The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-628

Chapter 628: Thunder Peak

Rollie meowed a few times before she reached out curiously and grabbed the cat by its neck. She held it up and asked, “Which street did you come from? What breed are you? The pattern on your head looks so cool. I wish I had it too.”

She learned this from the MDT.

It was obvious that the yellow cat was not blessed by a golden apple. It looked at Rollie in confusion. She had a pair of ears like the ones it had, but she was very different in other aspects. Soon, it recognized the silly cat’s smell and language, realizing that they were of the same race; it began to show her respect—well, it was not necessarily because of her smell and language. Not like one could figure out the worldview of these cats. Even Hao Ren had yet to figure out how the strays in the Southern Suburbs got along so well with Lily.

“Doesn’t this cat fear you?” Nangong Wuyue reached down to scratch the yellow cat’s chin as she looked up at Galazur. “Where is your sense of authority? Ordinary animals should have jumped out of their skins in front of a dragon.”

“I don’t know why.” Galazur shook her head. “From the day it was adopted, it has never been afraid of any dragon. It even ran around my palace and snatched food from the dragon guards, so it’s famous around here. Dragons think it’s an interesting creature and come to feed it.”

Hao Ren also began to wonder if inspectors had some commonalities, that they would invariably encounter bizarre things. The big yellow cat was even more talented than a pre-transcendent Rollie. He patted the yellow cat on the head. “Does it have any special ability?”

The cat girl immediately lowered her head and meowed at the big yellow cat. She then looked back up. “It has no special ability. It’s just too stupid to feel fear.”

Everyone was speechless.

Galazur looked up at a golden disc that was hung at the top of the hall. “Well, let’s end this for now; it’s time to go out for a stretch. I’ll take you to Thunder Peak—that place is quite a distance from here. I’ll fly you there, and before that, I’ll give you a tour of my kingdom.”

With a twinkling, majestic sound, Galazur turned into a golden dragon and the palace’s heavy stone doors swung open. The dragon soldiers who were on guard outside the palace immediately bowed their head as the dragon queen emerged.

“I’m going out with these strangers,” said Galazur in a majestic voice. Her voice reverberated throughout the mountains. No one would have thought that she just had a mouthful of pork knuckles and stewed pork trotter a while ago. “Guard the palace; do not let anyone in before I return.”

A dragon guard saw the people behind the dragon queen: Hao Ren and the others were busily climbing up onto Galazur’s back. The young dragon was shocked. “My Lady, these creatures… ”

Galazur shot the guards a stern look. “They come from above and we have known each other for a long time. Ask no more about them. That is an order.”

The dragon guard immediately lowered his head in awe, before carefully retreating.

Galazur used her tail to help Hao Ren and the others up on her back. She then leaped up from the massive square in front of the palace and hovered over the air.

Lily lay on the dragon’s scale, looking down from the back of the dragon’s shoulder. She saw row upon row of palace buildings, all of which were not of human scale. Galazur’s palace was the most magical: like an oval-shaped nest floating inside a large cave, it was suspended by a dense mist of light with only a few thin air bridges connecting it to the distant cliffs. Underneath the palace was a sea of clouds.

Galazur told them about the place, that the lower part of Pyroxene Peak was linked to a different dimension. No human wisdom was able to pierce its secrets. Bards liked to write about the place, describing how all the treasure that the dragons’ family had collected over thousands of years lay underneath the clouds. It was a vast treasure house with enough to cover the entire land of the human kingdom in half a meter thick of gold. Bards: they were always neurotic.

“Actually, it’s a place to store and hatch dragon eggs.” In order to let her guests get a better view of her kingdom, Galazur deliberately circled it a few more times. “Dragon will not put gold jewels in places like the treasure house. We would never let those precious stones out of sight; we made beds out of them, or had them inlaid in our bodies.”

“You still do that?” Hao Ren laughed as though he had remembered something.

“Of course we don’t do that anymore,” said Galazur, shaking her head. “In my fourth year as an inspector, my worldview was totally shattered; I bumped into a planet entirely made of diamonds during a mission. From that day onwards, my worldview became upside down. Now, I no longer collect jewelry, instead I collect food. I don’t believe that there’s a planet of sauced beef and barbecue cheese in the universe!”

“How did the bards find out about the Kingdom of Dragons?” Lily was being logical. “Didn’t you say humans were forbidden in this place?”

“It was the dragons who spread news of it,” said Galazur, looking a bit helpless. “The young dragons were unable to resist the temptation. They often turned into humans and went out to play… or you may call it experiencing the world. They were the ones responsible for leaking news about the dragon kingdom. They loved to look like bards because they thought it was romantic and…”

“And it feels better in the first-person perspective.” Hao Ren shrugged. “I feel you; I also know one who has the same problem.”

Galazur emitted a dull sound as if she was laughing. She then turned around and flew upwards, flying out of the exit at the top of Pyroxene Peak into the sky.

She rose higher and higher until she was above the clouds before she flew in a fixed direction. Lily nervously held on to a rugged bone on the dragon’s shoulder, looking scared. Nangong Wuyue marveled at Galazur’s flying skills. “Are you relying solely on your wings to fly? The speed… and the surrounding air flow are very strange.”

“It’s the power of magic, a dragon’s inborn skill,” the dragon rumbled from the front. “With special training, we can even fly in a vacuum. The dragons are the only race on this planet who have the ability to enter space. Unfortunately, we cannot stand the cosmic radiation. That’s why Saint Sur IV is still blank in terms of its aerospace capability. Anyway, we take it slowly; after all, this planet is still young.”

Galazur flew at a very high altitude, using the clouds as a cover to avoid causing panic on the ground. After all, a dragon queen flying overhead was no small matter for the races in that world. It was easy for a few nervous magicians to stun her with their fireballs, which were not very pleasant.

Soon, Hao Ren saw the scenery before him change.

A large group of dark clouds, like pillars of smoke, appeared on the horizon. The clouds were circling and swirling around an axis with some occasional lightning. The whole thing looked strange but magnificent.

Needless to say, that was what Galazur referred to as Thunder Peak.

“It took me a while to catch that vengeful spirit. It took shape in the space between Saint Sur IV and the Suharr Satellite Base. I don’t know why it was attracted to the gravitational equilibrium there, but when I noticed someone in space was interfering with the signal between Saint Sur IV and the satellite station, I went to check it out before capturing this thing.” Galazur slowly descended and headed towards Thunder peak. “That thing was nasty. A few pieces of my scales were burned when I tried to capture it. I finally got it using a strong magnetic field.”

The dragon flew through a thick cloud before a magnificent black “peak” appeared before their eyes.

The peak was about several thousand meters high and it was formed by a series of cylindrical columns. Several rings of rock, which emitted blue light were circling the mountainside. There were bursts of intense lightning between the rings and the black pillars of Thunder Peak. Hao Ren stared at it for a long time, yet he still could not help but ask, “Is this thing a mountain?”

“Humans and dwarves in Saint Sur IV call it Thunder Peak because they couldn’t think of any other name,” said Galazur, smiling sulkily. “But it is certainly not a mountain. It was left behind by the first civilization. It’s a massive fusion reactor, which has been operating for nearly 20,000 years and counting. This thing used to provide energy for the entire planet. Now it’s just a pile of huge rocks constantly generating thunder and lightning.