Chapter 699: Abaddon Was Set Free by Guilliman!

The ground was viscous, coated with biomass and thick, foul-smelling secretions that rose past Azriel’s shins; each step was excruciating, as if countless invisible creatures tugged at his legs within the yellow, translucent suspension, profoundly nauseating.

As a battle-hardened Astartes, Azriel was naturally immune to external environments affecting his battle will.

What truly unsettled him was the atmosphere around him—the Seraphim walked silently beside the Lion, their gazes toward Azriel carrying faint hostility.

Helaer remained silent as well; Azriel vaguely sensed his brother carried many secrets of his own.

His superior swordsmanship, his knowledge of Sefer, and his connection to the Lion all suggested his brother’s past identity within the First Legion was anything but ordinary.

Revisiting Laine and the hallucinatory stimuli from Marantai’s curse had left his thoughts chaotic and heavy; along the way, he spoke little beyond killing enemies.

The atmosphere within the Deathwatch Black Shields was thick with awkwardness—most of these men had committed unforgivable sins, some were outright defectors or fallen warbands, and worse still, some were direct descendants of traitor legions; following a Primarch known for brutality, vigilance, and terror, tension was inevitable.

Even Azriel couldn’t help wondering: among his Black Shield brothers, perhaps a few were Fallen Angels.

“Are we crawling into the reproductive glands of some damn bug?”

Azriel attempted to lighten the mood with a joke.

But the air remained only awkward, dead, and silent—no one laughed or responded to Azriel’s remark.

A few Seraphim scrutinized Azriel with suspicious glances; some even shot him near-threatening looks, silently ordering him to shut his mouth.

Azriel shrugged helplessly, sighing that his brothers were far too rigid, solemn, and gloomy.

He turned his head, trying to conjure a joke tied to the Dark Angels’ somber mood.

But the Lion suddenly halted, turning his head to look at Azriel.

Azriel shuddered violently, thinking his words had angered the Lion again, and fell instantly silent.

“You’re perceptive,” the Lion said in a low voice.

Azriel blinked, unsure what the Lion meant.

Laine swung his power sword, named Loyalty, cleaving through the pus on the ground, exposing the vein-like fleshy conduits beneath the semi-translucent sludge.

Within those fleshy conduits, worms writhed rapidly.

The Lion brought Loyalty down again, rupturing the pus-wrapped vessels; the worms burst free.

Azriel clearly saw that each worm bore swollen sacs on its back.

The Lion slashed once more, instantly shredding the worms into fragments; the sacs burst, spilling fibrous matter.

For some reason, Azriel’s heart lurched violently as he watched the fibrous matter torn apart.

“Is this… transporting some kind of genetic material?” Combining the Lion’s earlier words with the shape of the fibrous matter, Azriel instantly deduced.

This was clearly genetic material—the Tyranid Hive Fleet was transporting it to synthesize some organism.

Azriel’s joke had accidentally hit the truth.

“I thought you were making mindless jokes,” Helaer turned to Azriel, his tone carrying a note of relief, even patting Azriel’s shoulder with the approval of an elder toward a junior.

The Seraphim’s hostile glances toward Azriel lessened somewhat, as if ashamed of their earlier threatening stares.

“Yes, I saw at once—these vile bugs are transporting these blasphemous, nauseating, ugly, twisted alien mutant genes!” Azriel displayed the psychological composure expected of a Chapter Master, speaking without hesitation.

“.That is my genetic sequence,” Laine said softly to Azriel.

“Huh?”

“And my brothers’. Even… the Emperor’s and the Primarch Mother’s.” The Lion glanced at the shattered fibrous matter.

“Primarchs have mothers?” Azriel blurted out.

The Seraphim behind Laine glared fiercely at Azriel.

But Laine showed no expression, continuing: “The Vault of the Source Blood—what Fulgrim’s clones failed to guard—contains the complete genetic sequences of myself and my brothers, or rather, all Primarchs were born from that sequence.”

“The Emperor’s genetic sequence, fused with that of the Primarch Mother Elda—the Tyranids stole it, using it to synthesize a being to carry themselves.”

Laine’s words plunged the air into deeper silence.

As they advanced deeper, resistance diminished—almost as if all nearby life had been broken down into biomass, gathered to nurture the creature within the depths of the flesh spire.

If what the Lion said was true, then the Tyranid creature awaiting them within the flesh spire would be—

Everyone’s spirits sank instantly.

Beyond dread, they felt rage and revulsion—they could not accept that the genetic lineage of their father, the Emperor’s own sequence, had been defiled, altered, and twisted by aliens.

Azriel felt the weight of the atmosphere too; he knew this mindset would cripple their combat effectiveness.

“My lord, we have all heard your sacred words: ‘Loyalty needs no reward—loyalty itself is the reward.’”

Azriel looked at Laine and spoke.

Laine gave him a slightly puzzled glance.

“And now your sword is named Loyalty—when you slay enemies with it—”

“.Isn’t that rewarding them?”

The air fell silent for a moment.

The Lion revealed a cruelly amused smile, raising his sword Loyalty slightly.

“I need to reward your loyalty.”

Azriel stepped back silently.

The Lion ignored Azriel, turning to Zabriel beside him: “Can you contact that clone?”

Zabriel shook his head slightly.

The Lion nodded lightly, unsurprised.

“We will face either a gaudy new Phoenix.”

“Or a new traitor, a new serpent.”

“But for the galaxy’s coming fate, it is now irrelevant.”

Azriel detected in the Lion’s words a fierce, unshakable confidence.

He didn’t understand why the Lion was so certain.

The Lion seemed to sense Azriel’s thoughts—he let out two or three cold laughs: