Departure

The clatter of keys rang especially sharp in the late-night rental, crackling with near-venting impatience.

Hua Wei curled up in his ergonomic chair, the screen's bluish glow reflecting off his slightly puffy, sleep-deprived face. A few crumbs from the fried chicken he had eaten at noon still clung to his chin.

Empty Coke cans and a half-finished bag of chips cluttered the desk. In one corner, a dust-covered Ultramarines helmet model stared hollowly at him.

On-screen, Warhammer 40K's newly released tithe had already put him in a foul mood.

Looking for some amusement, he opened a Lobster video and heard a recruitment advertisement.

Hua Wei curled his lip. "The Warhammer world? Not even a dog would...!"

Bzzzz!

A dull tremor, as though it had come from the depths of the cosmos, suddenly pierced his cheap headphones and slammed into Hua Wei's eardrums.

The image on the screen abruptly distorted. Countless indescribable whispers exploded directly inside his mind. They were no longer electronic sounds filtered through headphones, but countless icy needles, carrying blasphemous malice and some... indescribable longing, stabbing straight into the depths of his thoughts!

"Go...!"

The world spun and collapsed before his eyes. The familiar outlines of his rental room twisted and shattered in an instant, like a canvas thrown into a blender!

"Fuck—!" A terrified howl caught in his throat, producing only a broken half-syllable.

Weightlessness. Bone-chilling weightlessness enveloped him.

There was no light, no sound—only endless falling and boundless, viscous darkness.

Those blasphemous whispers coiled through the void like maggots clinging to bone.

Time lost all meaning. It might have been an instant, or ten thousand years. Just as his consciousness was about to be utterly crushed by this Chaos—

Bang!

A heavy, muffled impact.

He had not landed on a wooden floor, but on some hard, cold... rock reeking strongly of blood and rust?

Agonizing pain surged from every part of his body. It felt as though his bones had come apart.

Hua Wei curled up and gasped desperately. Every breath brought tearing pain and a stench so thick it could not be dispersed.

With effort, he opened eyes blurred by sweat and tears.

His vision swayed, then gradually focused.

The sky was a sickly lead gray. Heavy clouds hung low, as if they might collapse at any moment and bury the land entirely.

The air was thick with a suffocating composite stench—the pungent smell of blood, the cloying sweetness of rotting flesh, the rank odor of excrement, and some... indescribable, acrid scent like corroding metal and evaporating chemicals. Mixed together, they formed a toxic haze capable of scorching the lungs.

He lay facedown in a muddy depression. Beneath him was cold, sticky black mud mixed with dark red blood that had yet to fully congeal.

A few meters away, a corpse in tattered work clothes was half-buried in the sludge. Its abdomen had been completely split open, its organs spilling out like an overturned can of paint. Several bloated flies with oily green shells greedily burrowed, crawled, and fed upon it.

Farther away, broken prefab buildings leaned crookedly. Their walls were pocked with charred bullet holes and streaked with some sticky, dark green filth that slowly continued to ooze downward.

"Urgh..." His stomach convulsed violently. Hua Wei abruptly turned his head and retched, sour fluid mixed with instant noodles and pizza scraps surging up his throat and burning his esophagus.

"For Grandfather's blessing!" A warped, distorted shriek filled with diseased fanaticism came from nearby, drowning out the wind and faint cries.

Hua Wei looked toward the sound in terror.

On a dirt slope a dozen meters in front of the depression where he hid, a "person" was moving slowly.

Or rather, it had once been a person.

Now it was swollen like a skin sack filled with filthy water. Its skin was a decayed grayish green, covered in bulging blisters leaking yellow pus and sores that constantly split open before writhing shut again.

A tattered, filth-stained robe barely hung from its bloated body.

It dragged a rust-covered logging axe smeared with scraps of meat and black blood.

Before it, a man in equally ragged clothing, his face blackened with coal dust, desperately crawled backward while clutching a wailing infant. His eyes were filled with broken despair.

"No... don't come closer!" the man screamed hoarsely, his voice trembling beyond recognition.

Seemingly provoked by the infant's crying, the swollen monster let out a raspy, bellows-like cackle. Its pace suddenly quickened, and its rotting feet made wet, sickening squelches in the mud.

It raised its filthy axe high.

"Grandfather... embrace..."

Hua Wei's heart was instantly gripped by an enormous icy hand!

He recognized that thing! He had seen it countless times in videos! A Nurgle plague zombie, one of Grandfather's "gifts"!

This was fucking Warhammer 40K! Not a game! Not a movie! It was real! He was going to die here! Like that man and baby, he would be chopped apart by that rusty axe and turned into a pile of rotten meat nourishing the Plague Garden!

Fear swept through him like ice water, freezing every limb and bone.

He wanted to close his eyes, but his body was too rigid to move. He could only watch helplessly as the axe fell with a foul rush of wind—

At that moment, a viscous shadow carrying the thick, sweet stench of decay suddenly engulfed Hua Wei!

He looked up in terror, his pupils contracting sharply.

A true behemoth was striding over the dirt slope toward the depression where he hid.

It was larger and far more horrifying than that zombie! Thick dark green power armor, covered in rust and suspicious filth, encased its bloated, deformed body. Viscous yellow-green pus constantly seeped from the armor's seams.

Huge curved horns on either side of its helmet resembled rotting ram's horns. One enormous, cloudy yellow eye gleamed with cruel light through the helmet's visor slit.

One hand held an absurdly massive chainsaw axe, fresh strands of flesh and bone fragments hanging from its teeth as it emitted a low, ominous hum. In its other hand, it carried a crude iron bucket containing bubbling, viscous dark green liquid—a plague bomb that gave off a nauseating stench!

Death Guard! Nurgle's Space Marines! Plague Marines!

Its cloudy single eye casually swept over the depression and Hua Wei's curled-up figure, as though examining a stone by the roadside—cold, numb, devoid of even the slightest emotion belonging to a living thing.

It took a heavy step. Its metal boot, coated with slime and rust, crashed down less than half a meter from Hua Wei's head! Mud and rotten grass splattered across his face.

"Uh... uh..." Hua Wei's throat felt as though iron pincers had clamped around it. He could not make even the faintest sound.

Utter terror froze his thoughts. It felt as if even his blood had stopped flowing.

He could clearly smell the Plague Marine's stench, a blend of rotten flesh, pus-filled blood, and chemical toxins so intense it nearly suffocated him.

That humming chainsaw axe, that bucket of churning lethal plague... the Reaper stood right before him, only a step away!

Run! He had to run!

His survival instinct, like a dying beast's final struggle, suddenly shattered the shackles of fear.

Hua Wei had no idea where he found the strength. His body sprang from the mud like a compressed spring, and he scrambled on all fours toward a pile of collapsed metal debris and twisted concrete blocks at the edge of the depression.

His heart hammered madly in his chest, nearly bursting. Every breath tasted of blood.

"Hm?" A muffled, phlegmy note of confusion came from beneath the Plague Marine's helmet. It seemed not to have expected this "stone" to move.

The heavy footsteps immediately turned, pursuing him with booming thunder like the beat of a death drum! Every step made the muddy ground tremble faintly!

It's over... I've been spotted... I'm dead...

Just as despair, like an icy tide, was about to drown his consciousness completely—

Bzzzz!

A cold, emotionless mechanical prompt sounded directly in his chaotic mind like an oracle, forcibly cutting off every other noise!

"Host detected facing a desperate situation. All initial emotion points will be forcibly consumed to construct a teleportation channel."

Hua Wei's vision went black, and then he lost consciousness.