Chapter 641: Dragon of Mars: I

A towering figure, as vast as an Astartes, stood before the vast host of the Cult of the Emperor’s crusaders.

According to the oracular device implanted within Engula, that figure was an Astartes, painted in the blue of the Ultramarines.

But in Engula’s last remaining flesh eye, that Astartes was shrouded in shadow, his entire hue closer to a deep indigo than Ultramarine blue, as if

He were a Night Lord—

Like a flash of lightning in the midnight, the dark-blue figure became a pale light, arriving before Engula before his sensory systems could react.

The roar of a chainsaw surged forth; the blade sheared into Engula’s neck, severing it in an instant, sparks erupting from the severed stump.

Engula’s head, still wearing the crimson hood of the Grand Sage, thudded to the ground.

Clear, bright, piercing.

Only after his head rolled for several seconds, its eyes utterly drained of color, did the surrounding crusaders finally react.

They stared in disbelief at the Astartes standing beside Engula’s corpse.

Engula’s body, heavily augmented with machinery, his lower half resembling a fortified war vehicle, still stood upright in a terrifying posture even without his head, like a headless sphinx.

Yet more terrifying than the corpse was the Astartes standing in the shadow of Engula’s remains, his power armor gleaming with a dark blue sheen.

He was pale, shadowed—not as if standing on the scorching surface of Mars, but as if bathed in the cold white glow of streetlamps after a rain in the alleys of a lightless city, gazing like a ghost at the wretched creature who had wandered into his hunting ground.

The crusaders held weapons; knights and Titans stood beside them.

Yet that Astartes, merely by the terrifying aura radiating from his person, paralyzed all former forces loyal to Engula.

The Astartes surveyed the surroundings, then vanished instantly among the masses of soldiers, leaving Engula’s crusaders bewildered and lost.

The former Second Company Captain of the Ultramarines, the Chosen of the Midnight Phantoms, Titus, retreated into the strange cave he was assigned to guard.

This peculiar engineering marvel, glowing with brilliant silver light, was vast as if Mars itself had been hollowed out; no edge of the cavern could be seen, the silver rocks stretching endlessly into infinite space.

Only a single protruding rock ledge stood at the center of this immense cavern, like a stage at the heart of a silver amphitheater.

For these past days, Titus had been ordered to guard this cave.

According to Saint Dora, this cave imprisoned a dragon once defeated by the Emperor.

Titus had never seen the dragon’s presence; when he first arrived, he expected a scaled, winged behemoth to emerge from the silver cavern. But after exploring, he found the cave nearly empty.

Yet this did not mean Titus had no duties.

Though invisible to the eye, Titus sensed the “dragon” growing increasingly agitated.

At first, strange machines appeared around the cave; then unmanned war machines tried to enter; later, deranged crusaders, mentally unstable Mechanicus savants, even a couple of rogue Titan Legion hounds appeared.

Now, an entire army had simply appeared.

Somewhat faintly, Titus sensed fragments of the dragon’s emotions.

Long ago, the dragon had once tried such resistance, such struggle, attempting to escape the cage built by the Lord of Mankind.

But as time passed, the dragon gradually abandoned its struggle, growing accustomed to the quiet, dull, comfortable ease of its prison.

In other words, the dragon gave up.

The dragon’s rare moments of clarity coincided with the era when humans on Earth developed the internet; its influence could easily manipulate networks of electricity and information, using human data for amusement, splitting its will into thousands of fragments scattered across the web, impersonating, provoking, attacking, and infuriating humans through the “Classic Filial Piety and Six Arts” to gain a sense of revenge.

Later, when the internet vanished and was abandoned, the dragon began sleeping all day, passing the long centuries in slumber.

But now, the dragon was panicking—it seemed terrified of something, desperately struggling to break free.

But what exactly was the dragon afraid of? What did it fear?

Honestly, even the dragon itself seemed unaware; it had merely sensed danger instinctively in its sleep, startled awake, and launched frantic resistance.

And the dragon was astonished to discover that, after sleeping for so many years, it had grown stronger than ever before.

Titus shook his head. Whatever it feared, his duty was to prevent its escape.

Suddenly, Titus sensed something wrong with his power armor—mechanical damage, invisible micro-fractures.

When had this happened? Had it accumulated slowly over time?

Titus suddenly realized: the dragon had not done nothing. It had been secretly infiltrating his power armor, slowly accumulating damage with its faint, leaking power—until now, when the damage erupted and crippled his armor.

“I am violent S!”

A stiff mechanical voice suddenly echoed through Titus’s comms:

“Release me, or I will torture you—my hands are black as sin!”

What the hell.

Titus froze for a moment, but more voices began flooding into his ears, pouring directly into his mind.

“Babies fed rice oil grow plump and white by a hundred days.”

“Look at our womb-born vegetarian baby.”

“Europeans don’t drink boiled water—how did they invent the steam engine?”

“The Industrial Revolution was stolen from the Yongle Encyclopedia.”

“That’s classic Android thinking.”

“Be grateful technology is in the hands of civilization.”

“Why do females have paternal chromosomes? Can we dig them out and throw them away?”

“Why ‘the world belongs to all’ and not ‘the world belongs to mothers’? Why ‘citizen’ and not ‘mother-citizen’?”

“I won’t speak a word until Constantinople is renamed Jin Guo Rubi Fortress.”

A torrent of abstract, twisted, indescribable, and blasphemous content flooded Titus’s mind.

The moment he heard those voices, he understood their meaning. They could not truly harm his spirit, yet they filled him with unbearable discomfort.

The dragon used this method to unleash nauseating, harmless attacks upon Titus.

This was among the few things the dragon could still do—the Emperor’s prison was so strong it sealed nearly all of its power.

At that moment, a round hand suddenly reached out from behind Titus and gently tapped his power armor.

Instantly, Titus’s power armor restored to perfect condition, and the voices vanished.