Chapter 384: The Blue Evil Cat Born Evil

Intense light filled every corner of this golden hall,

that scorching, that blazing, that thick radiance sweeping in, mingled with the silent wails of hundreds of thousands of psykers,

No,

not only the psykers',

in a single instant, Luo Bote Guilliman seemed to hear a million voices roaring, wailing, whispering, groaning, and weeping simultaneously in his ears,

those voices he could not hear clearly, every voice utterly distinct, every sentence contradicting the others, causing distress and unbearable irritation,

until the booming sound of the Eternal Gate closing rang out, and only then did Guilliman snap back from those cacophonous sounds, turning his gaze toward everything before him,

he saw that massive machine, as huge as an Emperor-class Titan, surrounded by piles of barbaric, wretched, complex, and chaotic machinery and cables,

Guilliman knew these cables and machines were merely the outermost parts of that terrifying machine, the products of ten thousand years of people constantly attempting to repair and maintain its operation; these were only the parts exposed above ground, like the portion of an iceberg visible above the water,

beneath the Wang Zuo Hall, the auxiliary parts of that terrifying machine might extend for dozens of kilometers,

and above the Wang Zuo Hall, these cables and machines climbed endlessly up a colossal machine resembling an Aztec-style Jin Zita,

scorching light emanated from the peak of the Jin Zita, as if a cruel sacrifice were being offered there to the Sun God, to the First Sun, to Tezcatlipoca, to the Smoking Mirror, to the Black Sun,

then, Guilliman saw the sacrifice of this ritual,

it was a withered skeleton, a dead king, a Emperor of the Nether Souls,

a mummy, a mummy without eyes staring at Luo Bote Guilliman,

in an instant, Guilliman doubted whether the entity sitting on the Wang Zuo had already died long ago,

"Emperor."

Guilliman spoke involuntarily, addressing the shadow of that former Master of Humanity, the savior who once walked among men, the remnant of the Golden One,

his tone carried intense sorrow, pain, and confusion, as if he could barely endure squeezing out that word:

"Father."

"We have come. What exactly do you want us to do?!"

Luo Bote Guilliman stepped forward first, questioning the mummy on the Wang Zuo.

Then, Guilliman regretted it,

that mummy, that thing that could hardly be called a living creature, or even necessarily a corpse, actually looked at Guilliman,

in almost an instant, Guilliman was certain that this thing was absolutely not the former Emperor, not even the remains left after the Emperor burned out,

"Son." He? It? Or It? spoke to Guilliman.

"Number Thirteen." It continued speaking.

"Lord of the Ultramarines."

"Demon Prince of Doraemon."

"Regent of the Second Empire."

"Redemption."

"Destruction."

"Hope."

"Disappointment."

"Full of lies."

"Ambitious."

"Thief."

"Traitor."

"Guilliman."

Thousands upon thousands of contradictory voices roared in Guilliman's ears,

He praised Guilliman, It cursed Guilliman,

He lauded Guilliman, It humiliated Guilliman,

He commended Guilliman, It condemned Guilliman,

He was gentle as a father, It was majestic as a monarch,

He was filled with emotion, It was cold and merciless.

"Son." "Not a son."

"Existence." "A tool."

"A name." "Not a name."

"A name, a tool, a product."

Guilliman was tormented by the emotions revealed in those words, those painful emotions.

Compared to Luo Bote Guilliman, Sanguinius saw far more,

he saw that withered, gray, purposeless corpse, that sacrificed corpse,

but Sanguinius also saw hanging above that corpse, within the Warp, that cold, dead, black sun,

this was a sacrifice lasting ten thousand years, a living sacrifice named the Emperor of Mankind offered to Itself, offered to that black sun reflecting the entire Warp, offered to that sun like obsidian reflecting death, extinction, and the end of all things,

the wind of the Eternal Long Night blew from the inevitable future, raging across Sanguinius's face, as if trying to carve hideous wounds into his soul,

but Sanguinius faced it head-on, gazing directly into the hollow eyes of that mummy.

"Son." He said.

"Number Nine." It said.

"Lord of Baal."

"Demon Prince of Doraemon."

"The Emperor of the Second Empire."

"Perfect."

"Flawed."

"Great Angel."

"Mutant."

"Death."

"Hope."

"Gold."

"Darkness."

"Sanguinor."

It said:

"Son."

"Tool."

"Chicken sauce?"

Those contradictory, abstract, distorted voices, like a choir of hundreds of millions singing in unison, kept washing over Sanguinor's will,

He saw the Emperor's power, saw all the sorrow, death, loss, failure, and agony, saw the latent potential that could rival every great power of Chaos,

". You've been led astray."

Sanguinor resisted the washing of that will, and with great difficulty managed to speak:

"Emperor." "Father." "Dry corpse." ". King of Darkness."

Through the connection between them, Zhou Yun could sense what both Guilliman and Sanguinor were seeing,

But what Zhou Yun saw was far more than the two of them combined,

That dry corpse on the throne was like a vast ocean, and the three of them were like containers,

Guilliman was like a washbasin, Sanguinor was like a reservoir — they were all peering through a tube, glimpsing the sun through a window, blind men feeling an elephant, seeing only a single feather of the whole,

But Zhou Yun saw the entire ocean, saw the truth beneath that remains, saw those blasphemous, distorted things

"Six arms, four legs, two divine emperors above." Zhou Yun cried out in astonishment.

The blasphemous degree of the phrase "six arms, four legs, two divine emperors" was far less than the blasphemous thing Zhou Yun now saw before his eyes,

That thing was born with a thousand arms, ten thousand hands, a hundred thousand broken bodies, hundreds of millions of skulls, as if the remains of everyone who had died ten thousand years ago had all been piled together in the ugliest, most self-destructive, darkest way,

They were all sacrifices, not just the Emperor — all of them were sacrifices,

From the distant past to the far shore of the future, everything that could be called human or derived from humans was a sacrifice,

The Emperor was merely the first sacrifice thrown out from the heart and offered to the King of Darkness, his son was the second, his father was the third, his father's brother was the fourth,

The Emperor personally killed his own son, and his son personally killed the Emperor,

The Emperor's father was killed by his uncle, and his uncle was personally killed by the Emperor.

Then came more, more, more — humans piled up like mountain ranges, piled up like a sea of stars,

All these humans had been sacrificed,

But just like those sacrifices on the Aztec pyramid who longed to be offered up, these humans also longed for it,

Their remains all reached their hands upward, stretching toward the black sun at the highest point,

They stretched out their hands, wanting to deliver this sun, to let him be born into the material universe,

That sun was the Emperor, was humanity, was the remains of the King of the Long Ages, was the King of Darkness.

Those hundreds of millions of remains twisted their bodies in unison, and with one motion turned their hollow eyes toward Zhou Yun,

The voices of hundreds of millions singing in unison rose in Zhou Yun's ears,

"A blue raccoon cat!"

".?" Zhou Yun was briefly stunned, then "A yellow weasel!" he immediately roared back.

But those remains seemed not to have heard Zhou Yun's roar; more voices, more mutually contradictory words poured from the mouths of different remains.

"Twenty-two!"

"Blue raccoon cat!"

"Stinkmouth!"

"Malicious craft!"

"Primordial motive force!"

"Greedy dissolution!"

"Eternal Dragon!"

"Corrosive destruction!"

"Death god of humanity and the Aeldari!"

"An innately evil blue childcare robot!"

These clamorous, disordered voices kept pouring into Zhou Yun's ears, shrill and piercing, impossible to distinguish:

"Zhou Yun!"

"Lion El'Jonson!"

"Brother Zhou Yun!"

"The evil god who corrupted Sanguinor and Guilliman!"

"The twenty-second century!"

"The trafficker who kidnaps demons!"

Countless streams of information surged out of Zhou Yun's mind,

too many, too chaotic, too tedious, as if they contained everything of billions of people within them,

the starving poor who died in the hive city, the peasants crushed under knightly iron boots, the maidens humiliated to death at noble banquets, the Hua Di Huang who played four-love games with Erdla, the Internal Affairs officials who suffered sudden death at their posts, the crewmen who perished alongside their warships, the Hua Di Huang who stole Ork-Peason sheep,

countless scenes echoed in Zhou Yun's mind,

Zhou Yun could not possibly sort out what those corpses were trying to express.

"What exactly do you want!"

Zhou Yun roared back at the dried corpse on the Wang Zuo:

"Huang Pizi! What is wrong with you right now!"

"My butt is so itchy!"

"My intercostal inflammation hurts so much!"

"My spinal disease is acting up!"

"Will sitting for long periods cause constipation?"

"Everything has failed!"

"Everything still has hope!"

"I really want to die."

"I still want to live."

"That fool Horus!"

"I forgive him!"

"Why must we suffer this agony?"

"Why not look at your own reasons for the failure of the Great Crusade?"

"Chaos and aliens killed your whole family? Maybe look at your own reasons, okay."

"God-Emperor! Please save us!"

"God-Emperor! We hate you."

"Blue Lynx! Dialogue! Dialogue!"

"Get out! Get out! Get out of my Wang Zuo Hall!"

"Do not leave! Save us!"

Death-like screams filled Zhou Yun's ears; these voices were on the verge of collapse,

but amidst these sounds, Zhou Yun heard a single, weary voice of a middle-aged man speaking Chinese, bearing a strange Central Asian accent,

"Dialogue! Dialogue! Dialogue!"

"Language! Blue Lynx! Language!"

"Prop! Prop! Eat it!"

"Translation! Dialogue! I want to speak!"

"Speaker!"

"Speaker! Speaker! Speaker!"

"You! Eat!"

"Speaker! Urgent! Urgent! Urgent!"

(End of this chapter)