The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-295

Chapter 295: The Temple High in the Clouds

The relic was actually an unusually vast world rather than a closed place, which they had initially speculated. Nangong Wuyue looked at the endless sea of clouds and lofty sky as her curiosity soared. “Have you explored the borders of this place? Does it even have a border?”

“We haven’t but, there must be a border here,” Hessiana shook her head and said. “The farther the sea of clouds, the thicker they get. There’s a very strange, thick fog within the clouds and flying in this thick fog is very exhausting. I guess that’s supposed be the barrier of this dimension. In addition, you’ll encounter another thick fog going halfway down along the mountain peak. If you forcibly go through the thick fog, you’ll see a cliff. I didn’t dare to jump down…”

It seemed that there was a border in this dimension, but the environment near the border became so bizarre that even the powerful vampires could not get close to it. Hao Ren decided to go and explore the most eye-catching temple in the clouds. However, before he did so, he looked at Vivian worriedly and asked, “Are you okay?”

Vivian had been behaving a little strange since just now. The special energy that filled the place seemed to have an impact on her. It made the usually calm and cool Vivian look agitated and impatient from time to time. However, she did not know what was going on either. When Hao Ren asked her with much concern, she could only shake her head and said, “I’m fine. I just need to control my emotions.”

Nangong Wuyue looked at Vivian inexplicably and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I just instinctively hate the atmosphere here, must be something that I’ve long forgotten.” Vivian smacked herself on the forehead and looked distressed as she continued to explain, “I can’t remember where I’ve encountered a similar situation like this, but I’m sure something bad must have happened…” Then she smiled at Hao Ren and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve been in similar situations before; I was inexplicably allergic to certain things and it took me quite a long time to remember some grudge from thousands of years ago. You know how I’m always forgetful. I’ll go back and think about it. I’ll tell you when I come up with something.”

Looking at Vivian’s stable expression, Hao Ren was relieved. Pointing to the temple high in the clouds, he asked, “Let’s go over there first. Are we going to fly there?”

When Vivian heard this, she immediately spread her wings, ready to hold on to Hao Ren and fly with him. The moment Hao Ren he got ready to hold on to Vivian, a thought suddenly crossed his mind. He turned to see Hessiana and found her looking at him ferociously. She bared her long, sharp teeth and hissed to threaten him. Hao Ren broke out in cold sweat right away. He was convinced that if he hugged Vivian in front of this girl, she would cut him evenly into 700 pieces, sprinkle him with cumin and marinate him for two months with soy sauce as well as vinegar. Then, she would eat 100 grams of his meat every day, which she would accompany with by Type B blood… Honestly, it was not easy to imagine such details in a flash. Obviously, this came from his experience as a college student, when he spent all of his money and ended up eating pickles for half a month.

“You can walk on the clouds, just be careful not to fall down,” Hessiana stood quietly between Vivian and Hao Ren. She pointed to the sea of clouds and said, “Do you see those glowing paths? They were probably made by the ancient Olympians. They blend with the clouds, but they’re actually paths. Watch your step, no one knows what will happen if you fall down.”

Hao Ren noticed that there were indeed some shiny paths in the sea of clouds. Those paths blended into the clouds around them, sending out a faint glow. They were connected to the temple in the distance and there were many crossroads leading to other directions, which most likely led to other temples. But now, there was only one way to go. Vivian then retracted her wings. Looked at the flashing paths, she pondered for a long time until finally, she clapped her hands and said, “Oh, yes, Zeus did build these trails in the clouds. Their houses were built in heaven and they were connected to each other by these paths in the clouds. Ah, so high-profile. Every day someone fell down and even Zeus himself fell down five or six times before. Every time he landed in a human village, he’d say, ‘I’ve come down to inspect the world’ after crawling out of the pit…”

“…Why the hell did they build this thing? And why didn’t they add a railing?” Hao Ren asked.

“It looked good this way. Also, if they fell down, they could fly up again anyway, so who cared? Actually, most of them were able to respond fast when they fell down and fly back, except Zeus. He was old and was always absent-minded when walking,” Vivian was revealing the unknown secrets of Olympians without fear. “Not just the Olympians, in Northern Europe and Egypt, those unusual creatures who lived among humans and pretended to be gods were also having the same problem. They liked to build their houses in all kinds of weird shapes just to make them look nice and cool. This allowed humans to think that they’re very powerful even though they didn’t quite understand the house. In reality, they were just showing off. After thousands of years of awe from humans, their mentality became so out of balance that they felt sorry for themselves if they didn’t live in the sky. Too bad, they all died in the end. They were actually quite funny.”

Hao Ren was speechless.

They nervously set foot on the path of clouds towards the far-away temple of the sky. Once Hao Ren stepped on the shimmering clouds, he was relieved: they could really stand on it. Although there was a layer of light on the path, it actually felt like they were standing on the ground. After he walked for a short distance, he could not stand it and turned to look at Lily. He then said, “Would you please stop pulling on my clothes? It’s hard for me to walk…”

Lily was right behind Hao Ren, following his footsteps and pulling on his clothes. In order to keep her balance, she even exposed her tail—everyone already knew about her werewolf identity, so she was not worried that Zeon or Hessiana would pounce on her to bite her. Hao Ren looked at the girl’s tail, which was trembling a lot and asked curiously, “Are you afraid of heights? You shouldn’t be, you used to be brave enough to hold on to the plane to steal a ride…”

The hair on Lily’s tail stood up. “I’m not afraid of heights… but, I don’t feel safe to step on this thing. There was this place where a glass bridge was built and someone fell off that bridge—it was me! I didn’t notice that a piece of glass was missing…”

Nangong Wuyue asked with surprised, “Where did such an accident happen? Why have I never heard of it?”

Lily then responded with a mournful face, “…That bridge was not complete yet and I sneaked in. But I ended up stepping on the spot where glass was missing and I fell. Under the bridge, someone was paving the road… I fell directly into the cement mixer. I was almost covered by cement and paved into the road. Thanks to my quick reflexes, I jumped out of it in a jiffy without being noticed, or else you could’ve seen me in the news a few years ago. It gave me a phobia from that day onwards. It’s really insecure to walk on such a transparent thing.”

Hao Ren sighed and said, “Alright, you can continue to grab on my clothes.”

The husky’s life in the past was so rich and colorful.

Vivian was walking beside Hao Ren, looking carefully at the scenery of the place and searching for information about it from her unreliable memory. She found that the sky temple in the distance was vaguely familiar, but she could not remember which old friend it belonged to. The mountain behind her was reminiscent of Mount Olympus—the mountain here referrred to “another” Mount Olympus. It was not the same as the real Mount Olympus that existed on Earth.

“There were many wonders created by magic in the Mythological Age; most of them were related to unusual visions,” Vivian disclosed some ancient knowledge to them as they walked. “Some were made for security, to prevent a place from being broken into; some were made to obtain peace and quiet; while some gods made them because they were addicted to games and felt that they had to build some sort of divine world. Anyway, whatever the reason, they built a lot of homes that drifted around the boundaries of the real world, which was a bit like the Shadowy Divide, but less guarded. The ‘Mount Olympus’ that Zeus lived in was such a place, where one part of it floated over the Mount Olympus of the real world and the other part stood in another dimension. After the Mythological Era collapsed, most of these dwellings cracked and turned into ruin, but now it looks like some have actually survived. This place here looks like somewhere near the peak of Mount Olympus… but the scenery’s somewhat distorted and changed. Probably, some kind of distortion happened after the collapse and of course, it could also be my memory problem.”

In the company of Vivian’s continuous explaining along the way, they finally arrived at the foot of the temple in the clouds.