Exploring the Spaceship

They set out again at dawn.

Following the trail of scattered spaceship parts, Feiyi no longer needed to correct their course so often, and their speed picked up considerably. The skilled old hand Feiyi deftly maneuvered the motorcycle around obstacles on the ground, making it look effortless.

The gale buffeted Fu Qinghai's face, making his face covering flap noisily. He held Feiyi tightly around the waist and used the time on the road to think about what they might face next—

The Space Marines aboard the ship.

When the Space Marine Legions were first founded, there had been twenty. The Imperium had erased all records of two of them, and their whereabouts were unknown. Of the eighteen remaining Legions, Fu Qinghai knew that half had taken part in the rebellion.

Fu Qinghai had no idea which Legion's Space Marines he would be facing. Since he had time to spare, he might as well let his mind wander.

Fu Qinghai ranked all the Space Marine Legions, from best-case to worst-case scenarios.

The best-case tier: the Thirteenth Legion, the Ultramarines, and the Eighteenth Legion, the Salamanders.

Both Legions were known for their friendly attitudes toward ordinary people. The Salamanders' skin was dark due to the genetic inheritance of their Primarch, earning them the joking nickname "black uncles" among Warhammer 40K fans. The Salamanders were compassionate, and were deeply concerned about civilian casualties in battle.

The Thirteenth Legion, the Ultramarines, was also Fu Qinghai's favorite Legion. They were known for their skill in governing the planets under their control. Unlike other Legions, whenever the Ultramarines conquered and reclaimed a human colony, they would quickly establish a strict and efficient administrative system, restoring production and daily life as soon as possible. Thanks to the meticulous way they governed the worlds under their control, they had access to a vast pool of recruits, and their numbers were greater than those of any other Legion.

Learn how the Ultramarines ran things, and then just F2 A your way through everything else?

It wasn't that simple. The Ultramarines' combat doctrine emphasized careful planning and tactical coordination, as well as gathering intelligence before battle and sharing information during it. It also fit Fu Qinghai's idea of what a modern army should be, and made them one of the two most efficient Legions at conquering during the Great Crusade.

Thinking back to Ladrall's dying words, he had said "white demons"... Unfortunately, neither of those two Legions wore white. The Ultramarines wore blue armor edged with gold, while the Salamanders wore dark green.

The second-best tier: the First Legion, the Dark Angels; the V Legion, the White Scars; the Sixth Legion, the Space Wolves; the Seventh Legion, the Imperial Fists; the Ninth Legion, the Blood Angels; the X Legion, the Iron Hands; and the XIX Legion, the Raven Guard.

These Space Marine Legions were neither warm nor cold toward ordinary people. After all, they considered themselves superhuman beings superior to regular humans, and many of their warriors looked down on ordinary people. But at least these Legions had remained loyal during the Horus Heresy, putting them on the same side as the faction the Reincarnation World had randomly assigned Fu Qinghai.

If the surviving Space Marines aboard the ship belonged to the loyalists, Fu Qinghai wouldn't have to come up with some convoluted way to infiltrate the traitors and stay loyal from within. His chances of earning reincarnation points would improve a little.

The Ninth Legion, the Blood Angels, was actually fairly friendly toward ordinary people. But from what Fu Qinghai knew, their Gene-seed had a flaw. Their genes had mutated after being polluted by radiation from their homeworld, giving them a chance of developing a disease called the "Red Thirst." Blood Angels in the grip of this disease were consumed by a bloodthirsty, murderous frenzy and might even attack friend and foe alike. During a sensitive time like the Horus Heresy, it was best not to run into them, so Fu Qinghai had put the Ninth Legion in the second tier.

The not-so-good third tier: the Third Legion, the Emperor's Children; the IV Legion, the Iron Warriors; the XIV Legion, the Death Guard; the Thousand Sons; the Word Bearers; the Alpha Legion; and the XVI Legion—the famous Luna Wolves, renamed the Sons of Horus in the later stages of the Great Crusade. They were Warmaster Horus's own Legion, the most famous Space Marine Legion in the Imperium of Man, and one of the largest. During the Great Crusade, their conquest rate had even slightly surpassed that of the Ultramarines.

All the Legions in the third tier had sided with the Warmaster and rebelled during the Horus Heresy. If the survivors belonged to one of them, Fu Qinghai would be in serious trouble. But at least in the early days of the rebellion, these Legions' Space Marines were still normal people. The Warmaster, Primarchs, or Chaos Gods they supported were righteous in their eyes. They might be called traitors, but they believed they were fighting for the truth.

It was only in the middle and later stages of the Horus Heresy, after the Space Marines had been completely corrupted by Chaos, that they became Possessed Marines, with horns growing from their heads, limbs sprouting beneath their arms, and minds consumed by nothing but the desire to torture and kill.

But there was an even worse fourth tier: the Eighth Legion, the Night Lords, and the Twelfth Legion, the World Eaters.

If the third-tier rebel Legions still left Fu Qinghai some chance of negotiating, swallowing his pride, and infiltrating their ranks, then the two Legions in the fourth tier were ones he would turn and run from the moment he saw them. They were two mad Legions infamous even during the Great Crusade.

The Night Lords Legion was known for spreading terror, torturing people, carrying out assassinations, and ruling through oppression.

And the World Eaters, the Legion with the Butcher's Nails driven into their heads, were a band of bloodthirsty, violent psychopaths, from their Primarch down to the lowliest Space Marine. During the Great Crusade, they often carried out pointless massacres and planetary exterminations.

Fu Qinghai didn't have the guts to go undercover in either of those Legions.

Among all these Legions, quite a few wore armor that looked almost white. Fu Qinghai couldn't tell which one it was yet.

"Tsk..." Fu Qinghai narrowed his eyes. He'd thought through plenty of possibilities, but when the moment came, he'd still have to judge the situation for himself.

Fu Qinghai had just taken a swig from his canteen.

"Skree—" The motorcycle skidded over loose gravel as Feiyi drifted to a stop.

Feiyi pointed at a small black hill in the distance. "A-Luo, look!"

Fu Qinghai wiped away the water he'd splashed and gazed into the distance. A spaceship wreck, shaped like a hillock, stood quietly far away. Though it was too distant to make out clearly, its straight, sturdy lines showed that it was an artificial construct, not a natural hill.

Fu Qinghai raised his binoculars and took a closer look. A huge spaceship lay on its side in the middle of the plain. The thick, dark gun barrels along its broadside showed that it was definitely a warship, or at the very least an armed merchant vessel. A massive split ran through the middle of the hull, and wreckage spilled from it to form a slope of debris.

The bridge had toppled to one side, and the ship's enormous Sub-light Engine nozzles had fallen to the ground here and there.

Fu Qinghai estimated that the warship was about two kilometers long. Going by the expedition fleet's classification, it was probably a medium-sized escort ship.

Its model was unknown.

The warship had broken apart so badly that it was hard to say whether this counted as a forced landing or a crash.

"The motorcycle's engine is too loud. We'll go on foot." The two of them parked the bike behind a boulder about half a person's height and sneaked toward the wreckage.

The closer they got to the warship, the more the imagined sounds of fierce fighting failed to materialize. The ship and its scattered fragments lay utterly silent. Apart from the wind whistling through the steel structures, there wasn't a sound.

They reached the base of the slope of debris. The other hatches either hung in midair or were buried underground, leaving this enormous split as seemingly the only way to enter the warship.

Remembering how Cedric's little gang had been wiped out, the two carefully moved to one side of the debris slope, keeping their backs against the towering steel hull.

Feiyi leaned close to Fu Qinghai's ear and whispered, "Still haven't seen anyone. What do we do, A-Luo? Do we go in?"

Fu Qinghai glanced at the pitch-black split, surrounded by severed cables and twisted steel girders like the maw of a beast ready to devour them.

"No, Feiyi. You wait outside. I'll go in," Fu Qinghai said quietly.

"I don't want to..." Before she could finish, Fu Qinghai covered her mouth.

He looked at the girl with determination. "Listen to me."

Under his steady gaze, the girl relented. She nodded and let go of his clothes.

Fu Qinghai removed the obstructive veil and headscarf, then slowly climbed the debris on all fours.

Under the girl's worried gaze, Fu Qinghai moved carefully, doing his best not to make a sound. He hooked his hand around a protrusion and placed his toes on a finely carved fragment of marble.

"Crash!" The loose marble slid down with a section of wreckage.

Fu Qinghai froze, afraid to move.

The warship remained quiet. Nothing happened.

Fu Qinghai took a breath and continued climbing.

Before long, Fu Qinghai had climbed through the split. Once his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he began looking around.

The warship's high, vaulted ceiling made the place seem vast and empty. Thick severed cables and collapsed steel walkways lay scattered about, and occasional sparks flickered in the corners. Together with the light filtering in from outside, they illuminated the gloom.

Large patches of dried blood stained the floor, and blackened bullet marks scarred the walls. Signs of battle were everywhere.

Then Fu Qinghai saw a corpse.

It had lost its lower half. Its face was twisted in agony, frozen in death. Its torso faced the split, both hands pressed to the ground as if it had tried to crawl outside. Its lower half dragged a trail of desiccated organs and intestines, leaving behind a thick smear of half-congealed blood.

Fu Qinghai knew this corpse.

Peibo, one of the thugs in Cedric's little gang, and one of the most enthusiastic bullies of Locke.

Seeing his wide-open eyes and face frozen in terror, Fu Qinghai didn't know whether to feel glad or afraid.

The stench of blood wouldn't go away. Fu Qinghai carefully stepped over Peibo's corpse, doing his best not to tread in the sticky blood on the floor.

Whatever happened, Fu Qinghai was definitely not going to explore in the direction Peibo had crawled from. He decided to go the other way instead.

Just as Fu Qinghai held his breath and tiptoed toward a half-open hatch—

A cold voice suddenly rang out in the empty warship:

"I see you, boy."

Fu Qinghai's hair stood on end.

He froze in place, then slowly turned his stiff neck to the right.

Among a pile of shattered glass in the corner of the floor, Fu Qinghai saw an eye staring coldly at him.