Chapter 1 A Row of Coffins

Hesperides had imagined many things regarding the "peaceful, safe haven in the Eastern Continent" that Vivian had mentioned, but now she discovered that her imagination had barely touched reality. She thought she would see a magical secret realm like Shadow Athens, but Hao Ren took her to see old Chinese houses all the way. She thought she would see a desolate wilderness, but Hao Ren took her to see a rented house that looked just like an ordinary family home. Just when she finally accepted reality and thought she would see an ordinary basement filled with sundries, Hao Ren showed her a row of coffins...

Strictly speaking, they were coffins that looked like they came straight out of a science fiction movie, gleaming with silvery-white light and streams of blue light.

"You call this thing a magical… prop?" Hesperides looked at Hao Ren fiddling with those strange silver-white metal boxes, finally unable to hold back her questions. "I've read a lot of books. I watched the Library of Alexandria being built with my own eyes—don't lie to me."

"This thing is indeed not quite the same as the magic you have in mind, and I am not quite the same as the wizard you have in mind, but there are so many mysterious things in this world, why bother trying to figure them all out one by one?" Hao Ren connected the data terminal to a stasis pod, setting the system's initial readings, and turned his head to wink at Hesperides. "Actually, these things are highly classified. If ordinary people saw them, they would definitely be silenced, but for the Others—especially Others like you—there's not much need for secrecy. The things you need to keep secret are no less than these devices of mine. Come on, let's do a checkup first. Just lie down inside."

Hao Ren had thoroughly studied the confidentiality agreement and, through his contact with Raven 12345, had gained a deep understanding of that goddess's various limits. He now knew which loopholes could be exploited and which ones couldn't. To put it bluntly, the Bureau's rules and regulations revolved around the core principle of "not interfering with the development of civilizations." Therefore, the existence of the Temporal Administrative Bureau itself needed to be kept secret, but it wouldn't have much impact if he occasionally let a few Others see some surreal things, as long as he could handle the subsequent troubles himself. He could even bring an Other like Hesperides to "lie in a coffin" without any problems.

Of course, if he didn't want to cause social unrest, it was best not to let ordinary humans see these things in his basement. After these recent years of atheistic influence, ordinary people today were much less accepting of anomalous things than the Others were.

Hesperides hesitated as she looked at the coffin beside Hao Ren. This thing was dazzling and eye-catching, cold and chilling, and although there were holographic projection panels floating on both sides that looked very high-tech, it couldn't hide the fact that its main body really looked like a coffin. But after all, she was someone who had seen great storms. The former Twilight "Goddess" thought that the other party had no reason to harm her, and finally gritted her teeth and stamped her foot: "Do I need to change clothes?"

Hao Ren hadn't said anything yet when Lily immediately perked up her ears and stared at the two of them. Hao Ren quickly waved his hand: "No need, no need. Just lie down inside."

Hesperides did as she was told and lay down in the coffin. The metal hatch slowly closed, and she quickly entered a state of deep sleep under the action of the device. The data terminal began to read her body parameters.

It wasn't just the wound on her forehead. First, it read Hesperides' complete set of physiological indicators.

"The body structure is basically similar to humans, but the respiratory organs have strange shapes and can process extreme oxygen-rich, extreme oxygen-deficient, and high-sulfur atmospheres. There are two sets of blood circulation organs, and neither of them is a heart. They are structures similar to whole-body vascular pumps. The cell strength is very high and can withstand high temperatures and high electromagnetic environments. The bones are hollow and contain some kind of liquid of unknown function. The bone strength is extremely high, and the material is almost metal… The newborns of this race must grow very slowly," the data terminal analyzed as it recorded this data in a certain archive. "The brain activity is still very high in the dormant state, which should be the part used to manipulate magic… Mental activity should be the instinct of this race. Comprehensive evaluation: all indicators far exceed humans. Even judging solely by physical strength, she exceeds humans by twenty to thirty times. The above parameters do not take into account her magical power."

Hao Ren nodded as he listened, while Lily felt a little creeped out. She tucked her tail between her legs and tugged at Hao Ren's sleeve: "What are you doing?"

"Building a database," Hao Ren saw that Lily was a little freaked out and reached out to touch the latter's head, laughing. "There are too many Others on Earth, and they have mutated for so many generations, and they don't always match up with their ancestors in the Dream Plane. I think we should build something like a species archive to statistically analyze them, and then compare the Others in the Dream Plane with those on Earth, and by the way, do some genetic溯源… Maybe we can find the trajectory of these races' changes over the past ten thousand years."

Lily looked at Hao Ren in surprise: "Wow, I suddenly feel like you're amazing, Landlord!"

Hao Ren scratched his face unnaturally: "I just thought of it a few days ago. I have to accomplish something, or who knows when I'll be able to get promoted. And now I'm really curious about the phenomenon of the Others. I want to investigate this matter clearly with my own abilities—that way, at least I can be more confident when I go to Raven to ask for a bonus in the future."

Lily stuck out her tongue: "Sounds good, but it feels like a mad scientist in the TV… It has a kind of evil feeling."

Hao Ren really admired Lily's imagination: "Ahem… I'm doing this for science! And haven't you noticed that I'm pure in everything from my motivation to my actions?"

"That's true," Lily scratched her hair and suddenly remembered something when her ears twitched. "Hey, in that case, you'll also have to collect information on werewolves and vampires? You don't have to bother with that. I'm here! When are you going to scan me too?"

Hao Ren opened his mouth: "Uh… next time, we'll talk about it next time."

Lily said "Oh" and didn't care. Hao Ren broke out in a cold sweat: he almost told the truth just now! He really didn't plan to collect werewolf information from Lily, because who knows if a girl who transformed from a husky even counts as a werewolf! Hao Ren felt that Lily wasn't representative at all. Maybe she was a creature that belonged to her own category when picked from the werewolves…

At least until he found the second husky spirit, he would never put Lily into his database, if only for the sake of scientific rigor!

While Hesperides was being scanned, Hao Ren and Lily began to busy themselves with arranging another set of simple equipment in the basement.

He and Lily rummaged through some leftover pressed plastic boards and iron pipe steel frames from renovations many years ago from the small warehouse next door, preparing to make a small cubicle the size of a bathroom in the corner of the room. Fortunately, this basement was quite large. Even excluding the area where Vivian slept and where the stasis pods were placed, there was still an empty space equivalent to a living room, so putting such a cubicle in it didn't seem to take up much space. Then, he took out some desk-sized circular objects and some prefabricated parts from his personal space and placed these things in the center of the space where he was preparing to build the cubicle. The circular objects were made of silver-white metal, exquisite and full of technology, and many faintly glowing blue lines could be seen on their surface, much like the style of the equipment on the Petrified Turtle Rock.

Lily looked at these things strangely: "What are you going to do?"

"Make a teleportation gate." As Hao Ren spoke, he released something else from his personal space.

This time, it was a wriggling mechanical squid!

This was an autonomous machine brought out from the Petrified Turtle Rock. Hao Ren had always kept it in his personal space for emergencies, and now it came in handy. The scary-looking monster made a series of gurgling sounds and, under Hao Ren's instructions, began to assemble the equipment on the ground, quickly turning it into a teleportation platform with a diameter of two meters. Then, it waved its tentacles and tapped and patted around the platform to adjust it. Finally, it activated the teleportation device's pre-set program and instantly disappeared in front of Hao Ren and Lily.

A few seconds later, the teleportation platform lit up again, and the mechanical squid teleported back after circling around somewhere. It waved its tentacles up and down at Hao Ren, gurgling to indicate that the teleportation was successful.

"This thing can lead to the ecological area of the Petrified Turtle Rock," Hao Ren pointed to the teleportation platform. "I exchanged this set of equipment from the Bureau a few days ago. In the future, we can use this teleporter to go to the spaceship. This way, if I'm not around, you can escape through this if you encounter an emergency at home."

Hao Ren had finally remembered to upgrade the hardware of his "base camp," which made Lily jump up happily: "Hey, hey! It feels like a secret base! So exciting!"

"Quiet, quiet," Hao Ren pressed Lily's head to keep her from jumping. "Let's enclose this thing first. This thing will keep glowing when it's on standby. Vivian won't be able to sleep at night."

Lily immediately rolled up her sleeves and started bending the steel pipes from the warehouse into suitable parts, while the data terminal scanned Hesperides' body data and finally began to examine her wound. As a result, it found an unexpected situation: "Hey, Hao Ren, come and take a look. There's something stuck in her head…"