The Record of Unusual Creature

“The prison’s going to collapse, it’s going to collapse, it’s going to collapse…”

The indistinctive and rhythmic murmurs waned. Watching the girl, who seemed to be mentally unsound drifting away and disappearing at the end of the hallway, Hao Ren felt that there was some secret hidden in the castle.

A gust of cold wind came out of nowhere and Hao Ren instinctively pulled his clothes closer to himself. But suddenly, he realized that there were no windows in the hallway, which was located in the deepest part of the castle.

He turned his head, trying to find where the cold wind had come from, but he only saw the full-body portrait of a woman hanging on the wall facing the hallway. This quirky portrait, marked as “witch” stood there quietly with her face covered with black gauze. Hao Ren felt her eyes penetrating the black gauze, and they seemed to be curiously looking at the strangers, who had suddenly come into the castle.

A sound came from a distance. It appeared that the unfortunate young man, who was mentally ill had begun to smash things in the house again. He heard two sharp dog barks from the direction of the castle garden, but the barking soon turned into a fearful whimper. The darkness underneath the castle was slowly creeping. It probably realized that strangers had broken into its cage, but it could have also been aware of the power they possessed. Hence, it crouched as if waiting for something.

Hao Ren scratched his chin, thinking that it was interesting. Then, he drifted back to his room.

Lily was sitting in front of the fireplace, dozing off. Nangong Sanba was checking out his tools while others were nowhere to be seen. They had probably returned to their respective rooms. Lily was awakened as Hao Ren came back in. She ran over and greeted him with joy. “You’re back, Landlord!”

“Haven’t you slept yet?” Hao Ren bumped her on the head and walked over to Nangong Sanba. “I just met someone outside…”

He told him about the mad girl, and Nangong Sanba nodded as he said, “That’s Anna, Igor’s daughter. The voice you heard was Akim, Anna’s younger brother. Both of them are the youngest generation in the Andrea Family. If the evil spirit can’t be eradicated, I’m afraid that both of them will be the last and final generation of the family.”

Hao Ren sat down in the nearest high-backed chair, picked Lil Pea out from his bosom and let the little one play on the nearby table. He then poured himself a glass of water. “They’re not normal?”

“Well, it’s a ‘genetic disease’ that runs in the Andrea Family,” said Nangong Sanba as he frowned. “Each generation is exceptionally healthy at birth, but they would contract the illness after the age of six. Madness, schizophrenia, delusions, swinging between being extremely smart and extremely dumb, they somehow end up gaining knowledge, which for the most part can’t be found in books. But at the same time, they’ll also somehow produce memories that don’t seem to belong to this world, which aggravates their condition. The madness will last until the age of 18. On their eighteenth birthdays, the evil spirits seemingly leave their bodies, leaving only a ‘genius’ full of quirky knowledge. This is why every head of family is talented, but not many of them survived after the age of 18; serious madness killed them. Some unlucky children even completely lost their souls in utter madness as if their bodies were possessed by something else… I suspect that vengeful spirit is possessing the bodies of the Andrea Family members. It could be looking for ways to escape the place, while the incident that happened to my home back then was probably the result of a successful escape by the vengeful spirit.”

Nangong Sanba clenched his fist tightly as he said, “I hope I can exterminate this monster this time.”

Hao Ren had seen the magic and technology of the other worlds. He had also witnessed various incredible space and cosmic visions. However, these mysterious incidents on the earth still excited him because he knew that the root causes of these supernatural phenomena on the Earth had also come from the Plane of Dreams, and the impact of these supernatural phenomena on ordinary people is naturally one of the symptoms of the intrusion of the Plane of Dreams into the real world.

Before this, Nangong Sanba stayed in the castle for a long time, so he was familiar with the situation of the Andrea Family. He sighed when he mentioned about the two persons who were devastated by the evil spirit. “They are actually very nice, young people. While Akim is polite and likes music, Anna likes to paint. Anna’s condition is more stable than Akim. She often walked out and I spoke to her several times. She could clearly remember her experience when she was mentally out of control: she related her was stuffed with a large amount of obscure ancient knowledge, and all the evil deeds for the past 300 years hidden deep inside the castle. The vengeful spirit observed everything that had ever happened in the castle, and then stuffed all it into her memory. Anna seemed to be very disgusted with her family, always cursing the ancestors whose portraits were hung on the wall. Akim rarely ventured out, but he would go to the atrium occasionally. There is no way he could leave the castle.”

A thought suddenly came to Hao Ren’s mind. He asked, “Anna knows everything about the Andrea Family that had happened over the past 300 years? What about the origin of the vengeful spirit?”

“Perhaps she knows, but no one could ever find out from her,” said Nangong Sanba while waving his hand. “Her mind is screwed up. At the same time, the vengeful spirit seems to be deliberately concealing this part of the information. When recalling those memories, Anna will become madder. I tried several times but failed to gain any insight.”

“Anna mentioned a ‘witch’,” said Hao Ren as he remembered the portrait he had seen at the end of the hallway. “There is a painting in hallway outside, a young woman with her face veiled. She was also described as witch…. Who is she?”

“She even told you about it?” Nangong Sanba was somewhat surprised. “Hey, it seems that Anna’s condition isn’t very good today. I’ve also noticed that there was such a witch in the history of the Andrea Family, but I’ve not been able to find out her past. She appeared at the beginning when the Andre family began to amass their fortune, but the subsequent genealogical records had kept mum about the witch. She’s only known to be very special to the family—someone who was feared. There’s a library in the castle, where there’s this oldest manuscript mentioning the witch in reverence, and attributing ‘everything’ the Andrea Family has to the witch. I suspect that this ‘everything’ isn’t just about wealth, but also includes ‘the curse of evil spirit possession.”

Hao Ren frowned as he but his nails. He knew that the ‘witch’ existed in the Earth’s history—the ignorant and dark era where the church and the people were obsessed with persecuting witches and punishing scorcerers. They did so to divert their fear of the Black Death and other natural and man-made disasters. This ferventness was not just driven by the demon hunters, and the blind following of the people, but also contained the shadow of witchcraft. Humans who had acquired special abilities and forbidden knowledge from the otherworldlings, or had contacted with certain things from the Plane of Dreams were called scorcerers and witches. But 1,700 years ago in the extreme north of Siberia, was there a witch?”

“Hey, let’s just stick with the topic of vengeful spirit,” said Hao Ren, scratching his hair. He thought that as terrible as the witch was, she must have been dead. The biggest problem now lay beneath the castle—the vengeful spirit. “How powerful is that thing?” he asked.

Hao Ren was quite relaxed as he asked the question. After all, he had just returned from the battlefield in the alien worlds. He had seen enough that he thought a pretentious thing like that would not pose much threat.

However, just when his voice trailed off, he heard Vivian’s voice from the outside. “Don’t underestimate the vengeful spirit.”

A buzzing noise was heard beside him as the window was opened by itself. A swarm of bats covered in show flew in from the outside and crashed down onto the floor. They tried to regroup and transform back into human form, but there were still a few of them could not do so as they were frozen and lying on the floor. Vivian smiled sheepishly at Hao Ren. “I went out to study the structure of this castle.”

“What have you got?” Hao Ren asked. “Anything special about the vengeful spirit?”

“The castle was obviously designed by an expert. Although it’s construction materials are just ordinary material, the special pattern makes it possible to form a seal that can suppress spiritual creatures. There’s a distorted spatial response underneath the castle, something powreful must have been locked inside,” said Vivian as she picked up the few frozen bats from the floor and tossed them into the fire. She patted Lily’s shoulder and said, “Doggie, help us to flip the bats. Landlord, you might look down on the vengeful spirits, but they’re not ordinary evil spirits. In fact, they are also not wraiths. Strictly speaking, they’re a kind of high-power energy bodies which have its own will. There are strong and weak vengeful spirits, but without exception, they are difficult to deal with. Their mysterious nature makes it hard to understand by even the demon hunters. There hasn’t a recorded ‘kill’ of vengeful spirit by the demon hunters because the demon hunters haven’t figured a way to kill them. So the usual view is that after vengeful spirit is defeated, it would be sent into exile back to where it comes from instead of being killed. In addition, vengeful spirits don’t afraid of physical attack, they’re amorphous, unfettered, have no sign to indicate that they could be weakened, wounded as they’ve no physical vulnerability.”

Vivian said as she suddenly shook her head, “Their combat strength not lie in brute force, but its mysteriousness. Your weapon might be 100 times more powerful than them, but your knowledge of them is the biggest obstacle in dealing with them.”

Hao Ren listened to Vivian’s analysis. He could not help but fall into thoughts. Lily who was next to him flipped the bats grilled in the fire with a plier, all the while drooling. “Oh bat, when can I eat you?”

Vivian stepped forward and picked the bats up out of the fire and merged back to her body. “All you know is eating! I just want to defrost it—this place is freaking cold!”