Chapter 360: Magnus: Lu Se Is a Superstitious Barbarian

Zhou Yun pulled out from his fourth-dimensional pocket the copy of The Book of Magnus he had acquired from the Black Library and a pair of yellow-and-orange shoes.

【Item Name: Shoes That Enter Storybooks】

【Origin: 22nd-Century Earth — Future Department Store】

【Manufacture Date: 231. 3】

【Function: After putting on these shoes, one may enter storybooks and freely roam within their worlds, participating in, altering, and twisting the direction and content of those worlds. Note: If the shoes are lost within the book world, exit becomes impossible.】

Zhou Yun swiftly slipped the shoes that could enter book worlds onto his feet, his gaze then falling on the copy of The Book of Magnus belonging to Ahriman in his fourth-dimensional pocket.

【Item Name: The Book of Magnus (Copy)】

【Origin: Prospero】

【Evaluation: An immortal grimoire of arcane arts compiled by Primarch Magnus from knowledge gathered during the Great Crusade; its contents have become sentient and formed an internal miniature world. Both The Book of Magnus and its copies serve as gateways to that world. This copy was gifted by Magnus to Ahriman during the Burning of Prospero, its text corrupted by the Changer of Ways, Tzeentch — it was precisely this altered passage that caused Ahriman to unleash the Red Glyph spell, burning his brother to ash.】

【Manufacture Date: 799. 30】

【Evaluation: No one understands the Warp better than I!】

【Value: 999, 99, 99】

Its contents had been corrupted by Tzeentch.

No wonder Ahriman had handed this grimoire, filled with powerful spells, to Zhou Yun without hesitation.

To Ahriman, this copy, altered by the Changer of Ways, was utterly untrustworthy.

Who knew how many traps and snares Tzeentch had hidden within, waiting for the reader to fall?

But Zhou Yun had no interest in the sorcery within the copy — he directly clicked to sell it, causing the copy of The Book of Magnus to vanish entirely from the galaxy.

One original and two copies of The Book of Magnus were interconnected; now, Ahriman's copy had vanished completely, leaving Zhou Yun's copy as the sole one-way path to the original in Magnus's possession.

Theoretically, if Zhou Yun entered his own copy and followed the path of the sentient knowledge within, he could directly reach Magnus's original, arriving at the very core of Magnus's Warp essence.

According to the Judgment of the Divination Machine, this was the optimal course of action.

He placed the copy on the ground and cautiously extended his foot — the pages, covered in twisted runes, melted like liquid, gently rippling.

Zhou Yun held his breath and stepped forward into it.

Strange — an intense strangeness filled Zhou Yun's surroundings; he felt he had lost all his senses.

No, his senses still existed — but there was nothing in his surroundings for them to perceive.

In this space, his nose detected no scent, his eyes saw nothing, his ears heard no sound, his touch felt no substance.

All things in the world had lost form, leaving only pure, transcendent abstractions — knowledge, concepts, ideas, and reasoning — in their sum.

Primitive, chaotic, pure information drifted through this world, bypassing the senses entirely, manifesting directly as knowledge within Zhou Yun's mind.

"This is the world within The Book of Magnus."

This knowledge entered Zhou Yun's mind and took voice.

"You are an intruder."

Malice — the information swirling around Zhou Yun suddenly surged with intense hostility.

As if his intrusion had triggered the book world's immune system, the surrounding information abruptly attacked him.

A surge of knowledge erupted violently within Zhou Yun's mind —

"I have finally arrived upon this planet, upon humanity's homeworld and my father's imperial capital."

"I have read a thousand times in books of this world's former beauty, and heard a thousand times from my father of its present ruin."

"But to see it with my own eyes — how could humanity's mother world, Terra, have become this horrific sight?"

"Radiation ravages the wasteland; sand covers the planet's surface; has the last drop of the final ocean been stolen by water thieves? This is a barren, shattered world — how cruelly have these so-called technological barbarians wounded our mother?"

Suddenly, Zhou Yun's senses received information from his surroundings again.

Hot wind swept across his face; grit slammed against his cheeks; intense radiation scoured every inch of his flesh — fortunately, Zhou Yun had pre-irradiated himself with Adaptation Lamps, rendering him immune to such radiation damage.

He looked around and found himself standing upon a crimson desert, faintly glowing green beneath the deep night sky — clearly contaminated by nuclear radiation. At first glance, he thought this was Baal.

But high above, beyond the crimson dust clouds, a dim, hanging star confirmed to Zhou Yun: he stood upon Terra — no, not true Terra, but Terra as rendered by the sentient knowledge of The Book of Magnus.

The knowledge of Terra formed the ground beneath his feet. Was this The Book of Magnus's defense against intruders?

Realizing this, Zhou Yun quickly conceived a possibility:

If the knowledge recorded in The Book of Magnus could manifest an entire Terra, could knowledge of specific individuals also manifest?

The Book of Magnus contained nearly all knowledge gathered by the Thousand Sons during the Great Crusade — naturally including —

"He is my brother? When I first saw him, I was utterly stunned!"

"I had expected my brothers to be accomplished scholars, wise scientists, enlightened rulers, idealized philosophers."

"But what did I see? A wolf! A superstitious, primitive wolf-king ruling over savage tribes of the frozen wastes!"

"I sought to civilize my brother — that superstitious barbarian."

"But he stared at me like a wolf — perhaps an illusion, but I saw wisdom in those wolf-eyes — then he accused me of being too obsessed with arcane things."

The voice of knowledge spoke again beside Zhou Yun; the knowledge gradually took form before him.

"Still, out of reverence for knowledge and history, I record here the name of my brother — may the knowledge of him grant me strength."

"He is the Wolf-King of Fenris."

(End of Chapter)