Chapter 117: The Winged Figure in the White Light

This was the third day of the swarm’s arrival on Asi.

The brief three days of battle already felt endless; General Drostron stood exhausted behind a barricade built from toppled statues, staring intently at the street ahead.

As planned, the Cardian forces had been preserved intact.

Heavy armor units—Poison Fangs, Leman Russes, Hellhounds, and countless other tanks—lay like mechanical beasts across the ruined streets.

This gave General Drostron a sliver of comfort: the Astra Militarum’s steel tide was their first line against the human enemy.

But the horror of the Tyranids quickly erased even this faint hope.

In just three days, Asford seemed utterly transformed.

Beyond the areas held by the Astra Militarum, Asford’s surface was now entirely covered by Tyranid lifeforms: Ripper worms hauled and devoured everything the swarm could use—from soil and seawater to plants and animals, even metals and minerals—all consumed to the last trace.

The air grew thick and stifling, signaling that symbiotic microbes had begun invading Asford’s environment, attempting to reshape the planet into a world fit only for the swarm.

The reclaimed matter was digested, broken down, and concentrated into thick, putrid biological sludge, which pooled into seas and was siphoned upward by Tyranid capillary towers descending from the stars and piercing the earth.

Large sections of Fardia City had been completely leveled by the swarm, exposing the sky hung with two crimson suns.

This was done to allow Tyranid warships to more efficiently harvest biomass from the city.

Many districts under Astra Militarum control in the Upper Hive had also collapsed.

Whether Upper Hive or Top Hive, most areas relied on the Lower Hive for structural support.

If the Tyranids breached the Lower Hive and entered the Upper Hive, the Astra Militarum could only pray their reinforcements arrived before Fardia City collapsed entirely into the biomass pool.

The crimson light burned fiercely, scorching General Drostron’s skin.

He pulled a radiation-blocking pill from his pocket and swallowed it.

The drug was extracted from algae; without it, humanity could never have colonized the Crimson Scar without spawning too many mutants from the strange radiation.

The crimson suns dried General Drostron’s throat.

He pulled a patterned flask from his coat and took a sip of the potent Aksema liquor.

The high-proof alcohol instantly soothed his throat and calmed his nerves.

The sharp, burning sensation gave him a comforting feeling—as if his insides were being sterilized.

The flask had once been stolen by the Laitrins, then won back by Zhou Yun.

But yesterday, Zhou Yun inexplicably returned it to him.

He even said: “If the Emperor and Russ had drunk this liquor in their contest, neither would have managed a second sip.”

General Drostron found this offensive—this man had no taste whatsoever.

The disinfecting sting and pain from the alcohol on his oral mucosa—how comforting it was.

General Drostron gazed at the crimson sky, his thoughts drifting—he was truly weary.

It was said the Crimson Scar, including Baal and the Underworld System, was a wound carved by the Blood God’s blade upon the material universe.

General Drostron thought of this unbidden.

Such talk was forbidden; it could only be whispered as rumor, perhaps even a blasphemy to think it at all.

“What a red sky.”

A voice suddenly sounded beside Drostron, filled with awe.

“They say it’s the Blood God’s wound, carved into reality—how fierce!”

“Pfff!!!!” General Drostron couldn’t hold it—he spat out his mouthful of liquor.

“See? I told you this liquor was disgusting—you’re spitting it out yourself,” Zhou Yun grinned.

Did I spit because the liquor was bad? General Drostron’s face twisted as he glared at Zhou Yun.

“You were just praising the Blood God?” he couldn’t help asking.

“Was I?” Zhou Yun looked genuinely confused.

He hadn’t mentioned blood sacrifice or skull offerings.

For safety, Zhou Yun silently recited the Dorn’s Purification Mantra several more times in his mind, just in case the Blood God took notice.

“I am Rogal Dorn. I am Rogal Dorn. I am Dorg Dorn.”

Watching Zhou Yun mutter to himself, General Drostron’s expression grew even more twisted.

He quickly scanned Zhou Yun.

But as a Cardian, he saw no signs of Chaos corruption.

Besides, this man used every trick in battle—ambushes, psychic powers, deceit, assassinations—without restraint.

If the Blood God even glanced at him, Drostron would twist his own head off and serve it in a bottle of wine.

“The Bastion Belt has gone utterly silent,” General Drostron said, voice low.

That meant the Cardian warriors within likely already perished—the swarm’s second wave was imminent.

According to what Zhou Yun had told him earlier,

“Do you think the next wave will deploy powerful psychic units?” General Drostron asked. Zhou Yun’s lips twitched slightly—he remembered clearly: the swarm would do exactly that.

And it was the most logical strategy.

The horde had met disciplined Cardians; the titans had met the Astra Militarum’s heavy armor; the Genestealer ambushes had failed.

The swarm’s best move now was to hatch powerful Tyranid psychic entities and crush the material army with the power of the psychic sea.

“Can Augustus Vrax’s psyker unit hold them?” General Drostron still clung to hope.

“No use,” Zhou Yun shook his head. “They’re decent, but—”

The swarm would send a brood of Hive Mind controllers, led by an Alpha-level psychic leech.

Additionally, a psychic brainworm had been deployed to Asford.

Later, that brainworm along with the brood managed to incapacitate Master Morpheus, the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels.

Morpheus—the one of the Empire’s greatest psykers, the apex of psyker lunatics.

If Zhou Yun had to pick the top human in the 40k Imperium below the Primarchs, he’d first consider Morpheus.

That lunatic had done things like pausing time at will, cleaving a starship with a single psychic spear, injecting his consciousness into every cell, splitting his soul across time, and banishing the Seed of Destruction.

Even now, Morpheus wasn’t as monstrously powerful as he’d become later—but he was still far beyond the ragtag psykers the Viceroy had adopted.

“Cheer up—I’m already thinking of a countermeasure,” Zhou Yun said seriously, clapping Drostron on the shoulder.

General Drostron’s lip twitched. He turned to look behind him—at Zhou Yun’s “countermeasure.”

Zhou Yun had torn down the newly built chapel in Sector Nine.

!

The bricks, mixed with Baal’s crimson soil and the ashes of Battle Sister martyrs, had been hauled to the Lower Hive.

Some were stacked before the towering statue of Saint Guilliman into a crude little hut.

The rest, due to time constraints, had been arranged by Zhou Yun’s men into vertical lines around the hut.

General Drostron stared—and it looked like a feudal-era outhouse built in a graveyard.

“Your plan isn’t… praying to Saint Guilliman, is it?” General Drostron asked, barely holding back his disbelief.

“How did you know?” Zhou Yun asked, genuinely delighted.

How did I know…? General Drostron’s face twisted further.

Around the hut—no, the crude chapel—candles burned.

Each candle represented a prayer from an Astra Militarum soldier or hive dweller.

Amid the flickering flames, thirteen Battle Sisters and one hundred sixty-nine devout Cardian warriors knelt inside.

Zhou Yun had insisted these warriors be pure, uncorrupted, and deeply faithful.

On the bricks taken from the chapel and on the warriors’ bodies, Zhou Yun had painstakingly painted symbols in blood.

Had General Drostron not once cooperated with the Blood Angels and recognized these as their secret runes, he’d have sworn this was some kind of heretical sacrifice ritual.

But even he couldn’t fathom how Zhou Yun had learned these symbols.

The one hundred sixty-nine Cardians were divided into thirteen groups, each chanting sacred texts about Saint Guilliman.

From the Angel’s descent on Baal, to the Emperor’s retrieval of the Angel, to the Angel’s great sacrifice aboard the Vengeful Spirit—thirteen groups praised the entirety of Saint Guilliman’s life.

“Can this… really work against Tyranid psychic units?” General Drostron asked hesitantly.

“An ancient Terra psyker sage once said: ‘Use magic to defeat magic!’” Zhou Yun said solemnly.

But inside, he felt a little uneasy.

“Are you sure this will actually work?” General Drostron hesitated, then asked again.

“Probably… maybe?” Zhou Yun’s gaze drifted toward the winged figure in the white light.

“.”

The winged figure in the white light also looked uncertain.

“My children are close. Combined with these prayers, the ritual, and the bricks infused with Baal’s hot soil and martyr’s ashes—”

“And with you as the anchor, the barrier between me and the material universe has thinned considerably—”

“So… it should work, right?”

(End of Chapter)