The Second Talent

After safely completing an exploration mission with a massive haul, Qin Xa began to ponder his past.

Why on earth did I become a Grey Knight?

Qin Xa had questioned himself in his heart more than once, just as he was doing now, forcing himself to confront the issue.

This question was the second greatest mystery, second only to his own psychic talent.

Under normal circumstances, a psyker's fate was to be apprehended upon discovery and sent aboard a vessel known as a Black Ship.

Black Ships were specifically designed to process psykers, who would undergo testing—much like the complex trials Qin Xa had faced before joining the Grey Knights—to determine if they were stable and safe.

Then, the Black Ship would carry the psykers away, and whether they lived or died thereafter was entirely a matter of fortune.

The Grey Knights were a secret army, and while their members were psykers, that did not mean a psyker could be discovered, taken, and transformed into a Grey Knight simply because their psychic talent was stable.

Joining the Grey Knights was an event of extremely low probability.

Qin Xa had never been on a Black Ship; he had encountered White Scars warriors on a rebellious world during their pacification campaign, only to be discovered and taken away by a Librarian.

Then, one day, the Grey Knights had simply arrived.

Matters regarding the warp were always mysterious and uncertain, so the sudden arrival of the Grey Knights was not entirely strange.

The problem was that Qin Xa clearly remembered learning he had to become a Grey Knight and undergoing the transformation surgery very quickly.

It was as rushed as forcing a duck onto a perch, as if he were being press-ganged.

Qin Xa felt that before he underwent the surgery, the Grey Knights had not conducted an in-depth investigation into his psychic talent; the process had been as hasty as a forced conscription.

The Grey Knights were a secret army with a series of extremely rigorous vetting and recruitment rules; they would never press-gang people like a mortal army.

Thinking this far, Qin Xa shook his head to clear his thoughts.

This doubt was different from the one regarding his psychic talent; the latter could still be answered through adventurous investigation, but the former truly offered no way to find an answer.

Because Qin Xa was in the 30K era, not ten thousand years later; the damned Immaterium had sent him on a second trans-temporal journey of massive scale.

There were no Grey Knights in this era, and most of the ancestors of those Grey Knights from ten thousand years later did not even know where they were pissing in the mud right now.

Yet, even after the second journey, even after arriving in the 30th Millennium, and even after landing in Nuceria—a place that was a hellish start for any Primarch—Qin Xa felt little sorrow or despair.

At least Angron had not yet been fitted with the nails; at least there was still a possibility of saving a Primarch for humanity.

Thinking of this, Qin Xa looked at Angron.

"All is fate, none of it is up to man."

The words of the White Scars Librarian echoed in Qin Xa's ears.

Qin Xa did not oppose this statement, nor did he harbor any fervent ideas of defying fate or refusing to accept it, because in this universe, a person's fate was exactly as revealed by the Threads of Fate coiled upon The Veil.

But even so, one could not simply do nothing.

If The Emperor had known his fate was to sit upon the Golden Throne, and that his dream-like cause was destined to fail, would he have simply thrown up his hands and sat on the ground, saying, "Well, let's just wait for death"?

If a soldier fighting in the future learned that the fate of the planet beneath his feet was to fall, would he throw down his weapon and wait for the end?

"Shouldn't we bury Caesar?"

Angron noticed Qin Xa's gaze, but he could no longer sense those negative emotions from him. Now that Qin Xa had recovered, Angron was more concerned with dealing with the headless corpse lying on the ground.

Oeno looked at the body and shook his head with a heavy expression: "If I could bury him, I would have done so long ago. But we have no tools, we cannot dig into the walls, we have no mats or bedding; we cannot even wrap Caesar's body to keep him from being exposed here."

As Oeno spoke, most of the gladiators watched him.

And when Angron looked at the others after hearing Oeno's words, everyone else lowered their heads.

The vast majority of people here were not cold-blooded or heartless; they also wanted to bury the bodies of those who shared their plight—not just Caesar's, but the bodies of every gladiator who had died here before.

But they lacked the ability; they could not dig into the rock walls, and they had no bedding to wrap the corpses.

They could only wait for the slave master to remember Caesar's body was still lying there, and watch the Security Automata seize the corpse, shred it, and carry it away.

"Perhaps from now on, no one will have to be left exposed here after death." Qin Xa rose and walked toward Caesar's body.

"Are you going to use some sorcery that can bury people into the rock strata?" Oeno perked up, thinking that perhaps Qin Xa truly possessed such sorcery.

But Qin Xa merely crouched beside Caesar's body and shook his head gently: "I am not certain I can; I am attempting it."

Qin Xa was essentially trying to pioneer a new way of using psychic power, just as Oeno had said, specifically to bury people into the rock strata.

Psychic power was not magic, and a psyker was not a wizard.

It was certainly not a game-like class skill; there was no rule that psychic power could only be used in a specific way.

Using psychic power to unleash lightning or fire, or to prophesy or heal... did not mean a psyker could only do those things; it simply meant those were the most common ways to use it.

In the real universe, where everything followed logical laws, the principle of psychic power—which originated from the illusory and uncertain Immaterium—was to warp reality to achieve things that were otherwise impossible for a biological entity.

Anything.

Qin Xa intended to follow this principle and find a way to use his psychic power to bury Caesar.

Fortunately, in matters like this, the second talent Qin Xa possessed would make his efforts twice as effective, allowing him to handle it with ease.

This talent was his absolute genius in studying a skill and learning something new.

"It's so cold." A gladiator huddled his body.

Frost began to spread throughout the cave.

Then, inside the solid rock wall before Qin Xa, a cavity gradually formed, following his will.

Once the cavity was shaped, the rock wall parted like flowing water, revealing the hollow space within.

Qin Xa focused on channeling his psychic power, his gaze fixed upon Angron.

Angron rose and lifted the headless corpse, approached the cavity, and slowly placed the body inside.

As the rock wall, which had parted like water, began to converge, Angron stood in silence.

He recalled the despair, fear, and unwillingness that Caesar had felt in the final moment before his head exploded.

If I were to die, I would feel the same at that final moment, Angron thought.

"Rest in peace," Angron whispered softly.

The other gladiators watched the scene, wondering if Angron had known Caesar for a long time; otherwise, why would he appear so desolate?

The rock wall closed completely.

Under the gaze of the crowd, Qin Xa walked to the wall, arrived at the spot where Caesar slept, and pressed his palm against the stone.

He moved his arm gently, his palm sliding across the rock face.

Finally, Qin Xa blew a soft breath against the wall, scattering the dust to reveal two lines of text that would be invisible if one did not look closely.

Caesar.

Died before the destruction of the arena.