The Record of Unusual Creature

The vengeful spirit’s departure did not restore the other underground dimension to its original form. As the MDT had surmised, the spatial structure there had been distorted for far too long. Now it was anchored between the gaps of reality in a stable state. Even without external reinforcement it could hold itself in that space for millenniums.

The place was still an endless field of snow, and it was as dark as ever. The spirit’s departure had caused the raging winds and snowstorm to finally die off. Hao Ren tried to recall the correct direction in his head as he walked and mumbled to Vivian, “What a large piece of land here. Seems rather wasteful to just leave it like that…”

Vivian did not even manage to respond before Nangong Wuyue quipped, “Mr. Landlord, don’t you think you’re too into your work? A land in an alternate dimension? Who do you plan to rent this to?”

Hao Ren already had something to retort with, “Well, just in case the gods decide to throw me an army or two of giant frost dragons. Given how that goddess operates, it’s not outside the realm of possiblity. I’m just preparing for the eventual need to accommodate anything that may appear from ‘Animal Planet’.”

Becky and Lily were at the back of the party. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything about giant frost dragons on ‘Animal Planet’…” Becky tilted her head. “Mr. Landlord’s mind works like a sandbox game, you never know what ideas he might come up with.”

“Your snow town or snow sanctuary won’t be of much use, but we should leave something here. Something like a power generator, or some lighting.” A few lightning orbs floated above the ancient vampire’s head as she looked around to plan for the future. “Maybe we should let Igor’s men set up some sort of station and monitoring facilities, or we can just do that ourselves. This place needs to be under surveillance, that’s for sure, especially with the fissure there.”

“I’ll get the Petrachelys to manufacture a set of equipment. Those gadgets are much more reliable than man-made one,” Hao Ren said as he looked at the faint lilac crack in the sky. “Especially when it comes to that fissure over there…”

The spirit’s departure did not affect the fissure’s status. It looked like it was just a gap akin to a door, and had nothing to do with the vengeful spirit’s energy source. The fissure was floating quietly on top of the stone platform in a slow and gentle frequency. It shone, floated, and emitted a weird humming sound.

“Let’s see if these two rocks are keys to anything,” Hao Ren muttered as he pulled out the two cursed stones and put them before the veil of light. “Hmm… what should I do next? Open sesame?”

The light veil stood silent as gentle waves rippled across its surface. Hao Ren felt like Lily as he did that.

“Looks like we need to active those triangular lines on the pyramid-shaped device in sequence.” Becky guessed the usage of the device like a grizzled veteran. “Something like opening a vault?”

“But that’ll take ages.” Hao Ren laughed drily. “I’m rather curious. If these are really keys, why do they have spatial storage capabilities? These two functions are almost the exact opposite. Have we guessed wrong?”

“Humans have been tripping over themselves to create gadgets beyond their wildest imaginations. A watchmaker from 1885 would never understand why a watch today would show everything else but the time. Don’t limit yourself to what you can see when you’re trying to figure out something beyond your comprehension,” Vivian said, almost philosophically. “Perhaps, the vengeful spirits designed their keys to be a storage vault as well?”

Hao Ren found that there was sense in Vivian’s words, but that did not change the fact that he had no idea how the two keys worked.

“Let me see what they might need… A touch command, voice command… some energy source… Maybe it’s a thumb-print, or iris-scan, but I don’t think the vengeful spirits have anything of the likes.” Hao Ren shrugged. “MDT, can you scan them?”

“They do have something to do with the fissure, at least in terms of data transmission, but it’s just basic transmission to ensure both sides are functioning as normal,” the MDT said as it shot out a ray of blue light and scanned the two small devices. “I think I should increase the power of my scans to see how this works. However, there’s a danger to that. Not everything’s as tough as Imperial-made items, especially when it comes to an alien key. There’s a chance that these two keys are already on their last legs, and my scan could end them.”

“Gotta try regardless.” Hao Ren pursed his lips. “Just try not to wipe out anything important inside. If neccessary, I’ll see Raven 12345 for more high tech gadgets.”

Under The MDT’s high-frequency scan, Hao Ren went to work in testing out the devices’ function.

Rubbing the lines along the triangular device did work. It seemed like the lines were the control “key”. The concentric rings on the other spherical device also had a similar function, but they needed to have a finger on one of the rings for it to work. And based on the MDT’s analysis, both actions would need to be performed simultaneously. An almost intricate pairing, it was like trying to get a rhyme out of a complicated musical instrument. Hao Ren had never seen an item with such an odd control method. He guessed that whoever created this had to be some sort of philosophical race—meaning, they were probably rather full of themselves.

“A very delicate control scheme with layers of encryption. You can’t decode this using normal data reading methods,” the MDT’s voice was filled with awe. “Not particularly advanced, but very clever.”

As Hao Ren was getting rather excited about the prospects of unlocking the keys’ mystery, a young female voice sounded from behind, “You’ll break the thing with your tests.”

Hao Ren had felt someone approaching earlier and he turned back to look. “Anna? What are you doing here?”

It was Igor’s daughter, Anna. The young girl who had just been released from the thralls of sickness was already there. She was wearing a thick fur coat, and in the dark, cold snow plains, her already pale complexion made her appear even more gaunt.

Even if the blizzard had stopped, for someone to walk down from the underground crypt to the fissure was no easy feat.

“How did you get here?” Vivian was even more surprised. “You knew the way?”

“I…. remember something?” Anna shrunk back as she eyed the fissure in fear. “The spirit left something in my mind… memories… I knew you were all here.”

Hao Ren and the rest looked at each other. They knew that the spirit had left a rather large data imprint in Anna’s mind, but they never thought it included matters regarding the fissure!

“You remembered?” Nangong Sanba asked, his face filled with emotion.

Anna nodded and held her hands out before Hao Ren. “Let me see the two keys… I may know how to activate them.”

Hao Ren passed the two “stones” to Anna, and the young girl started to touch the mysterious lines along their surface. The latter suddenly let out an almost inaudible hum. Seeing this, Hao Ren was perplexed. “I don’t understand…. Why did the spirit leave something like this inside a normal person’s head? Was it intentional?”

“I don’t think it intentionally fed her knowledge. It was something passive and random, some sort of mental broadcast,” Vivian crossed her arms as she tried to explain. “Now we know that the spirit’s an energy field and also a field of consciousness. When you’re in the vicinity of a vengeful spirit, it’s pretty much akin to being inside a living being’s brain. You’ll somehow be compelled to listen to the being’s thoughts. Weaker humans may even be totally reprogrammed. The Andrea Family’s been touching the key for generations, and they were treated as an enemy by the spirit. Plus, having lived in this castle for centuries, they were the most affected by the spirit. That was the source of their insanity. The spirit has no logical functions; it won’t purposely tell you anything. The Andreas were just being ‘soaked’ within the creature’s mind, to the point that they started to hear its thoughts. The knowledge and memories probably came from there.”

“So, it’s literally information being copy-pasted from the spirit’s brain into theirs,” Nangong Sanba added. “And this is really by chance. Every member of the Andrea Family has listened to something different and their insanity has ranged from mild to severe. But because they were bombarded with the memories of the spirit without any warning, most of the victims misunderstood what they saw…”

As he said this, he pointed his mouth at Anna, and lowered his voice. “She’s probably seen her ancestors taking out a large amount of gold with the keys, and recalled the legend of the witch. That caused her to unilaterally think that her family’s wealth was stolen, and that it was the cause of the curse. It then worsened her initial sickness.”

As Hao Ren and the group were busy discussing the spirit’s ability to affect the human psyche, Anna’s manipulation of the devices finally began to bear fruit.