Chapter 328: Nurgle: Heheheh! Soup's on!

Zhou Yun did not know how to describe the thing before his eyes,

It was flesh, it was flourishing life, it was life that endlessly grew and rotted, rotted yet never died,

Fat, pus, maggots, and rotting plants piled together to form its body; it was never a single entity, it was all life and all rot, it was the path of entropy that all things must pass through on their way to their fated end, it was the accumulation of all things rotten,

It was so hideous and ulcerous, yet divinity was born from within; Nurgle's daemons crawled merrily out of every pustule and fold, their bloated bellies dangling with filthy stomachs that oozed thick fluid, maggots in the pus swelled into housefly-sized boulders that swirled above the brow of that divine figure, forming a ring of dark clouds,

And then all of this, all that was born from within It, swiftly rotted away, becoming part of the decay that piled up to form Its body, and gave rise to new life once more,

Zhou Yun saw it, he saw with absolute clarity the divinity of the Father, and understood the divinity of the Father,

Life is born from rot, and rots again through plague; rot is not death, rot is endless reincarnation, is unending renewal,

All beings must rot, and in rotting must die, and death returns to meaninglessness—this is the fated end,

But Nurgle refused; from rot He discovered the cycle, He bestowed upon all beings the gift of rotting yet not dying, drawing meaning from decay,

So it is, the process of birth and creation itself contains decay and destruction; today's palace is tomorrow's ruin, the maiden of dawn is the crone of night, a moment of hope is an eternal regret,

But ruins will be rebuilt into palaces, when the sun rises the crone's child is a new maiden, and within eternal regret there is always a moment of hope—meaning lies within,

This is His divinity, His existence, His gentleness and kindness, His love.

Zhou Yun's eyes went wide, receiving the boundless meaning emanating from the Father's vast body; the meaning and existence accumulated through endless cycles was so immense that an ordinary mortal would likely burst apart at a single glance, and even an Astartes could not directly gaze upon this sacred form,

As for fully understanding Nurgle—no such being exists in the mortal world.

But Zhou Yun's consciousness kept trying to understand the Father's existence; he. He had never felt his mind so clear before, and in the process of understanding the Father's existence, He faintly felt he had seen something more clearly, understood more of the Warp and his own original nature,

Faintly, Zhou Yun heard some voices praying to him—four kinds of prayers swirled at his ears

Slimux tumbled off his snail in terror, staring in fright at Zhou Yun, who stood atop the snail Mause,

Zhou Yun's body seemed to grow immensely vast, and in an instant Slimux seemed to see a blue raccoon cat standing between the heavens and earth of the entire Garden of Nurgle,

The raccoon cat's entire body seemed to be made of blue flames, burning fiercely yet indistinct and hazy, its gaze carrying a growing clarity as it stared at the Father,

A deathly still, destructive, icy, soulless death rippled out from the raccoon cat, but after it surged forth a pure white, blissful, joyous, brand-new rebirth,

The raccoon cat and the Father stood facing each other,

One blue, one green; rebirth from death, birth from rot—two similar yet seemingly entirely opposite concepts crashed against each other,

The Nurglings in the Garden of Nurgle shrieked in terror, piling together and hiding behind the Great Mouth Tree, but the Great Mouth Tree was also badly frightened, pulling out its roots and ducking behind the Nurglings instead,

Rain Father. Roghtos squalled in panic, dug a great pit in the ground, and shoved its own head into it,

Ku'gath stopped his work, staring dumbfounded at the scene unfolding in the Warp,

Typhus, who was butterfly-stroking in a cesspit, was so startled his body seized up, and he sank uncontrollably into the sea of filth and excrement,

In the Gao Ta of the Plague Star, Mortarion—his moth-wings removed—sat at a desk writing furiously, calculating the intersections and meanings between the sacred numbers, searching for the secret and meaning behind the resurrection of Ji Li Man and Saint Gulliman,

Numbers danced across the paper before him, and his plain handwriting gradually revealed to him the meaning of fate,

"The Legion's sequence is the order of our birth; this number itself contains fate and guidance, just as my Legion is the Fourteenth Legion—the doubled sacred number of the Father, destined to return to His embrace."

"Ji Li Man's thirteen, Saint Gulliman's nine"

The numbers revealed extraordinary meaning to Mortarion; thirteen and nine merged on the paper, presenting a sacred number never seen before,

"Twenty-two—the being who resurrects Ji Li Man and Saint Gulliman has twenty-two as the sacred number!"

Mortarion was pleased with the result of his calculations,

When the course of fate changed, Angron remained ignorant, Fulgrim could only show his arrogant face, Magnus was lost in superstition and mysticism,

Only he sought truth from matter and numbers, finding truth in objective things outside the mind, and through numerology he glimpsed a fragment of truth,

Truth obtained through reason and analysis! Not through superstition and mysticism!

More truths appeared before Mortarion as the numbers unfolded; he saw the deeper core of the sacred number twenty-two, saw the arrival of five brand-new Greater Daemons, saw four utterly different voices of prayer, saw threefold divinity, and the service of two daemon primarchs.

Number connected with number, and Mortarion suddenly raised his head,

"The sacred number twenty-two intersects with the sacred number seven? The being who resurrects Ji Li Man and Saint Gulliman is currently visiting the Father's domain?"

Mortarion looked up in surprise, then his gaze turned toward the distant Garden of Nurgle,

He too saw the two towering figures—one blue, one green—standing in the depths of the Garden of Nurgle.

Zhou Yun took a deep breath, clutched his head, and listened to the prayers at his ears,

The first was the prayer of humans, praying to him in various pitches of Gothic,

The second was a prayer as melodious and clear as song, in some ancient tongue—Zhou Yun recognized it as Aeldari prophecy,

The third was a prayer like the whisper of the dead, cold and dry, like the sound produced by mechanical vibration,

The fourth was disordered and chaotic, like the chirping of insects and beasts, containing no linguistic element at all,

His will settled slightly, the scene before his eyes stopped swaying, and the vast information about the Father's divinity ceased flooding into his mind and consciousness,

This was not because Zhou Yun had fully understood Nurgle's existence, but because more information about Nurgle's divinity was deemed harmful by the Adaptation Lamp and adapted away.

The form of Nurgle before Zhou Yun's eyes ceased changing further, and instead settled into a writhing, rotting mountain of unclean flesh, looking like the Nurglings puls. pro. max. ulter16g+1tb version,

"You seem to have recognized yourself a little! That's wonderful!" Nurgle's voice said joyfully.

By observing the Father and drawing an analogy to himself, Zhou Yun gained a slight recognition of his own destiny,

He perceived that in the future he would be worshipped by many, many people or non-people, mainly from four races,

Humans, Aeldari, and two others not yet identified—Zhou Yun's expression turned a little odd, for he had actually somewhat distinguished which two races those prayers came from,

But those two races theoretically should not produce any echo of faith toward any Warp god.

"Hehehehah, perhaps I can pass on a little experience as a senior."

Nurgle noticed Zhou Yun thinking, and said with a chuckling laugh:

"Sometimes don't deliberately pursue; our existence is like a great tree wrapped within a seed—let it be, and it will take root and sprout naturally."

The corner of Zhou Yun's mouth twitched,

He wanted somewhat to retort Nurgle's words—not that he wanted to refute the seed theory, but—

"I am not a god, I am not the same as you." Zhou Yun said seriously to Nurgle.

After observing even a sliver of Nurgle's divinity, Zhou Yun broke out in an even colder sweat,

No way! I absolutely refuse to turn into something like that!

Let Hua Di Huang be the god or whatever!

"I understand! I understand!" Nurgle chuckled and said: "Your species is always like this."

"But you have such a good temperament, willing to listen to me ramble. The other four completely refuse to hear me speak."

The Plaguefather patted his belly, his face full of joy, seemingly genuinely happy because Zhou Yun was willing to communicate with Him,

Even looking like the expression of an old man who had lived alone for many years suddenly seeing a friend visit,

"I thought you were like those other four, unwilling to come visit me here."

Saying so, Nurgle turned his head with a smile, leading Zhou Yun forward toward the black manor:

"Clearly they have a lot of worries, and I know exactly how to handle them!"

"Although people always say Tzeentch is the wisest, actually, although I'm not as clever as Him, I've existed the longest, and in this world only the tiniest bacteria, fungi, and viruses can see everything.."

Walking along, Nurgle prattled on at Zhou Yun:

"For example, for example, that little Vashtorr whose domain overlaps with yours — the ancient weapon He's seeking, I actually roughly know its location."

"And also, your Lord of Mankind, He wants to build the Webway, right? I still remember where the Webway boring machine was placed back then."

"And also, and also, that little Ji Li Man wants to cure his brothers — actually I can do it!"

"I don't know why everyone is unwilling to come visit me here."

"Hm?" Zhou Yun was listening with great interest to Nurgle prattling on about some very ancient matters, when he suddenly felt a gaze,

That gaze felt somewhat familiar to him, but this familiarity didn't come from himself, but from the Aeldari Pantheon?

Zhou Yun slightly raised his head, looking toward a room high up in the black manor, and felt a gentle gaze coming from there.

"Come quick!! Come quick!! Hehehe! The soup is here!"

Before Zhou Yun's gaze could linger up there for long, he heard Nurgle's urgent voice.

"This is a soup I hastily brewed on the spur of the moment, a bit rushed, a little thin, with only a mere two thousand two hundred-plus kinds of bacteria."

"I hope you won't dislike it!"

(End of this chapter)