Unexpected Change

A darkness.

Everything that had happened before flooded Lu Jin's mind as his consciousness began to revive.

He abruptly opened his eyes and found himself submerged in nutrient fluid, various tubes connected to his body.

Outside the transparent glass tank stood the Chapter Master and the Apothecary, their backs turned to him.

"We can only hope the auto-suture goes smoothly, because I don't even know how to cut someone open to install a gene-seed."

"It's fine, I'll use bio-sorcery psionics to interfere with his flesh, ensuring the augmentation surgery will succeed."

Lu Jin closed his eyes and held his breath.

Between accepting augmentation and losing himself, coupled with the immediate prospect of falling into chaos and becoming a slave to the Chaos Gods, Lu Jin chose suicide.

His will was sufficient to overcome his body's instinctive reactions.

The Apothecary quickly noticed something was wrong and turned to look at Lu Jin.

The Chapter Master closed his eyes, sensed Lu Jin's condition, and immediately used psionics to intervene.

Oxygen surged directly into Lu Jin's blood.

"You won't die."

The Chapter Master walked to the glass.

"You will become one of us."

"And you don't need to worry about losing yourself... Our gene-seed is the product of two extremes colliding; it will ensure we always retain our own selves."

"There are many things... I will..."

"No, slumber."

The Chapter Master hesitated, then used psionics to hypnotize Lu Jin.

That boundless darkness once again filled Lu Jin's vision.

After an unknown amount of time.

When Lu Jin's consciousness returned, he abruptly opened his eyes and found himself in darkness, surrounded by steel.

After a few simple touches, he realized he was lying in an iron box.

Lu Jin took a deep breath, kicked the lid of the iron box open, climbed out, and observed his body in the dim light.

It was still the same body, unchanged.

Lu Jin breathed a sigh of relief and surveyed his surroundings.

A Space Marine's corpse lay beside the box.

Additionally, a line of text was engraved on the chamber wall.

[Forever remember our twenty-second battle-brother.]

Beneath the inscription stood a suit of power armor that fit Lu Jin's height, but it was merely an empty shell. One hand of the power armor held the Heavy Hammer Lu Jin had used during the ritual, while the other held a Heavy Axe.

Little Damian's mechanical hand was still on Lu Jin's shoulder.

Lu Jin lowered his head to look at the Space Marine corpse again and noticed that the armor worn by the corpse was not red and blue, but a wine red.

All of this required time to process and digest.

Lu Jin sat in the box, thinking and assessing.

This chamber was undoubtedly a tomb.

The Chapter's tradition was that every deceased member would eternally rest in a chamber, accompanied by their armor and weapons as burial goods.

Lu Jin realized he had died earlier.

The reason might have been augmentation failure—he clearly hadn't become a Space Marine.

But the reason for his resurrection...

Lu Jin looked at the Space Marine's corpse.

It seemed his special ability wasn't just to seize some of an opponent's power after killing them, but also to be reborn after death if someone nearby died.

Lu Jin closed his eyes and sensed.

He felt that his own power had also changed.

His height had increased by ten centimeters, reaching two meters twenty, and his physique had become more robust.

At the same time, his strength, according to the standards he had previously invented for forcibly visualizing and quantifying data... was 3.

Lu Jin was puzzled. He had previously managed to pick up a kill on a Chaos Space Marine and only gained 0.5 power from it. Although he had killed some Greenskins later, it shouldn't have been enough to reach 3 just by killing another Space Marine.

An explosion suddenly interrupted Lu Jin's thoughts.

His first instinct was to rush to the wall and grab his Heavy Axe and Heavy Hammer.

These two weapons felt as light as daggers in his hands... they were made for mortals, after all.

And that suit of power armor... Lu Jin found the Fierce Angels Chapter to be incredibly rigid. He hadn't been interred in it during his modification, yet they had still managed to craft a suit that fit his body perfectly.

Even though it was just an empty shell, the material was still ceramite.

Lu Jin put on the empty shell power armor... no, the armor, and then walked out of the chamber.

The moment he opened the hatch, a violent shockwave hit him head-on, flipping him onto the ground.

Everything he could see was engulfed in flames.

His ears were filled with explosions and screams.

Lu Jin got up and saw a Space Marine standing in the corridor. It was an Apothecary.

The Apothecary also saw Lu Jin. After getting up, he took a look, recognized Lu Jin from the armor's size, and then shouted, "Battle-brother! You're not..."

Just as Lu Jin was about to respond, the wall next to the Apothecary suddenly exploded, and the Apothecary, along with his armor, instantly vaporized.

Lu Jin quickly dashed over and saw that some unknown weapon had penetrated dozens of walls and exploded into the corridor. The Apothecary hadn't even left anything behind that Lu Jin could salvage.

He had no idea what was happening, but he could temporarily deduce that the Fierce Angels' strike cruiser had come under attack.

Continuing down the corridor, Lu Jin arrived at a chamber.

A group of mortals was trapped in a raging fire. Upon seeing Lu Jin, they cried out to the angel for help.

Just as Lu Jin was about to rush over, the right wall of the chamber collapsed, crushing the group of mortals underneath.

The adamantium wall and floor were tightly sealed... there were no survivors.

Lu Jin pressed on and saw hundreds of Greenskins pouring into a larger chamber.

Thousands of mortals were gathered inside the chamber, with those capable of fighting holding weapons and confronting the Greenskins.

Lu Jin quickly charged in from the rear, cutting into the Greenskin horde. After killing over thirty Greenskins, the rest were eliminated by others.

Someone immediately rushed to the chamber entrance and closed the blast door.

"My Lord!"

A cry rang out as Carly rushed out from the crowd and threw herself beside Lu Jin.

"What happened? Why is it exploding everywhere as soon as I crawl out of the grave?" Lu Jin asked.

While he was asking, the explosions had gradually subsided, and only the shouts of Greenskins remained in the corridor.

"The ship was attacked after entering the Maelstrom!"

Carly quickly recounted what had happened during Lu Jin's absence.

The modification surgery had failed.

The Apothecary and the Chapter Master had held a funeral for Lu Jin with the Chapter's members.

After dozens of days, today, as the ship emerged from the Warp, it was suddenly attacked by another vessel.

Many heretic Space Marines had stormed the ship, burning, killing, and looting everywhere.

The Chapter Master had led the Space Marines, excluding the Apothecary, to engage them. Their current fate was unknown.

Carly and the others had been rescued by the Apothecary.

Before hiding in this sanctuary, the Apothecary had seen a heretic Space Marine breaking into the tomb chamber, attempting to loot the burial goods.

Before Carly fled, she heard the Apothecary roar, "You will not disturb my battle-brother!" and then the Apothecary charged at the heretic Space Marine.

"That must be a pirate warband," Lu Jin surmised the attackers' identity.

Chaos Space Marines organized themselves into warbands, fighting independently.

Due to the extreme scarcity of resources within the Warp rift, they often engaged in looting.

The Fierce Angels must have been plundered after their voyage.

"The Greenskins will break through the door sooner or later!" someone holding a Laser Rifle stepped forward. "What do we do, Angel?"

"I didn't succeed in the modification, I'm not an Angel," Lu Jin turned to face the blast door. "Hide behind me. If the Greenskins charge in, fight with me."

As soon as he finished speaking, those unable to fight immediately retreated behind him.

The hundreds of combat-experienced individuals moved to the front, positioning themselves behind Lu Jin, kneeling and aiming their weapons forward.

Lu Jin could hear more and more Greenskins approaching. They seemed to sense the presence of humans.

These Greenskins would normally only exist in sealed areas, but now that the ship was damaged, they had wandered out. The entire warship was likely filled with Greenskins and warband Space Marines.

More footsteps and "WAAAAGH" sounds echoed into the sanctuary chamber.

Lu Jin held his breath, lowered his body, and crossed his hands holding his heavy weapons in front of him.

The gate suddenly opened.

Just as Lu Jin was preparing to rush out and wreak havoc, he found that what stood outside the gate was not Greenskins, but a crozius.

The Chapter Master's crozius.

Surrounded by shattered Greenskin remains, the crozius floated into the sanctuary, the gate behind it slamming shut with a blast of Psionics.

Lu Jin stared at the crozius, raising an eyebrow.

The eagle head on the crozius turned, as if it had eyes, and its gaze fell upon Lu Jin.

It floated to Lu Jin's side, spinning in place a few times.

Lu Jin continued to stare at the crozius, feeling as though words would emerge from it at any second.

The crozius floated up and smashed down hard on Lu Jin's helmet.

Lu Jin lowered his weapon and grasped the crozius, only then hearing the voice emanating from within.

"The warband is gone."

"We were all captured alive... that warband leader was also a psyker, several times stronger than me. We couldn't even resist."

The Chapter Master's words echoed directly in Lu Jin's ears.

"This is the result," Lu Jin said. "Joining Chaos only leads to this result: withering away in endless crushing and the law of the jungle, your soul eternally enslaved by Chaos after death."

The Chapter Master didn't take the bait. "You are using this crozius now. It is a sacred relic of the Chapter. I have cast a Psionic enchantment on it, allowing it to become a Psionic release medium independent of me."

Lu Jin placed the crozius on the device invented by Little Damian.

A mechanical arm on his shoulder firmly gripped the crozius.

The voice could still be transmitted to Lu Jin's ears.

"I'm sorry," the Chapter Master said. "I overestimated myself... your immune system killed two Gene-seeds, your body temperature was so high your internal organs were nearly cooked, and this was the mildest of the physiological crises you experienced in two seconds. If there were six of me present, I might have been able to ensure you survived."

Lu Jin rolled his eyes and didn't reply.

His attitude towards the Fierce Angels Chapter and its members was not hatred, but dissatisfaction.

Dissatisfaction with their forceful modification of him; if he hadn't had the ability to win the revival match, he would have surely died.

As for the acceptance and kindness shown to him by everyone in the Chapter, he remembered that too.

Lu Jin had a code of conduct, which could be condensed into "repay kindness with kindness, and revenge with revenge."

"Tell me where you are, and I will find a way to rescue you."

"After I repay your favor, I will leave."

The Chapter Master, conversing through the crozius, was silent for a second.

"Take the crozius and clear the surrounding xenos, ensuring everyone else is safe, then have them check the ship's various sections to see if it can be made operational again."

"Then you will go to the Navigator's sanctuary and rescue the Navigator. Without her, we cannot navigate."

Lu Jin also intended to do just that.

He opened the gate, then closed it from the outside, and began clearing the Greenskins lurking nearby.