The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-75

Chapter 75: The Soy Sauce Portal

Hao Ren woke up early the next morning, before the sun had even rose. He bumped into Vivian, who did not sleep the night before and the early riser, Y’zaks. The three of them spoke spontaneously, “Let’s check on Lily (Doggie)!”

After hitting herself unconscious since the previous night, Lily was not in any danger. By staying unconscious, she did not lose control and go on a rampage. In fact, Hao Ren and Vivian helped Lily back to her room that night. Hao Ren anticipated that Lily was going to wake up soon. He pushed the door open with Vivian but, what they saw shocked them.

Lily was still in her werewolf form—and awake. She crouched on the bed and her wolf tail stood erect like a feather duster. Her back was facing them so they could not see her face. But Hao Ren could vividly feel a suppressed energy, which was gradually being released around her—he felt like he was confronting a beast.

Vivian inched a step forward and Lily’s ears stood up as she growled. Seconds later, Hao Ren saw a dazzling light. Lily had faded into a silver, lightning-like shadow. She flitted across the room, along the walls and ceiling before charging towards Vivian with her snarling fangs!

“Lily!” Hao Ren shouted at her. Meanwhile, Vivian had already shapeshifted into a colony of bats which flew away in the air. The werewolf maiden missed her target. She stopped in bewilderment and began to sniff the floor.

Hao Ren spotted that the werewolf was only going after Vivian and was not interested in him. He plucked up his courage and inched forward. “Lily… can you hear me?”

“Heh-heh-heh…Tsssss…” All he heard was a series of indiscernible sounds coming out from her throat. She obediently raised her head. When she saw Hao Ren, she smiled. “Landlord? …Dinner…”

Hao Ren was speechless—he began to doubt the possibility of saving such a hungry creature.

Nevertheless, Lily still recognized faces that were familiar to her. However, Hao Ren noticed something—a layer of murkiness began to obscure her golden eyes, erasing the contrast between the pupil and the sclera. That was not all, her breathing was irregular too as with her facial expression which changed erratically when she spoke. It showed how screwed up her state of mind was.

Witnessing her condition, Hao Ren slapped his forehead—he should not have waited until the next day. Lily’s condition had deteriorated so quickly that it was only proper to send her to Raven the night before.

Vivian was back in her human form. She edged cautiously round the back of Hao Ren and maintained a five-meter distance from Lily. “Hey Doggie, are you going to bite me again? Would you?”

“Not any…more.” Lily crouched on the floor, raising her foot to scratch her face. She could barely speak and it sounded clumsy. “My eyesight’s a little…blurry. Just woke up, not entirely awake. Better now. Landlord, are you taking… me to the doctor?”

“Yes, right away.” It ached Hao Ren to see that she could not even speak properly. He held the werewolf maiden by her hand and said, “It’s good to see you awake. Let me handle the rest.”

“Landlord, don’t… touch me.” Lily shook Hao Ren’s hand off. “I could fling you… Look, there you go flying again!”

Hao Ren got up from behind the sofa, staring in dismay at how muddled her head was. “Can you tuck your ears and tail away? You can’t board a bus like that!”

“What? Are you asking her to take the bus?” Vivian jumped to her feet protesting. “You can’t be serious! How can you let her out in public when she can kill someone with just her sneeze?!”

“Then what?” Hao Ren had his hands spread out. “Should have taken her out last night. It’s daylight but she’s not getting any better!”

“Fret not, I’m prepping a portal,” Y’zaks suddenly chimed in. “I made a trip to Bastard Barrio last night. I’ve marked the location. The portal will be ready in a few minutes.”

Hao Ren took a long sigh of relief. “I almost forgot, demons are apt dimensional travelers. But I still can’t believe that you could open up a portal in an unfamiliar space.”

Y’zaks proudly replied, “The physical constants of this world are somewhat different from ours. Yes, I had problems with establishing the connection initially. But like I said, it’s the tricks of the trade—I tweaked the formula a little and ta-da, it worked. By the way, do you still have soy sauce?”

“Did you just say soy sauce?” The idea of calling up a portal in his living room was indeed a pleasant surprise. Hao Ren could now take pride in the fact that there was a more decent tenant in the house. The demonic portal sounded cool but he could not believe what he had just heard. He strode over to Y’zaks only to find the demon squatting and drawing a circular diagram in the middle of his living room. It was about of two to three meters in diameter. He drew it while held a dish in his hand. In the dish was some black liquid and it smelled like… soy sauce.

“WTF?”

“Why not? When you’re at the level of a master, you can draw diagrams with basically anything—even water; all things hold demonic power. I once knew an awesome demon master, who calmly drew a line of hell fire with his pee in the face of 20,000 strong, beastmen.He managed to hold it until help arrived. However, the old pretender later denied he had ever used the pee trick. Instead, he claimed to have performed a blood-smear formation… Any more soy sauce?”

“…Yes, soy sauce right away! Screw it, I’m not gonna be pretentious anymore. I should have known—I’m never ever going to cross paths with anything that’s state of the art! Vivian, please give the gentleman some soy sauce…”

After splashing a whole bag of soy sauce, Y’zaks finally completed the teleportation diagram. The drawing medium notwithstanding, the diagram looked like it meant business with its complicated and exotic demonic runes. They were stacked into rings of three. Rows of unintelligible incantations floated around in the center of the diagram like a living object. Just as Y’zaks exerted his energy into the runes, the diagram emanated a red and green yet cloudy glow. The gateway was finally online!

The only fly in the ointment was the smell of the soy sauce.

And that thought kept ringing in Hao Ren’s mind. Could things get any less magical than this?

Anyway, it was the only way even if it was not magical, Lily’s state of mind was deteriorating fast. She crouched on the floor without making a sound. Her pose and behavior had become characteristically wild (and dog-like). Hao Ren had also witnessed her gnawing on the table leg during the few minutes that Y’zaks was drawing his diagram; the total loss of his table was prevented only because the wood was too unpalatable.

Y’zaks got to his feet and pointed at his creation. “Everyone, move inside the circle and I’ll start the teleportation. Beware, this will work only once. So, we better go at once.”

“Is it because soy sauce has a limited capacity of demonic power?”

“Nope.” Y’zaks shook his head as he pointed his finger at Rollie, the cat on the sofa. “Judging from its edacious eyes, I can tell he’ll lick the soy sauce clean once we’re gone, thus spoiling the runes…”

Hao Ren jumped inside the circle at once. “Alright, let’s go. If we keep this conversation up a minute longer, I’m afraid I won’t be able to convince myself that I’m going to be involved in more magic.”

Fortunately, the soy sauce portal worked without a hitch. Everyone on board arrived at the destination in one piece.

Bastard Barrio appeared as it always was—deserted. No more than a few cars passed by in the day and the camouflage provided by the portal made their emergence less of a problem.

Feeling nauseated, Hao Ren clung to a telephone pole. “That was one hell of a flaky, soy sauce portal—”

Y’zaks had an ingenious smile as he said, “It’s typically demonic—crude and simple yet, practical. Try getting used to it.”

Still crouching like a wolf on the ground, Lily’s head drooped from left to right. With extreme caution, Hao Ren poked her shoulder and said, “Lily, are you alright?”

“So far so good.” Lily raised her head. There was no more reflection in her cloudy eyes but, her sanity remained. “Where’s the floating mansion?”

Hao Ren gave her an assuring smile as he found the familiar telephone pole with the old Chinese medicine sticker. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re about to witness a moment of wonder!”