The Record of Unusual Creatures

Chapter 1405: The History of the Ancient City

A ma.s.sive electromagnetic storm blew up over the city. It was only a few hundred meters above the ground, and the shockwave was so strong that it sent a gust of wind toward everyone. Everything became electrified, and sparks crackled in the air. Ionized ozone filled the air with pungent odors, and the invisible magnetic field was far more powerful than the discharges in the air. It swept the entire block, and all the statues shuddered to a halt before they fell one by one.

In the sky, something huge like a transparent jellyfish emerged from the impact of an electromagnetic storm.

It looked like a spun sugar floating high in the sky. It had an unstable appearance and an illusory boundary. Lines of s.h.i.+mmering light stretched beneath the huge transparent structure and each line connected to a stone guardian on the ground below. When the stone guardians fell, the “wires” attached to them were retracted, much like jellyfishes retracting their tentacles.

The spectacular and mysterious structure made everyone gasp in amazement—except for the poor cat girl, who was too frightened to notice what was happening.

Hao Ren finally saw it clearly. He guessed that it was completely invisible and that what they saw was not its true form. It should be something that did not interact with the physical world. Vivian’s powerful energy simply bombarded its key nodes, causing the jellyfish to be electrically charged in the region where it came into contact with the physical world, and the twisted discharge layer outlined its contours.

Hao Ren’s first reaction when he saw it was to raise his hand and fire a shot. Then he released a round of heavy missiles and hit the weird ‘jellyfish’.

The psionic gun fired a small blue flame on the surface of the ‘jellyfish’ penetrating the structure directly, but the wound was nothing compared to its overall size. And when the heavy missile penetrated it directly, it was like a phantom that did not exist in the real world, did have any friction with the missile.

The missile flew over the thing and exploded in the far reaches of s.p.a.ce, and suddenly the already unstable s.p.a.ce began to collapse even more violently.

Hao Ren immediately gave up the idea of destroying the ‘jellyfish’ violently.

“What the h.e.l.l is that?” Lily looked up, dumbfounded. “Is it the vengeful spirit? Or the soul of the Firstborn?”

“Neither. A vengeful spirit has no form, and the soul of the Firstborn is much larger.” Hao Ren shook his head. “But it should be something close to the soul… I have this intuition. Y’lisabet, do you know what it is?”

The little demon girl shook her head and said, “I don’t know. I just followed my experience. This thing is probably floating around the city, in a state of deep sleep with the statues, but it woke up when our investigation of the temple stimulated it. This is kind of the control center of the statues. I just told Vivian to hit the connection node between it and the next statues. The electromagnetic shock should make it lose its sense of the next node for a short time — in other words, the statues will be blind for a while soon.

“It’s now or never,” Hao Ren said, waving his hand. “Let’s go to the grand temple!”

Y’lisabet’s judgment was correct. As she said, when the ‘jellyfish’ in the sky was temporarily paralyzed by Vivian’s electromagnetic storm, the statues on the ground fell into a short period of chaos.

They lost control of the whole battlefield and no longer acted as one. Instead, they started to move around like headless chickens. Each of the statues was blind and fighting alone, and their intelligence was obviously not enough to make themselves fight independently.

Everyone was moving forward in a thrilling way in the street blocked by the army of colossi. They could see the huge statues shaking at almost every crossing and main road. The onslaught of giant stone statues was speeding up the demolition of the old city. Before the edge of the city fell into the vortex of spatial collapse, the buildings within the city were almost stamped out by its own guardians. And the stone statues that moved around basically turned a blind eye to the ‘invaders’ who ran past them. Even if Hao Ren and the rest of them accidentally got too close or ran into one or two statues, and when they destroyed these statues, the other statues around them seemed to be completely unconscious.

But in the process of approaching the grand temple, Hao Ren was astounded:

There were so many colossus guards in this city!

They knew that a third of the city was occupied by temples. The number of religious facilities in the city far exceeded the demand, and each temple had far more stone statues than the general regulations, but it wasn’t until the statues emerged from their temples and formed a dark ma.s.s of army in the streets that Hao Ren realized the size of this ‘army’ was much larger than he had imagined.

Even Vivian stuck out her tongue in amazement. Even in the mythological age, the number of colossi in the city was a militaristic arrangement.

“This city is certainly not an independent city-state. It was fed by other cities, either as capital or as a religious center. Otherwise, with their productivity, an independent city-state could not afford such a large army of mages,” Vivian descended a little from the sky and floated beside Hao Ren as she explained her thought. “But such a powerful country doesn’t even have a name. That’s kind of weird. And the ‘spirit’ they use to defend the city…”

She looked up as she spoke. The huge jellyfish-like transparent structure was still floating high in the sky. The inductive phenomenon caused by electromagnetic storms on that region has not subsided, so the jellyfish’s connection to the army of stone was still paralyzed, but over time the electrical layers of the sky are dimming, and the paralysis might be coming to an end.

But at the same time, they were also approaching the grand temple in the center of the old city.

Vivian took back her gaze and shook her head. “This kind of thing is rare even in mythological times. Everybody would know it if it appeared, but I have never heard it at all. It’s weird.”

At this time, the MDT’s voice suddenly rang in everyone’s mind. “As for the name of this ancient city, I’ve figured it out.”

The small holographic projection device floating beside Hao Ren projected the image transmitted by the MDT—the same murals that had been found in the temple before.

The murals depicted the legend of the ancient giant beast, Ertos. At that time, however, the stone guards suddenly woke up, Hao Ren had to stop the study of these murals in advance. It now appeared that the MDT had completed a full a.n.a.lysis of the contents of the mural.

Hao Ren was running while looking at the contents of the murals and listening to the report from the MDT.

“These murals are connecting, telling the story of the city’s disaster and the glorious history of its re-emergence. At first, the city did not exist. The land was just a loose collection of tribes ruled by a band of half-animal, half-human ‘G.o.ds’ who were the first rulers of the land. Later, a monster named ‘Ertos’ suddenly appeared, which was the thing appeared on the first mural. It’s higher than the mountains, has long thin legs. It walked on the ground, but its body could reach the cloud. The monster released lightning and fire while walking, and destroyed many tribes. That is the second contents of the mural. But then a very powerful ‘great ruler’ came to the land and fought against Ertos…”

Hao Ren looked at the third mural, which was the one that he could not finish studying after interrupted by the stone guards.

On the mural, an image made of abstract lines appeared in front of Ertos. The image was like an American-style carved wooden mask. The facial contours were all connected with exaggerated and ridiculous straight lines. At first, Hao Ren thought this was what the ‘great ruler’ looked like, but Vivian soon explained that it was actually an “ideal avatar.” The great ruler was supposed to be too powerful for primitive man to paint him directly. Therefore, according to the simple religious concept at that time, people depicted a deified totem for the great ruler.

This totem was the mask floating in front of Ertos.

“The great ruler and Ertos fought for three days and three nights. Fire and storm swept the earth, but only one tribe survived because it recognized the power of the great ruler ahead of time and sought refuge behind him.” The MDT continued to read, “Then the great ruler finally won. Ertos was torn apart by the power of the great ruler. Its body was divided into four parts. The parts fell on the ground and became four fertile lands. The head of Ertos fell to the last surviving tribe, the greatest prize of all. Therefore, in order to express their awe and grat.i.tude to the great ruler, a city was built on this head, and its name was Ertos.”

In the fourth mural, there was the scene of Ertos falling to the earth in pieces, while a group of human beings, driven by the “ancient G.o.ds” who are part beast and part human, climbed onto Ertos’ head and built a city on the skull.

There was no doubt that the city was the one before them, and its name was Ertos.

“And then?” asked Hao Ren.

“The story ends here.”

“What? That’s it? I’m expecting more!”

Vivian hurried to comfort him, “Don’t be angry. It’s normal. In those days, who had time for a cultural inheritance? Very little tales were finished in those days, and the Dead Sea Scrolls were not completed too.”

Hao Ren was speechless.

“There should be more to come,” said the MDT. “Based on some of the incomplete writings in the previous temple, I think every temple in this city has a different ‘cla.s.s.’ Different cla.s.ses of temples have different records, so one temple may not have a complete record, but the grand temple in the middle of the city should have the most complete historical record.”

“The grand temple…” Hao Ren looked up, and the grand temple was before him.