Chapter 1 Vivian's Charm

Whether Vivian's charm was effective remained to be seen. At least, Haoren didn't have any more nightmares for the next three nights—though he didn't think it had anything to do with the Bagua (Eight Trigrams) plate.

One reason was that he knew the Bagua plate wasn't meant for warding off evil spirits. It was more suited for geomancy, surveying directions, and finding spiritual treasures. Using it for repelling spirits was a misuse of its intended purpose. The second reason was that he found a small line of text in the corner of the Bagua plate, which read the name of a wooden crafts factory in Sichuan... There was nothing more to say about that.

He decided not to tell Vivian the truth.

In any case, not having nightmares was a good sign. Although the tuft of wolf fur brought from the dream world to reality still made him uneasy, Haoren was almost certain that he was being targeted by something terrible again. But he was a guy who could cheer himself up. Even if the sky fell, as long as Yao Ming was still alive, he could live happily—as for nightmares, he would ask Crows 12345 when he saw her again.

Speaking of Crows 12345, Haoren had gone to look for her once in the past two days. After all, they had parted in a hurry last time, and there were many things that hadn't been explained clearly. Haoren had also accumulated a lot of questions at home. But when he went to look for her last time, he didn't see that strange "goddess."

Haoren still used the same method as last time, taking a bus to that embarrassingly named "Turtle Mound," then found the lamppost with the old Chinese medicine advertisement, and successfully teleported to that upside-down foreign-style house, which was probably located in another dimension. This proved that his previous experience was not a dream. But there was no sign of Crows 12345 in the house. Haoren only saw a few blue mist people wandering around in the garden and the house—they should be Crows 12345's servants, and seemed to possess high intelligence, but they didn't seem to speak human language. Haoren felt that he couldn't communicate with them at all.

A blue mist person handed Haoren a note. Crows 12345 wrote on the note that she had important business to attend to in the constellation Centaurus, and would be back in about three to five days, or three to five years if she went crazy playing.

Then Haoren was driven out by the blue servants while clutching this unreliable message.

"This is really unreliable..." Haoren was sitting in the living room, blowing on the air conditioner and reading a magazine. He felt a pain in the ass when he thought of his experience at the "Time and Space Administration's Turtle Mound Office" (this full name is important!) a few days ago. He didn't know when Crows 12345 would come back to answer his questions. Now Haoren felt like he was shrouded in a fog, with things he couldn't understand or figure out everywhere. He didn't even know where to start asking, and the only one who might tell him everything was a crazy and unreliable "goddess."

If he wasn't broad-minded, he felt that obsessive-compulsive disorder alone would be enough to kill him.

Of course, in the past two days, he had also tried to learn about "otherworldly beings" from Vivian and Lily. How should he put it... he had gained some knowledge. At least, he had a real understanding of werewolves and vampires, and a vague impression of the "world" that existed outside of human society.

Otherworldly beings—this was Haoren's subconscious term for Lily and Vivian, and it was also what many humans called those non-human things. Even Lily and Vivian themselves called themselves that, and they didn't seem to be dissatisfied with it.

The origin of otherworldly beings was unknown. It seemed that they had been around since humans had historical records. From the bizarre myths and monsters of ancient times to the vigorous church purges of demons in the Middle Ages and the Chinese exorcism, to the occasional horror stories circulating in modern times, there were half-true and half-false legends of otherworldly beings everywhere. Vampires, werewolves, demons, and undead were now seen by many as just stories to scare people, but in the era when these ancient stories were first formed, they were genuine "eyewitness records."

Most otherworldly beings were a threat to humans. The initial conflicts were now unprovable, but it was certain that otherworldly beings and humans had been in constant friction before there were historical records. But at the same time as the friction, many otherworldly beings had close contact with humans and even lived together. In the human cave-dwelling era, otherworldly beings were the most primitive gods or ferocious beasts in those ancient stories. Many ancient books that have been handed down to this day mention "god-men" and "strange men" with animal characteristics or three heads and six arms, or they were strange-looking. No matter how you looked at them, they were mutant monsters that didn't conform to evolution. Some of these records were the imagination and exaggeration of the ancients, some were deformed children born from consanguineous marriage and disease in ancient times, and the rest were basically the otherworldly beings that really existed.

They and the humans of that time jointly wove the early volumes of Earth civilization, and served as the "gods and monsters" in the civilization records.

Vivian had experienced that era—although her memory was somewhat chaotic for some reason (maybe she had lived too long?), she could still introduce the basic situation. The most shocking piece of information Haoren heard from her was that... Zeus was actually a real person, a thunder giant, and a moron...

What was obvious was that in the early days of contact between otherworldly beings and humans, the former had an overwhelming advantage: otherworldly beings usually possessed special abilities far beyond human understanding, had long lifespans, were tenacious, and were much smarter than early humans. Otherworldly beings had an absolute dominance over humans. It was their whim to torment them and become fierce gods and evil beasts who harmed the common people or become primitive gods who protected one side. But as time went on, this situation changed. Vivian's memory was unreliable, so she was not sure how the otherworldly beings suddenly declined. In short, it was certain that there were three main reasons: first, humans gradually became enlightened. When the otherworldly beings were lax, humans gradually learned to unite and create more sophisticated tools to fight against the tyrannical gods and monsters, while the latter always maintained relatively loose and independent small groups, and the isolated guys were easily defeated one by one; second, the otherworldly groups inexplicably declined (the reason was unknown); third, the demon hunters appeared.

The third point was also the most important point.

Demon hunters were strange guys with half-human blood. No one could figure out how they appeared. It was as if they had come out of nowhere. As soon as they appeared, they began to hunt "otherworldly beings" all over the world. The title of demon hunter was not like this at first. They didn't have a fixed title at the beginning. They were called all sorts of things. It wasn't until the European church promoted the name "demon hunter" in the Middle Ages that this title gained widespread recognition. At that time, Europe was the last place where otherworldly beings were rampant (the otherworldly beings in other regions were basically wiped out by the locals and demon hunters), so the European church's classification, titles, and definitions of various otherworldly beings and demon hunters became the "final version" and have continued to this day.

I don't know if this is considered the luck or misfortune of the European region...

In short, the activity of demon hunters gradually led to the "otherworldly beings" withdrawing from the stage of Earth civilization, from the rulers at the beginning to the marginalized ones. Although otherworldly beings still possessed great power (compared to ordinary people), they basically couldn't cause much trouble anymore.

This was the situation Haoren heard from Vivian. It was the unbelievable other side hidden behind the real world that he had always thought was calm for more than 20 years... But anyway, the worldview has been rebuilt after the disaster, so let it collapse.

As for the two superwomen at home, Haoren also learned about them seriously.

Lily was a "young werewolf" with only a few decades of life experience, and a senior idiot, so she couldn't provide much information. But Vivian was a high-level blood relative who was said to have lived for many years. Haoren was shocked when he first heard about the girl's qualifications: she had been active in this world since humans hadn't invented currency, which could be said to be older than the history of human civilization in many regions! But it was strange that Vivian knew very limited things. Her thousands of years of memory were a bit muddled. It was said that she usually just slept in various places. Until modern times, human society was quite dull and boring for Vivian. This eccentric senior vampire was not as keen on tormenting humans or "improving her taste" as her compatriots. She spent most of her time focusing on dealing with her bad luck... Anyway, she had lived such a muddled life for so many years, and Haoren thought she was definitely the shame of the vampires.

But she was a good girl for humans.

I don't know how her worldview was formed.

(I encountered a special situation at noon... I couldn't access the webpage, and it took me a while to fix it.)