Facing the Four Gods

Day after day, year after year.

This was the mission of the Shadow Vault Custodes: to guard the terrifying, aberrant creations sealed away by the great Emperor.

The mortals living on Terra, the greatest heart of the Imperium of Man, might have believed this to be the safest place in the entire Imperium.

But to the Adeptus Custodes, the dangers here were no less severe than those of Cadia's fortress worlds within the Eye of Terror. Horrific servants of the Dark Gods still wandered the abandoned, magnificent Webway, while countless dark secrets lay buried within the vast underground tombs formed from relics and structures of the old world.

Tokman, clad head to toe in jet-black Custodes power armor, had patrolled this underground darkness for thousands of years. Ever since the Shadow Vault had been established—or rather, ever since the Custodes had been formed—Tokman had been selected to watch over these disobedient "beasts" for the Emperor.

Even during the Horus Heresy, when Terra's situation had been perilous in the extreme, the Shadow Vault had continued to fulfill its duty.

Thinking of that age of rebellion dampened Tokman's spirits. The Emperor, once as radiant as the sun, had taken His seat upon the Golden Throne. Humanity's grand dream of conquering the stars had been cut off at the waist, leaving behind only the wheezing, decrepit giant of today.

Crises of every kind, xenos invasion alarms that never ceased, and the Dark Gods hanging above everyone's heads left the Imperium's soldiers rushing themselves ragged. Its already rotten, rigid political system brought even greater suffering to its countless people.

But there was no helping it, was there? To survive, they had already sacrificed everything.

Only a faint red glow seeped from beneath the shades of the alarm lamps in the dark corridor. That dim crimson light proved that the lamps still functioned properly, continuing to accompany Tokman in his endless duty.

Tokman suddenly heard an incongruous sound. There should have been no sound in this dark prison. Those ancient, unknown technologies used stasis techniques comprehensible only to the God-Emperor to imprison the great horrors from the distant past.

Even when Terra had suffered its fiercest assaults, this place had always remained silent and untouched.

Sometimes, certain horrors would seep part of their bodies out of the stasis fields due to their peculiar nature, but to the Shadow Vault Custodes, that was no more than a minor diversion. So long as the main body had not completely escaped the stasis field, these creations could not possibly defeat ultimate warriors who had served the Emperor for over a thousand years with their greatly weakened power.

Just like this.

But this time, Tokman could clearly sense through his helmet's sensors that a complete individual was wandering through the corridor.

The discovery instantly tensed every muscle in Tokman's body. Within mere microseconds, he made his decision: alert the Shadow Vault Custodes guarding the other sectors, then race toward the detected target.

Such a massive armored giant ran with astonishing speed. Those enormous metal boots should have thundered against the floor, yet with every step, the sounds vanished without a trace, as though this place were the vacuum of space. Only the faint electrical hum from the alarm lamps told anyone that it was not.

Lin Fan marveled at his bizarre experience as he slowly walked through this unknown dark corridor.

He had clearly only happily bought a Warhammer novel from Taobao and was preparing to enjoy the cruelty of the dark future and the grandeur of space opera at home. Yet the moment he opened the book, he had been sucked inside and brought to this damned place.

Having just crossed over, Lin Fan had cried as pitifully as a Gretchin whose toe had been stepped on.

Who knew whether he had landed in that Warhammer world where even suicide led to no good end? The darkness around him alone was enough to fill an ordinary person like Lin Fan with fear.

At first, Lin Fan had quietly comforted himself. Don't be scared. Maybe it's just a little dark. Maybe this isn't the Warhammer world?

The very moment he thought that, the countless whispers in his mind drove him into a breakdown.

"How fascinating. Never before has someone seen through my essence so completely! What delight! Delight, ahhhhhhh!!!!" The wanton, androgynous voice expressed Its opinion of Lin Fan.

"Oh, my young child, what did you need of your great Grandfather?" A trembling, coughing voice came through, as though it had swallowed a mouthful of thick phlegm. It sounded revolting, yet one could still hear the kindness of its owner.

"Hmph!" A sharp, metallic voice exploded inside Lin Fan's mind.

Though there were only three utterly different voices, Lin Fan could clearly feel four gazes shooting at him from every direction.

The fear and misery in Lin Fan's heart grew heavier still.

For someone who had read the lore and setting, he was practically a natural broadcasting station for corruption. Those who did not fully understand the nature of the Warp had all been corrupted into Daemon Prince superhumans one after another. For someone like him, who knew too much and even knew all that discarded lore, wouldn't he be able to become a Prince outright?

Though he had never called upon these gods in his heart, the knowledge already existed in his mind. These gods did not care what names you spoke aloud; they cared whether, deep within your heart and at the bottom of your mind, you could call their names.

Lin Fan's lore-savvy brain was an alarm clock that continuously called upon the Dark Gods every second of every day.

Lin Fan had already prepared himself to be corrupted by the Four Gods into a daemon stripped of freedom and soul, or to become a Chaos Spawn and suffer endlessly.

Yet neither the corruption nor the blessing he had expected came. He merely heard the whispers of several Dark Gods in his mind, as though his brain had become an online chatroom.

"Yes! Yes! Think about me more! Think of me! Ahhhhh! This feeling of being seen completely naked! It's wonderful! I want you as my champion! Throw yourself into my embrace! I will grant you endless pleasure and delight!" The wanton voice came again, panting heavily without pause. Its owner must have been delighted beyond measure.

"What a pervert." Lin Fan silently cursed Slaanesh. He had no desire to become one of Slaanesh's addict lunatics, eventually turning into some ultimate orgy-loving, skin-flaying, self-mutilating, drug-taking superhuman.

Slaanesh did not mind Lin Fan's insult. It continued moaning in bliss.

The androgynous moans were incredibly seductive, but Lin Fan knew the price of such temptation, so he did not lose himself in them.

That was what he thought, but the brain could easily maintain several trains of thought at once. While Lin Fan told himself not to believe Slaanesh's nonsense, another part of him thought that Slaanesh's voice was genuinely intoxicating—far better than any coquettish, soft voice he had heard before.

Slaanesh immediately sensed that flicker of temptation in his heart. Thick pink energy instantly stained Lin Fan's entire body. An ordinary person would already have been corrupted into part of Slaanesh by then.

After all, poor people who knew nothing of the Warp could be corrupted merely by having symbols they did not understand carved onto their bodies. That went double for someone who understood the Warp inside and out.

Slaanesh let out an excited, piercing scream. It could already see its champion happily serving it within the Palace of Pleasure.

But as the thick pink energy steadily dissipated, Slaanesh abruptly discovered that Its corruption had no effect whatsoever on the mortal before It!

He was clearly just a mortal! He even possessed an extensive understanding of the Warp! He was not even one of those fanatical devotees of the Emperor! Why could he not be corrupted?

The enormous contrast, this unprecedented experience, delighted Slaanesh even more.

Slaanesh's pleasure came from experiencing sensations It had never felt before. That was why Slaanesh's followers often began with ordinary pleasures like being well-fed and warmly clothed, only to gradually descend into depravity. Senses blessed by Slaanesh could only experience the joy of something once; doing the same thing a second time greatly diminished that pleasure, or even erased it entirely. That was why Slaanesh's people always became all manner of sadistic perverts and addicts pursuing new stimulation in the end.

Today, Slaanesh had not only felt the naked sensation of being completely seen through, the fury of being cursed by a mortal who knew It inside out, and the frustration of having Its corruption resisted by a powerless mortal! These feelings made Slaanesh unable to control Its pleasure at all. After letting out a shrill moan in Lin Fan's mind, It fell silent.

Lin Fan himself had been terrified. When he saw those disgusting pink things sweep toward him in a way he could not possibly evade, he had already thought he was finished. But who could have imagined that the pink stuff would merely rub against his body before disappearing? It filled Lin Fan with immense relief.

"What the hell? Looks like my will really is pretty strong. From now on, I can brag that I faced the corruption of the Four Gods head-on and came out unscathed."