to proactively… speak with me.”

“I’m a human… so stop calling me… ‘thing’.” Hao Ren felt somewhat conflicted. “Do you know where this is?”

“I don’t.”

“Do you know how long you’ve survived in this state?”

“I know what ‘time’ is, but I don’t know how to calculate it. But I suppose it has been a very, very long time.”

“Ugh… Then, do you know who created you?”

“I don’t.”

“…Do you know who the goddess of creation is?”

“I don’t.”

“Then what do you know?”

“I don’t know what I know, and I don’t know what I don’t know. You’ll have to ask me something for me to know if I know or don’t know it.”

Hao Ren was flabbergasted.

The Godslayer could indeed be communicated with, but the bugger was a prime example of an ignoramus!