Foundation Exusiai, Containment Breach!

A steady voice suddenly rang out over the comm channel.

"Everyone in this fleet, immediately abort the warp-jump procedure."

The Ultramarines fell silent at once.

It was the Chapter Master's voice.

Lord of Macragge, Guardian of Ultramar, heir to Guilliman's will.

"Chapter Master!" The captain abruptly looked up, his voice suppressing anger and confusion. "Macragge is under attack! The Orks' battle moon has already—"

"I know." Saul's voice was cold and resolute. "But Terra has issued new strategic orders."

The holographic projection flickered, and Saul's image appeared in the center of the bridge.

He wore finely crafted power armor, the Ultramarines' insignia engraved upon his pauldrons. His gaze blazed like fire, utterly unwavering.

"Andamantu Planet has fallen," he said gravely. "The Imperial Fists' defensive line has been breached, and the Ork horde is advancing toward the Sol System."

The Ultramarines fell silent for a moment.

The Imperial Fists, guardians of Terra.

Dorn's sons had actually been defeated?

"Terra has dispatched the 'Solar Fleet' to intercept them," Saul continued. "But the High Lords' Council believes the Solar Fleet alone cannot completely crush the Green Tide. Therefore, we have been ordered to rendezvous with them immediately and assist in annihilating the Orks' main force."

Realizing Terra was in danger, the captain could not help falling silent as well.

"Yes, for the Golden Throne."

"But Macragge..." one warrior could not help but say.

"Macragge will hold. Yours is the fleet closest to Terra." The Chapter Master's voice allowed no doubt. "The defensive systems our primarch Guilliman left behind will not be breached so easily. But if Terra falls, the entire Imperium will descend into chaos. We must prove to the Emperor that the Ultramarines are loyal not only to Ultramar, but also to the Emperor's throne."

His gaze swept across every warrior.

"This is an order, and it is also your duty. Macragge does not need your fleet, but Terra does."

As he spoke, the Chapter Master was not particularly willing to deal with those vermin either.

But he had to give a response as well. Most of the other Chapters shared the same thoughts.

After hearing the Chapter Master's words,

the bridge sank into dead silence.

The Ultramarines gripped their weapons tightly, struggling inwardly.

Their homeland was burning. Their brothers were fighting.

But their primarch had taught them that the Imperium's survival outweighed all else.

At last, the captain slowly nodded.

"By your command, Chapter Master," he said quietly, then turned to the bridge officers. "Reset the course. Full speed toward the Andamantu Sector."

"For the Emperor! For Terra!" The Chapter Master's voice echoed through the comm channel.

The Ultramarines saluted in silence. The fury in their hearts had not faded; it had merely been suppressed beneath a heavier responsibility.

They would not abandon Macragge, but neither would they allow the Imperial Fists' defeat to become humanity's end.

There were priorities in all things.

In the blink of an eye,

the entire fleet began its transition.

Thaddeus, the Blood Ravens warrior crawling through the ducts with bags of loot and an angel tied around his waist, suddenly felt weightless.

"Wuh—aaah!"

Rumble!

The engines roared!

The entire fleet entered the preliminary acceleration phase for Warp travel.

As the fleet moved at high speed, the environment within the ducts became increasingly unstable.

"Damn it."

At that moment, Thaddeus, who had only wanted to grab some supplies and take a few relics along the way, realized that he could not leave at all.

He tapped his arm a few times, sending several signals that he might not be coming home.

Shrrk!

By the time they came to their senses, the ship was already traveling through the Warp.

"The angel is gone! That angel has disappeared!"

An Ultramarines warrior reported the situation to the captain. This was their failure—they had allowed that suspicious Living Saint to escape.

"What?"

Upon hearing the news, the captain immediately felt overwhelmed.

No matter what, it was an indisputable fact that the angel had slaughtered an entire planet's worth of enemies, along with countless Orks and Chaos warriors.

Even if she was highly suspicious, she should at least have received honors befitting a hero.

No matter why she had left, the captain believed it was because they had failed to treat her properly.

After all, binding her the moment she arrived and treating her as a heretic had truly been a helpless measure.

Clatter, clatter.

Just as he was regretting it,

a thunderous explosion from the ducts interrupted his orders.

Within the tides of the Warp, the ventilation ducts convulsed violently like the intestines of a dying beast, swinging in an arc across the bridge.

Boom!

Two figures suddenly dropped from the opening of the ventilation duct.

The Ultramarines immediately went on alert.

But when they saw who had arrived, they were dumbfounded.

Thaddeus, the Blood Ravens warrior, crashed into the tactical hololith like a cannonball. A massive bundle of various "spoils" was emitting an increasingly blinding glow.

Xiao Huasheng landed on her back with her hands behind her, looking utterly dead inside, and did not move at all.

Seeing this scene,

the Blood Ravens warrior slowly sat up. Thaddeus greeted the brothers of the Ultramarines Chapter.

"Knowledge is power."

"Hello, brothers."

The sticky-fingered Chapter was caught red-handed!

When the war on Andamantu ended in the Imperial Fists' defeat,

within the High Lords' Council on Terra, the center of human Imperial rule,

an increasingly fierce political struggle was also underway.

After the peace of the past thousand years, the Imperium had long since fallen into darkness and decay.

But in the end, through the combined efforts of the Inquisition's representative and the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, they forced the Imperial Navy's High Lord Admiral, who commanded vast military forces, to deploy the Solar Fleet.

It headed for Temple Port to engage the Ork forces gathered there.

And now, this elite fleet of Terra's humanity had already clashed with the Orks.

Vast and terrifying gravity weapons spewed forth from the Orks' battle moon!

No one knew how the Orks had built those immensely massive gravity weapons, much less how the things operated.

But when they smashed into the heart of the fleet, their power became the first truly devastating attack the Imperium had witnessed since a thousand years of peace.

An admiral stared at the sudden gravitational distortion appearing on the tactical star map. Twisted ripples of gravity were dragging three frigates into a crushing zone like toys.

The Orks' "Waaagh!" energy could be felt even through the void of space. The success of this attack was an immensely exciting event for the Orks!

After suffering one loss, the Imperial Navy swiftly spread out its formation, preventing itself from being easily caught.

But that did almost nothing to stop it.

Hundreds of jagged breaches suddenly split open across the battle moon's crude iron surface, and its rusted gravity cannon arrays warped the entire sector into a vortex.

The keel of a Lunar-class cruiser groaned as it twisted beyond endurance. Its armor belt peeled away layer by layer like bark, and even with its engines at full power, it still could not escape the overwhelming pull.

In the end, it plunged into the battle moon and exploded into a spray of sparks!

Watching the scene, a subordinate aboard one vessel cried out to the admiral.

"Report... we've been caught too!"

At that moment,

the admiral sharply noticed that whenever the battle moon used its gravity weapons, its void shields temporarily shut down.

A mad idea emerged in his mind.

"Don't be afraid! Attack! Attack that planet!"

Countless artillery shells, along with every conceivable means of attack, slammed into the battle moon.

The bombardment barely paused for an instant, and the struck areas immediately melted into enormous craters.

Seeing that their attacks were effective, the admiral had not even had time to cheer.

The next moment,

screams from the bridge and the thunderous shriek of twisting metal erupted at the same time.

From inside his compartment, he watched the warship that had served for a thousand years crumple like tinfoil in an invisible giant hand. The bridge tower collapsed inward first, then the entire vessel twisted into a knot within the spiral gravity field.

Tens of millions of crew members were crushed into a mixture of flesh and metal before the decompression alarms could even sound.

At last, he too was absorbed into it, becoming a lump of metal scrap hurled toward the Ork battle moon.

But the information gained from his attack gave the Imperial Navy immense confidence.

Soon, suicide assaults centered around the Solar Fleet appeared across this brutal battlefield.

Everyone was giving their lives for the Golden Throne, merely to inflict a little more damage upon the Ork battle moon. That was all!

And along Temple Port's terminator line, a Warp rift emerged as the Ultramarines fleet finally arrived.

"I want to become a magical girl!"

The moment she reached this battlefield, Xiao Huasheng beheld the most magnificent and tragic sight she had ever seen.

"This is..."

The universe was burning.

Tens of millions of warships poured down from the black void like a rain of fire cast upon the world by gods. Every falling trajectory tore apart the eternal silence.

They burned and rolled, their hulls bursting with blinding crimson-gold radiance under high-speed friction, like meteors blooming with their fiercest brilliance in the final instant of their lives.

The battle moon's colossal silhouette flickered amid the flashes of explosions. Its surface had long become a boiling furnace, greedily devouring this grand dance of death.

Ship shadows fell like tears; their descent was like falling stars.

Some warships broke apart before they crashed, becoming countless burning fragments that dragged brilliant yet fleeting trails through the void.

Others were like stubborn swords, plunging straight into the battle moon's rusted crust and erupting into blazing white suns bright enough to blind at the moment of impact.

Molten metal sprayed like bloody tears, congealing into chains of crimson-gold beads beneath the intense gravity before crashing down once more.

Ring after ring of thermal halos continuously emerged across the battle moon.