Chapter 4: Chicken Heretic: Warm Nature, Pungent Taste, Unblocks Meridians and Relieves Pain

When the shadow of the Great Devourer blankets all of Axi, it will be too late.

The winged figure calling itself Saint Gileas flickered in and out of Zhou Yun’s vision.

This time, as he had said, Zhou Yun had indeed encountered danger.

But Chaos always delights in luring men to ruin with kindness.

The love of a lover, the wisdom of a sage, the bond of brothers, the care of a father.

This kindness is sometimes a disguise, sometimes sincere—but whether false or true, the gifts of the Warp always come at a price, and always drag you deeper.

The Sons of Horus, seeking to save their Warlord, placed him within Dai Wen’s Serpent Cult temple, where he was corrupted.

Magnus pursued Warp power too fervently, and a single psychic cannon shattered the Emperor’s Webway dream.

Fulgrim obsessed over the power of the Spear of Telesto, and was ultimately possessed by the demon dwelling within it.

Even the Primarchs, with their superhuman intellects, were deceived by it; Zhou Yun knew he lacked the wisdom to discern it, and the courage to gamble.

He pulled a small knife from his fourth-dimensional pocket and approached the few Chicken Heretics who had been knocked unconscious by the air gun.

The blade slit their throats, sending these lightly corrupted gene-thieves to meet the Great Devourer.

Looking at the bodies sprawled on the ground, Zhou Yun felt a headache coming on.

If these corpses were left where they lay, other gene-thieves might find traces and track him down.

If only there were a way to destroy the bodies without leaving any trace.

Hmm?

Zhou Yun blinked, and an idea popped into his mind.

He crouched down, grabbed one of the corpses, and shoved it into the fourth-dimensional pocket in his abdomen.

[Item Name: Hybrid New Follower Corpse]

[Origin: Mingfuzhidunxingxi - Asifudexing - Fudiyacheng ]

[Evaluation: Corpse of a gene-thief with minimal mutation; nature warm, taste pungent and slightly salty; effects: unblocks meridians, relieves pain, dispels toxins and resolves nodules, causes gene contamination; not for consumption.]

[Production Time: 978.M41]

[Status: Intact, excellent condition]

[Value: 10,000 credits]

Effects: unblocks meridians, relieves pain, dispels toxins and resolves nodules, causes gene contamination.

Zhou Yun was about to complain about the fourth-dimensional pocket’s evaluation when his eyes were drawn to the ten-thousand-credit payout below.

It was worth more than an entire broken phaeton extraction transit unit!

He immediately began his diligent work, stuffing the remaining corpses into his fourth-dimensional pocket.

Eight Chicken Heretic corpses had now earned him over a hundred thousand credits.

The leader, crushed into a bug-patty with heavy mutation, alone yielded over twenty thousand.

Zhou Yun felt a pang of regret—if only it hadn’t been flattened, if its condition hadn’t been ruined, the payout would have been higher.

Adding this to his previous junk-hunting earnings, Zhou Yun now had nearly two hundred thousand credits in his pocket.

He swallowed hard.

He asked himself: he was not a greedy man.

But the more money he accumulated, the closer he drew to the teleport gate, the greater his chance of escape.

If he could hunt more gene-thieves…

Zhou Yun quickly shook his head, crushing the dangerous thought.

These were gene-thieves. Chicken Heretics. Not a group of chickens in suspenders who could sing and dance rap.

These were merely a few hybrid new followers with minimal mutation—the weakest and most human-like among Chicken Heretics.

If he encountered more hybrid new followers, or deeper-mutated hybrid believers, or even the top predators of the Chicken Heretic cult…

He would likely meet the Great Devourer before the Tyranid fleet even arrived.

Thinking of this, Zhou Yun reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial of liquid.

[Item Name: Air Gun Liquid]

[Origin: 22nd Century Earth—Future Department Store]

[Production Time: 241.M3]

[Function: Liquid. Drip onto fingertip, then point at target and shout “Boom!” to fire a shockwave—sufficient to knock out an ordinary human. One fingertip can fire only one shot.]

[Evaluation: No gun? Then you can’t shoot people! How inconvenient is a gun supposed to be!]

This item’s power paled next to a shock gun or an air cannon; it could only stun ordinary humans. To subdue a hybrid new follower—a flesh-mutated monster—required multiple shots.

But its advantages were low cost and high concealment; Zhou Yun would never encounter an Astartes, a creature nearly mythical within the hive cities.

He reapplied the air gun liquid to his fingertip and fired shockwaves in slow, sweeping arcs around him, erasing every trace of his presence.

Then he fled the ruined district at top speed, avoiding pursuit by the gene-thief cult.

Minutes after Zhou Yun left,

A hooded figure, its face bristling with mechanical implants, slipped silently toward the site of the recent battle.

It was a Sanctioner, an assassin born of the gene-thief cult to eliminate any threat to the Zuqun ’s safety.

It possessed night vision beyond mortal limits, multi-jointed limbs capable of crawling through shadows, and malleable muscles able to squeeze through the narrowest crevices.

Its eyes were the eyes of the Patriarch; its bio-blade, the Patriarch’s claws. It had come to investigate this place to answer the Patriarch’s questions.

But the ground here seemed scoured by a gale—no trace remained.

It gripped its bio-blade warily.

If no physical traces remained, then it would search for lingering psychic residues.

In the world invisible to the naked eye, it saw a single white feather, gently drifting through the air.

The feather was magnificent, forged as if from white gold, yet softer than any goose down.

The feather was pure, utterly alien to this filthy world; it was noble, as if blessed by the holiest grace of the cosmos.

It smelled a fragrance—emanating from the feather—like centuries of prayers and incense soaked into a cathedral.

Oh, it could no longer hear. It could not hear the Patriarch’s voice. It could not hear the voice of the Four-Armed God-Emperor.

It began to weep. In its daze, it understood the grotesque form it had become, the path of error it had walked.

It begged for forgiveness. It begged for redemption. And then, He sent down this fire.

In the dark recesses of the ruined district,

A colossal shadow, six meters tall, crouched in the gloom—a personification of all corruption and blasphemy, half-god, half-demon—watched this scene.

It watched as the Sanctioner, its eyes and its tracker of psychic traces, froze in place, its connection severed.

Then, searing golden flames erupted from the Sanctioner’s corrupted, mutated skull—pouring from its eyes, mouth, ears—blazing fiercely.

Until it was reduced to a pile of faintly golden-sparking ashes.

The colossal shadow let out a low, fearful roar.

Instantly, the roar of the Patriarch echoed in the minds of every gene-thief.

“Find him! Kill him!”

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(End of Chapter)