Epiphany

The smoke of the Battle of Iron Plain had yet to fully disperse. Vladimir lay limp as mud, dragged away by two Faithguard Army warriors as fierce as wolves and tigers. The soldiers under his command who could still stand were systematically disarmed and detained amid confusion and fear.

The wounded groaned while the victors silently cleared the battlefield and collected the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Countless tedious yet necessary tasks piled up like mountains—counting prisoners, tallying casualties, steadying morale, taking over Ice-Iron Fortress, consolidating newly occupied territory, preventing possible outbreaks and lingering Chaos contamination... There were endless matters to handle, enough to give any leader a splitting headache.

Yet Zhou Beichen was quite free at the moment.

He found a relatively clean little slope overlooking most of the battlefield and plopped down on it. He even had the leisure to pull out a piece of dried meat from the small leather pouch he carried and chew on it slowly.

Lavoisier and his capable administrative team, tested by the work-point system, had already descended on the postwar asset-restructuring work like sharks smelling blood, filled with fanatical efficiency and a sense of mission. Watching those people flush with excitement at being entrusted with such important duties, Zhou Beichen could not help but sigh. Being a leader—especially this sort of hands-off leader—really was great. Particularly when, like an ancient king, you tossed work to your subordinates and they still felt grateful, believing it to be an immense show of trust and honor.

"Pfft, the taste of power..." he mumbled through the meat, squinting contentedly.

Footsteps approached from behind, steady and firm. It was Lorgar.

His white robe was still torn and stained, yet the air of majesty and sanctity lingering around him after the great battle—especially after purifying the demon at the end—was more eye-catching than any magnificent attire. He walked over to Zhou Beichen, sat down beside him in imitation of his casual posture, and looked over the busy yet solemn scene below.

"Son," Zhou Beichen said after swallowing his jerky, nudging Lorgar with his elbow. His face held undisguised teasing and praise. "When you stood there at the end and watched those people kneel, that pose you struck was damn cool! The effect was incredible!"

Lorgar turned his head, genuine confusion in his violet eyes. "Father, what does 'striking a pose' mean?"

"Huh?" Zhou Beichen froze, then laughed. Only then did he remember that the phrase was far beyond Lorgar's curriculum. Scratching his head, he tried to explain it in a way the other could understand. "Well... it means deliberately, but not too deliberately, using certain actions, words, or bearing to display a level of style, presence, or ability far beyond ordinary people. The goal is to intimidate others, attract admiration, or simply make yourself feel great. Like what you did just now—that was an extremely advanced pose. The effect was especially good!"

Lorgar nodded thoughtfully, seeming to understand a little. Yet there was not the slightest trace of pride on his face. Instead, his confusion was replaced by a deeper emotion. After a moment of silence, he looked toward Vladimir's former soldiers being driven away and guarded below, as well as the laborers farther away gathering corpses.

"It was nothing, Father." Lorgar's voice was somewhat low. "I was merely... perhaps considering a kind of emotional asset, as you put it. But just now, I suddenly felt... that they were pitiable."

"Pitiable?" Zhou Beichen raised a brow and followed his gaze. "Why? The victor becomes king and the loser a bandit. It has always been that way. They followed the wrong master and chose the wrong side. It is no surprise they ended up like this."

"That is not why." Lorgar shook his head. "I mean that many of them fought us to the death on the battlefield, yet perhaps until they died, they never knew what they were truly fighting for."

He raised a hand and pointed below. "The warriors of our Earthly Heaven at least know clearly that they fight to defend their homes, for work points, so their families can be fed and clothed, and for the tangible Earthly Heaven before their eyes. And the one they worship is me, a tangible Son of God. But what about them? For Vladimir? For the insubstantial rewards he promised? Or for... the god they believe in?"

Lorgar's brows drew together slightly, a sign of his true inner confusion. "But Father, why would anyone be willing to so easily offer their loyalty, sweat, and even their lives for an existence they have never truly seen and that has never tangibly done anything for them? I do not understand. It does not conform to equivalent exchange."

Zhou Beichen looked at Lorgar's eager, inquisitive eyes, tinged with pity, and thought to himself, Good grief, a primarch really is a primarch. This depth of thought is already touching on philosophy and sociology. He cleared his throat, feeling it was time to teach his good son another lesson.

"Child, it is good that you can recognize this. It shows you have not learned from me for nothing." Zhou Beichen put on the air of a seasoned lecturer. "You are asking what religion is? Fine. Today, let us take another angle and break it down again using the brand framework you are familiar with."

"Look," he said, counting on his fingers, "what does a successful brand need? First, it needs a logo and a visual identity system, right? The symbols of the Covenant Church, specific prayer gestures, grand churches—those are its visual identifiers. Second, it needs a core slogan and a brand story, right? 'Those who believe in me shall gain eternal life,' 'The Father God created the world,' 'The prophet received revelation'—those are its slogans and brand legends. They sound lofty and irresistibly appealing."

"Then it needs products and services, right? Although the product—so-called salvation and grace—is intangible, delivered later, and may even never be delivered at all, it provides emotional value. It is like that business-to-business model—I will explain that to you another day. It can ease people's pain and fear of death, the unknown, and reality itself. That is called solving the user's pain points!"

"Furthermore, it needs channels and settings, right? Churches are its offline experience stores, prayer and worship are its usage scenarios, while priests and bishops are its channel managers and customer-service staff."

"Finally, and most importantly, it needs to create a sense of user belonging and a community culture. It makes you feel that once you believe in it, you are one of its own, different from heretics and unbelievers. You gain a sense of superiority and spiritual support. After that whole combination of moves, after hundreds or thousands of years of iteration and monopoly, the brand becomes faith, and users become believers."

Zhou Beichen concluded, "So religion is, in essence, a super-brand run extremely successfully, one that deeply binds its users' emotions and ideology. Vladimir and his soldiers are deeply brainwashed users of that brand. To preserve the brand's purity and market share, they willingly gave everything, including their lives. And what our New Covenant Church must do is build a more advanced, pragmatic new brand that can genuinely deliver value, replace it, and compete for users' minds."

Lorgar listened with intense focus, light flickering in his violet eyes as he rapidly absorbed and understood this entirely new interpretation, full of "Beichen characteristics." He nodded slowly. "So we are... carrying out a brand upgrade and iteration. We will use equivalent exchange and the real value of Earthly Heaven to replace the old brand's empty promises."

"My son truly has excellent comprehension!" Zhou Beichen patted his shoulder approvingly.

The subject seemed to have come to an end. The cold night wind swept past, carrying a chill. Zhou Beichen seemed to recall something, and his brows furrowed slightly. "Still, it is strange. Things have been raging here, even Chaos has shown its face, yet that fellow called Erebus should have jumped out to stir up trouble long ago. Why has there not been a single peep from him? I have been thinking about killing him this whole time."

Lorgar pondered for a moment and offered a possibility. "Father, perhaps... the changes caused by your arrival were great enough that he... became a good person?"

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!" Zhou Beichen shook his head like a rattle drum. "That brat is rotten to the core, a purebred scumbag! Let me tell you, there is another secret here. The fellow running around under the name Erebus is not the real Erebus at all!"

Seeing Lorgar's surprised gaze, he lowered his voice and spoke with the thrill of revealing a hidden secret. "That guy, in order to infiltrate the Covenant Church, personally smashed to death a truly devout boy named Erebus with a stone, then stole his name and identity! The current Erebus is nothing more than a bastard whose eyes and heart have been completely blinded by power and ambition! The dead boy was the true, innocent Erebus."

A chill flashed through Lorgar's eyes. He instinctively felt disgust toward such an act of desecrating life and trampling loyalty.

"If he does not come looking for me," Zhou Beichen said with his trademark sinister grin, full of calculation and ruthlessness, "then I will go looking for him! Once things here settle down a little, we will issue the highest-level wanted notice in the name of Earthly Heaven and the New Covenant Church!"

He leaned closer to Lorgar, light gleaming in his eyes. "To fake devotion and conceal his past, I hear that bastard tattooed ancient Covenant Church inscriptions everywhere he could tattoo them, all over his body, including even his little OO! We will search based on that feature—a bald man covered head to toe in Covenant Church inscriptions, named Erebus! Such a conspicuous target will surely be dragged out by our lackeys or by people seeking work-point bounties soon enough, as long as he has not left Colchis!"

Lorgar nodded, firmly committing the identifying feature to memory. He likewise had not the slightest mercy for such a scum who desecrated life and defiled faith.

The subject seemed to have ended, and silence once more fell over the stone fortress. Lorgar gazed at the flickering lights, then suddenly asked another question. His voice was quiet, but it carried weight.

"Father, will our brand... Earthly Heaven... someday become what we despise? Like the old Covenant Church, rigid and rotten, becoming a new tool of oppression?"

The smile on Zhou Beichen's face gradually faded. He was silent for a moment.

"Not in our hands," he answered with certainty. "I will keep a close watch and make sure it continues along the path of equivalent exchange and striving in this world that we have set. I will write mechanisms against Chaos and internal stagnation into this brand's very genes."

He paused, his tone turning somewhat distant and meaningful. "But as for our descendants... that is truly impossible to say."

He looked out into the boundless darkness beyond the window, as if seeing the distant future.

"After all, a red kingdom may endure for ten thousand years, but future generations have their own wisdom—and their own goddamned nonsense. All we can do is lay a solid foundation and build thick firewalls. As for whether it will grow crooked in the future..."

He withdrew his gaze, looked at Lorgar, and shrugged.

"That will not be our concern. Son, fill in the shit pit in front of us before worrying about eternity!"