The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-588

Chapter 588: The Veterans

At the end of the dark channel was a shell-like gate, but in front of the gate were two armed siren sentries. Hao Ren hid behind a bundle of pipes and looked up at the guards in the distance. “I wondered if they would allow us to pass… and they don’t look puppets which have lost their thinking ability.”

Hasse carefully drew this crossbow. “Looks like a fight is inevitable. I’m confident I can remove them in an instant and make little noise.”

Shaqira quickly stopped him. “Wait a second!”

“No, we must act now,” Hasse seemed to have misunderstood Shaqira. “These sirens are under control. Now they are enemies.”

“That’s not what I mean. If you kill them here, they will soon be resurrected elsewhere in the palace and attract a large group of guards,” Shaqira shook her hands slightly. “It’s very difficult to completely kill a siren if there isn’t enough preparation which requires a complicated sealing ceremony.”

Lily pulled her ears and said, “Arf—so why do you people evolve to become like this?”

However, the ‘seal’ had reminded Hao Ren of something. He quickly observed his surroundings and gestured with his hand saying that he had an idea. “Step back. Shaqira, can draw them over here?”

Shaqira had no idea what it was about, but she still nodded, and when the others had stepped back, she opened her mouth in the direction of the two sentries but they heard nothing. However, the two sirens were alert. The two looked at each other before writhing toward the corner where Hao Ren was hiding.

As the two sirens moved a little bit closer, Hao Ren tensed up. The two siren sentinels apparently had sensed the breath of strangers from the water from five meters away. Their expression slightly changed before wielding their tridents high!

Hao Ren rushed out of the corner, his movement was quick and powerful as if he had launched himself from a spring. This shocked the two siren sentries. However, when they realised what was going on, Hao Ren had caught them by their tails. With just a swoop, the two sirens were gone.

Hao Ren dusted his hand as his mouth spat out a series of bubbles. “Done.”

Shaqira was stunned. “Where have you thrown them to?”

“In the dimensional pocket,” Hao Ren shrugged his shoulders. “Now they’re fighting with two mechanical arms. Oh, there’ve been tied up…”

Shaqira: “What?”

Nangong Wuyue looked at Hao Ren’s hand quirkily. “Wait, why do I feel that your move is a little familiar?”

Hao Ren smiled wryly and said, “Oh, that’s how I usually drag you back up when you crawled around the house.”

Everyone: “…..”

Vivian patted on Hao Ren’s shoulder and said, “Let’s move. The monster brain might soon discover that it has lost two chess, and send someone to investigate. We better get moving.”

They quickly swam toward the gate, and this time they finally got lucky: The gate was not locked, and Shaqira and Sorma pulled the lever next to the gate and the gate slid open to the side producing a string of bubbles in the process.

Hao Ren took the lead and swam in. As he crossed the gate, he was taken aback by what he saw. “What the heck… look!”

Behind the gate was a fan-shaped hall. In the centre of the hall, a spherical luminous object like a super-giant pearl was suspended in there. Under the illumination of this luminous object, they saw many rectangular platforms neatly lay around the hall. On each platform there was a ‘person’ lying lifelessly. Their skin was dark grey and stiff, wearing tattered World War II soldier uniforms and their chests were inlaid with grey-blue weird crystals.

They were WWII allied soldiers!

Vivian came in following Hao Ren’s exclamation. She was surprised by what she saw. “The dead? Are they charged being charged here?”

“Looks like this resonance chamber is the place where they can charge up their crystals,” said Hasse, pointing to the grey-blue crystals on the dead’s chest. The crystals echoed with the glowing sphere in the centre of the hall, and pulsated with light. “These bodies seem to be asleep.”

Y’lisabet looked curiously at the glowing sphere, and underneath it was a mysterious rune platform. She wielded her a small screwdriver and swam up about to poke the sphere, someone plucked her up and said, “I’ve told you don’t touch anything here!”

Y’lisabet waved her limps in mid-air and called out. “Uncle Ren, there’s a thing stuck here! There’s something stuck here!”

Then only they saw a large piece of crystal was embedded in the centre of the Rune platform below the glowing sphere. The crystal looked a little familiar. White Flame scratched his chin for a moment and suddenly it crossed her mind. “Look at the shape, seems like it’s the same crystals that were inlaid on the polearm of the sirens.”

This only reminded them of the strange weapons of the siren overseers outside the city. The weapon was like a polearm, but the most striking feature if it was the sapphire-like object on the crescent blade, making it more like a wand than weapon. Moreover, only the siren supervising the ‘dead’ had this sapphire, the sirens who guarded the alien slave labourers had only normal polearms.

The crystal and the sapphire were almost the same in shape and colour, even their surface rune lines were similar, but this crystal was much larger. Vivian suddenly realised what it was. “Is it this thing is controlling the dead? Is this a master controller?”

When Shaqira heard this, she immediately reached out to touch the crystal. “Then we must destroy it!”

Nangong Wuyue immediately stopped her. “Don’t do that! What if this isn’t a controller but an alarm?”

Shaqira suddenly hesitated, and Hao Ren stepped forward and wanted to pull her hand back. “Wait a minute. Let the MDT do a scan to determine what this thing is all about.”

Before his voice trailed off, his hand accidentally touched a corner of the crystal. Cracks quickly spread on the surface of the crystal before turning into a pile of debris.

Hao Ren was rooted to the spot. “Wait… I didn’t do anything!”

Vivian was also stunned, then she smacked on her forehead. “It’s your anti-devil ability that works intermittently.”

“Oh shit,” Hao Ren felt that fate had failed him again. “This ability… oh, wait! They’re moving!”

The breaking of the ‘master-controller crystal’ had not triggered any alarm, but it produced an even more unexpected result: With a strange sound like wind chimes, the sleeping dead around the hall began to wake up one by one as the a strange wind chime sound echoed in the air.

It was horrible, as the World War II souls, which looked like zombies, woke up one by one, adjusted their balance with their stiff postures, and checked their state in confusion, before they turned their gaze to Hao Ren. Pairs of distorted eyes stared at Hao Ren, causing cold sweat to trickle down his forehead—of course he was under water but he could still feel his sweat. That speaks a lot about how scared he was.

Of course, Hao Ren was not actually afraid of these zombies; he just felt that the atmosphere was too creepy!

Lily and Rollie had their hair puffed up; one of them had the tail between her legs while the other one bent her body up like an arc as they stepped back. The others were on guard. Only the naive Lil Pea happily swam out to greet the uncle zombies but Nangong Wuyue was holding her back. Hao Ren looked bizarrely at these staggering World War II souls. He slyly raised his hand and waved to them. “Hi there! We are not bad people… We just want to help.”

He spoke alternately in English, French, and Russian. Hasse was surprised. “I didn’t know you’re multilingual!”

Hao Ren just shrugged but said nothing. Instead, he looked at the World War II soldier who was a Soviet submarine commander was wearing a military uniform that happened to be near to him. “I’m sorry to disturb you. We were just passing by and saw you being enchanted and unable to rest in peace. We just want to help. I didn’t mean to screw the operation steps.”

The allied army officer tilted his head slightly, seeming to make his stiff brain recover. Then he looked down at the grey-blue gemstone on his chest before suddenly raising his arm high, as if he was cheering in silent.

Hao Ren: “?”