The Emperor had been coming by rather often lately.
Like he was out for a stroll or dropping in on a neighbor, he would silently appear in Zhou Beichen's room.
Sometimes, Zhou Beichen would wake up and find this lord of mankind sitting cross-legged in a chair, wearing that linen robe of his that looked like it had been picked up at some ancient Roman night market, studying the strange gadgets Zhou Beichen had brought with him.
"Old friend, try this." One time, the Emperor eagerly pulled out an aged cardboard box printed with a blurry logo. Inside were several suspiciously shaped, brilliantly orange chunks. "As far as I know, this was a junk food treasure from the 2K era. I was fortunate enough to try it at a restaurant called MFC before, so I had those tech-priests on Mars try to reproduce it."
Zhou Beichen stared at the thing. "You had those people... reproduce junk food?"
"The meaning of life lies in trying things, old friend." The Emperor picked one up and bit into it without concern. After chewing a few times, a faintly nostalgic expression actually appeared on that perfect face of his. "Mm... this composite assault on the taste buds—high-calorie, high-salt, mixed with inferior spices... it really does have a crude sort of pleasure."
"..."
He began to wonder whether the man before him had been swapped out by some Chaos god from the Warp.
Ah, right. In truth, he had always been a Chaos god from the Warp.
The problem was that the Emperor seemed particularly... relaxed around him? Or perhaps more accurately, completely uninhibited?
He watched as the Emperor used psychic power powerful enough to crush stars to envelop a marinated sand beast rib, precisely controlling it to generate a heating effect akin to air