How can a retired savior be considered retired if his price drops to 40,000?

Chapter 327: I don’t recommend that you scare yourself

"Allow me to ask you one more question: Have you sent anyone to the Cathedral of Baal?" Hastings, who had finally managed to escape from the inspection of the Grey Knights, said to Inquisitor Marlan.

Such a detailed examination was not pleasant, even for a psychic inquisitor who had been accustomed to enduring all kinds of pain since his youth. Hastings felt that his entire soul had been turned upside down, and his thoughts seemed to have been completely scattered and then hastily gathered together again, with a bit of intermittent confusion. His head was splitting, and his internal organs were churning - obviously, the Grey Knight had no intention of being polite to him. If he had not done quite a few enhancements on himself in the first half of his life, which allowed him to stay as awake as possible in extreme situations where ordinary people would lose consciousness, he would probably have fainted by now.

However, his poor physical condition did not hinder his sharpness in his work. Even though Marlan was an experienced Lord Inquisitor, Hastings still caught a tiny sign through his psychic senses the moment he finished speaking: an emotional fluctuation as slight as a breath that could be easily ignored. This was enough for him, and he had enough confidence to make further additions before the other party opened his mouth to give an answer:

"If you do, you'd better answer 'yes'. That way, you can still recover the agents you sent out in a relatively intact condition."

Hastings admitted that after such an incident, he was somewhat resentful, so his words were naturally aggressive. Even Marlan, the Lord Inquisitor who would first consider the strategy of peace and tranquility when dealing with the current situation, felt unhappy when faced with such words.

"Is this a threat?" She raised her brows, causing the wrinkles on her forehead to pile up like waves.

"It depends on how you interpret it." Hastings said unhappily. This tone was probably to cover up his current weak state as much as possible. "Since the agent is still alive and has not been investigated yet, but has been detained, you can get him back under your command with just one word. I suggest you understand this as a gesture of goodwill - if the agent who unfortunately ran into Chaldea is indeed working under your command."

"Then I will answer 'yes'." Malan replied unhappily. After all, it takes a lot of resources and time to train a useful spy agent. As a lord judge, she is indeed qualified to waste these precious consumables like mud and sand in the mission, but she will not choose to give up when she can simply recycle one of them.

Of course, a more ruthless Inquisitor would choose to burn their brains remotely to prevent possible enemies from reading any information from the corpses that would be detrimental to themselves or their missions. But Malan was not inclined to such a ruthless approach. On her own ship, she was already prestigious enough, so she preferred to base her rule over her subordinates on love and loyalty rather than fear and coercion.

"But I still don't think this is a 'goodwill gesture'." The Lord Inquisitor said, "You should know that if the one who went through this was one of our colleagues with a worse temper, the person in question might have regarded this as a provocation."

"Then I have to express my regret for the overly self-centered and arrogant temperament of this virtual 'colleague' you created." Hastings shrugged, "You also know what we usually do when we catch uninvited intruders. Considering that your agent is still in a relatively intact state, I think this fully demonstrates how much 'leniency' Chaldea has for the parallel departments of the Empire that are also loyal to the Emperor."

Malan instinctively wanted to refute, but when she opened her mouth, she realized that what the other party said was indeed irrefutable - if it were her, even if she didn't immediately execute the insect that sneaked in, she would immediately drag the other party to the torture room to investigate. Therefore, she uttered some meaningless mutters unwillingly, and then reluctantly said: "Maybe so."

"Thank you for understanding this." Hastings said expressionlessly, "Please allow me to contact the ground briefly about this. And I have absolutely no objection to your investigation in such a perfunctory manner."

As a lord judge who has been active around Terra for a long time, Malan certainly understood that the other party was expressing his "strong opinion". However, considering that the two positions were reversed and she put herself in his shoes, Malan also believed that she would be angry, so she would not have any unnecessary thoughts about this already restrained emotional expression.

This flexible way of thinking from other people's perspectives and relatively stable emotional response may be the reason why she was selected and asked to take on this task. She sighed and acquiesced to the other party's contact with the Shadow Hammer, which was still under his control, to send the information to the ground - although originally, Hastings's words were not essentially a request, but a notification. Malan observed the latter performing these operations with an inquiring look until they were finished, and then asked:
"If I understand correctly, does this mean that Chaldea has exercised restraint in matters involving the Inquisition, or not just the Inquisition, but all other parallel institutions of the Empire?"

Hastings used all his strength to drive his brain, which was almost turned into mush by the Grey Knight's psychic energy, and briefly analyzed the other party's intention in asking this question. Because of his poor condition, he failed to successfully grasp the other party's thoughts in the first time, and could only give a stable answer as much as possible: "As the mistress of Chaldea, although I know this is impossible, Fujimaru Ritsuka still hopes to complete her mission without disturbing the local and parallel organizations as much as possible."

Malan was noncommittal: "But judging from the current reality, she doesn't seem to be very successful."

"The roof doesn't move, and the rain will always fall on it." Hastings refuted with an Ultramar proverb, "If Wilchak or you can be less curious and stop stretching your hands so long, and let Chaldea do their job quietly, then we can all save a lot of trouble."

"You should understand your duty. You are also an inquisitor, Lord Hastings." Marlan pointed out, "Our duty is to doubt everything and eliminate all people, things and objects that may pose a threat to the empire in a simple and efficient way. Trust is a luxury poison to us. The only one we can trust is ourselves."

"But sometimes, we may find that the knowledge, common sense, rules and logic we have spent our entire lives building will collapse in an instant, and we can't even trust our own experience." Hastings smiled bitterly, "I sincerely hope that you will not experience such a decisive moment, but in my opinion, from the moment you approached Chaldea, or Fujimaru Ritsuka, voluntarily or forcibly, you have been on the countdown to this end."

He paused, then added, "It's the same with Brother Captain Stern. In fact, perhaps he completely changed his mind earlier than you did."

Malan cast a suspicious look: "It sounds like you suffered a great blow during your time in Chaldea."

"That's true, but it's a 'good' blow." Hastings understood what the other party wanted to point out and said, "The series of events I experienced did almost destroy all my experience, but... at least now it seems that the results of these things are not bad, so it's still acceptable." After all, it is almost impossible for any psychic to survive after facing the Lord of Change directly - even a small projection. This is not the first "unreasonable" thing Hastings has encountered since boarding the Storm's Edge, but it is undoubtedly the most shocking one.

Its impact in terms of "irrationality" was so strong that even the Grey Knights refused to believe its authenticity.
-

This was not the first time that Lanmalok had watched a psychic ritual at close range, but the sight still amazed him.

The psychic rituals led by the Blood Angels were significantly different from those led by Fujimaru Ritsuka. Lanmarok was not sure whether this was due to the different schools or the different functions that needed to be achieved. His intuitive feeling was that, judging only by the preparations beforehand, the Blood Angels were obviously more fancy in this stage.

After Lanmarok led them to the temporary morgue, Joscelius and the two recorders he brought with him immediately became a chief priest and two assistant priests. After a brief instruction, the two recorders took out small items such as animal bones, incense burners, chalks, and candles from their pockets, drew a simple diagram at the designated location, and laid out the style of a simple altar. The smoke from the incense burner slowly drifted out, and Lanmarok smelled a smell similar to blood. The analysis equipment on the power armor reported to him that these drifting spices contained a certain amount of hallucinogenic ingredients.

Even though she was confident that she would not be knocked down by this disturbance, the Dark Angel silently switched the armor's air circulation system to internal circulation. Fujimaru Ritsuka also lit incense during the large-scale ceremony that she had to lead, but she admitted that it was just an atmosphere group that didn't matter whether it was there or not. The reason she did that was just because she felt that smelling that scent would make her feel calmer and therefore easier to concentrate.

But now, Lanmalok strongly suspected that the smoke had a real meaning in the rituals of the Blood Angels Librarians here.

One of the recorders removed the gauntlet for Jorgeselius, while another held the incense burner so that the smoke from it could cover the space above the charred head of Trolipo. The chief priest, the Librarian, muttered something, holding a ritual knife in one hand, and while emitting blue psychic light from his eyes again, he stabbed his other hand, which had taken off the gauntlet, and let his blood drip next to the corpse.

The wound he inflicted on himself naturally and quickly formed blood scabs after the knife was pulled out, but the blood that left his body, contrary to the physiological characteristics of Astartes, maintained quite good fluidity for dozens of seconds. They did not quickly form blood clots in mid-air, but fell to the ground in liquid form under the careful guidance of psychic energy, smearing a red line - then, accompanied by the low chanting of Joselius, something happened.

Something did happen, but Lanmarok was not sure what happened. This might be because he lacked relevant knowledge, or it might be because he was relatively insensitive to things behind the curtain that could not be measured with common sense. He only felt that the temperature around him dropped significantly, heard some vague and strange noises that seemed to come from far away, and saw the smoke from the incense burner began to flow like a long snake in an absolutely unnatural way, as if it was twisted into some strange, but unclear pattern. Apart from that, he did not feel anything else.

But for Joscelius, this was obviously not the case. The old Librarian took a while to break free from the trance brought by psychic energy. He shuddered, exhaled slowly, and then said hoarsely: "Shock, pain, betrayal, regret."

He paused for a moment before explaining these words that popped out of thin air: "The Archbishop's death was obviously also interfered with by psychic energy. Even though I tried to read his last echoes from the warp before his death with a ritual, I could only roughly read these deepest emotions."

The two recorders did not question this conclusion, but Lanmalok, as a layman, was different - to be honest, he was a little disappointed.

"Is this all we can know?" He struggled to ask from the perspective of a person who only knew how to use materialistic methods to investigate. "To be honest, just knowing what the archbishop was thinking before he died is not much help to us."

"Psychic power is a very delicate subject!" Ruo Heselius did not like being questioned, especially by a layman. "There are many vague hints and omens, which require more information to verify each other! I don't have so much time to explain them one by one to someone who doesn't even know how to maintain respect."

Lanmalok was of course very unhappy to be criticized like this, but in order to allow the investigation to continue, he chose to stand there angrily and remain silent. He watched as Joscelius and his assistants changed positions and performed the previous ritual again in front of the body of "Confessor" Conte - this time, even Lanmalok, who had almost no inspiration for the warp, clearly saw the difference between the two rituals:
The smoke from the incense burner gathered into a clear human shape above Kong Tai's body, and began to move on its own. Lanmarok stared at it for a while and realized that the little man who was almost just pacing in circles was actually reproducing Kong Tai's actions in the recent period before his death.

Perhaps this is what this ritual should be like. At least after a few minutes, after finishing it smoothly, Joscelius let out a sigh of exhaustion and satisfaction. Lanmarok deduced from this that no matter what the result was, at least he was sure to find something in this ritual.

"How is it?" The Dark Angel asked shamelessly, earning an unhappy glance from the Blood Angels Librarian under his psychic hood. But perhaps because the success of the second ritual brought him back to a good mood, Joscelius decided to explain:
"The death of 'Confessor' Conte was entirely of his own will." He said the answer that the echo of the warp told him. "After returning to the room, he felt shocked and terrified, but most importantly, he questioned his own beliefs. From the subjective point of view of the person involved, he was loyal to the Emperor from beginning to end, but in the last moments of his life, he began to question whether his loyalty was real and whether he had been used by others. The seeds of doubt grew rapidly in his heart, and in a short moment they became branches and leaves. So, he finally made the decision to hang himself, so as to prevent his possibly impure beliefs from causing greater damage - even if this was against the doctrine of the state religion."

Lanmarok listened to this discussion carefully. He understood every sentence in it, but when they were put together, they showed a logic that he could not understand: if he might have made a mistake in the past without knowing it, he should immediately start to find a way to make up for it, instead of just scaring himself until he decided to scare himself to death.

After a short moment of reflection, he decided not to comment on this matter that he did not understand, but instead turned to ask another possible breakthrough: "So, what did he do to cause him to begin to question his beliefs and loyalty?"

Joscelius's gaze shifted to Trolipo's charred body again: "I'll have to ask our Archbishop about this."

(End of this chapter)