The Emperor’s Angel of Death

After making the guess that Li was responsible for the destruction of the Venomthorn Chapter, more questions immediately arose in Sozhyang's mind. What was Li's purpose in doing this?

Was it to cover for the Astral Knights and White Templars?

Unlikely.

And did Pew ever discover the Eleventh Legion's bloodline? What did he think of the Chaplain's actions at the time? There are quite a few Imperial Fists successor Chapters with unclear bloodlines. As long as a lost Legion's bloodline isn't exposed, it's not really a problem. The Venomthorn Chapter itself was only discovered after the fact.

But with Pew's death, probably no one can answer these questions anymore, or rather, only one person can answer—

Li!

This Primarch 'brother,' shrouded in mystery and with a very strange stance, had always been elusive to Sozhyang. Now, a series of Li's covert actions made Sozhyang more vigilant. He felt that there was some unknown plan involved.

"After escaping, what have you been doing?"

"To evade possible pursuit by the Imperial Fists, we hid in the Ghoul Stars. Fortunately, Mr. Li had already prepared a temporary base for us. While we were recuperating, we tried to obtain information about the Legion. Mr. Li provided us with information bit by bit. We learned that the Astral Knights and White Templars were also our blood relatives, and we also learned that you are the current Chapter Master. We wanted to find you a long time ago, but Mr. Li said the time wasn't right. If we showed up, it would easily arouse the suspicion of the Imperial Fists. After all, while Pew was still alive, we kept trying to replenish our ranks, but the lack of gene-seed made it inefficient. Moreover, the Ghoul Stars are not a safe place. The supplies provided by Mr. Li were only enough to deal with emergencies. We had to find our own way to solve our survival problems. This caused us to clash with alien forces or Chaos warbands from time to time. The number of brothers we lost even exceeded the number of new recruits we added. We originally had 264 brothers, now only 221 remain."

After listening, Sozhyang seized on a crucial question.

"Who notified you that you could come and find me?"

"Mr. Li's follower. He told us that Pew was dead, and no one in the Imperial Fists knew about this anymore. We could return to the Legion."

"Li's follower? Are you sure?"

Sozhyang asked, and Tekshar was stunned. After thinking for a while, he replied:

"I haven't actually seen that person, but he was able to find us, and we were very eager to reunite with our brothers, so we didn't ask about his identity in detail."

Sozhyang walked back and forth, calculating in his mind.

First of all, several points can be deduced from this:

The Imperial Fists high-ranking officials like Pew most likely did not know about the existence of the Eleventh Legion.

Li had at least one dose of Grey髄 in his hands.

The tragedy of the Venomthorn Chapter was most likely orchestrated by Li.

The person who asked the Venomthorn Chapter to come and find him may not have been Li's man. Besides Li, the only organization Sozhyang could think of was the Makado organization, because only they had the ability to continuously monitor this mysterious Li over such a long period.

Combining all of this, things became strange.

What was Li's purpose in creating the Venomthorn Chapter's tragedy? What was the purpose of the person who notified the Venomthorn Chapter to come and find him? Also, are Tekshar and the others telling the whole truth?

But Sozhyang already had some vague guesses in his mind. At least based on the situation of the conversation just now, these people had a deep-seated hatred for the Imperial Fists. Then Sozhyang remembered something—

When he was looking up information before, he saw that Belisarius, the Chaplain of the Imperial Fists, was finally killed in a battle against the Orks. It seemed that Iron Warriors Chaos Space Marines and other Chaos warbands were also involved in that battle. Their goal was very clear. They went straight for the 2nd Company of the Imperial Fists at the time, which was also the company Belisarius was in. After killing the Chaplain, the traitors dismembered the Chaplain's body and cut off his head.

Sozhyang suddenly looked at the skull pierced by spikes behind Tekshar's armor.

"Tekshar, you killed Belisarius?"

Tekshar showed a cruel smile, then exhaled with a hiss.

"Yes, Chapter Master, we must avenge our dead brothers."

"So you chose to cooperate with the Iron Warriors traitors."

"No, we used them, and then we killed them all and plundered their equipment and supplies."

Sozhyang looked at this Tekshar, and he was more and more certain that this was the "trouble" that Makado's organization had found for him. These people had stained their hands with the blood of the Imperial Fists. Once their existence was exposed, Sozhyang would inevitably face questions and accusations from the Imperial Fists. This was what he least wanted to face—in any case, Lysander and Pew had helped him when the Chapter was at its most difficult.

But Tekshar and the others were, after all, the bloodline of the Legion, and their reasons for revenge could be regarded as legitimate. The entire 1st Company had also heard everything. As the Chapter Master, he could no longer ignore it.

What ruthless and vicious methods. This was simply a deadly dagger against his neck, reminding Sozhyang that they could destroy everything he had built at any time—

But from another perspective, these people were indeed a "burden" hidden by Li. Now that they suddenly appeared like this, Makado's organization was equivalent to opening this "package" in advance. Perhaps in addition to threats, there was also the meaning of help. After all, if they continued to exist in secret, it was really hard to say what would happen in the future.

This went back to the original question.

What exactly does Li want to do?

He always claimed that he represented Eldar and the Emperor, but Sozhyang always felt a sense of distance and alienation from this person. No matter how eloquent the other party was, some kind of instinct told him to stay away from this person and not to trust this person completely.

At this moment, he suddenly understood a sentence that Kayang once said—the most vicious demons come from the most vicious human hearts.

Is it that the human heart is like a demon, or is the demon like a human heart?

However, these two hundred people were, after all, blood relatives of the Legion. Although he knew that this was a hot potato, Sozhyang could not abandon it after all. It could only be said that some people really understood his psychology and grasped it very accurately.

He turned to look at the crowd and said in a deep voice:

"Let the past grievances be over. Let me introduce myself again. My name is Sozhyang Aleksey, Chapter Master of the Astral Knights, and also Acting Chapter Master of the Eleventh Legion, brothers of Simorgh—"

Saying that, Sozhyang opened his arms and solemnly shouted in a passionate and loud voice.

"Welcome home."

In an instant, all the warriors of the 1st Company also took off their helmets, and Maximillian took the lead in shouting.

"Welcome home!"

Welcome home!!

All the warriors of the 1st Company also shouted in unison. The warriors of the former Venomthorn Chapter also took off their helmets one after another. Some people even had tears in their eyes. After all, for hundreds of years, they had been wandering in the cracks, and sometimes they even had to associate with pirates and heretics. If Tekshar had not continuously used the Legion's actions as a banner to encourage everyone, it was likely that they would have become a group of scattered thugs like many fallen Chapters.