The Record of Unusual Creatures

Y'zaks spoke about his past, but maybe because things happened too long ago, his memory seemed a little messed up. Nonetheless, he could still remember the strange old man's reaction when the demon guards captured him.     

"He wasn't afraid of me, not even when I stood before him in my true form." The incredible feeling still lingered in his mind. "His robe was ignited by the flames on my body, but the old man just put the fire out with his bare hands. He then demanded for me to let him go so that he could continue his experiments—I've never seen anyone like him and it was interesting. Hence, I gave him two choices.     

"I told him that because he was an interesting human, and I was thrilled, he had earned my clemency. I would give him two choices; one, I'll spare his life. He can leave, but without taking anything with him because everything belonged to the demonic army now; two, I'll allow him to continue his experiments, but he'll only have a one more year to live. After dies, his soul will belong to me."     

Y'zaks suddenly had a wacky expression on his face, or maybe he was just rolling his eyes—his face always looked the same no matter what. "Now, thinking back to it, I feel ashamed of myself. But back then, I was still young and I wanted to do the in thing—like being cool and mean, scaring humans, satisfying someone's wish, collecting souls and stuff to make myself looked like a king. So in my mind, any normal human being would have chosen to live, but that old man surprised me once again."     

"Let me guess, he chose to stay to continue his experiments?" Hao Ren had guessed the answer; it was a predictable story. However. it was something new to Y'zaks back then. "By the way what was he doing with those experiments?"     

"He was studying the universe, things outside the bubble zones and stuff like that." Y'zaks nodded. "That time, I didn't understand a thing about it and just found the old man interesting, mad, and fearless when it came to demons. So, I let him continue his research. That old guy just said thank you before he turned around and went back to his lab, continuing his research in the ruins of the kingdom. I was curious, so I followed him inside to see what he was up to.     

"He then told me about his theory of the bubble zone like he was teaching his student. He never treated me like a demon. He shoved a book in my hand before he stood in front of his test bench and started lecturing. He mentioned a very novel idea no scholar of any races has ever thought of; do you still remember the time I told you that the structure of my hometown's spatial dimension was different from the rest of the universe? Our entire universe is made up of many individual bubbles. The content of these bubbles are nothing like the Milky Way, but they're mostly space, which can be as small as a continent or as large as a star system. The old man called these structures 'bubbles' and divided them into different categories. He spent his entire life studying and coming up with this theory: the bubbles aren't the true face of the universe, but just a distorted, abnormal star system. He discovered that the law of physics in the bubbles are unusual, so he theorised that the bubble zone wasn't formed naturally, but a byproduct of a distorted and shattered star system. He thought that the bubble zone was like a tiny oasis in the real universe—it was unstable as well as abnormal, and the real universe where billions of stars resided, existed outside the bubbles."     

Y'zaks sighed all of a sudden. "It's just like the starry sky of your world."     

Hao Ren thought about it for a while and said, "...But this place has been shrouded in fog for a year. Can you still see the stars?"     

Y'zaks rolled his eyes and smacked Hao Ren on the shoulder. "I guess Vivian was right; you always say the wrong thing at the wrong time!"     

Hao Ren smiled in embarrassment. "Don't bother about me... you may continue."     

"In our world, there are no starry skies like yours." Y'zaks gulped down the shaojiu and continued, "Looking up in the spatial pocket or bubble, all we see are planets, auroras, phantoms of the nearby dimensions, and sometimes a few stars if you're lucky. But never a starry sky like the one here. Everything appeared normal to us. The old man was the only one who thought that things were abnormal. He figured out the theoretical size of the universe and found that it was amazingly huge as he searched frantically for the edge of the bubble zone. He would be a scientific genius here, but he was considered a lunatic in our world. Perhaps,, the fact that he was also born in a tiny human kingdom ruled by some dumbasses further reinforced the notion that he was a lunatic. That may have been the reason why he was so down and out when I first met him. Any alchemist who failed to produce useful weaponry for the country, or luxury products for the elites was deemed a failure. The old man, who only knew about stars and dimensions would have been certainly excluded, or expelled if not for his elite father."     

Y'zaks paused for a while. There was a ridiculous smile on his face. "Ironically, this 'outcast alchemist' who was discriminated by the human society had built a massive lab of his dreams in the kingdom of the demons. Advanced technologies, those which the human kingdom failed to attain, the demons had made."     

When Hao Ren heard this, he could almost guess how things transpired then. "So, your perspective of the world was broadened with the help of the lunatic scientist. You finally discovered that space was man's true romance, hence you planned for a grand unification of the world."     

It turned out that his thoughts were nothing more than a fairy tale. Reality was always less rosy than one's imagination. Y'zaks shook his head and said, "Actually, no. I wasn't that farsighted back then. I was just like the others, who only had one thing on their mind: if the bubble zone theory was true and I could find where the edge of the bubble was, I would be able to expand my territory indefinitely. That was what I was thinking."     

"..."     

"The difference between me and the others was, they didn't believe in the old man, and I did." Y'zaks grinned and his face looked really creepy. "I was thinking that there wouldn't be any limit to how much territory I could acquire outside the bubble zone. I was going to use that to show off my capabilities, so I decided to back the old man in his research project. I made him my chief scholar, whose responsibility was to search for the edge of the bubble zone. My paradigm shift only happened several hundred years after that.     

"The old man had proven that his research was not a pipedream. He exhausted his life scaling the world, and found the pattern that wove the bubbles together. He was an inch away from cracking the pattern that connected the bubbles to the outside world. With his semi-completed results, I managed to expand my empire two times faster than other demons, further strengthening my belief in the theory, and my resolve to break through it. During the process, I began to discover the vastness of the universe, and also the vanity of racial conflicts in the world.     

"It was ironic that I was the demon who kicked up the most wars, but also the first one to realise the senselessness of the war.     

"I built an expedition team and followed the teleportation guide, which the old man had come up with to find the edge of the world. I personally commanded the expedition team. Though the exploration was not a success, we went farther and reached more places than anyone else. We saw amazing places: storm that ravaged an entire planet, the gas bridge between the two stars in Gemini Constellation, the deadly space environment, and many others. My expedition team was flung out into space during a teleporting accident, half of my men died, my strongest general was captured by a neutron star and vanished into it. During the ten years of exploration, I had seen a great energy which I knew nothing about—a natural power that no races, not even demons could resist. Those races which fight among themselves senselessly for the pathetic bubble zone would never understand the greatness and truth outside.     

"During the expedition, I had made the old man into semi-demon so that he could live a little longer and help me decipher the secret of the universe. But his lifespan was coming to an end. He volunteered to join the expedition because he wanted to witness with his own eyes the things he had been calculating for all his life before he died.     

"We didn't make it to the edge of the bubble zone, though. The day he decided to cut short the expedition and return home, he was exposed to a high dose of radiation and died shortly after that.     

"He left me his last word: when you finally look back at where you come from after making it so far, you would realise that you were once a fool.     

"Then I turned the expedition team around and returned home. The following year, I began my world unification war plan."