Behind the Golden Throne...

Zhou Yun carried a candlestick, an incense burner, and several ritual implements as he pushed open the door and entered a room behind the church, built from rough-hewn stones.

It was a triangular room at one corner of the church, half of it below ground. Dim and chilly, its moss-covered walls held only a palm-sized window. Yet through that window, he could see neither stars nor moon, only profound darkness.

This was suitable... After tightly shutting the door, Zhou Yun walked to the center of the triangular room and sat down cross-legged.

His senses extended slightly outward. Everywhere he looked was rough rock, while the air carried the refreshing scent of a basement after rain. The cold air gently brushed his skin, gradually settling his mind.

The rocks enclosed the room, the room enclosed his body, and his body enclosed his soul. Everything else in the material universe was shut outside this room.

He could not see the sky, feel the earth, hear human voices, or smell smoke.

To Zhou Yun's mind, everything outside might as well not have existed.

The triangular room seemed to stand alone within a pitch-black void containing nothing else.

Reality was weak here, making it perfect for Zhou Yun to immerse himself in the vast ocean of the Warp.

First came the incense burner. Zhou Yun placed the incense he had bought from Agrippa into it, and sparks burst from his fingertips to light it.

Light smoke rose from the burner, curling through the air and winding around Zhou Yun like soft silk.

Zhou Yun arranged the six ritual implements around himself in turn, then finally placed the candlestick directly before him.

The incense burner, the ritual implements, and the candlestick—eight ritual objects that had received worship for many years—formed an octagon around Zhou Yun.

This was the shape best suited to opening a view into the Warp. If circumstances had allowed, Zhou Yun would have preferred to find an octagonal room.

He took several deep breaths, slowly adjusted his state, and then lit the candlestick before him.

The flame on the candlestick burned slowly, its orange-yellow glow briefly driving away the darkness around Zhou Yun, as though it had opened a passage through the vast sea within the profound darkness of the void.

Zhou Yun focused his mind and gathered his breath. He began to meditate, to imagine.

Within his thoughts, Zhou Yun began to believe that no matter remained beyond the room. He began to believe that the flame before him was turning into a vortex... or rather, a fiery vortex created when a golden toilet flushed.

This was Zhou Yun's experience from the last time he broke through a Realm. He had found that imagining the process of entering the Warp as a golden toilet flushing was the safest and most efficient method.

The orange-yellow vortex of flame roared and howled before Zhou Yun. The room around him began to fade into darkness, and even the heavy ground vanished without a trace as Zhou Yun began to be sucked into that golden toilet.

A powerful sensation of falling struck him. Zhou Yun felt himself plunging into a sewer pipe... no, into the boundless, profound void between the Warp and reality.

Yet at the same time, it felt as if he were rising toward a higher Realm, as though he were about to crawl out of the toilet...

Then Zhou Yun felt resistance. He sensed the existence of an indistinct boundary.

The Veil, the Veil placed between reality and the Warp.

Zhou Yun was going to cross it. He extended his hand as the scorching vortex of flame wound around him. The Veil trembled lightly, and an endless sea of energy reflected in Zhou Yun's eyes. His gaze began to blaze with scorching psychic light.

"...Hmm?"

In the church hall, Agrippa, who had been fiddling with the silver coins Zhou Yun had just given him, raised his head.

He looked toward the mosaic, toward the Golden Knight with no eyes.

To help children who had lost their parents in war and then had their compensation seized by relatives, Ollanius, the church's previous bishop, had personally dug out the Golden Knight's gemstone eyes and sold them for money.

But... Agrippa seemed to see light bursting from the Golden Knight's eyes.

He blinked. The knight's eye sockets were clearly still empty, but... but Agrippa could somehow sense that those eyes were glowing.

Could it be because... Agrippa could not help looking deeper into the church.

In truth, Agrippa had roughly guessed what Zhou Yun was doing. Lucretius had once done something similar.

But this... When Agrippa looked again, the Golden Knight's eyes had already dimmed.

Was it merely some kind of sorcerous reaction...

No, what was he thinking? It had to be a sorcerous reaction!

It could not be that the wizard brat was his boss manifesting, could it?

If that were true, would he have to share the church's profits with him too?

No way, right? Surely not?

Agrippa shook his head, banishing the unbelievable thought from his mind.

He was probably just a wizard. Agrippa knew what those little wizard groups were capable of.

Those wizards could not even survive a lasgun shot, much less rise from the dead like his boss. There was no way they could be the one above his head.

"Ah..." Agrippa let out a deep breath as he looked at the Golden Knight in the mosaic.

Boss, boss, if you could really manifest, we would not need to do business with those wizards.

Now we have to slight you every other day. Sigh...

Zhou Yun breathed, but what he inhaled and exhaled was no longer air from the material universe, but the surging energy of the Empyrean.

Vortices, waves, gusts, twisting flames, howling ghostly figures, ravaging shadows.

Space and time did not exist here at all, and the laws of physics had completely vanished.

Thunder roared within the Sea of Souls, storms rumbled, and surging tides of energy scoured Zhou Yun's soul. But this amount of pain was entirely bearable for Zhou Yun.

Those ignorant Warp phantoms twisted their bodies, attempting to approach Zhou Yun.

But the surging psychic power around Zhou Yun pulsed faintly and drove them all back. Most Warp entities near Macragge were weak and meager, not difficult to deal with. Only one shadow did not disappear...

No, that was not a shadow. It was pure psychic power.

Amid the howling Warp, Zhou Yun saw a shadow formed entirely of psychic power. The figure wore the clothes of an Underhive worker and had an Emperor's Tarot tucked at his waist. Its face could not be seen, but its build resembled Zhou Yun's current body, dressed in Macragge scholar's clothing.

That was... psychic power, the psychic power Zhou Yun had possessed as a Diviner.

Suddenly, Zhou Yun understood. The Scholar's psychic gift was not merely innate to this body; the Diviner's psychic gift had also been inherited by this body.

As Zhou Yun crossed into a new Realm and awakened the Scholar's psychic gift, the Diviner's psychic gift awakened for a second time as well.

The psychic phantom took a step forward and merged with Zhou Yun's spiritual body.

Zhou Yun slightly opened his mouth, and psychic flame poured from it. Scorching blue fire surged from the corners of his eyes as his psychic potential continued to rise.

Instinctively, he raised his head and looked up toward the heavens above.

Zhou Yun saw himself... saw himself seated upon the Golden Throne, scorched by blazing fire.

The Zhou Yun on the Golden Thrrone saw himself as well. That small fragment of will he had divided off was looking down upon him.

This was the first time Zhou Yun had looked up at himself on the Golden Throne and seen himself screaming amid boundless flames.

But... but Zhou Yun also saw—

Behind himself on the Golden Throne, there seemed to be a vast, dark-brown shadow.

Vague and hazy, almost impossible to discern.

What... was that?