Chapter 378: Venerate the Emperor, Punish the Traitors!

"The people of Terra suffer terribly—surely your own families suffer too!"

"In the hive cities, the wives and sisters of the people must cut flesh from their own bodies to feed their children!"

"The workers produce corpse-starch—and cannot even eat it themselves!"

"The people have no food; they starve, exhausted, while the God-Emperor does not wish humanity to suffer thus!"

"It is the High Lords, officials, and Ecclesiarchy priests within the palace who have concealed the people's suffering from the God-Emperor, hiding the true state of the realm!"

"Sever the heads of these bastards! Venerate the Emperor, punish the traitors! Divine retribution upon the nobility! Offer skulls to the Golden Throne! Blood sacrifice to the God-Emperor!"

"Food! We need food!"

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

Roars, thick with the stench of blood, echoed endlessly beneath the Eternal Wall, as the commoners surged like crimson-and-white tides, crashing against the palace ramparts.

A priest clad in a tattered Ecclesiarchy robe stood among the masses, waving a battle banner painted in blood, roaring and bellowing to the crowds, preaching doctrines of rage, vengeance, and slaughter.

Beneath his feet, tens of thousands of commoners linked hands, using their own flesh and blood to build an altar for the fallen priest; some had already died from crushing pressure, starvation, and overcrowding, yet their corpses were still carried forward by the press of the living.

Around this living altar of flesh, countless others roared in furious pursuit of the fallen priest—so many that even Sergeant Valerian of the Imperial Guard's shield wall doubted whether all ten billion inhabitants of Terra had gathered beneath the palace.

As the blasphemous, dangerous, blood-scented words spilled from the priest's mouth, the commoners around him began to undergo horrifying mutations.

Men grew wings; women sprouted fangs; once-human forms twisted into half-beast monstrosities. Blasphemy spread among the people, and with it, terror.

"Do not fear! This is the blessing of blood! The gift of blood!"

"Accept the blessing of blood! Only then can we kill! Only by killing can we survive!"

"God-Emperor! Look upon us! The nobles have stolen your gifts—and we shall save ourselves with the blessing of blood!"

The fallen priest, spitting saliva as he preached his devotion to the Blood God, ensnared the mutated masses with his voice; they howled in frenzy, gathering together, trampling their comrades, surging into a towering wave that crashed toward the battlements of the Eternal Wall.

But they struck iron.

Bolters, lasers, and searing psychic energy rained down upon the tide of flesh; the mutated monsters fell like rain from the air—only for more commoners to surge forward, forming even fiercer waves.

"The most heinous criminal is Imperial Chancellor Tiruien! Corrupt, greedy, exploiting his position for personal gain—his bloated, obese body is proof of his avarice! Sever his head!"

"Then the High Lords! Foolish! Decayed! Corrupted! Lost in their power struggles, feeding hundreds of billions of bureaucrats, parasitic upon the common folk!"

"Finally, the corrupt Imperial Guard! They are the Emperor's guardians, His creations—yet they wallow in palace luxuries, running naked through the Throne Room, working out, bathing, abandoning billions of commoners, becoming the nobles' watchdogs!"

Hearing the fallen priest's slander against the Imperial Guard, Sergeant Valerian's expression flickered slightly.

Though Valerian himself did not fully support the Restriction Edict—he believed the Guard should not be confined to Terra—he still found the claim that the Guard ran naked, exercised, and bathed in the Throne Room absurd. Did they treat the Throne Room as their own bathhouse?

Valerian steadied himself and raised slightly his ancient Watcher spear, named "Knowledge."

His duty here was not to fight, but to observe and assess risk.

Since the Restriction Edict was signed ten thousand years ago by Rogal Dorn, Roboute Guilliman, the High Lords of Terra, and the first Captain-General of the Guard, Konstantin Valdo, the Imperial Guard had never truly left the palace, never deployed as a unified force in war.

Not during the Beast Wars, not during the Vangorich Uprising, not during the Age of Apostasy, nor even during the Fall of Cadia—the Guard had never truly broken the Restriction Edict.

Within the Guard, many held this belief: the Imperial Guard was not part of the Imperium—it existed solely to protect the Emperor.

The Restriction Edict was a chain woven from orders, tradition, and the Guard's own guilt, binding Valerian and his brothers deep within the palace.

Unless the Emperor's safety was directly threatened, the Guard would never deploy as a unified force—clearly, this mob of rioters posed no threat to the Emperor himself.

Yet Valerian still pulled the trigger of "Knowledge," firing a searing beam of disintegration toward the roaring fallen priest upon the altar.

His duty was to observe and assess risk; firing was merely to test the strength of these corrupted ones—to aid in risk evaluation. That was his internal justification.

The disintegration beam from "Knowledge" came from an ancient technology known only to the Emperor himself—a terrible light capable of severing the internal bonds of matter, reducing any substance to a fleeting flare of ash.

But to Valerian's surprise, his beam dissolved before it reached the fallen priest, as if influenced by some unknown force from the Warp.

Was this the Blood God's power? Some kind of blessing that repelled ranged attacks?

Valerian also noticed that the palace's defensive fire could not inflict meaningful damage upon the mutated rioters below.

Only when they surged close enough to the battlements—within a certain range—did the Astra Militarum's lasguns, the Adeptus Astartes' bolters, and the psykers' psychic energies begin to take effect.

Valerian lowered his spear. If this was the case, he alone could do nothing.

Moreover, the Eternal Wall needed no help from him now; the mutated commoners surged like endless tides against the reef of the Eternal Wall, shattering themselves upon impact.

How could mortals shatter the creation of Primarch Rogal Dorn?

Even those Guard members who doubted the Primarchs, who saw them as flawed creations, could not deny that the Primarchs' talents far surpassed their own.

Valerian had joined the Guard relatively recently and had not lived through the Great Crusade or the Horus Heresy, but after brief encounters with those two Primarchs, he still felt their power and glory.

And the one other—Zhou Yun, the man who many worshipped as a god, the Holy Doraemon.

Valerian's impression of him was faint, but he clearly remembered Zhou Yun constantly insisting, "I am not a god."

Just as the Emperor had done in the ancient Guard records—this made Valerian hold Zhou Yun in high regard, seeing him as a worthy man.

Many beings in this galaxy were revered as gods—but only the Emperor and the Holy Doraemon refused divinity.

Yet now those three had departed directly for the Lion's Gate to meet with Captain-General Trajan—surely their purpose could only be the Throne Room.

Already, suspicion toward the Primarchs and the Holy Doraemon festered within the Guard; once they learned the trio's true intent was the Emperor, that suspicion would surely erupt.

"Sergeant Valerian, you were distracted?"

Captain Leina of the Cadia 184th, who continuously unleashed psychic energy upon the fanatics atop the Eternal Wall, said with surprise.

She seemed astonished that the Emperor's perfect creation could be distracted on the battlefield, that Valerian's will had grown sluggish.

Valerian bowed his head slightly in shame; he too sensed that ten thousand years of the Restriction Edict had dulled the Guard.

"I worry," he explained to Leina, "that my brothers will burden Zhou Yun with accusations full of suspicion."

"Hmm?" Leina's expression turned slightly odd as she listened.

After a pause, she said: "I think you should worry about your brothers."

"... hope Zhou Yun's blasphemous words won't shake the Guard's minds."

"I feel your gaze brimming with intense distrust."

"Is this how you look at me and Saint Guilliman? With such suspicion?"

"You may doubt Guilliman—but do you doubt me, a loyal believer of the Emperor? Do you doubt the Archangel?"

"Today you doubt me, you doubt Saint Guilliman—tomorrow, I dare not imagine what you will doubt."

Before the Lion's Gate spaceport, Zhou Yun stepped out of the portal and faced at least a thousand Imperial Guardsmen, his face filled with fury.

The Guardsmen stared at Zhou Yun, at Saint Guilliman, and at Guilliman with suspicion and wariness,

as if this entire force had assembled here solely to guard against them.

But before the Guard commander could voice his suspicion, Zhou Yun struck first:

"Where were you when I refuted the false faith of the Four-Armed Chicken God in the Underhive?"

"Where were you when I fought the Hive Fleet in the Underworld?"

"Where were you when I battled the Great Devourer and the Blood God on Baal?"

"Where were you when I resurrected Roboute Guilliman on Ultramar?"

"Where were you when I casually slurped an entire pot of stew in Nurgle's Garden?"

Captain-General Trajan opened his mouth to speak—but Zhou Yun gave him no chance.

"You gave yourselves names thicker than dictionaries. You run naked in the palace. You play bloody games of make-believe."

"We, who serve the Emperor with utmost loyalty, came here unarmed, with no guards, exposing our fragile bodies to your power lances."

"And you, who for ten thousand years have merely sprayed water on the Emperor's corpse to keep it moist, now stand fully armed, wary of us? Where is your trust? Do you even have any left?"

The Guardsmen's bodies trembled; they gripped their power lances, desperate to retort—but Zhou Yun's relentless words had struck their hardened minds, leaving them speechless.

Only Captain-General Trajan regarded Zhou Yun and the two Primarchs with a strange gaze, then carefully spoke:

"So… why are your skins so red?"

Saint Guilliman and Guilliman shifted their gazes slightly.

"Then tell me," said Zhou Yun, his skin equally flushed, his expression unchanging, "are you a Ma Lei or female Guardsman?"

(End of Chapter)