The Record of Unusual Creature

The ancient, deep-sea city of Nasaton was shutting down the large protective wall for the first time in 10,000 years. The translucent film above the city slowly crumbled and receded from the apex as well as spatial layer. At long last, the layered, invisible labyrinth was gone. With the shutting down of the wall, the maelstrom directly above the city gradually lost its energy supply. Its edge shook slightly and it began to spin at a slower speed. However, just as the siren queen had predicted, the maelstrom did not disappear. It was still unstoppable, still growing, albeit slowly.

Hao Ren led everyone back to the city’s surface (in the deep sea, the word “surface” seems a bit weird). He looked at the maelstrom above, and it felt like the maelstrom could fall down at any time and consume them all. “Now we have a month to shut this thing down. I think it’ll directly affect my year-end bonus this year… So, who of you has a better solution?”

“Blow it up,” said the MDT without hesitation.

Hao Ren thought for a moment before he reached and grabbed Lil Pea and held her in front of the MDT. “You have thirty seconds to explain it clearly or else you would have to play with her for the whole day.”

The MDT took several ‘steps’ back. “Put down the fish! I’m not kidding!”

Lil Pea clapped happily. “No kidding! No kidding!”

“Okay,” Hao Ren let Lil Pea loose to swim in circles as he looked up at the MDT. “Are you really going to blow up this maelstrom? To be honest, I don’t think this thing will go away easily; it has accumulated the energy of Nasaton and of the earth. Once these energies are released…”

“Once they’re released it, you would become the most wanted man of this century. Like in movie, the superheroes would shoot you for an hour, and when you resurrect in the next episode the same process repeats,” the MDT circled around Hao Ren. “However, theoretically we can deflect the energy other places, such as the void. We can detonate concurrently at both ends of the maelstrom and destroy its structural stability, so that its energy will be concentrated in the centre, and its ‘centre’ is located in the rift between the surface world and The Plane of Dreams, the energy will be deflected into the void. Of course, this requires a little bit of precision… but once it’s successful, we will not only be able to solve the problem of this maelstrom, but the power it generates will also push The Plane of Dreams and the surface world a little bit apart. That essentially will reinforce the Wall of Reality—speaking of taking two birds with one stone.”

Hao Ren listened carefully and tried hard visualise it in his mind pretending he knew it like a pro. “Although I don’t really understand it, it sounds very cool. What do you mean when you said you’re going to detonate at both ends of the maelstrom concurrently? The other side is in…”

Nangong Wuyue who was listening suddenly chimed in. “The Plane of Dreams?”

The MDT floated up and down. “Yes, the Plane of Dreams. According to observations, this portal has already begun to take shape, and its other end should have opened somewhere in The Plane of Dreams. We will set explosions on both The Plane of Dreams and the surface world concurrently, and then it would be gone before you know it.”

Hao Ren looked around and nodded. “I think this is feasible.”

Lily scratched her chin and thought for a moment. “But I don’t really understand.”

“It’s okay, I too don’t understand,” Hao Ren waved. “All in all, we’re going to blow it up at the same time on both sides of the maelstrom, and we don’t need to know how it work, after all, we haven’t been able to understand how things work. How do we know the position of the other end of the maelstrom?”

Hasse and the other two demon hunters looked on with excitement. White Flame suddenly could not help but mutter. “Can you really save the world like this?”

“It’s said that they always do this every time they save the world.” Nangong Sanba smiled as he spread out his hand. “It’s like having special effects…”

“If you’re not helping, please go away.” Vivian shot them a sideways look. “We’re discussing how to save the world, you know.”

Hasse’s stiff facial muscle twitched a little, his only eye filled with a strange light. “Will you take time to explain to me what is happening after you all are done? I am interested in you people…”

Hao Ren waved his hand calmly signalling he had heard him. The old obstinate demon hunter whose only concern was hunting the demons had taken the bait. His effort seemed to begin to pay off as the demon hunter was taking initiative to explore what had once happened in The Plane of Dreams, much effective than to convince him. Hao Ren had loosen the first brick of obstinacy of the world’s most stubborn demon hunter.

Moreover, judging by Hasse’s tone of voice, this brick was rocking quite violently.

“Can you put a detector on the other side?” Vivian summoned a bat and made a throwing gesture in the direction of the maelstrom. “I think that portal is almost open. Maybe there is a crack or something we can squeeze through. We use a detector to find out the coordinate on the other side, and then enter The Plane of Dreams from somewhere else to find the other side of the maelstrom…”

“Please, don’t,” the MDT quickly dismissed her suggestion. “We must do everything possible to prevent ‘information’ from crossing the Wall of Reality. You must remember that ‘information is everything’ and sending a detector with a signal sending function to the opposite side is more dangerous than shooting at it in the face. If possible, don’t let even a stone to pass through it, let alone a detector.”

“Then how do we know where the other end of the portal is in The Plane of Dreams?” Y’zaks asked sulkily. “The universe is such a big place; are we going to sweep slowly with a radar?”

The MDT rocking slightly. “So the biggest difficulty with this plan is to determine the location of the other side of the portal: we must find it within a month, and then throw explosives into it. Everything else is much easier.”

The siren queen was listening attentively, trying to keep up with the rhythm of their topic. Although she could not understand many things, she could still guess what these people wanted to do. “You want to know where the Maelstrom leads to?”

Lily’s ear suddenly stood erect. “You know the answer, my Queen?”

“Call me Katreina. You all are my distinguished guests. You don’t have to be over courteous in the city of the sirens,” said the siren queen. “If I’ve not guessed it wrongly, the maelstrom probably leads to our hometown.”

“I know, The Plane of Dreams…” Hao Ren said, but then he suddenly came to his sense, “Wait a second, do you mean the sirens’ original planet?”

“We don’t know exactly where we’ve come from, but we vaguely know that we are from a very distant place—and it’s definitely not here,” said the siren queen, nodding. “The water inside the aqua dome of Nasaton is slightly different from the water on this planet. Of course, the chemical composition is the same, but the siren can appreciate some very subtle differences: we believe that the water inside the aqua dome comes from our hometown.”

Hao Ren looked up at the aqua dome over the city. After the wall was shut down, the city had still a barrier, which was Nasaton’s very own dome shield. This shield shielded the entire city from the outside world. It had not lost a single drop of its internal water body for the past 10,000 years. Instead, the water was constantly going through a recirculation cycle. This was how the city’s ecosystem worked.

The entire city was a huge space fortress. It still maintained a very good airtightness until today.

“You feel the same smell inside the aqua dome from the maelstrom?” Lily asked, blinking.

Katreina closed her eyes slightly and said, “Yes, and probably that smell was the reason why the monster had taken the sirens so easily—we were eager to return to our hometown, and then when the maelstrom emitted the smell of our hometown, the siren unconsciously gave up resistance… we were homesick.”

The atmosphere now was a bit gloomy. Vivian clashed her hand. “Well, we now have a target: to find the position of the siren’s planet in The Plane of Dreams. However, it’s weird that I feel that the level of difficulty has not lessened much?”

Nangong Wuyue forced a force. “From a needle in a haystack to pea in a haystack—there’s not much different. God knows where our planet of origin is!”

Lil Pea overheard someone seemingly calling her name. She quickly swam over in the arms Wuyue, hovered there, and stopped moving: she was waiting for someone to pick herself up.

Hao Ren scratched his chin, and an idea came to mind. “‘Someone’ knows. Nasaton is an interstellar spacecraft. It knows where it came from!”