It was impossible to say how much time had passed.
Carly woke groggily, feeling something patting her. When she opened her eyes, she saw a seal slapping her arm with its tail.
She looked around...
She was in a dim place, like a dungeon. Beyond the iron bars, the corridor was short, and she could see a gilded arena resembling the one at Tyrant's Gate.
The seats around the arena were filled with richly dressed people.
Carly saw a mother and son at the center of the arena—the pair she had brought down, hoping to find treatment for the boy in Manros.
The boy was chained to a guillotine. His mother was being beaten by guards wielding iron rods, but she clung desperately to the chain that held up the blade. If she let go while they beat her, or if they broke her arm, the blade would fall.
Cheers rose from the stands all around the arena.
At the edge of the arena, a magnificent statue of the Emperor looked down over the entire scene.
But, just like the other statues she had seen at the governor's mansion, the God-Emperor had his eyes closed. In these circumstances, it was as if he couldn't bear to watch.
"Let them go!" Carly shouted, gripping the bars, but the cheering immediately drowned her out.
She quickly calmed down and stopped wasting her strength. Turning away, she searched for something that could help her open the cell door.
Then Carly noticed that the animals she had seen at the banquet were locked up with her.
A rooster, a seal, a dog...
They all had the same look in their eyes—eyes no different from a human's.
Tears streamed from the rooster's eyes. It held one of its own feathers in its beak, and the blood from its broken beak served as ink as it wrote a line on the floor.
[We were all human before.]
[A noble from the Spire transformed us. It's a craft passed down through their family, a tradition... They make us for their amusement...]
Carly's face went pale, and her breathing quickened. She instinctively glanced up.
There was a statue of the Emperor inside the cell, too.
Like all the others, its eyes were closed.
[I'm the slave who bought a portrait from you before. Do you remember me?]
After writing the line, the rooster raised its head and looked at Carly.
Carly instantly remembered. After they had wiped out the Botulism Gang, people had set up stalls on the hangar deck to sell food, and Onaas had even brought out her family's treasures to sell. Back then, a slave belonging to a fat nobleman had quietly returned and bought a portrait of the Chapter Master.
Reading in Carly's eyes that she remembered, the rooster didn't explain why it had been transformed. Instead, it continued writing down the information it had carefully pieced together while Carly was unconscious, believing she needed to know it.
[Before I was transformed, my master and I received an Inquisitor. The Inquisitor brought a Chapter with him.]
[When all the nobles had gathered in the Audience Hall, the Inquisitor asked my master if he had ever seen a Chapter called the Fierce Angels. My master said he had.]
[After that, we slaves were driven out. We don't know what they plotted.]
[Anyway, after that, we were all turned into animals.]
Carly looked at the other animals.
Their eyes were all brimming with tears, and they let out low, inhuman cries.
One of the seals crawled over, took the quill in its mouth, and continued writing.
[I was brave, so I eavesdropped on the meeting... I heard the Inquisitor ask the nobles why there were so many portraits of traitor Space Marines in Manros Hive.]
Lu Jin's exorcism portraits had been the very ones Carly had given to the slaves.
An immense wave of sorrow and guilt burst inside Carly. She had never imagined her actions would bring so many people to harm.
[So I think the portraits had something to do with us being turned into animals. Maybe the nobles thought the portraits had entered Manros with the slaves, so they punished the slaves of every noble who had been involved in the trade.]
[The portraits spread through the lower hive and Underhive. The nobles hated them, so they ordered that the Fierce Angels Chapter Master in every portrait had to have his eyes closed.]
Only then did Carly learn what had happened after she gave away the portraits.
Lu Jin's portraits had spread throughout Manros, and the nobles had hated them so much that they ordered every image of Lu Jin to have its eyes closed.
Just like the statues of the Emperor.
[People resisted the order.]
[The killing and repression began.]
[In the end, people still gave in...]
[The one who resisted to the death was a Psyker. They gouged out his eyes, and before he died, he left behind a prophecy.]
The seal wrote out the prophecy.
Blood formed a crooked line of words on the floor.
[The Emperor closes His eyes and saves no one; Lu Jin opens his eyes and slaughters beasts]
More information followed.
The blood wasn't endless. Whenever the quill dried up, the seal slammed its head hard against the floor, then wrote line after line.
The people who had been turned into animals passed the quill around.
Carly learned more as they continued.
Because of the prophecy, the Psyker had been executed. The Inquisitor then concluded that Manros must have more ties to the current Fierce Angels Chapter Master, so he had stationed a Chapter called the Merciful Emissaries on Manros.
Carly thought the Inquisitor might be lying in wait, hoping the Fierce Angels would show up to trade again so he could wipe them out in one fell swoop.
That meant the Space Marines who might still be in the Audience Hall were in danger.
Carly wanted to go back and tell Lu Jin everything about this planet, and about the Space Marine she'd seen... but there was no way.
The information, and the boy's cries and the sound of the beating from the arena beyond the corridor, tormented Carly's mind.
But there wasn't even a stone in the cell. How could she escape?
"Please wait patiently for another two minutes. When this performance is over, a genius from House Salas will show you how to turn a human into an animal, followed by a grand animal brawl!"
The words only made Carly's ordeal worse.
Footsteps approached.
A squad of guards came to the cell and opened the door, preparing for the next performance.
But while the current performance was still underway, they had to wait.
One guard peered into the cell. He looked Carly up and down, then said, for no apparent reason, "It's already been spread."
"What?" Carly asked.
"The news that Lu Jin has arrived," the guard said gravely. "The slaves of the Spire nobles have already spread it."
Carly looked puzzled as she studied the guard.
The guards exchanged glances, then turned their backs to the cell and slowly drew their swords.
Carly immediately realized they were on her side.
She also realized... the slaves might have been interested in the Chapter Master's portrait because they had already been planning to rebel back then.
Everything happening in different parts of this universe was happening at the same time. It wasn't as though things only started unfolding in a place once someone arrived there.
The Fierce Angels' arrival on Manros would serve as a signal, igniting the resentment and rebellion that already existed on the planet.
Lu Jin had become a "symbol" to the locals.
The Inquisitor lying in wait might not have anticipated that.
"The time to settle old scores is at hand."
Meanwhile.
The banquet in the Audience Hall had ended, and the nobles had left.
Before leaving, the governor had told Lu Jin, "Let the Emperor's angels stay in the Audience Hall."
As the nobles led by the governor gradually departed, Lu Jin noticed how hurried they seemed. He felt more and more certain that something was wrong.
"Chapter Master." Kao stepped up to Lu Jin and handed him a data-slate. "The ship picked up an unknown transmission from Manros. Someone sent us this information."
Lu Jin looked at the data-slate, scrolling through the images one by one.
To his surprise, the portraits the crew used to ward off evil were everywhere in the lower hive and Underhive. No nobles lived in either of those places.
But the portraits shared one thing with the statues of the Emperor: their eyes were all closed.
"Why are there portraits of me here?" Lu Jin asked in confusion as he swiped through the images.
Then he saw a photograph of a group of Space Marines and an Inquisitor. It had clearly been taken secretly, from a very strange and cunning angle.
Kao saw the photograph. His pupils suddenly dilated, and he murmured, "The Mercy Emissaries..."
The Battle-Brothers heard him. Their expressions turned grim, their eyes full of killing intent.
"The Mercy Emissaries... The Chapter that acted as executioners when the Inquisitor tried to lure us into a trap," Kao said gravely.
"Then this Inquisitor, the one seen only from behind, might be the one who planned the ambush?" Lu Jin pointed to a figure in the photograph.
Kao's silence told Lu Jin it was possible.
Lu Jin kept swiping through the images.
What came next was horrifying and disgusting.
There were pictures of local nobles holding sacrificial rituals, nobles torturing and abusing their slaves, and a group of nobles rampaging through a lower-hive residential district, killing indiscriminately.
Some of the things in the images defied description.
After swiping through more than a dozen pictures, Lu Jin reached the limit of what he could stomach. His face darkened, and his chest heaved.
Some of the images even made Kao, a battle-hardened elite Space Marine, feel sick.
"Where did this information come from?" Lu Jin asked.
"It came from..." Kao swallowed hard. "The signal was sent from the lower hive."
"No more business." Lu Jin took the Warhammer and Battle Axe from his back and slowly rose to his feet. "I can't stand looking at this..."
Before you continue