Chapter 97: Standing Firm as Cadia (Combined Three Parts, Six Thousand Characters)

A howling hurricane erupted from the street, wind like blades slicing in all directions, twisting into a vortex.

The surrounding gene-thief motorcyclists stared in shock at the scene.

Sewage, mud, and gravel from the street were swept up, swirling like clusters of dark shadows.

A mournful wail echoed through the hive-city ruins, the tornado resembling a monstrous beast roaring as it lunged at the motorcycles.

Before they could react, they were snatched into the hurricane; their motorcycles began to shake uncontrollably.

At that moment, they saw a dark silhouette emerge from within the hurricane.

The shadow leapt from an overturned heavy truck, nimble and airborne.

Before the motorcyclists could react, the figure had already landed atop the nearest motorcycle.

Only then did the motorcyclist recognize the intruder’s identity.

It was a slender figure clad in deep black leather, wearing a chainmail hood, standing atop the motorcycle’s handlebars.

The motorcyclist reached for his gun—but a sharp stiletto plunged straight into his neck, spraying blood.

Dici flew like a black phantom through the motorcade, reaping the lives of the gene-thieves while swiftly retreating beyond the hurricane’s radius.

The hurricane spewing from her gourd was rapidly expanding.

Fortunately, Dici was agile enough—she leapt across the motorcade in an instant and landed at the street’s edge.

This was the first step of the assassination plan.

Dici had silently infiltrated the heavy truck carrying the gene-thief leader, armed with the divine-tech artifact known as “Pocket Tornado.”

If the assassination succeeded, she would kill the leader outright.

If not, she would unleash the hurricane within the narrow truck, chaos erupting instantly.

After Dici emerged from the storm’s radius, she heard a cold, slithering sound from the shadows.

Even though the slithering was faint, even with the hurricane roaring all around,

Dici’s lifelong training and modifications allowed her to identify those sounds.

From the dark corners of surrounding buildings, dozens of pure-blood gene-thieves surrounded Dici, their skin tinged purple.

This was expected.

Shadows flashed past in all directions.

The other eleven Deathmaidens, clad in gray leather, appeared beside Dici.

Dici’s lips curled into a fanatical smile.

Death—they would bring death to the Emperor Doraemon.

The micro-injectors hidden beneath her leather suit activated, flooding Dici’s body with complex, secreted Deathmaidens’ drugs.

Her nerves, muscles, and heart surged with enhancement; her eyes reddened, pupils contracted, and everything before her slowed.

“Xenomorphs, your skulls shall please our god all the more.”

Dici’s eyes burned crimson; the drugs twisted her mind, making her expression wild and frenzied.

Blood began to spurt.

In the sewers, sewage flowed downward.

Giant hive-city rats, larger than seven- or eight-year-old children, clustered in the sludge, crawling and gnawing on the “food” within.

Some of them vaguely resembled humans.

Under the influence of the hive-city’s toxic chemicals, these tiny creatures—originally from Terra, spreading with human expansion across starships to countless worlds—had become terrifying predators in the hive-city sewers.

Even robust hive-city laborers, if they accidentally wandered in, were devoured alive by swarms of these rats, reduced to bleached bones.

Some bolder rats even slipped out at night, infiltrating homes and gnawing entire families to death.

But these ferocious rats had met something even more ferocious today.

Pure-blood gene-thieves carved a path through the sewage, tearing every charging rat-pack into bloody pulp with their razor claws.

It was said some powerful pure-blood gene-thieves could rip through Terminator power armor with their claws.

These pure-blood gene-thieves guarding Sipio, though not that monstrous, were more than enough to clear Sipio’s path through the filthy sewers.

What truly worried Sipio was the assassin.

Through the psychic link, Sipio saw the black-leathered female assassin clashing with the pure-blood gene-thieves.

The more she watched, the more Sipio trembled.

This mere mortal woman, armed with nothing but crude leather and a stiletto, plus some inexplicable injected drugs, was holding her own against a pack of pure-blood gene-thieves.

She chanted praises to the Emperor and some damn Doraemon, while hacking off one gene-thief head after another.

Each time she severed a head, she roared out its number, declaring it an offering to the Emperor and Doraemon.

Then she continued chanting about death, blood, and sacrifice, slashing off another gene-thief’s head.

This drove Sipio nearly mad.

Was this a fanatic of the Emperor? Why did her behavior resemble those cultists who worshipped the “Blood God”?

At least she was being held back by the pure-blood gene-thieves.

But what of her other companions?

The only factions with motive to assassinate Sipio were the Ark Gang and the rumored Lyen Ruse.

Where was the Ark Gang’s psychic master?

Where was the mysterious man named Lyen Ruse?

Sipio chose the sewers to escape precisely to avoid being tracked by those two.

The hive-city sewers were labyrinthine; finding one person within them was nearly impossible.

And the psychic link binding her to her entire species allowed Sipio to effectively evade all psychic prophecies.

BOOM!!

A thunderous roar erupted above Sipio.

The pure-blood gene-thieves beside her instantly seized her and dragged her aside.

The sewer ceiling shattered and collapsed—a psychic warhammer crashed from above, slamming into the ground; sewage surged violently into a tidal wave.

Sipio’s face flickered with surprise, then she instantly recognized the attacker.

Sure enough, Leina’s figure dropped through the broken ceiling.

“Stand still!!”

A powerful hypnotic voice lanced toward the pure-blood gene-thieves and Sipio.

But this potent psychic voice could not drown out the increasingly clear Leviathan Song ringing in the ears of the gene-thieves and Sipio.

It was the song of the Four-Armed Divine Emperor between the stars!!

Yet at that moment, Sipio noticed shimmering electric currents wrapping around Leina’s body.

They were bioelectric fields generated by psychic reinforcement of neural currents.

The hypnotic voice was a distraction—this bioelectricity was Leina’s true attack!

Leina plunged into the sewage; the electricity spread through the liquid like poisoned needles, piercing the flesh of the gene-thieves and Sipio, freezing their movements.

Sipio gritted her teeth, dragging her numb, stiff body, spinning around to flee.

But as Sipio turned, a figure suddenly appeared in her vision.

A man with dark-gold hair, his face like a lion of the deep forest, terrifyingly majestic.

He wore a comical mechanical cap, one hand holding a red cane, the other gripping a laser automatic rifle.

The black muzzle was aimed squarely at Sipio’s head.

Lyen Ruse!

Sipio’s pupils contracted—she saw the man gently lower his red cane, letting it fall toward himself.

“Found you,” Lyen Ruse whispered.

Then a blinding laser shot toward Sipio’s forehead.

The surrounding pure-blood gene-thieves lunged to protect Sipio.

But before they could react, Lyen Ruse had already pulled the trigger.

His marksmanship was truly horrifying!

Sipio felt a searing heat surge across her face, as if a sun had slammed into her.

Then her head dissolved into ash, scattering into the air.

Thud.

Zhou Yun watched calmly as Sipio’s headless body collapsed to the ground.

Everything had gone as planned; the Seeker Staff confirmed this corpse was the gene-thief leader.

The Seeker Staff pinpointed the location; Dici used the Pocket Tornado to force it to abandon its main force and retreat;

Then the Seeker Staff tracked it; Leina used psychic power to smash through the floor and bioelectric currents to disrupt their movement;

Finally, Zhou Yun teleported into the sewers and killed the gene-thief leader in an instant with his godlike marksmanship.

The entire plan was executed flawlessly.

His figure flickered, appearing beside Leina in an instant.

Enraged pure-blood gene-thieves roared and charged toward Zhou Yun and Leina.

Leina’s pupils narrowed; the air around them grew cold.

Zhou Yun’s psychic hat pointed at the gene-thieves.

A psychic warhammer, fused with a telekinetic blast, slammed into them, hurling them back.

Seizing the moment, Zhou Yun summoned telekinesis, yanking the gene-thief leader’s corpse toward him and shoving it into his waistband’s fourth-dimensional pocket.

Then he pulled out one of the rings, pressed it against the wall beside him, and dragged Leina into it.

Along the alleyways,

Dichi was drenched in blood, her face twisted in a manic grin, eyes blazing with the exhilaration of battle,

Behind her lay the severed heads of seven or eight pure-blood gene-thieves, piled into a small pyre of skulls,

harvesting heads, bringing death—it always stirred such exhilaration,

and this made Dichi feel as though the Emperor himself were blessing her!

But the drug’s side effects were slowly manifesting; fatigue began to surge through Dichi’s muscles,

and this was only after years of rigorous physical and drug-resistance training,

had she been an ordinary person, she would have died from the drug’s side effects within seconds of injection.

At that moment, a sharp laser shot through, piercing one of the pure-blood gene-thieves beside Dichi.

Dichi turned her head and saw Zhou Yun’s lion-like face nodding slightly at her from afar,

she knew this meant the gene-thief leader’s life had been claimed.

A cruel smile curled on Dichi’s lips; she seized the last moment to sever another pure-blood gene-thief’s head,

then, with her sisters beside her, she dissolved into shadows and vanished between the alleyways.

Old One-Eye wore a fiber vest beneath a bulletproof armor, hiding behind factory pipes,

beside him were the members of the Ark Gang—or rather, now they should be called the Ark Gang’s soldiers,

these boys wore PDF standard-issue gear and carried various weapons forged by the Agrippina Foundry, yet they had only received about a month of training, barely competent on the battlefield, still clumsy and unpolished,

but fortunately, they possessed greater combat will than the PDF,

they believed in the Emperor and understood that fighting these blasphemous xenos meant protecting their homes and lives,

compounded by Leina’s extraordinarily effective propaganda and speeches—Old One-Eye suspected they were laced with psychic energy—these boys fought with fearless ferocity, far superior to the PDF’s trash, raised by the Viceroy to fire two shots and call it a day.

Augustus Flax refused to redeploy the PDF, insisting they remain as his personal bodyguards,

for decades, the PDF had barely engaged in real combat; even with good equipment and training, their combat will and battlefield capability had inevitably deteriorated,

Old One-Eye had returned to the Underhive twice and, seeing the current PDF, couldn’t help but shake his head in disgust,

whereas these Ark Gang boys were growing more and more satisfying to him.

“Commander!”

an Ark Gang member clutching an Agrippina Type-III assault rifle shouted,

“The sneaky bastards are charging! Just as you predicted!”

Old One-Eye’s lips curled into a smile,

he knew the gene-thieves inside this factory had nearly exhausted their ammunition and supplies,

their current charge was merely a desperate, futile lunge,

!.read

Indeed,

after Zhou Yun and the others eliminated the gene-thief leaders,

these blasphemous xenos, though still fighting with near-immunity to death, had seen their tactical and strategic capabilities plummet, with almost no coordination between them,

they had become little more than scattered rabble, fighting no better than street gang thugs from the Underhive.

“Net it.”

Old One-Eye tossed away his LHO cigarette and charged forward with the Ark Gang members beside him.

Blood began to flood the factory—this time, mostly from the gene-thieves.

“The fourth major district’s gene-thieves have been cleared; their last stronghold has been eradicated.”

In the Ark Gang’s base, Leina’s lips curved in a smile,

“I hope, before the Feast of Saint Guilliman, we can reclaim another major district.”

Since Zhou Yun, Dichi, and she successfully assassinated the gene-thief leaders,

the tide of battle had indeed begun to turn,

aside from a few elite gene-thief units, most of the sneaky bastards had become disorganized, uncoordinated rabble,

while the Ark Gang members, meticulously honed by Old One-Eye, had grown increasingly skilled in combat,

overall, the advantage was steadily shifting toward the Ark Gang; one by one, gene-thief strongholds across the districts were being eradicated,

of course, in the frontline zones, the gene-thieves’ elite units still possessed considerable strength,

many pure-blood gene-thieves had begun appearing on the battlefield,

they still clung to several major districts centered around the Garbage Mounds, continuously harassing others,

the entire Underhive was engulfed in war.

Zhou Yun sat beside Leina, fiddling with the red cane in his hand,

calculating the time, confirming that now, Fedia City faced away from the Crimson Star of the Underworld System, toward the galaxy’s outer reaches,

recently, at this hour nearly every day, he performed his own test.

“Leviathan Hive Fleet,” Zhou Yun said to the red cane.

The cane tilted sharply, pointing skyward,

this time, the angle of tilt was far smaller than yesterday—the Leviathan Hive Fleet was drawing nearer.

Tophive,

before the grand landing field of the Viceroy’s Palace,

rows of PDF soldiers stood in solemn formation, clad in polished armor, like statues erected before the landing field,

despite decades of neglect, having allowed the Underhive to descend into chaos,

these PDF troops still adhered to daily drills under the Viceroy’s near-tyrannical demands,

making them exceptionally skilled at standing guard, marching, and radiating authority,

a visually imposing Planetary Defense Force gave Viceroy Augustus Flax a sense of security.

Augustus Flax, controlling a servitor nearly identical to his own appearance, stood at the center of the PDF, scanning the empty landing field with suspicion and paranoia,

all ships around the landing field had been cleared away, reserved solely to welcome the imminent arrival.

That one had come by order of the High Lords of Terra,

reportedly, the High Lords of Terra had, unusually, avoided bickering and swiftly passed a unanimous resolution.

To mobilize all military forces near the Underworld System in support of the Underworld System.

According to intelligence already known to Augustus Flax,

two years ago, the Vitria System had lost contact, emitting only a faint distress astropathic signal,

this signal was received by the Eleventh Storm Legion, “Capek’s Eagles”; their commander, Storm Lord Uther Abraxas, led the Punishment Starship to investigate Vitria, and discovered the entire system had been consumed by the Tyranids,

after losing an arm, Uther Abraxas sent a warning to Terra:

“The Leviathan Hive Fleet is advancing; their next target is the Underworld System.”

Two years later, this message reached the High Lords of Terra via the Ordo Xenos,

fortunately, the High Lords understood the significance of the Underworld Shield,

the system’s greatest value lay in its role as the bulwark protecting the Bal System, where the Archangel’s homeworld and the Blood Angels’ motherworld resided.

For any reason, the High Lords could not stand idly by as the Underworld System fell and Bal was attacked by the Tyranids.

After resolving more pressing matters, the High Lords, unusually, passed the resolution unanimously,

to hold the Leviathan Hive Fleet at bay in the Underworld System until stronger defenses could be assembled on Bal.

Finally, after frantic haste, Imperial reinforcements arrived in the Underworld System just before the Leviathan Hive Fleet’s arrival.

Augustus Flax stood here, waiting to transfer his authority to the Astra Militarum commander.

According to what Augustus Flax knew,

the Astra Militarum force arriving in the Underworld System numbered roughly three million, but which specific unit it was, Augustus Flax could not know.

Augustus Flax steadied his mind,

authority would certainly be transferred, but he had no intention of handing over the PDF,

after all, he still needed the PDF to protect his crypt and his own safety.

Tiberius and Zhou Yun could come for him at any moment.

Thinking of Zhou Yun, Augustus Flax’s lips twitched slightly,

he attempted to contact the Inquisitor of Luxi,

but the news was that the Viceroy of Luxi was suspected of having defected to the gene-thieves,

yet the Inquisitor ignored even that, plunging headlong into investigating some Salt Goddess of the Tides,

even the Battle Sister Magda Grace of the Holy Rose Convent had been taken away by him.

Augustus Flax’s expression darkened; now it seemed he could only counter Zhou Yun by targeting the Astra Militarum commander.

As Augustus Flax pondered,

a hurricane surged across the landing field, parting the clouds above,

a gunship painted in dark green slowly emerged from the sky, its surface scarred by countless battles,

alongside it appeared two more gunships—Valkyries armed with Hellstrike Missiles—forming a squadron in the heavens,

Valkyrie gunships, Wings of the Emperor,

Augustus Flax thought, composed,

the dark green paint bore the scars of time.

But it was impossible to tell which unit of the Star Guard this was—nearly all Star Guard units imitating the Cadillians used this paint scheme.

The Valkyrie gunship landed slowly on the landing pad; its hatch opened, and a group of Star Guard infantry in dark green armor poured out.

They swiftly formed a line in front of the Valkyrie.

At first glance, their equipment looked even less refined than the Viceroy’s PDF forces, nearly all bearing the scars of war.

Yet Augustus Flax could not help but straighten his spine, daring not to harbor even a shred of contempt for these warriors.

Their eyes carried a faint purple hue.

This was a mutation that, in the Empire, would normally be a mark of scorn.

But now, such purple eyes nearly signified that one was among the finest of the Star Guard.

Purple eyes were a genetic mutation unique to the Cadillians.

The Star Guard arriving in the Underworld System were none other than the famed Cadia Shock Troops.

Augustus Flax was momentarily stunned, for he knew that the fortress world of Cadia itself was currently under attack.

A commander stepped down from the gunship.

He was in his fifties, an old veteran, his graying hair cropped short against his scalp.

Beneath the short hair, one eye had been replaced with a crimson mechanical ocular, the other a deep, unmistakable Cadillian purple.

The commander marched forward with the powerful, disciplined stride forged by rigorous training, and in an instant stood before Augustus Flax.

Before this commander, Augustus Flax felt himself become utterly insignificant.

“Meylon Drost.”

The Star Guard commander introduced himself:

“In the name of the Emperor, by order of the High Lords of Terra, I bring three million Cadia Shock Troops and the Vostroyan Firstborn to reinforce the Underworld System.”

“Per the High Lords’ command, I assume full ground command authority over your planet.”

“May your world stand firm, as Cadia does.”

This chapter is six thousand words—back to normal update length. Starting tomorrow, I’ll make up the missed posts. I’d planned to start today, but traffic jammed on the road (this is how it is in Jinan), and I didn’t get home until around four.

(End of chapter)