Darkness.
Everything that had happened before surged through Lu Jin's mind as his consciousness began to return.
He suddenly opened his eyes and found himself submerged in nutrient fluid, with various tubes connected to his body.
Outside the transparent glass tank, the Chapter Master and the Apothecary stood with their backs to him.
"We can only hope the automatic transformation goes smoothly. I don't even know how to perform surgery to implant Gene-seed."
"It's all right. I'll use biomancy to interfere with his body and ensure the surgery succeeds."
Lu Jin closed his eyes and held his breath.
Faced with the combined prospect of losing himself during the transformation and immediately joining Chaos, becoming a slave to the Chaos Gods, Lu Jin chose to kill himself.
His willpower was strong enough to overcome his body's instinctive reactions.
The Apothecary soon noticed something was wrong and turned to look at Lu Jin.
The Chapter Master closed his eyes and sensed Lu Jin's condition. He immediately intervened with his psychic power.
Oxygen flooded directly into Lu Jin's bloodstream.
"You can't die."
The Chapter Master walked up to the glass.
"You'll become one of us."
"You don't need to worry about losing yourself, either... Our Gene-seed is the product of two opposing extremes colliding. It will let us retain our identities forever."
"There are many things... I'll..."
"No. Go to sleep."
The Chapter Master trailed off, then used his psychic power to put Lu Jin under.
Boundless darkness once again filled Lu Jin's vision.
He had no idea how much time had passed.
When Lu Jin's consciousness returned, he abruptly opened his eyes and found himself in darkness, surrounded by steel.
After feeling around, he realized he was lying in an iron box.
Lu Jin took a deep breath, kicked the lid off the box, and crawled out. In the faint light, he examined his body.
It was still his original body. Nothing had changed.
Lu Jin sighed in relief and looked around.
The corpse of a Space Marine lay beside the box.
There was also a line carved into the chamber wall:
[Remember forever our twenty-second battle-brother.]
Beneath the inscription stood a suit of Power Armor sized to fit Lu Jin. It was only an empty shell. One hand held the Heavy Hammer Lu Jin had used during the ritual, while the other held a Heavy Axe.
The Mechanical Arm Little Damian had made was still on Lu Jin's shoulder.
Lu Jin looked down at the Space Marine's corpse again and noticed that his armor wasn't red and blue. It was wine red.
He needed time to sort through and absorb everything.
Lu Jin sat in the box, thinking it over.
This chamber was undoubtedly a tomb.
The Chapter's tradition was that everyone who died would rest forever in a chamber, with armor and weapons buried alongside them.
Lu Jin realized he had died earlier.
The reason might have been that the transformation failed—he clearly hadn't become a Space Marine.
But the reason he had come back to life...
Lu Jin looked at the Space Marine's corpse.
It seemed his special ability didn't just let him steal part of an opponent's power after killing them. It could also bring him back to life after his death if someone nearby died.
Lu Jin closed his eyes and sensed himself.
He could tell that his strength had changed, too.
He was ten centimeters taller, now standing at two meters and twenty centimeters, and his build was even more muscular.
At the same time, his strength, measured by the arbitrary system of forced quantification he had come up with earlier, was... 3.
Lu Jin was puzzled. He had killed a Chaos Space Marine by chance earlier and gained only 0.5 strength. He had killed some Greenskins afterward, but that shouldn't have been enough for killing another Space Marine to raise his strength to 3.
An explosion suddenly interrupted Lu Jin's thoughts.
His first reaction was to rush to the wall and grab the Heavy Axe and Heavy Hammer.
The two weapons felt as light as daggers in his hands... which made sense, since they had been made for Mortals.
As for the Power Armor... Lu Jin realized that the Fierce Angels were incredibly rigid. He hadn't been undergoing the transformation when they buried him, but they had still gone and made a suit of armor to fit his body.
It was only an empty shell, but it was made of ceramite.
Lu Jin put on the empty shell of the Power Armor—no, the armor—and walked out of the chamber.
The moment he opened the hatch, a violent shock wave slammed into him and knocked him to the ground.
Flames filled his vision.
Explosions and screams filled his ears.
Lu Jin got back up and saw a Space Marine standing in the corridor. It was the Apothecary.
The Apothecary saw Lu Jin, too. He got to his feet and gave him a once-over. Recognizing Lu Jin from the size of his armor, he shouted, "Battle-brother! You're al—"
Lu Jin was about to respond when the wall beside the Apothecary suddenly exploded. The Apothecary and his armor were vaporized instantly.
Lu Jin hurried over. Some kind of weapon had punched through dozens of walls and exploded into the corridor, leaving nothing of the Apothecary for him to salvage.
He had no idea what was happening, but he could tentatively conclude that the Fierce Angels' strike Cruiser was under attack.
Lu Jin continued down the corridor and entered a chamber.
A group of Mortals were trapped in the flames. When they saw Lu Jin, they cried out for the angel to save them.
Lu Jin was about to rush over when the chamber's right wall collapsed with a crash, crushing them all beneath it.
The adamantium wall had melded seamlessly with the floor... There were no survivors.
Lu Jin continued onward and saw hundreds of Greenskins pouring into a larger chamber.
Thousands of Mortals had gathered inside. Those capable of fighting were armed and resisting the Greenskins.
Lu Jin rushed in and attacked the Greenskins from behind. After he killed more than thirty of them, the others were wiped out by the people inside.
Someone hurried to the entrance and shut the hatch.
"My lord!"
A shout rang out. Carly ran out of the crowd and rushed to Lu Jin's side.
"What happened? Why are there explosions everywhere the moment I crawl out of the tomb?" Lu Jin asked.
By the time he asked, the explosions had gradually stopped. Only the Greenskins' cries echoed through the corridor.
"The ship was attacked after entering the Maelstrom!"
Carly hurriedly explained what had happened while Lu Jin was dead.
The transformation surgery had failed.
The Apothecary and the Chapter Master had held a funeral for Lu Jin, together with the other members of the Chapter.
Several dozen days later, today, the ship had suddenly been attacked by another vessel as it emerged from the Warp.
Many heretic Space Marines had stormed aboard, burning, killing, and looting wherever they went.
The Chapter Master had led the Space Marines into battle, with everyone except the Apothecary joining him. No one knew what had happened to them.
The Apothecary had rescued Carly and the others.
Before they made it to this shelter, the Apothecary had seen a heretic Space Marine breaking into the tomb chambers, trying to loot the grave goods.
Before Carly fled, she heard the Apothecary roar, "Don't disturb my battle-brother!" Then he charged at the heretic Space Marine.
"They're probably a pirate warband," Lu Jin guessed.
Chaos Space Marines were organized into warbands, each fighting for itself.
Supplies were extremely scarce in the Warp Rift, so they often resorted to raiding.
The Fierce Angels had probably been attacked after their journey ended.
"The Greenskins will break through the hatch sooner or later!" someone said, stepping forward with a Laser Rifle. "What do we do, angel?"
"I didn't complete the transformation. I'm no angel." Lu Jin turned to face the hatch. "Stay behind me. If the Greenskins get in, fight alongside me."
As soon as he finished speaking, those who couldn't fight immediately moved behind the others.
Several hundred people with combat experience moved to the front, behind Lu Jin. They knelt and raised their guns, aiming ahead.
Lu Jin could hear more and more Greenskins pouring in. They seemed to be able to sense the humans' presence.
The Greenskins should have been confined to sealed-off sections, but now that the ship was damaged, they had gotten loose. The entire vessel might be crawling with Greenskins and warband Space Marines.
More footsteps and shouts of "WAAAAGH" echoed into the shelter.
Lu Jin held his breath, lowered his stance, and crossed the heavy weapons in front of him.
Then the hatch suddenly opened.
Just as Lu Jin was about to charge out and slaughter everything in sight, he saw that what stood outside wasn't a Greenskin. It was a Sceptre.
The Chapter Master's Sceptre.
Chunks of Greenskins surrounded it. It floated into the shelter, and the hatch slammed shut behind it under a burst of psychic force.
Lu Jin looked at the Sceptre and raised an eyebrow.
The eagle's head on the Sceptre turned, as if it had eyes, and its gaze fell on Lu Jin.
It floated over to him and spun around several times.
Lu Jin kept staring at the Sceptre, thinking words would come out of it at any moment.
The Sceptre floated up and smashed into Lu Jin's helmet.
Lu Jin lowered his weapons and grabbed the Sceptre. Only then did he hear the voice coming from inside it.
"The warband has left."
"All of us have been captured... The warband's leader is also a Psyker, several times stronger than me. We couldn't even fight back."
The Chapter Master's voice echoed directly in Lu Jin's ear.
"This is what happens," Lu Jin said. "Joining Chaos can only end this way. You wither away in endless infighting and the law of the jungle, then your soul is enslaved by Chaos forever after you die."
The Chapter Master didn't respond to that. "Use this Sceptre now. It's a Legion Relic. I've imbued it with psychic power, so it can serve as an independent conduit for releasing psychic energy."
Lu Jin placed the Sceptre on the device Little Damian had invented.
The Mechanical Arm gripped the Sceptre tightly on his shoulder.
The voice still carried clearly to Lu Jin's ear.
"I'm sorry," the Chapter Master said. "I overestimated myself... Your immune system killed two Gene-seed implants, and your body temperature rose so high that your organs were nearly cooked. That was the mildest of the series of physiological crises you experienced in those two seconds. Even if there had been six of me there, I might only have been able to keep you alive."
Lu Jin rolled his eyes and said nothing.
He didn't hate the Fierce Angels or its members. He was dissatisfied with them.
He was dissatisfied that they had forced the transformation on him. If he hadn't had the ability to win a rematch with death, he would definitely have died.
As for how every member of the Chapter had accepted and treated him kindly, he remembered that, too.
Lu Jin had his own code for dealing with people. In a nutshell, it was "repay kindness with kindness, and repay enmity with enmity."
"Tell me where you are. I'll find a way to rescue you."
"Once I've repaid you, I'll leave."
The Chapter Master fell silent for a second as he spoke through the Sceptre.
"Take the Sceptre and clear out the nearby aliens. Make sure the others are safe, then have them inspect the ship's various sections and get it running again."
"Then make your way to the Navigator's Sanctuary and rescue the Navigator. We can't travel without him."
Lu Jin had already planned to do the same.
He opened the hatch, then closed it from the outside, and began clearing out the Greenskins roaming nearby.
Before you continue