Could He Have Come Back from the Dead?

The first card appeared before Zhou Yun,

It was a finely dressed clown, dancing across the parchment. Its slender body struck comical poses, while its heavily painted face was full of mockery and ridicule.

The Harlequin Card, modeled after the Harlequins who served Cegorach, the Aeldari Laughing God.

Zhou Yun relaxed slightly. It seemed that depicting the corpse-emperor upon the Golden Throne as Yellow Skin had indeed worked.

Back when he had still been a diviner, Zhou Yun had drawn the "God-Emperor Card" thirteen times in a row, frightening Greyfax badly.

If he had not altered the God-Emperor Card, the first card Zhou Yun drew would almost certainly have been the God-Emperor Card, symbolizing cold hope.

Zhou Yun looked at the Harlequin Card.

This card belonged to Strife, one of the four suits. This suit symbolized enemies, hostility, and conflict.

The Harlequin Card represented trickery, deception, and conspiracy...

Sure enough, Cicero was playing some scheme against Zhou Yun.

Then how was he carrying out that scheme?

Zhou Yun turned over the second card.

It depicted an ugly man with a withered, decayed face, covered in shackles and collapsed upon the ground.

The Lost One, symbolizing corruption, indulgence, and being trapped in darkness.

Cicero was luring Zhou Yun into corruption, pulling him down into darkness. That was how he was carrying out his scheme...

Was he really going about it in such a roundabout way?

Zhou Yun frowned slightly, his expression turning subtle.

He turned over the third card, hoping it would answer his doubts...

The twisted, chaotic Warp, a formless dimension, and the ugly, grotesque creatures lurking within it.

This was... the Demon Card...

It symbolized the interference of those twisted, chaotic things within the Warp.

Zhou Yun stared at the card. The ink lines upon its surface actually began to writhe on their own, little by little.

The ugly, grotesque creature on the parchment gradually transformed.

The monster revealed a bull's head, exposed its hermaphroditic body, and snakes coiled around it.

Slaanesh...

Within the Agate Baths, the snake-headed statues continuously spewed pinkish-purple steam mixed with spices, shrouding the revelry throughout the bathhouse in a hazy mist.

As far as the eye could see, those gambling, bathing, singing, dancing, and copulating had all become writhing shadows, intertwined like a nest of mating snakes. Only those sticky sounds could penetrate the pinkish-purple veil of fog.

Cicero's red leather shoes stepped across the damp floor as he walked deeper into the steam. He pushed open the narrow door set with gold and gemstones at the end of the bathhouse corridor and entered the private room.

He heard a suffocated whimper.

A young girl's neck was clutched by fingers like withered vines. Her plump thighs, resting atop the blind witch's shriveled legs, trembled.

Yet the girl did not resist or feel fear. Instead, she stuck out her tongue slightly, her face flushed and her eyes rolling white, as though immersed in immense pleasure.

The slave trader Tull was licking the young girl's delicately trembling skin with his tongue, as if he wanted to lick through her flesh and suck her inner vitality dry.

Libo, a priest of the Temple of Semuneta, sat with one leg crossed over the other. Red leather shoes similar to Cicero's gently swayed along with the girl's whimpers. When he saw Cicero enter, he raised his wineglass in greeting.

Cicero gave Priest Libo a slight nod, then sat beside him.

The girl let out a dying whimper and collapsed onto the blind witch, sliding from the witch's legs like a snake whose bones had been sucked out.

The slave trader Tull summoned an attendant to carry the girl's corpse away, while lightly licking his lips.

"A young lady of House Paulus?" Cicero glanced at the girl. "A gift from Lord Paulus?"

"No, she came willingly. Her soul yearned to ascend to the garden and enjoy bliss." The blind witch smiled, her voice hoarse and dry.

Killing the girl seemed to have granted her some kind of power.

Cicero had never liked this sort of suicidal indulgence. There was still so much joy and suffering in the mortal world left to experience. How could one return to the metaphysical world so quickly?

"You should have confirmed it by now, shouldn't you?"

The blind witch twisted her head toward Cicero. Cicero truly could not understand how this woman "saw."

"I assume that scholar has already killed himself. Surely you have now learned to trust the gift of the God of First Cry?"

"Suicide?" Cicero sneered. "Zhou Yun seems perfectly alive to me."

As he spoke, Cicero pointed at his nose.

"You see? This was done by the dead man you spoke of."

"...That's impossible!" The blind witch froze for a moment before shrieking.

"Then perhaps my 'friend' came back from the dead." Cicero sneered.

"He is nothing but an ignorant mortal. How could he resist the bite of the God of First Cry's serpent?"

The blind witch's voice was full of disbelief.

"When you led him into pleasure, I undoubtedly injected the poison of delight into his mind, causing him to sink ever deeper into it."

"When he fell into debt, I likewise injected the poison of despair into his mind, drowning him in the darkness of despair."

"And yesterday, when Father's Eye opened, when the heavens and reality were closest and the God of the Broken Lighthouse's influence was at its weakest, I truly did have the serpent bite his soul and induce him to kill himself."

"But he's still alive." Cicero emphasized again.

The blind witch's expression darkened.

"Perhaps it was Lucretius. That old man is his teacher." Libo, the priest of Semuneta, drained his cup and smiled at the blind witch.

"If he had intervened, I would know." The blind witch sharply retorted.

"Then something must have gone wrong with the witchcraft you played with!" Libo snorted a few times.

"What I used was the gift of the God of First Cry. Nothing could go wrong with the serpent's bite... He must have attempted suicide. Perhaps something went wrong elsewhere and caused his attempt to fail."

The blind witch hissed,

"Give me sixty-six willing sacrificial offerings, and I can curse him to death. I can have the God of First Cry's serpent directly bite his soul to pieces..."

"Sixty-six? Do you know how difficult it is to cultivate a believer willing to offer themselves? Do you know how much effort it takes to keep Conor's hounds from catching the scent?"

Libo nearly immediately rejected the blind witch's proposal.

"Take that girl from House Paulus. I had to make the entire Paulus family believe in the God of First Cry, then give the girl time to sever all her other social ties before I could deliver her into your mouth without attracting the hounds."

"I don't think there's any need to worry so much. That scholar still hasn't escaped our grasp."

"After all, he still owes me money. If he cannot repay it next month, we can rightfully turn him into a debt slave."

Upon hearing this, the slave trader Tull nodded approvingly. "I said it before. You people kill far too freely. There was no need to kill him at all. A scholar like him is highly sought after on the slave market. Killing him would be such a waste."

"I'm afraid it won't be that easy."

Cicero pinched the bridge of his nose.

"The reason we had the witch manipulate him into killing himself in the first place was because we feared he would survive the first payment period... His niece has a compensation payment in hand, and if he borrows some more from that old man Lucretius, he should be able to get through the first payment period."

"Then it depends on your silver tongue. If you can bring him to the baths, we'll have plenty of ways to make him owe even more." The slave trader Tull shrugged.

"I need to find a chance when he's alone. That niece of his is rather troublesome." Cicero raised his head.

Just then, the private room's door was pushed open, and the fragrance of grease wafted into the room together with a young girl's scent.

"Since things have come to this," Tull smiled, "let's eat first. We can't let the eldest daughter of House Paulus go to waste."

Inside the apartment, Zhou Yun looked at the tarot card displaying the visage of a Slaaneshi demon.

Behind Cicero was indeed a cult devoted to Slaanesh, and these cultists could even wield the power of the Warp to a certain extent.

But why? Why go to such lengths against a mere scholar?

Macragge's veil was so thick that practicing Warp sorcery here was by no means easy.

Was it merely for the position of a private tutor?

Zhou Yun looked at the final tarot card and slowly reached out to turn it over.

What this tarot card revealed was the true target of Cicero and the cultists behind him.

Zhou Yun—or rather, the scholar—had never been their true target.

Zhou Yun had likely merely happened to stand in their way.

The fourth tarot card depicted a ruler holding a short sword, clad in ultramarine power armor and wearing short golden hair. His face was filled with fury, as though he would punish those heretics playing their schemes at any moment...

The name of this card was

Guilliman's Wrath.