Flames of Resonance

The farther they traveled from those fringe settlements brimming with false happiness, the faster the surroundings seemed to shed their "sacred" disguise, revealing beneath it a bizarre, even blasphemous nature that defied common sense.

The air was no longer merely cloying. Wisps of faint, multicolored mist had begun to mingle within it. Like living veils, they slowly drifted and coiled through the woods and roadside gullies. Sunlight passed through the colored haze and refracted into warped patches of light, scattering over the ground, which had likewise begun to turn strange.

The soil was no longer simple yellow sand or black earth. Its surface was coated in a slick mucus, as if secreted by some living creature. More horrifying still, swollen growths resembling grotesque tumors had begun to appear in places. Dark red or purplish-black, their surfaces were covered in twisted veins. Some even pulsed faintly, like hearts buried beneath the earth that belonged to no known creature. The cloying scent in the air had also grown more complex here, mixed with an indescribably pungent odor like rotten spices and ozone.

And the "happiness" of the residents here had begun to turn grotesque as well.

They still wore smiles and warmly greeted Zhou Beichen and Lorgar as they passed, as though they had noticed nothing unusual about their surroundings. But a closer look revealed that many of them had undergone obvious physical changes. A hard, root-like growth wound along an old woman's arm; a fleshy tumor on a grown man's temple constantly oozed yellow fluid, yet he casually wiped it with a handkerchief, his satisfied smile never fading; they even saw a child with thin, webbed membranes growing between his fingers, happily flapping them.

Even the villagers who still looked "normal" turned a blind eye to the obvious bizarre changes in their relatives and neighbors. They continued laughing and chatting with them as though those things were no more than ordinary birthmarks or scars. This collective distortion of perception chilled Zhou Beichen more deeply than the growths themselves. This was no longer faith, but a diseased kind of forcibly instilled "normality."

Lorgar's brow furrowed tighter and tighter. His near-instinctive pursuit of order and purity, inherited from the Primarch, filled him with intense physical discomfort and anger in the face of this ubiquitous distortion and corruption. Yet at the same time, something deeper and indescribable had begun to take root in his heart.

He stopped, closed his eyes, and no longer relied solely on sight and smell. His immense psychic gift, stimulated by the abnormally dense energy around him, began to "see" this world with unprecedented clarity.

In his psychic sight, the multicolored mist was no longer a blur of colors, but a raging torrent of energy representing ecstasy, indulgence, the power to twist life, and pure change. The tumor-like growths on the ground were nodes where that energy had anchored itself in the material world, ugly lighthouses constantly drawing in and radiating nauseating psychic waves. As for the villagers, their souls no longer shone with the unique light of individuals. Like threads tossed into a dye vat, they had been steeped in and assimilated by that chaotic energy, becoming a frenzied yet uniform, ever-shifting kaleidoscope of color.

Chaos... disorder... and yet it contained some twisted, powerful vitality.

At that moment, Lorgar felt as though something deep within his soul had been touched. A strange resonance, like the plucking of a sleeping string, began to tremble through his body. He felt as though he had been born able to understand certain "rules" of these energies, as though part of his very essence existed to command or oppose this power.

He unconsciously raised his hands and spread his palms. There was no chant, no ritual. With a mere thought, following the instinct for order that surged within him and faintly resisted the chaotic energy outside—

Whoosh!

Two clusters of pure, blazing flame, radiating a steady golden light, ignited out of thin air above his palms! The flames burned quietly, driving away the unsettling colored mist around them. They illuminated Lorgar's grave yet slightly astonished face, as well as Zhou Beichen's eyes widening in an instant.

"What the fuck?!" Zhou Beichen nearly jumped, staring at the flames in Lorgar's hands in disbelief. He knew Lorgar possessed psychic abilities like precognition, but this power to conjure fire barehanded, to manifest energy into reality, had never been displayed so clearly before him. The whole vibe had abruptly leaped from low-fantasy political intrigue into high fantasy, dealing an immense blow to the understanding of a former stock trader accustomed to solving problems with data and calculations.

Lorgar lowered his gaze to the dancing flames in his palms, complex light flickering in his violet eyes. He could feel the flames' power. They were pure and blazing, carrying the essence of purification and order, utterly at odds with the chaotic, blasphemous energy around them. This was... power he could control.

Almost unconsciously, a thought slithered into his mind like a venomous snake, bearing the imprint of the mindset Zhou Beichen had instilled in him over the years:

This power... if I can control it, if I can systematize and standardize it the way Father controls work points and redemption vouchers... could it... also become my "capital"?

The thought gave even him a faint sense of alarm, yet it also carried a strange allure. No matter where power came from, if it could be used, could it not also become a tool for building order and achieving one's goals? Had Father not used those seemingly "worldly," even "blasphemous" methods time and again to defuse crises and establish the foundation he had today?

He silently extinguished the flames in his palms. He said nothing, but something deep in his eyes had already begun to change.

The two continued deeper toward the core region. The sights around them grew ever more horrifying. The original mud-brick houses were being wrapped up and eroded by warped growths that seemed to be made from a mixture of flesh and stone. On the walls of some houses, pupil-less eyes opened and blinked continuously, while others split open into mouths dripping saliva. The multicolored mist grew thicker, and within it, vaguely formed shadows writhed and darted about, uttering meaningless whispers and shrill laughter.

Amid that nerve-racking atmosphere of horror, a long, dull bell toll, carrying a strange seductive pull, rang out from the dense fog ahead.

The bell seemed to possess magic. It dispelled some of the fear in Zhou Beichen's heart, only to bring another, more bone-chilling sensation. Following the sound, they cautiously passed through a dead forest tangled in enormous, pulsing fleshy vines. Then the scene before them suddenly opened up—

It was a cleared expanse, and at its center stood a building.

It still vaguely retained the outline of a church, with spires and stained-glass windows—if those panes that constantly shifted through blasphemous patterns and oozed viscous fluid could still be called stained-glass windows. But its overall structure had warped and swollen, like some malformed creation struggling forth from a dying giant's final exertion. The building's surface was covered in a thick layer of constantly writhing flesh, while countless twisted symbols crawled across its walls like living things. A scent several times stronger than before, mingling blood, sandalwood, and rotten sweetness, wafted from this ghostly "church."

At that moment, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people had gathered in the clearing before the church. They wore all manner of clothing: farmers, craftsmen, even some who looked like low-ranking clergy. All of them faced the twisted church and knelt upon the ground, rocking their bodies rhythmically back and forth as they muttered prayers in a fanatical collective ritual. Their faces no longer bore the simple "happiness" of those in the outer regions, but an eerie expression blending extreme ecstasy, agonized distortion, and something... inhumanly focused.

The sight before them was enough to make any person with a shred of reason left feel their scalp go numb and turn to flee.

Zhou Beichen instinctively took half a step back, his throat dry. This place was so wicked that it went beyond anything he could understand. The little scheming and financial maneuvering he had brought with him seemed pale and ridiculous here.

Fuck, what is this cursed place...

Just as the thought of making a run for it rose in his mind, he caught sight of Lorgar beside him, standing firm as a boulder, his gaze sharp as a hawk's.

An inexplicable courage surged back into him.

What the hell am I scared of!

He encouraged himself inwardly, with the reckless ferocity of a man who had nothing left to lose.

There's a Primarch standing right beside me! If anyone's dying, this thing dies first!

Meanwhile, Lorgar was completely drawn in by the scene before him and the immense, filthy psychic waves emanating from the twisted church. The flames that had just gone out in his palms seemed to still be faintly hot. A powerful impulse, born from the depths of his bloodline, surged through his chest, mixed with disgust, anger, and a... indescribable attraction, like the summons of fate itself.

He seemed to hear something calling to him from the church's deepest recesses. Not through sound, but through the language of the chaotic energy itself.

Destroy it? Or... understand it, perhaps even... command it?

Lorgar did not know the answer. But he knew he had to go inside. This place might be the key to understanding his own power, as well as the enormous crisis before them.

He took a deep breath. The blasphemous air filling his lungs stung sharply, yet it also made him more clearheaded.

"Father," he said in a low voice, with unquestionable resolve, "we need to go in and take a look."

Zhou Beichen looked at Lorgar's profile, so resolute it was almost sacred, and clenched his teeth.

"Fuck it... let's go!"