Drinking Soup is Truly a Wonderful Thing

"Father, it was all Second Brother who forced me to do this! I am innocent!"

Fulgrim chose to distance himself from Mordred the very first second. He didn't know if Second Brother would die, but he knew that if his own delicate frame took a punch like that, his skull would likely go flying.

Before the Emperor could even speak, the Phoenix, who was full of schemes, knelt down immediately as if he had rehearsed it a thousand times. The Emperor was stunned, his gaze lingering for a moment on the purple qipao, wondering how his progeny had turned into this state in less than a year.

He had been perfectly fine before being sent over, yet in the blink of an eye, he was bearing children. Even for the Emperor, this was hard to accept!

Confusion, bewilderment, and then uncontrollable blood pressure spikes made the Golden Giant clench his fists:

"Speak. What have you and that dog thing been doing all this time? Give me a full account, without missing a single word."

I can't die, I can't die! I still have to make the Legion great again, I haven't even participated in the Great Crusade yet, I haven't collected more beautiful dresses—Second Brother, don't blame me!

Fulgrim didn't hold out for even a second; he sold Mordred out completely and smoothly. Or rather, this was the true reaction of a Primarch facing the Emperor; someone like Big Mo was the exception.

But fortunately, Mordred had been genuinely good to his little brother over the past six months. The Phoenix still had a shred of conscience and didn't reveal the little stories he usually made up about the Emperor, and he even beautified some of the more obviously treasonous antics.

"Father, that is all. I have told you everything I know. As for the rest, only Second Brother knows."

After finishing, Fulgrim immediately shut his mouth and sat on the ground like an ostrich, only howling frantically in his heart, cursing Vulkan for being a piece of work.

However, to his surprise, the Emperor did not unleash an Emperor's Head-Shattering Fist as he had on Mordred. Instead, he used telekinesis, tearing through space with his world-renowned, powerful psychic might to drag a group of Adeptus Custodes over, directly sealing off the Hive Laboratory.

This miraculous display made Fulgrim doubt reality, and he couldn't help but ask:

"Father, are you truly a god?"

It would have been fine if he had just played dead, but unfortunately, Fulgrim stepped on a landmine with that one sentence, detonating the anger that had just accumulated.

Accompanied by a roar of "I Am Not a God," the Emperor's Head-Shattering Fist reappeared in the galaxy, letting the third Fulgrim truly experience the ultimate thrill of a physical body breaking the triple speed of sound.

Meanwhile, the preemptive Mordred had already regained consciousness. Looking at the massive emerald-green planet before him, he felt dizzy and felt as if his neck had been broken.

"Who am I? Where am I? What was I supposed to be doing?"

However, it wasn't just a feeling. It was thanks to Mordred's thick health bar that he only fell into a state of suspended animation after his body broke the universe's top speed. His neck had been stretched two meters at a ninety-degree angle; if this had happened to anyone else, even a Primarch, they would have died on the spot.

The bewildered Mordred stretched his body, his two-meter-long neck allowing him to observe his surroundings in three hundred and sixty degrees. After much thought, he finally remembered what had happened to him.

"Someone save me! I can't go back."

Then, looking at the All-Risk Cargo Ship growing larger in his field of vision, Mordred, floating in Low Earth Orbit, decided to give up on thinking.

The Phoenix on the ground said nothing, Big Mo in the sky wanted to go home, and only the Emperor looked at the hive and bloomed with joy.

But fortunately, there were still reliable people. Seeing their Primarch punched away, the Son of the Emperor and Atlas immediately began a large-scale search, dispatching their respective stretcher teams for rescue.

Poor Fulgrim had been punched into the Twisted Forest. By the time they found him, his eyes were vacant, and he was lying in a dirt pit, unconsciously muttering strange words like "toad, toad."

The surroundings were filled with shattered, twisted remains, and one could vaguely make out the original shape of a swamp, leaving the Sons of the Emperor baffled.

Only the accompanying Goff guide discovered the anomaly; the blood drained from his dog face, and the Big Yellow Dog was scared into a Little White.

"Run! If we don't leave now, it'll be too late! Dead Leg, move your legs!"

Thanks to the dog's quick wit, otherwise, the already small number of Sons of the Emperor might have been wiped out on the spot.

Mordred was much unluckier. Atlas couldn't find any trace of their father at all. It took a full seven days before they discovered him on the outer deck of a cargo ship docked at the Forge World of Angstrom.

Looking at their Primarch, who was drooling at the corner of his mouth and lying on the ground with a belly as big as a ten-month pregnancy, rolling his eyes, the Atlas members were at a loss, and resentment toward the Emperor began to rise in their hearts.

It was clear that their father had been punched into outer space by the Emperor, then unluckily collided with the cargo ship's deck, and without the protection of a Geiger field, had gone on a seven-day tour of the Warp.

"How could His Majesty treat Father like this? He is his own son! Such conduct is no different from those Tech-barbarians on Terra."

The leader of the Black Knights, Mordred, had a gloomy face. As one of the first Space Marine batches of the Imperium, he was a hardened veteran who had fought through the Unification Wars and survived; in terms of seniority, few in any legion could compare to him.

But now, the words and actions of this Terran-descended veteran were highly treasonous. He ranted against the Emperor, cursing him for not acting like a ruler or a father, and saying he wasn't even as good as the Warmaster Ol' Peson.

But as the saying goes, concern leads to chaos. Compared to the brainless brute Mordred, the more meticulous Goff discovered the crux of the problem:

"Wait, listen carefully. Father seems to be muttering something. It sounds like... soup?"

"Soup? Does Father want to drink soup?" Mordred pushed Goff aside, leaned in to listen carefully, and indeed heard some sounds.

"Soup, soup! This thick soup is delicious! Let me go, you Old Man, you are so stingy, I want to drink soup!"

???

Mordred and Goff looked at each other, thinking this wasn't right. Where had Father been drinking soup? He had been hanging on the cargo ship's deck the whole time; where would he get soup to drink in the Warp?

With no other options, the two could only return first, thinking of going back to Serenity to have the Emperor resolve it. Since His Majesty caused all of this, he must return a healthy Primarch to them.

Holding this resentment, the Abomination Exemplar began to speed frantically through the Warp. Countless unlucky Warp Creatures were smashed into fragments before they could dodge, attracting countless predators to scramble for them.

But soon, these predators scattered and fled, because an even more terrifying predator was feasting frantically.

Five days later, the rushed stretcher team carried Mordred toward the Hive City, and on the way, they ran into the Primarch Fulgrim.

In just five days, Fulgrim looked as if he had been broken. He even shuddered at the sonic boom of the transport ship landing, as if he had been left with some psychological trauma.

"You found Second Brother? You've returned at just the right time. The Emperor is waiting for you in the hive. Go quickly!"

The stretcher team, having received the news, did not hesitate and charged straight into the Hive Laboratory. But when they entered, they were stunned; the annoying figures of the Adeptus Custodes were everywhere. They had been raided.

As for the Space Marines, the Emperor would not vent his anger on them because of Mordred. He directly signaled them to move his Rebellious son onto the Operating Table; the stench was making him nauseous.

However, when Mordred lifted the white cloth, it still gave the Golden Giant a start.

"What the hell, what kind of monster is this?"