The Record of Unusual Creatures

Finding a wizard in the vast Inferno was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Even with the army of bats that Vivian was so proud of and Hao Ren's advanced probes, there was no guarantee they would find him. They began to discuss their next search option. Lily recalled why Baptiste wanted to go to Inferno. "He's going to the second layer of Inferno. But where's this second layer?"     

Hao Ren looked into the distance. No matter which direction he looked at, he could only see a desolate land. There was no sign of "stratification". When he first heard about the second layer of Inferno, he thought Inferno was structurally like a tower, but now it seemed that he was wrong.     

"Underground." Vivian gently tapped the ground with her toes. "There's another layer a dozen kilometers beneath our feet. It's a vast space, almost like another world."     

Lily was wide-mouthed for a long while before she said, "Underground again? It seems like we've always been going underground lately."     

Hessiana looked at Hao Ren suspiciously. "What do you mean underground? What do you usually do with Vivian?" she asked.     

"Don't worry, I'm not going to sell her to the Shanxi coal miners as a slave," Hao Ren said, waving his hand. "Not even the Saudi Crown Prince can stand her jinx. And by the way, is the second layer of Inferno a cave?"     

"No." Vivian shook her head. She looked troubled as if she was at a loss. "I've just heard some rumors. It's said that the area beneath is as big as the world on the surface. It's so incredibly big that it's not a cave. No one has ever gone to the deeper parts of Inferno. An exploration team detected the second layer of Inferno using magic telepathy. But I can't tell what it' s like."     

"Baptiste knows it. Otherwise, he wouldn't be so obsessed with it," Nangong Wuyue said amid the gurgling sound of water. "Do you know where the entrance is?"     

"I'm letting the bats look for it. It's said to be surrounded by a crater. I think it should be very eye-catching. It'd be great if we can find Baptiste when we find the entrance."     

Meanwhile, Nangong Sanba was looking around cautiously. "I heard there are monsters here? Rumor has it that monsters crawl the land, but I see nothing here."     

"Isn't it good not to see a monster?" Vivian arched her mouth. "There are indeed many monsters in Inferno, but not in all places. Occasionally, we'll encounter a 'quiet' place like this. Now, we're just plain lucky. I hope Baptiste is equally fortunate and that he doesn't die before we get to him."     

Vivian then looked at Hao Ren and said, "Can you increase the range of the probes? It's not that I can come to Inferno every day; I want to get to know more about this place. I was curious about it the last time, but unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to learn more."     

Hao Ren nodded. He instructed the MDT to let the probes conduct a broader search.     

Armed with the latest information, he issued the probes a set of new search criteria. Besides searching for Baptiste, the probes would also look for large voids and craters on the surface. They had enlarged their search area, and the holographic map displayed on the MDT's screen was continuously updating. The probes and Vivian's bats searched separately to cover more area.     

Meanwhile, he ordered some probes to get a bird's-eye view from above so that he could see how big the world was.     

The MDT showed the footage as the probes streamed back the visuals. The probes had entered a thick and dense atmosphere at high altitude. Large, dirty clouds were looming low with frequent lightning. The lightning was not natural but the result of a certain chemical reaction. It oscillated at breakneck speed along the surface of the cloud and inside the cloud, turning it into a weird illuminant, which resonated with the other clouds in their surroundings.     

This visual was like a tour into the stomach of a massive cloud monster, whose organs and flesh were shimmering with light.     

Hao Ren deliberately got the probes to slow down so that he could observe the cloud more clearly in the hopes that he might find out the answer to the mystery of Inferno's ecological environment. The magical visual attracted their eyes as they all gathered and watched. Poking her head towards the visual, Lily suddenly said, "Are these lights illuminating the entire of Inferno?"     

"I suppose. But we can't see the sun from the surface; the thick clouds are blocking out any light from above. So, yeah, the clouds are illuminating the world." Hao Ren nodded slightly. "And this is dimensional debris; it's hard to say if there are stars outside."     

Nangong Wuyue asked curiously, "Where does the electric light in the clouds come from?"     

Hao Ren poked the MDT who then replied listlessly, "Don't poke me. I've done the analysis. It's the microbes."     

"Microorganisms?" Hao Ren looked a little surprised.     

"Weird ecosystem," the MDT said, opening a small set of visuals next to it, which showed a simulation of Inferno. As there were no real scanned images of the planet, the simulation was just an assumption. But the simulation did look convincing; there was a diagram showing the cross-section of the upper atmosphere. "The thick clouds cover the planet, and they're very dense like a bed covered with a quilt. The clouds contain microbes, at least as many as a hundred types of them. They feed on the organic dust brought up from the lower atmosphere. And, they give out heat as well as light. Strictly speaking, this is no longer a 'cloud,' but a massive, living pan-biological tissue. Due to the unique structure of the cloud, I see it as a peculiar, loose multi-cellular organism although the microbes appear to be independent single-cell individuals. The world is a big, big place. Anything is possible."     

Everyone was stunned except Hessiana and her sidekicks who appeared like they had been listening to Double Dutch. Lily could not help but look up at the clouds in the sky. "It looks like a supermassive soft creature wrapping around a planet."     

Hearing what Lily said, Hao Ren glanced at Nangong Wuyue. She immediately shook her body and snorted. "Why are you looking at me? I'm a mollusk, not a creature... No, I mean I am a creature, not a mollusk. Oh, wait! I'm a mollusk, but I'm not that big."     

Hao Ren scratched his head. "Speaking of mollusks, I can't help but think of slime. Can't you study what your ultimate talent is and shapeshift into something other than a ball of slime?"     

Nangong Wuyue held her arms and said, "I di. I'm also a mantis shrimp. A three-meter long one!"     

Hao Ren was speechless.     

Lily was right. A massive organism was wrapping Inferno inside it. The cloud was a spheroidal creature, which provided light and heat to the world. However, compared to the incredible phenomenon, Hao Ren was more concerned about another thing. "What's outside the clouds?" he asked.     

The MDT commanded the probes to speed up. Soon, the probe reached an altitude above the clouds. As they could see from the visual, the probe had passed through an incredibly smooth, silk-like, milky-white plane before it shot into the vast darkness.     

The probe slowed down and started to capture images of a sea of white. It was as smooth as snow. If they had not already known about the clouds, they would have thought that it was a snowfield.     

Lily was almost in a stupor. "...It's so beautiful!"     

Vivian shot her a sideways glance. "Feeling like putting a collar on your neck and going for a sprint?"     

Without thinking, Lily replied, "Yes!"     

She had the genes of her ancestors.     

The probe turned its lens back to the direction from where it came. It captured a leakage on the smooth, white "purdah", where fog and white, fiber-like tissues were spewing out. However, the rift closed up a few seconds later.     

"Unbelievable... This is biological," Hao Ren said, his jaw almost at the ground. "How did it evolve into this?"     

"It prevents the planet from losing its mass," the MDT replied. "The probe just penetrated a solid colloidal structure, which the microbes in the clouds have probably condensed for thousands of years. The outermost layer of the planet is a pure white world. If you walk in the atmosphere, you should feel like walking on marshmallows."     

Nangong Wuyue let out a sigh. "I never imagined this hellish place could be so beautiful from space."