May Your Soul Return to the Golden Throne

The foul air of the Underhive, tinged with a faint smell of blood, rushed into Zhou Yun's lungs, bringing with it an unprecedented sense of reality.

Once again, Zhou Yun clearly realized that he had transmigrated.

He had transmigrated into a world of magic and miracles, wizards and knights, priests and scholars, elves and dwarves, swords and guns. This world was protected by four gods of love, life, wisdom, and courage. In this world, belief itself was magic, and the Demon King sat in a palace atop a mountain...

The only problem was...

By the Emperor's holy hook, this was fucking Warhammer 40,000.

There were no swords and sorcery here. There were only chainswords and Warp psychic powers.

"Zhou Yun."

Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax's voice rang out, interrupting Zhou Yun's thoughts.

The young female Inquisitor crouched in the shadows of a Hive City alley, with five Tempestus Scions standing at her side.

Greyfax's psychic goggles glimmered faintly, reflecting the building outside the alley, hidden amid the Underhive's mountains of garbage.

That faint smell of blood was wafting out from within.

"Use your talent." She turned toward Zhou Yun and gave him the order.

Zhou Yun's talent—or rather, his predecessor's talent—was divination.

His predecessor had been an Underhive street fortune-teller skilled in Emperor's Tarot.

That poor, unlucky man had died in a gang brawl. Reclaimed by the Corpse Guild, he had been about to be thrown into a fermentation vat and turned into a meal on some worker's table along with other corpses, recyclables, and industrial byproducts when Zhou Yun had been reborn in his body.

By coincidence, the cult Greyfax had been tracking was deeply connected to the Corpse Guild, and she had encountered Zhou Yun just after he escaped from it.

As a psyker, she had sensed the true nature of Zhou Yun's divinatory ability.

Zhou Yun possessed prophetic psychic talent, allowing him to glimpse the future to a certain extent.

Greyfax appreciated Zhou Yun's talent. This fledgling Inquisitor had chosen to recruit him as her retainer and personally taught him how to use his gifts.

Zhou Yun took a deep breath, calmed himself, and began to use his psychic talent according to Greyfax's teachings.

He pressed his clasped hands against his brow.

"Terra's Himalayas are cold, the Emperor on the Golden Throne awaits the loyal. The Astronomican burns, psykers ascend. This one is blessed with foresight dreams bestowed by Long Live... hey, hey, hi-yo..."

Zhou Yun muttered the rhythmic tune under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut.

Greyfax was not surprised. Psykers who had yet to master their abilities often needed words, shouts, and rhythmic phrases to assist themselves.

Praying to the Emperor through a little tune, as Zhou Yun was doing, was also a common and relatively safe method.

"...With loyal devotion, I beseech the God-Emperor. Yellow Weasel, swiftly reveal your true spirit and show me the future and fate..."

As he continued chanting, Zhou Yun felt scorching heat, pain, and golden light spread across his back. Tangled visions began to emerge in the darkness before his eyes.

He saw blood, cleavers, bone-chopping axes, chainsaws, vivid red flesh, gore, crushed corpses, and butchers wearing savage masks.

Zhou Yun opened his eyes, looked at Inquisitor Greyfax, and described what he had seen.

"The Corpse Grinder Cult." Greyfax revealed a smile that could only be called cruel. After such a long pursuit, she had finally found them.

The cult hidden within the Hive City, which craved warm flesh and blood, hunted for food through slaughter, and worshipped the Lord of Blood, had finally been caught by her.

According to Zhou Yun's vision, both the cult leader and the idol of the Lord of Blood they worshipped were inside.

"Once this mission is over, I'll take you out of this Hive City."

"Your talent still needs training. Otherwise, it may harm you instead."

Greyfax looked at Zhou Yun and said,

"You can become my apprentice. If you perform well enough and earn the recognition of my other colleagues, you may have the chance to become an Inquisitor."

At that, Greyfax smiled. "Or if I happen to die on some mission, you can inherit my Inquisitorial Rosette and receive a battlefield promotion."

Greyfax was sincere.

She was a psyker powerful enough to stand above ordinary mortals, particularly skilled at probing the hearts of others with her psychic powers.

She had examined Zhou Yun's will. Within it, she had seen nothing but blazing golden light, like that of a saint.

Greyfax believed this was proof of Zhou Yun's unwavering loyalty to the Emperor.

The corner of Zhou Yun's mouth twitched. It really was not a bad option.

In Zhou Yun's memories of his previous life, this Inquisitor Greyfax would one day be captured by Trazyn the Infinite, the Necron known as the "Figurine King," and become part of Trazyn's collection.

Only during the Fall of Cadia would she be tossed out by the Figurine King like a Pokémon. Later, she would even take part in reviving Roboute Guilliman.

If Zhou Yun could seize the right opportunity and avoid being captured alongside Greyfax by the Figurine King, then he would have an almost certain chance of inheriting Greyfax's Inquisitorial Rosette and becoming an Inquisitor.

At last, he could leave this damned Hive City...

The months Zhou Yun had spent struggling in this Hive City had already left him exhausted in body and mind.

Greyfax made a gesture, and the five Tempestus Scions and Zhou Yun rushed out of the alley's shadows with her, charging toward the building hidden amid the garbage heaps...

More than ten minutes later,

"Destroy those blasphemous objects, finish the cleanup, and then burn this place down."

Looking at the Corpse Grinder Cult leader lying on the ground, huge and grotesquely mutated, Greyfax gave the order.

Although Zhou Yun had expected that these cultists, who were not much stronger than ordinary Underhive gangs, would be unable to threaten Greyfax and her Tempestus Scions,

he truly had not expected it to be this easy.

Even the Corpse Grinder Cult leader, whose body had been warped by Warp power, had been killed in a single shot from Greyfax's bolt crossbow.

Zhou Yun even suspected that Greyfax had only asked him to divine the future in order to train his precognitive ability.

Huh?

A string of chaotic images flashed before Zhou Yun's eyes.

He saw blood surging, Greyfax's back, and a cleaver...

He saw himself falling beneath that cleaver.

Almost immediately, Zhou Yun stepped forward several paces, moving closer to Greyfax in an attempt to find some safety.

"For the Lord of Blood! For the Lord of Flesh!"

A shrill roar rang out as a cultist wielding a cleaver suddenly burst from the blood pool.

Fuck—

The cultist had actually meant to strike Greyfax.

But Zhou Yun had adjusted his position because of his vision. He now stood directly between them, meeting the cultist's cleaver head-on.

Zhou Yun remembered what Greyfax had just said...

"Your talent still needs training. Otherwise, it may harm you instead..."

The cleaver chopped into Zhou Yun's body, while the cultist's head was shattered by a Scion at the side.

The scene was exactly the same as the one in Zhou Yun's vision.

Zhou Yun's throat moved, and his body suddenly collapsed to the ground beside Greyfax.

Greyfax watched the scene, surprise flashing across her face. She crouched down and looked at Zhou Yun, whose body had nearly been split apart by the cleaver.

"You... you foresaw that cultist. You knew there was danger, yet you chose to protect me?" Greyfax lowered her eyes slightly, disbelief in her voice.

She had always thought Zhou Yun was loyal, but he had come from the Hive City's Underhive and was also a psyker... She had never expected his loyalty to run this deep.

Zhou Yun's throat moved. He desperately wanted to say that he had simply been screwed over by his own precognitive talent.

His attempt to hide near Greyfax had happened to fulfill the vision of him being killed by the cleaver. If he had not moved just then, he would have been fine.

A trace of frustration crossed Zhou Yun's face. Now he was going back again.

Greyfax's expression softened. She seemed to interpret the frustration on Zhou Yun's face as a deathbed desire to repent.

Greyfax removed an Aquila Pendant from her person and pressed it against Zhou Yun's chest.

"Whatever you wish to repent for, you have atoned for it through loyalty to the Emperor."

"Child, the suffering of this world will leave you. The Emperor will warmly embrace your soul."

"May your soul return to the Golden Throne."

Hearing those words, Zhou Yun revealed a smile uglier than crying.

His throat moved a few final times, and he spat out some indistinct words. Greyfax froze for a moment.

She... seemed to have heard Zhou Yun's final words...

"Fuck your mother, Yellow Weasel..."

No, she must have misheard...

Heat—scalding heat—filled Zhou Yun's shriveled body.

Upon the Golden Throne, Zhou Yun's soul let out a soundless scream from within that withered corpse.

Fuck.

He was back again.

Zhou Yun had returned to the Golden Throne once more.