Precognition

Lorgar grew quickly. A few more months passed, and his body had become as towering as an ancient Titan. When he stood inside the small chapel, the top of his head nearly touched the dome pieced together from rusted steel plates. His muscles bulged with the power to tear down cities and uproot strongholds, yet his violet eyes, beneath their foundation of compassion and shrewdness, were veiled by a haze that would not disperse.

Zhou Beichen was the first to notice something was wrong.

It happened after an evening lesson. Instead of immediately absorbing the knowledge as usual or raising incisive questions, Lorgar stared blankly at the flickering acetylene flame, his pupils unfocused.

"Father," his voice carried a rare trace of distraction as it interrupted Zhou Beichen's explanation, "tomorrow... at noon, the old support in the eastern water cistern will break. Carter's daughter, that red-haired girl, will fall in."

Zhou Beichen stopped mid-sentence. He narrowed his eyes and studied Lorgar. The water cistern? Carter's daughter? Those details were too specific to be a guess.

"What is your reason?" Zhou Beichen's voice remained calm and even.

Lorgar shook his head, brow slightly furrowed as if troubled. "There is no reason. I... saw it. Like a memory, except it was not my memory. It was a... fragment of the future."

A fragment of the future?

Zhou Beichen's heart lurched. Precognition? Given what was established about the Primarchs, it was not impossible.

"What are the odds?" He changed his wording, trying to quantify it.

"One hundred percent." Lorgar answered without hesitation. His violet eyes refocused, shining with absolute certainty. "I saw water, darkness, and the sound of her choking and coughing."

Reason told Zhou Beichen this was absurd. But transmigration and Primarchs were even more absurd.

"Understood." He rose to his feet. "I'll handle it. Get some rest."

There was no further questioning, no doubt. That attitude alone was the greatest possible show of trust in Lorgar's words.

The next day, Zhou Beichen used the excuse that the Son of God had sensed a structural hazard to evacuate everyone near the eastern water cistern ahead of time, then sent the Faith Guard to reinforce it.

At noon, before dozens of watching eyes, the wooden support, half hollowed out by insects, let out a teeth-grating groan and snapped with a crash, spraying muddy water everywhere.

Silence fell.

Then came cheers they could no longer suppress, laced with fear.

"The Son of God! The Son of God foresaw the disaster!"

"He saved little Mila!"

Carter, a burly man of few words, carried his red-haired daughter, still shaken and bawling, to Lorgar. He dropped heavily to his knees in the sand, pressed his forehead to the ground, and did not raise it for a long while.

Lorgar bent down and gently helped him up.

"It was the guidance of the Father God." His deep voice echoed out, attributing the glory to the void while cleverly strengthening his own position as the Son of God.

Zhou Beichen watched from the side, expressionless, though his mind was calculating at high speed.

Yet this was only the beginning.

Over the following days, similar visions began assailing Lorgar with increasing frequency.

"Tarik, who is patrolling in the north, will be bitten on the left ankle by a sand viper tomorrow."

"The ore the western tribe uses to trade for clean water is mixed with unstable radioactive minerals."

"In three days, the sandstorm's wind direction will suddenly change. The canyon that is currently safe will become a death trap."

Each time, Zhou Beichen calmly transformed the warning into divine revelation or the Son of God's protection and intervened in advance.

Tarik was warned beforehand and wore thicker boots. Though he was bitten, he suffered no serious harm. The radioactive ore was removed in time, preventing a silent massacre. Before the sandstorm arrived, the village relocated along the safe route Lorgar had seen.

Lorgar's reputation swelled and surged like fries dropped into boiling oil, reaching an unprecedented peak. He was no longer merely the Son of God. He was a living talisman, a god of the future walking in the present. The believers looked at him with near-mad worship.

But Zhou Beichen noticed that after every vision, Lorgar would fall into a brief period of weakness and silence. The haze in those violet eyes seemed to grow thicker.

This ability clearly did not come without a price.

It was consuming him.

Whatever it was.

Zhou Beichen realized it was a risk that needed managing, a potential source of attrition.

That night, Lorgar recovered from an especially violent headache, his forehead beaded with fine cold sweat. Zhou Beichen handed him a cup of clean water.

"How do you feel?" Zhou Beichen asked, his tone like a doctor asking about a patient's condition.

"The fragments... there are more of them, and they are more chaotic." Lorgar's voice was hoarse. "It isn't only dangers nearby... Sometimes, I see... light. Golden, scorching light... and... war, on a scale beyond imagination..."

Zhou Beichen's heart sank. Golden light? The Emperor? The Great Crusade? So soon? Or was it the more distant future? That hopeless 40k tormented by the Four Gods and all sorts of other bullshit?

"Can you control it? Focus on the near future, on what is around us." Zhou Beichen tried to guide him.

Lorgar shook his head, a trace of confusion and exhaustion appearing on his face. "It is difficult. They come like a tide, surging in beyond my control. Father, when I see those disasters, I can feel the pain and fear... But farther away, those grand scenes... there is only coldness, and... an end."

Zhou Beichen fell silent for a moment. He walked over to Lorgar. Unlike his usual shoulder pats, gestures filled with encouragement and calculation, this time he gently placed a hand on the back of Lorgar's enormous, taut neck. The muscles there were hard as iron.

"Listen, Lorgar." Zhou Beichen's voice was low and grave. "This ability of yours is currently our greatest informational advantage. But it is also a double-edged sword. Overuse will destroy you. And if the 'future' you see is spread without restraint, it may cause panic beyond our control."

He paused, looking directly into Lorgar's eyes, which seemed even deeper in his pain.

"From today onward, learn to filter it. Focus only on short-term information directly related to our survival. Those distant, grand long-term trends should be sealed away for now and reported only to me. Do you understand? This is an order, and it is also to protect you."

Lorgar looked at Zhou Beichen. In those violet eyes, shrewdness and compassion seemed to struggle against the newly born haze of pain. He nodded. "I understand, Father. Filter information. Control risk."

However, the greatest trial arrived soon after.

A few days later, while preaching at noon, Lorgar suddenly froze. His massive body swayed slightly, and his face turned deathly pale in an instant. He seized the edge of the lectern, the metal surface letting out a groan of unbearable strain beneath his grip.

"Teacher..." He looked at Zhou Beichen, his voice filled with unprecedented terror. "The ground... beneath us... they are moving... Tomorrow... at sunset... the entire village... will collapse..."

This time, it was no longer a water cistern or a single person. It was the land beneath their feet, the foundation they had cultivated for years—the entire village, along with this small chapel, would be destroyed.

The news spread like a deadly plague within the range Zhou Beichen deliberately controlled. After the core believers and Faith Guard members learned of it, their faces no longer held simple worship, but disbelief mixed with the terror of impending doom.

"The entire village? How is that possible?"

"Is this another revelation from the Son of God?"

"What should we do?"

For the first time, murmurs of doubt arose among the upper ranks. If the prophecy failed, Lorgar's newly established, soaring reputation would collapse in an instant, and everything Zhou Beichen had built might be reduced to nothing.

This was the greatest risk, and also the greatest opportunity. Zhou Beichen knew he had to gamble.

"It is divine revelation!" Zhou Beichen's voice was firm and decisive, drowning out every whisper. "It is the Father God's final trial and mercy for us! Lorgar has endured immense pain to bring us this final warning! To believe him is to believe in the Father God!"

He displayed unprecedented decisiveness.

"Move at once! Mobilize everyone! Take all the supplies, food, and water you can carry! Relocate to the Southern Highlands! That is the direction the gods have shown us!"

The next twenty-odd hours became a mad race against time. Driven forcefully by Lorgar and Zhou Beichen, the entire village set out with their possessions, driving their scrawny sand beasts southward through the blazing sun and blowing sand like a vast band of refugees.

Doubt, complaints, and fear spread through the procession, but Lorgar's pale yet resolute face, along with Zhou Beichen's unquestionable command, barely maintained order.

At sunset, when the last group staggered up onto the rocky platform of the Southern Highlands and collapsed to the ground in exhaustion, they looked back toward where they had come from.

The orange-red sunset, like spilled blood, stained the entire horizon.

Then they witnessed a miracle—or rather, divine punishment.

The earth let out a low roar from the abyss. The land where they had lived for generations began to heave and collapse as though kneaded by an invisible giant hand. Houses, the chapel, the water cistern, the pitiful fields they had cultivated... everything sank and crumbled before their eyes, throwing up dust that soared into the sky like the dying breath of some enormous beast.

The rumbling continued for a long time, reaching the highlands and shaking the soles of every person's feet, along with their souls.

Silence.

Upon the highlands lay a total silence, as though even time itself had frozen.

Every doubt, every complaint, every fear was crushed to pieces before that devastating sight.

No one knew how long passed before the first sob rang out, trembling with the shock of surviving disaster. Then, as if a dam had burst, deafening cries and prayers erupted from the crowd, mingling endless lingering fear with wild ecstasy.

The people turned away. They no longer looked at the homeland that had become a graveyard. Instead, they poured every gaze, every shred of fervor, every ounce of faith, almost tangibly, onto that towering figure.

Loga Aurelian.

Their savior.

Their god walking among men.

Countless people fell to their knees, reaching out toward him with tears streaming down their faces and calling his name, their voices hoarse yet full of strength.

Zhou Beichen stood slightly behind Lorgar's side, watching that volcanic surge of faith. He had succeeded. He had won the gamble. Lorgar's reputation had gone beyond merely reaching its peak; it had become an immortal legend, branded deep into the genes of these survivors.

The enormous risk had brought immeasurable returns. Their capital of loyalty had reached its absolute height.

Lorgar stood there, bearing the tidal worship of the crowd. His violet eyes looked toward the sunken land of their old home. There was no joy in them, only bottomless exhaustion and a trace of... confusion and fear toward his own power.

He turned his head slightly and looked at Zhou Beichen behind him. In a voice only the two of them could hear, carrying a barely perceptible fragility, he asked:

"Father... is this... the 'return' we seek?"

Zhou Beichen met his gaze but did not answer at once. The wind and sand stirred the hem of his coarse linen robe. Against the backdrop of sky-filling dust and the blood-red setting sun, his face was hidden in shadow, impossible to see clearly.

"I'm not sure, Lorgar."