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

"This is a necessary process." The archangel explained calmly, "You have been separated from your own soul and essence for too long. When you reunite, all the elements must be reintegrated together. In this process, you must strictly examine, analyze, face and understand all of yourself - past experiences, strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures. Only in this way can your body, mind and spirit be recast once again, and your 'completeness' will be a true completeness."

"These are idealistic tricks," Mortarion said angrily. "Our common father only wants to torture me with them."

"Then you are blaming him wrongly. You know that good medicine tastes bitter. Some rehabilitation treatments are indeed accompanied by intense pain." Sanguinius consoled him.

But in the next sentence of the Archangel, there seemed to be some unconcealable gloating emerging: "Besides, this is far from being called 'torture'."

Mortarion was alert. "What did you say?"

"I mean, it's only the beginning when you are truly whole again." Sanguinius's tone was so brisk that it seemed as if he was singing. "You don't think that the sins you have committed against the entire galaxy in the more than 10,000 years since the Heresy have been wiped out?"

The shining figure pointed in a direction, and Mortarion followed the other party's gesture and looked in that direction, or rather, he cast his currently limited perception in that direction -

——A road, in front of which any language seemed pale and powerless, appeared before his eyes.

The road was paved with blood and fire, plague and death, corruption and pain, the wailing of the innocent, and the curses of the dead. It represented the karma he had created. The road was wide and straight, without any cover, but even for the Primarch, it was endless. It looked stable, but Mortarion instinctively knew that as long as he dared to approach it, the souls or obsessions that suffered because of him would rush over and try to tear him to pieces.

"When you are whole again, you will be qualified to embark on this path; and when you have completed this path, you will be qualified to return to the physical universe as a Primarch, as the Emperor's son." Sanguinius said, "Of course, if you decide to embark on it now, it doesn't matter, but that would be no different from suicide. Hmm... or perhaps, this is also a way out? You decide for yourself."

Obviously, although the archangel appears to be friendly, it is only an appearance after all.

"You always said that you are the most tenacious brother among us. If you can't complete this trial, I think we can stop the rescue operation for the other rebellious brothers." Sanguinius said in a relaxed tone, "Fujimaru Ritsuka is a good man, and our father is a little too delusional to be tolerant of his son. If these two people unite and insist on doing this, I really can't persuade them. But if you fail here, I will have some new and more powerful evidence to refute this thankless plan."

He said nothing more, but Mortarion seemed to hear what followed: "I am looking forward to it."

"Don't be too stressed," Sanguinius continued, "We all know that it is difficult to accept yourself completely. If you fail here, no one will laugh at you. It is normal to think of death because of pain and despair. Although you and I are already dead, if you think that being torn to pieces by the victims of your crimes is a better ending, I will not say anything more about your decision."

Furious, Mortarion waved his arms at the golden light: "Go away! You birdman!"

It was only then that he realized that the limbs he was trying to control were a gray mist, and Sanguinius had already left the place with some kind of psychic power, laughing, and no one knew where he went.

Mortarion knew that the other party was deliberately provoking him, but there was indeed a raging rage growing from the regret, shame and fear in his heart, burning fiercely, once again igniting his desire to survive.

I will endure it, Mortarion thought bitterly.

I will endure all of this, and then, once I can get out of this damned place, I will find Sanguinius again and give that work of art a good punch.

-

After mobilizing all his strength in a fight to the death, the Lord of Plague paid a heavy price.

Judging from the results alone, He and some of His followers managed to survive. Nurgle's domain still exists and has not been wiped out from the endless chaos, but its power has inevitably shrunk a lot. The gods' beloved garden has become fragmented and desolate after a fierce battle.

As most of His Plague Fleet is currently heading to Ultramar, heading for a war where victory should be easy, the defense of His headquarters has been weakened. Otherwise, the Emperor's Vision, even if it is the Emperor's own masterpiece in war engines, should not be able to cause such serious damage to a god's Chaos Realm with just one ship.

But it was too late to regret now, the thing had already happened. Even though Nurgle had stirred up a warp storm in his deep grief and anger, he had almost succeeded in keeping the great warship in his own domain - unfortunately, it was still just a little short.

At the most critical moment, countless ravens flew out, covering the sky and the sun. No one knew where they came from, nor where they disappeared to. But they did completely block the unobstructed view between the sky and the earth in Nurgle's domain for about two seconds, and in these two crucial seconds, a warship larger than the Glorious Queen-class battleship disappeared out of thin air.

This was clearly some help from a third party, but the exhausted Nurgle had no time to distinguish who or what it was. The Plague God now only wanted to return to his ruined palace and cry in grief with his remaining children.

After this battle, He undoubtedly fell to the bottom of the Great Game rankings, and the plague ships that had been sent out probably had no hope of returning. This brought more problems: Although, apart from the gardens and palaces, His territory did not seem to have been greatly disturbed, it was only an appearance - soon, the fact that Nurgle's territory lacked defense power would be noticed by other players on the chessboard, and then they would swarm in like vultures and eat up those areas on the edge of His territory that were unable to be protected. This was a foreseeable tragic future.

The father returned to his palace in frustration, and was not surprised to find that all his servants were silent. He planned to return to his favorite small terrace to stay for a while, where the view was always the best. Although seeing the devastated garden now would only make him feel heartbroken, Nurgle thought it necessary to clearly record the loss this time.

——Then, He discovered something was wrong.

"Where is Isa?" His angry voice was like thunder. He no longer strolled through the palace with a sad heart, but appeared directly in his favorite room - the room where he originally kept the cauldron for cooking plague and imprisoned the Eldar Goddess of Life in a cage.

The cage had been opened, the prisoner had escaped. The room was empty, with traces of spells and psionic energy everywhere, and everything else had been burned, flooded, frozen, twisted - destroyed by various forms of energy.

Nurgle, deeply offended, cast his spell, but he soon discovered that all clues had been erased, all records destroyed, leaving no trace, whether in time and space, or in the records of possible life itself.

Amid the Plague God's angry and sorrowful roar, a tiny, colorful hummingbird feather slowly fell from the top of the cage.

The new chess player has received his first chess pieces.

Miu (no more)

Lying peacefully.jpg

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 124 is not the end, it is the blood pressure bureau

On the battlefield in the north of Tyros, everything was silent, the waves of the subspace returned to calm, and the physical rules of reality once again prevailed on this plain.

In this moment when the dust seemed to have settled, the white city and high walls that appeared out of thin air behind the battle line not long ago also collapsed and disappeared silently, and the girl standing on the top of the city fell from the air without knowing it. It was not that she had not made a plan in advance, but that she was unable to react now: if you look down from above, you can easily find that she had completely lost consciousness even before the city wall began to dissolve.

But she obviously wouldn't end up falling headfirst and dying in such a ridiculous way - there were so many people on the ground.

The man in white soared into the air, as if he had anticipated this scene, and caught the falling body of the girl in mid-air; Sigismund, who was a little further away from the crowd, slowly stood up from the ground, dragging his armor that was emitting black smoke and his burned spiritual base, and stumbling back to the team; the Imperial soldiers on the battlefield were still a little confused about the drastic changes in reality, until Robert Guilliman turned to them, holding up the Emperor's Sword and proclaiming victory, they seemed to have turned on a switch, celebrating the victory with shouts, screams and sobs; while everyone wanted to see the true face of the saint, the Ultramarines who had appeared from the Cursed Army gathered around their Primarch -

——This is undoubtedly a victory. Victory itself is worth celebrating, but it is not the end of everything.

Sparks were still flashing irregularly in the sky above Parmenio, the fleets in the void were still fighting, and other battlefields on the planet were still fighting. The soldiers of these distant empires would not understand why the Nurgle army had weakened significantly in the past period of time. They would not miss this obvious opportunity, but their battle would not end in a breath.

There were some black-painted Dark Angels wandering on the edge of the Ultramarine's ultramarine ocean. One of the two leading men had a broken hand, and the other had apparently picked up a blue helmet from the battlefield and put it on his head.

In the central area where these people could not go deep for the time being, Guilliman had a brief conversation with the man in white. Sigismund and Akultona, who had rejoined the team, also surrounded him and the girl in his arms.

Amid the cheers, the looks of these people remained serious, but no one tried to stop the celebration of the Astartes, Astra Militarum, Battle Sisters or other people present.

This is not a final victory, but it is a victory nonetheless. This victory can be celebrated because people need it.

We are still far from victory in this war, still far from the great achievements dreamed of by the emperor, and even further from the future of "five days work and two days off, reasonable wages, appropriate surplus, and the ability to entertain and travel safely." But this victory may indeed bring humanity a small step forward on the long road to such a future.

——He admitted that He also wanted to see such a future.

High in the sky, the undiscovered raven overlooked everything and witnessed everything. He flapped his wings in the thin air, and the sky in the highest heaven responded with turbulence following his wings. The dark raven feathers disappeared behind the curtain, and the screams and howls of the dead were immediately heard in the warp. The blue feathers and eyeballs with spiritual light and magic blood flew everywhere, and were restored to invisible ether in an instant. Then, some kind of behemoth, with the blessing of another technology, almost silently passed through the barrier of the curtain:

Broken, decrepit, damaged, stained, but still victorious, the Emperor's Vision cast a huge shadow on the plains of Parmenio.

-

"You see, I have a strong learning ability." Conrad Coates boasted leisurely.

If Fujimaru Ritsuka was here, he would undoubtedly get a comment similar to "Yeah, but you just don't learn well" - but unfortunately, she was not here. At this point in time, she was still in the virtual number of submarines rushing from the Tyros Cathedral to the northern battlefield, and at this moment, all the heirs around Curze would not refute him.

The coerced dark angels around him were angry but dared not say anything about his actions.

The Lion's Mane has now left the Imperial Fleet's formation - or surveillance, and is heading for Mandeville Point in the galaxy alone. If the calculations, navigation, and handling of the Plague Fleet are correct, the Galatan Star Fortress, which has slightly changed its course, will follow behind her: if everything that is about to happen goes well, then this behemoth will become a prison for the Night Lords; if not, then it will also be a deadly enough weapon for this mob fleet.

These orders seemed very ill-considered, but judging from the data transmission path and the relevant electronic seals, they were issued by the Imperial Regent. No one dared to question the Primarch's authority and precise thinking, and even though this series of instructions did not seem to be foolproof, out of trust in Robert Guilliman, they were still carried out without any compromise.

——But when this order was issued, the Imperial Regent himself was trapped in the warp battlefield along with a hundred-man guard. It was impossible for him to use his authority to issue any orders to the Lion's Mane at this point in time.

The man who did this was Conrad Coates.

Ten thousand years have passed, and the Empire's genetic testing technology has not improved much. Curze, in a good mood, sighed in his mind. Ten thousand years ago, he used a similar method to impersonate Lion El'Jonson on the Invincible Reason and forged an airdrop order; ten thousand years later, he successfully impersonated Robert Guilliman and used the seal and authority of the Imperial Regent.

- The Empire's genetic testing technology may be able to tell mortal twins apart, but it is still unable to tell the difference between Primarchs, even though the differences between them appear to be far more than those between twins.

Or perhaps, their physical genetic makeup is exactly the same, and the differences are caused by factors originating from the subspace?

Coze allowed this little conjecture to linger in his mind for a while. He knew that he was not good at this knowledge, and he was not obsessed with the answer to the question. After he was sure that he could not come up with an accurate answer, he let it go easily.

The Lion's Mane's navigators reported the large fleet approaching behind the veil, and the divination instruments began to show the signals reflected by the ships that first jumped out of Mandeville Point. Curze glanced at the time and was satisfied to find that everything that had happened so far was exactly in line with his predictions - whether it was the successful execution of his forged order or the time when his descendants' fleet jumped out of the warp ten thousand years later, everything was perfect.

This certainty gave him a slight satisfaction, but he still suppressed his desire to continue "looking back" and rejected all the illusions about the future that came to him. He stood up from his chair on the bridge, watched for a while the dots representing the ships projected on the screen by the divination instrument, and began to give orders:

"Turn on the full-band radio," Kurtz announced. "I want them all to know that I'm here."

I am here for you, the Night Haunter thought.

Meow (six o'clock)

Guda helped the Empire capture Mortarion, hello Guda.

The shell forged the regent's order and acted privately. The shell is bad.

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 125 Once You Accept Your Weakness

It's actually funny: after Conrad Koz confirmed that he was undoubtedly a loser in every sense of the word, the whole world suddenly became clear in front of him.

For the overly arrogant Primarchs, how to make them have a correct self-awareness is the most difficult part of the whole thing. If this can be done successfully, with the Primarchs' far superior thinking, reasoning, learning and understanding abilities, it will not be difficult for them to correct their original shortcomings.

That is, they want to do it.

Few people can force a Primarch to do something he doesn't want to do. This is the problem that caused Fujimaru Ritsuka to have many doubts. If Konrad Curze wants to make a change, this change will come quickly and violently - he did change greatly in a short period of time according to his own expectations and decisions, but no one knows what Curze expected and what he became in this process.

She was intentional in observing and guiding this issue, but unfortunately everything happened too fast afterwards. After Fujimaru Ritsuka was finally able to get away from the heavy coordination work, there was still a war that was watched by the gods waiting for her support and dispatch. Although she had only joined this war for three or four days, perhaps she intended to quickly finish all the work at hand and then turn around to stare at him again, but unfortunately...

She was still a little too trusting of Roboute Guilliman's regulatory procedures and the encryption methods of the Imperial information transmission structure.

A standard week in the Terran calendar was enough for a Primarch to prepare for a makeover, and now it had been ten days since Curze made up his mind to do this. At this moment, whether it was right or wrong, he was ready and decided to submit his answer.

He is a coward, a sinner, a prisoner, a rebel, a sadist, a brutal tyranny, and a sharp arrow of fear. He wants to be just and to make judgments, but he is just going further and further down the wrong path.

He wanted to correct this problem, but his past experiences were not good enough. But it didn't matter, he soon realized that in his second life, he had a pretty good role model around him.

If it was Fujimaru Ritsuka who had to face this situation, what would she do?

During the two days of quietly dormant in the Lion's Mane, Conrad Curze spent a long time thinking about this problem. With a large number of samples, it is not difficult to simulate the thinking of a mortal. He knew very well that Fujimaru Ritsuka would not give up any of her offspring who she thought "still had hope", just as she would not give up Nostramo who repeatedly betrayed her in the illusion; but he also knew very well that he definitely did not have such good patience to follow through on this matter.

Then, as he was thinking, he gradually realized one thing: he could certainly imitate the judgment that Fujimaru Ritsuka might make, but that would not be his own judgment. If this continued, he would in a sense become a slightly different copy of this little girl - indeed, Fujimaru Ritsuka could obviously handle this kind of complex problem, but since she, a mortal, could do it, couldn't he, Conrad Coates?

This thought inexplicably made him compete with the other party without Fujimaru Ritsuka's knowledge.

He knew that if she were to face such a group of rebellious heirs, she would first try to communicate, try to declare her views through speeches, try to judge, convict, serve sentences and educate. She had many examples of doing this in the fantasy world, and Conrad Coates's evaluation of this was: mortal thinking.

Curze is the Primarch, and Primarchs have their own way of doing things.

——Now, the bridge console of the Lion's Mane was broadcasting a pre-recorded speech to the nearby void, and he himself had boarded a boarding torpedo that he had personally modified, together with the eighteen descendants who had successfully passed the Path of Judgment, ready to sail to any of the shabby ships that had just jumped out of the warp.

He had no intention of picking the enemy's flagship first. On the one hand, it was too common sense to board and attack the flagship first, and on the other hand, if he had to face his own genetic offspring, Curze, who had already understood his true nature to some extent, did not need to make things so complicated.

Children of genes, base contracts, master-servant relationships - he learned these concepts from Fujimaru Ritsuka. From the fact that the latter never exercised the corresponding power in their contractual relationship, it can be seen that she herself does not seem to like to show off her authority in this regard, but Curze has no such concerns.

The surrounding shells began to vibrate on their own, and an absolutely unpleasant force accumulated on the outside. Everyone skillfully opened the magnetic boots and confirmed the stability of the seat belts and backrests. At the moment when the gun barrel was operating and pushing the boarding torpedo into the void, Curze's nightmare cloak dutifully captured the nearby communication signal for him:

"Hello, fellow robbers, bandits, sadists, murderers, pervert artists, those who bend the knee to Chaos, losers who act only to satisfy their own bestiality, deserters who easily bend the knee when faced with a strong enemy - fellow scum and villains, fellow Midnight Lords."

He heard his own voice on the radio.

"Hello, my descendants."

Amid the deafening roar of the promethium engine, he was even a little surprised that his tone was so calm when he admitted this.

"As you can see, I am Conrad Curze, your genetic father. Perhaps you will be confused and suspicious about this, or you can just treat this as a mockery from the enemy or some new kind of prank and laugh it off - I don't care. I will soon present the relevant evidence to you, but before that, I still have something to say to you."

Coz suddenly regretted his wording: it sounded like he wanted to say something from his heart to these gene sons whom he had never met before, but that was not what he meant.

What he said to these bastard sons was just a parody of the "duty to inform" in a way. He would pass judgment on these heirs, and they should at least know what was going to happen to them.

"You may be surprised to hear my voice, because you have heard that I am dead. I can now answer this question with all my heart: I am indeed dead. But after a long and boring experience, I was forcibly pulled out of a peaceful death by my (electronic noise) father."

Curze frowned. The Dark Angels had modified the audio without his consent, and he remembered that.

"Perhaps you have heard about my hatred and disgust for sin itself, and how severely I would punish the criminals. Or perhaps these things have been covered in dust over the years and abandoned in the chaotic subspace. It doesn't matter. I only say now: after re-examining my life, I have come to a conclusion."

The Primarch glanced back at the loud noise of the hull shaking, and had no doubt that the little bastards behind him were also taking advantage of the last bit of free time to listen to the radio attentively.

"I have committed many sins in my lifetime, the most serious and despicable of which are arbitrariness, weakness and evasion. I realize what kind of person I am, so I will not be surprised or sad about what you have become in these ten thousand years of wandering. You all inherited a part of me, and how could a seed that is already dirty and filthy produce healthy and luxuriant branches and leaves?"

The noise of the boarding torpedo was very loud. In theory, even the Primarch would find it difficult to distinguish all the details of the sound in such an environment. But Coze was a little suspicious. When the radio played this part, there were one or two very soft whimpers behind him.

"I accept this reality: the vast majority of you are hopeless scum, and the few who are still barely there are just not completely rotten. Just like I accept that I am a paranoid murderer, a cruel executioner, and I can also have a hundred or eighty other rotten titles - but, what I want to say is that I don't intend to stay like this."

The 200,000 kilometers between the two ships disappeared in a flash under the speed of the boarding torpedo. According to calculations, a dilapidated ship belonging to the Night Lords should be close at hand. At the right time, Curze reached out to the control console he had modified and activated several magic components that he had installed on the torpedo hull, which were derived from Chaldea's technology.

"During that long and boring experience, I gradually realized that when faced with an obvious mistake, I should not choose to destroy it together with its carrier, but should correct it. This means that in this second life, I will not try to pursue a judgment that ends in death, but should try to correct the mistake I made ten thousand years ago."

They undoubtedly collided head-on with the enemy ship's void shield, but under the action of those components and the calculations of Curze's own Primarch-level brain, the boarding torpedoes mysteriously did not smash into the shield - instead, they seemed to be stuck in some soft gelatin, and visually slowed down suddenly.

However, the crew inside the boarding torpedo did not feel any deceleration at all: the void shield would block the passage of any object exceeding a certain speed, so as long as some subspace means were used to extend the range before the collision, the torpedo itself would be slowed down enough to pass the interception of the void shield and naturally reach the hull itself.

"——I am not saying this to seek your opinion, nor am I asking you to join me on this thorny road. What I am saying is——"

Ten seconds later, the boarding torpedo successfully crossed the void shield, but at the cost of losing most of its propulsion and speed - but it didn't matter, the Night Lords' ship and the boarding torpedo were traveling in opposite directions, which meant that even if they didn't continue forward, the opponent's ship would quickly crash into them on its own.

"——You are also the mistakes I made in the past."

In line with this statement, the melta bomb at the front of the boarding torpedo was triggered after the collision. The last auxiliary propulsion engine at the tail of the torpedo ignited, supporting it to drill into the hull of the ship. In the dirty, chaotic corridor of the Night Lord, filled with the stench of corpses, the torpedo hatch slowly opened:

"I'm here for you." Conrad Curze's voice, which became rough and terrifying after being processed by the helmet, echoed in the ship.

Meow (no more).