The Record of Unusual Creatures

There were survivors on this planet.

The existence of survivors had inspired Hao Ren and aroused his curiosity. He was so excited that he had temporarily forgotten the shit he was now in after his spacecraft crashed on this planet. In the doomsday world of the Plane of Dreams, the number of First Borns and the planets that they destroyed was by no means few. The many images of ruins that the drones sent back had proven this. But there were few survivors. And survivors who still stubbornly resisted the purge were unheard of so far. But the appearance of the aircraft earlier meant that the survivors were not only resisting but they seemed to be in control.

Hao Ren did not want to make contact with those aircraft. Instead, he had the MDT keeping an eye on them and intercepting their radio communication. He was just waiting for the right time to make contact with the survivors.

His priority was to fix his problem at hand. He must be prudent in his act to ensure the success of his mission. Now, Nolan was practically a handicap lying in the impact crater. The only manpower and resources that Hao Ren could utilize were his partners, a group of autonomous robots, and the arsenals in his dimensional pocket. He had done this math; his current combat strength did not give him an absolute advantage over the locals. So, he figured he had to make it slow.

The survivors might not necessarily be friendly. After all, these people had fought the mad First Born for thousands of years, and they could be very well a bunch of psychopaths.

But then, the locals could have already detected the crash when Nolan fell out of the sky. They could have known that a bunch of extraterrestrial visitors were on their planet.

After the two aircraft disappeared before their eyes, Hao Ren received a call from Nolan. She sounded a bit nervous. “Boss! Are you okay? I just sensed a strong energy reaction on your side!”

“I tell you what, the civilization of this planet is not extinct as we have first thought. There are survivors.”

“What?”

“They are fighting the First Born on this planet, and they have made quite an accomplishment.”

“Really?”

The MDT sent the recorded images to Nolan while Lily and Nangong Wuyue recounted what just happened. At last, Hao Ren told what he thought. Nolan agreed with him after a moment of silence.

“Now we are in bad shape. We need to repair our spacecraft before contemplating scaling up our operation. It is best to collect more information first so that we could have a good grasp of the situation. I use to do this when I was still a mercenary,” Nolan said. “I think the locals have yet found out we are here. I have not detected any radar signals. Many of my external sensors are damaged, but I am not blind. Had they been people watching us, I would have definitely known.”

“That will be fine. We need to learn more about the survivors of this planet and then assess how we could approach them. Restore the functions of the Petrachelys as quickly as possible. Find ways to contact the drone cluster. These are the two most important jobs right now.”

“Understood. I will launch a new batch of probes to find the base of the survivors. Captain, when are you coming back onboard?”

“I plan to continue to explore the city,” Hao Ren replied. “This city might have been abandoned for thousands of years, but it could contain clues of the survivors. At least, we could find out how their civilization looked like before the First Born destroyed them.”

“Please be careful. The Lullaby system is activated, but we are still standing on the head of a planet-sized monster, which had just been provoked a while ago. Its subconscious movement could be disastrous.”

Hao Ren assured Nolan and then hung up. The trio continued to head deeper into the city.

The bombings and counterattacks that occurred on the borders of forest in the distance did not seem to affect the tranquility in the city. This desolate place was still peaceful with wild animals roaming around freely, adding a little noise to the otherwise quiet place. Hao Ren looked at the city and the lush vegetation; he could not believe that this world was still living under the threat of the raging First Born—the calm was worrying.

When a runaway First Born was devastating to the ecosystem. The tide of lifeblood would thoroughly purge, assimilate, and reset everything organic and inorganic. It would not only kill intelligent lives but also nature, every tree, and grass. But here, on this planet, where the First Born was still active, the ecosystem was thriving, and the forest had even swallowed up the civilized world.

The alien animals roaming around in the city seemed to be clueless of what was going on in the world around them.

The only thing that proved the First Born and Second Born was at war was the bombing that happened in the distance a while ago.

Was the First Born of this planet not mad? Or was it that the indigenous civilization of this planet had gained the upper hand and completely suppressed the First Born? That was why the ecosystem had time to recover during the thousand-year struggle?

With these questions in mind, Hao Ren and his team scouted the collapsed ancient buildings for more clues. They needed to find text and pictures of the ancient civilization, but the chances of finding these things were slim; text and images were not easy to preserve.

Perhaps they should take a look at the plane wreckage at the edge of the forest—if the aircraft crashed on this side of the forest and were far away from the tentacle.

At noon, the group had arrived at the foot of the massive building in the city center.

Like a quadrangular pyramid, the building should be the best-preserved part of the city. It clearly used highly sturdy materials and unique techniques in its construction to increase the lifespan of the building. Despite the exterior had peeled off, and the wide cracks and large holes, the scan result from the MDT showed that the building had a perfectly intact frame. Just like a giant beast with a reinforced steel skeleton, flesh and blood had decayed over the years, but the strong bones remained.

It all meant that this was an important building.

The structure had sunken by a dozen meters due to land subsidence. The original entrance was buried in rubble, and its walls were full of holes and cracks. That meant Hao Ren could enter the building freely. He asked the MDT to first scan the interior of the building before they got inside through a gap.

The faint blue light of the MDT and the Flamejoy were illuminating the place. This ancient building that looked like a decaying tomb had shown its age. Moss and photobacterium covered the walls, and vines had grown through the broken floors. In some places, Hao Ren could even hear the sound of running water. The underground structure of the city had evolved into a subterranean river. The MDT found that this subterranean river connected to two cavities under the city and led to the streams and sewer. Together with the water on the surface, these waterways nourished the nearby vegetation.

A new ecosystem flourished in this city.

Nangong Wuyue, in her sea snake form, was crawling beside Hao Ren. She had summoned three water spheres around her, and through the humid air, she could perceive every detail in the surroundings. Suddenly, she stopped and pointed in a direction with her tail. “Mr. Landlord, look.”

With the help of illumination from the MDT, Hao Ren curiously looked into the direction where Nangong Wuyue was pointing. And then he saw a sculpture.

The sculpture was broken in half. The upper body was lying on the floor while the lower part was missing. The real face of the statue was visible after removing the moss from the surface.

It was a human statue—at least it looked like one.

“It seems that the intelligent creatures of this planet have followed the information perturbation and evolved into this ‘standard template,'” Hao Ren said. “Now, we at least know how the native creatures of this planet look like.”

“Not only this.” Vivian’s eyes were slightly gleaming in red as she looked at the dark hall in front. “It is either a museum or message center.”

Hao Ren looked at where Vivian was looking, and he knew what Vivian meant.

Sculptures and reliefs lined up in the hall quietly as if it was a military parade. They also looked like tombstones.

Civilizations, whether on Earth or in alien planets, used sculptures to pass down information. Be it carved woods or stones during the early stage of civilization, or alloy-cast, beautiful objects during the height of civilization, sculptures always occupied a prominent position in information transmission. Regardless of the capacity of information, the use of sculptures was consistently more accurate and reliable than text and language in transmitting information. If one wanted to preserve a message and hope that it could be easily interpreted by future generations thousands of years later, then one of the best ways was to carve it in stone.

Whether it was reliefs or sculptures, they all could preserve information for a long time. At least, for those civilizations that had yet outlasted time itself, the ‘shelf life’ of sculptures and reliefs was long enough to fit the purpose.

Perhaps, this building was just a museum for exhibiting sculptures, but Hao Ren hoped that it was a message book that the ancient civilization left behind when they faced with a disaster. The appearance of the six aircraft earlier had confirmed that there were survivors on this planet. But somehow, Hao Ren felt that he could not pin his hope on the survivors, as represented by the aircraft, in uncovering the historical truth.