The Record of Unusual Creatures Chapter 289: Visit from the Lucas Family

Chapter 289: Visit from the Lucas Family
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
As conceited as they got, the Lucas Family had been very careful not to slight Vivian, who was the ultimate vampire ancestor, living since the Prehistoric Era. The day before, Hessiana sent a messenger to the Lucas Family. And today, their patriarch had come to pay a visit. The vampires were a race attaching great importance to bloodline and tradition. They respected seniority more than anything else. So, even if Vivian had a screw loose, she was still their senior. Never mind the vampires, if Emperors Yan and Huang or Adam and Eve came back, wanting to see you, would you not meet them with hat in hand? Vivian's history was no shorter than theirs...
Meanwhile, the Lucas Family had already arrived early in the morning. However, the person they wanted to see had just woken up. As Vivian pushed the door open and got out of her room, she saw Hao Ren as well as the two maidservants in the corridor. She was all yawny when she greeted them and she looked like a scarecrow. Hao Ren was very surprised: Vivian was extremely particular about her appearance; Lily said she was pretentious. Vivian would never let herself look down-at-heel, always making sure that not a hair was out of place. But now, she was a real sight to behold.
"Didn't you sleep last night?" Hao Ren looked curiously at Vivian. The biological clock of a vampire was different from a human's. Sometimes, Vivian could do with an hour of sleep, but now she looked like sh*t as if she had not gotten a wink of sleep for five days.
Vivian raised her hand and pointed to Hessiana who was coming out from another room. "She gave me a hard time last night. I almost went crazy."
Hao Ren's mind was instantly filled with age-retricted scenes. He had his eyes on Hessiana, looking at weirdly. So Hessiana got agitated. "Why are you staring at me like that? I just wanted to sleep in Lady Vivian's hair, just like old times. But she wouldn't let me."
Hao Ren turned his curious eyes to Vivian. Vivian looked back at him with arms akimbo. "I broke myself up into a swarm of bats, dispersed and slept around the house. She inherited my ability, she can't fight me..." Vivian said, still yawning.
"You slept like that the whole night?" Hao Ren still looked at Vivian uncannily. "Didn't you feel tired? What's the point?"
"All right, let's not delve into this. I heard that the Lucas Family is here. Lead me to the washroom. I'll meet them once I get myself sorted." While she walked away with the two vampire maidservants, she looked back and said to Hao Ren, "You haven't kicked your habit of throwing the blanket off yourself while you sleep, eh? You scared me as I hung over your head last night!"
Then she swaggered away, leaving Hao Ren and Hessiana behind. Hessiana's glaring eyes were like razor blades piercing into him; he got the feeling that Vivian had done that on purpose!
Out of nowhere, Hessiana yanked out an iron hammer and smiled at Hao Ren like the Cheshire Cat. "Come on, get your head over here, I've got something for you..."
"Please, calm down! It was just a bat even if it was her! What could I do to a bat, right?"
"Shut the f*ck up! Everybody knows that humans are peverts! Especially you, shaman. Who knows, maybe you like things with wings?"
Hao Ren was speechless.
Vivian should not have left her daughter and allowed her to grow up alone! Look what became of her.
Despite that, Hessiana knew her limits. Perhaps she was wary of being whacked by Vivian, so she took a chill pill. As a matriach, she had to play host to the guests that day. As Hao Ren walked along the corridor, he knocked on each door and collected his team members before going to the long hall downstairs. He came with a curious state of mind to meet the patriach of the Lucas Family. Lily came with a hungry state of mind—for breakfast, lunch and dinner; Doggie had no clue which meal it was. She was a zombie, waking up from oversleeping. The city had no sun and no moon to mark time, so no one would know what time it was.
As he got down the stairs, he saw the Lucas Family representatives, whose sense of existence was off the chart. He immediately recognised the difference between them and the Hessianite Family: they were the real deal—the type of vampire everyone was familiar with.
There was a large table in the middle of the long hall. Hessiana and her men were sitting at one end of the table, looking well-mannered, for the moment at least. Sitting across them were 10 males and females; they were envoys of the Lucas Family. Everyone was wearing the Blood Clan's favourite costume: dark suits with blood-red stitches or ribbon trims, however the clothes were not old-fashioned. They were modern-looking, not functionally out-of-place even by today's standard or too plain in a vampire party. Without a doubt, the Blood Clan members were meticulous about their looks no matter what. In that sense, when Lily called them "pretentious", it was a fair statement.
Sitting in the middle of the 10 vampires was the patriarch of the Lucas Family. He was a tall and slender, middle-aged man. He had a pale face with middle-length grey hair, swept-back in a neat hairstyle. He was wearing a black suit with maroon lining, absolutely dapper. He was handsome, with a tad of elegance, not as mean and ghastly as one would imagine. He obviously paid a lot of attention to his look; he was impeccable from head to toe, even the creases on his clothes were perfect. But Hessiana was making fun of him. "You still have the same sh*tty look, like you're going to be cremated soon..."
Hao Ren started to doubt whether the maiden received brain damage when she broke apart from Vivian's body; she was totally unlike her parent, judging from her demeanour.
"I'm here to see the countess." The elegant middle-aged man had no emotion on his face as if he did not hear Hessiana. "She is my elder. I should do whatever a junior should. But this space is a bit... Don't you have a proper meeting room?"
The man's eyes darted all over the long hall and the scene almost shook him off his chair. The remnants of last night's party had not been cleaned up yet. Okay, let me spell out for you: about every five metres or so, there lay one of Hessiana's vampires on the floor, still mumbling with food in their mouths. These ladies and gentlemen (in terms of their attire) in suits were strewn across the floor, making the hall appear like the scene of a gruesome genocide.
"Your family is sh..." a flirtatious woman beside the middle-aged man spoke with half a smile on her face, but stopped short of calling Hessiana's family shameful.
"So what? As long as we're happy and grow fast." Hessiana shot a smug smile back at her. "Anyway, we were the ones who first accepted the vagrants. Weren't you the one expelling them in the first place? And now you've got a problem with that?"
Hao Ren heard about Hessiana's history of struggle when she talked about it at the party last night. He now knew the origins of her strange vampire family: just as he had suspected, nothing would be normal when it had to do with Vivian's bloodline.
In the beginning, the Hessianite Family was made up of vagrants.
The conservative vampire families at that time observed a set of strict family rules, even in smaller vampire families. Those who violated family rules would be driven out and it was a very common occurrence. Those who were expelled would lose the protection of their family and food security; they faced discrimination because the sanctuary had no laws to protect this group of vampires. For this reason, the vagrants' lifespan was very short. Even if they struggled to continue living, there were no families willing to take them in. Humanly speaking, it was a very strange phenomenon. But for those who gave great importance to the concepts of honour as well as disgrace, and abided by ancient traditions, it was a common occurence.
From the day Hessiana was sent there by Vivian, she mingled with the vagrants as she too was a vagrant. Before that, she had received a few years worth of a Vivian-styled education. She could not care less about the Blood Clan's honour and stuff like that. She found that vagrants were not as bad as people thought, so she befriended them and played with them... She played with them from the start because, after all she was just a kid back then.
The vampire families once raised their concerns about the gathering of large group of vagrants, but nobody dared to provoke the royal child—yes, nobody.
Because she was sent there by the Countess of the Crimson Moon, half of the ancient ones, including the most senior one, Hesperides were Hessiana's guardians. The ancient ones had lived for far too long and most witnessed their own family's demise, so they had no strong concept of race. They had no qualms about Hessiana's actions. And since they did not mind, other people did not have the guts to mind it.
Back then, people just thought of Hessiana as a VIP's naughty kid, running loose and hanging out with a bunch of wretched vampires. She would get bored in a few days time, what harm could she possibly cause?
But the naughty kid with her wretched friends completely finished off all the vampire families save for the Lucas Family—all in a matter of three days.
These crackpots hung crosses and garlic across their bodies while they held their divine silver weapons in their hands...
Everyone in the sanctuary was scared to the bone. They thought they were demon hunters!