The Record of Unusual Creatures

White Flame had brought them to the top of the Netherrealm Clock Tower.

Floating in the void, the tower had now recovered from the space-time distortion. The dark shadow that once shrouded the tower was completely gone as the Godslayer had been taken away. Mysterious ancient runes glowing in pale gold and red reappeared on the tower, making it a bright spot in the darkness of the void.

The top portion of the tower had been destroyed during the deicidal war 10,000 years ago. Though the Netherrealm Clock Tower was the best-preserved building in Coldpath, it had suffered considerable damage. After all, nothing could really remain perfectly intact in a war. After the tower’s spire was blown away, the hall on the top of the tower became a semi-open platform with building debris floating around it like a group of asteroids.

Hao Ren landed on the top platform of the tower. Looking around, he saw a large number of irregularly-shaped broken stones floating on the outer edge while a vast expanse of stars was above his head but beyond reach. It felt as if standing in space. Hao Ren stomped his feet slightly. He could sense that the force of gravity was less than one-third of when it was normal and not perpendicular to the surface.

“Look, there is nothing here,” White Flame said, pointing to the surroundings. “There are only ruins. Be careful of the shadows floating in the air; they will suddenly turn into gravitational storms and fling you out and away or even pressed you on the ground if you get too close to it.”

At ten meters away, Lily was caught in an abnormal gravity and sprawling on the ground. She struggled to speak, “Why don’t you tell me that earlier…”

Nearby, Vivian sounded sarcastic. “Wouldn’t you change, would you? That’s the price to pay for being too curious.”

“If she were to change, it would be in betrayal of her ancestral chromosomes,” Hao Ren said. He then let the MDT get Lily out of the peculiar situation by way of teleportation while he kept looking around for anything that might resemble a console. “The central point of the sphere must be on this platform.”

After getting Lily out, the MDT came up to Hao Ren. It switched on a hologram and checked the position of the central point, which was represented by the intersection of the virtual lines drawn inward from the sphere’s circumference. As expected, the center of the sphere was at the top of the Netherrealm Clock Tower. Skeptical, Vivian came up to take a gander. “Didn’t you say that the spatial rift will shift position when being observed? Some have shifted several times. Can these virtual lines you drew determine its exact position?”

“I have thought of problem too,” the MDT said, flashing in blue light. “First, I have studied its shifting behavior; they would not go beyond the boundary of the temple. Secondly, they are all moving on the surface of a large spherical shell, so their movements have no effect on the central position of the sphere. This further affirms the theory that the control terminal of the space-time vault is on the Netherrealm Clock Tower.”

“There is one thing that I’m worried about,” Hao Ren said, looking at the building that had been blown up becoming an open-top platform. “Could the control terminal have been blown up along with the top of this building?”

Swaying from side to side, the MDT said, “Impossible. If the controller’s offline, these rifts wouldn’t have popped out. Let’s look around carefully, there must be something still running here. The technology tree of the Goddess of Creation has to be very weird; the controller she made may not look like what you have in mind.”

They then split up and searched for anything that looked suspicious. Even Rollie began to scamper around trying to help. Though the cat maiden’s worldview was worrisome, she was intelligent enough to follow instruction as long as the target was clearly defined. The cat was an excellent hunter and detective, so her meticulosity and intuition might come in handy.

Hao Ren looked out at the floating temples in the distance. The MDT was with him, and he was thinking. “The Goddess of Creation left behind the spatial rifts, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Obvious.”

“Every rift is attached to a temple. According to White Flame, these rifts only appear within a hundred meters of the temples so we can infer that the Goddess of Creation has predetermined the position and orbit of each of the temples around the Netherrealm Clock Tower. Since she wanted to maintain her ‘vault’, these temples would not randomly change their positions.”

“Obvious.”

“But these temples were destroyed in the deicidal war. The Coldpath dimension was originally a piece of debris from the Star of Creation. At first, we thought that the temples floating aimlessly out there was a result of an explosion. But now it seems that this is not the case at all. Instead, everything here has been precisely calculated.”

“I understand what you mean.”

“The goddess accurately calculated the position where each temple would float. She was even aware of what the future Coldpath would look like, with the location of every single piece of debris precisely calculated. You know what it is like? It is like when a person’s home is blown up, this person knows exactly where each brick would end up even before the explosion. This person has also determined the purpose of each block and tile. The goddess used these bricks and tiles to form a giant jigsaw puzzle that spanned hundreds of kilometers across just to tuck something away from prying eyes safely and securely.

The MDT said, “So there is a problem now—”

“Yes, there is a problem,” Hao Ren said, nodding. “Did the Star of Creation explode due to overload from the deicidal incident? Or did the Goddess of Creation plan all this? The explosion was so precisely controlled that it is hard to believe that she was not the one behind all this.”

“So it was the Goddess of Creation herself who blew the Star of Creation up. Buddy, do you think the kind of information we recently obtain is a bit too overwhelming?” There was a rare hint of confusion in the MDT’s voice. “I almost wanted to believe that the goddess made the treacherous children herself.”

Hao Ren shook his head. “Probably not. I still insist that the deicidal incident is a conspiracy of a third-party and the Goddess of Creation is the victim. But we have to reevaluate the level of her active involvement in the event. She seemed to have many things planned in advance.”

“Mr. Landlord, you might want to see this!” Lily was heard from far away.

Hao Ren went up to Lily. “Is this pattern not interesting?” Lily said, pointing to the ground.

At first, Hao Ren thought that Lily had found some ancient device or stuff like that, but it was just some patterns on the ground. But when looked closely, the design caught his eyes. Round and at two meters across, it was a large three-dimensional spherical pattern made up of a large number of irregular lobes.

It was almost identical to the space-time vault in the simulation.

“This is…” White Flame was surprised. “I knew there was a relief on the ground here, but it wasn’t like this before.”

“It was not like this?” Hao Ren said. “Could it have appeared with the spatial rifts—?”

Before he could finish, Rollie, who was examining the relief, suddenly exclaimed, “Big Boss Cat, there is some text here!”

Hao Ren looked down. At the edge of the circular pattern, a line of text appeared. He switched on the translation plug-in to translate the words into the language that he could read.

“Whichever creation of the lifeblood reads this text may open the sacred vault with its blood.”

“The creation of the lifeblood?” Startled, Hao Ren spontaneously looked at Vivian, whose eyes affixed on the text. “I didn’t have to use the translation plug-in to understand it,” Vivian said.

“So this is meant for you,” Hao Ren said, swallowing. “It’s something the Goddess of Creation has set aside for you!”

“Wow!” Lily said in a whisper, “It suddenly became an epic piece of poetry.”

Unable to digest the information, Vivian was bewildered. “What should I do?” she asked.

Lily grabbed Vivian by her arm. “Need you ask more? The instruction’s very clear: bloodletting!”