What was that...?
It was a hazy, indistinct shadow hanging behind Zhou Yun, who sat upon the Golden Throne. He could barely make out its dark brown color, like something charred by burning coals. It crouched behind Zhou Yun in an ugly, hunched posture, and the shadow it cast nearly swallowed Zhou Yun whole.
What was that?
Zhou Yun wanted to see it clearly, but he could not. Even with all his psychic power concentrated in his eyes, he still could not make out what that blurred thing was.
+What are you?+
Zhou Yun questioned the dark brown shadow.
+...Human...Yun...+
A fragmented voice came from atop the Golden Throne. Every word seemed to carry the blazing heat of a star as it fell from the heavens and smashed into Zhou Yun's will, scorching every nerve in his body.
The pain was almost on the same level as sitting on the Golden Throne. A soundless scream escaped Zhou Yun's throat.
He was falling, falling toward the ground, falling back into reality.
With a crash, he hit the floor. The candlestick toppled, the flame went out, wax cooled on the ground, and the spices in the censer had long since burned away.
Inside the dim triangular room, Zhou Yun clutched his head. His clothes were nearly soaked through with sweat, and his legs trembled faintly.
Phantom pain, agony, dizziness, fear... all sorts of chaotic emotions surged from Zhou Yun's mind.
What was that...?
Behind the Golden Throne, behind Zhou Yun, there was still something crouching there, almost completely enveloping Zhou Yun with its body.
Behind the Golden Throne, behind Zhou Yun—or rather, behind the Emperor—how could such a thing exist?
Zhou Yun rubbed his temples, trying to ease the pain in his head.
Whatever it was, it was not something Zhou Yun could see clearly yet.
His psychic power was still too weak. Merely glancing at that thing's vague silhouette and hearing its fragmented voice made his soul feel as though it were burning.
If he wanted to see exactly what it was, he would probably have to continue strengthening his psychic power.
In truth, Zhou Yun had a vague guess as to what that thing was, but he did not dare dwell on it.
He dared joke about the Four Gods because he believed they lacked the ability to breach the Golden Throne.
But that thing... if it truly was what Zhou Yun thought it was...
Dark King... The name flashed through Zhou Yun's mind for an instant.
That Yellow Skin from Piyang hadn't really left him with such a massive landmine, had he...?
What did this feeling resemble?
It was like the previous person using the toilet had failed to flush, then stuffed a firecracker into the shit—and that firecracker could explode at any moment.
What was even worse was that he did not even know whether the shit was really there.
Zhou Yun gritted his teeth. Fuck it.
If it really exploded under his ass, then everyone could die together. Zhou Yun believed that when the time came, there would definitely be people more anxious than him.
With that thought, Zhou Yun shook his head, snuffed out his train of thought, and tried to redirect his attention.
He had successfully crossed the Realm. At that moment, a genuine connection had formed between Zhou Yun's body and the Warp. He had become a doorway caught between the Warp and reality.
Or rather, every psyker who had truly awakened their talent was a doorway.
Under normal circumstances, they could use this connection to draw upon psychic power from the Warp.
But if they lost control, they themselves would become an opening through which demons could invade reality.
Zhou Yun was not particularly worried about that.
The lesser reason was that the Warp near Macragge was relatively stable and not so dangerous.
The main reason was that although stronger psykers were more likely to become doorways for demonic invasion, he had never seen a demon stupid enough to enter through the Emperor's door.
Although Zhou Yun could not use the Emperor's psychic power, he could pull the will and psychic power within this body back onto the Golden Throne at any time, leaving behind only an empty, soulless corpse.
And any demon trying to pass through Zhou Yun's door would most likely be dragged onto the Golden Throne along with him to enjoy itself.
Zhou Yun controlled Warp energy as it slowly flowed into his body. His senses became sharper than before.
They were not the conventional five senses, but a perception that transcended reality. Faintly, he could glimpse the future.
This was the psychic talent of a Diviner. According to the Inquisition's classification, he belonged to the Precognition School.
The specialty of such psykers was seeing through the currents of time and fate, foreseeing the direction of the future, manipulating probability, and inflicting some form of misfortune upon their enemies.
Besides that,
There was the Biomancy School, which specialized in the path of flesh and blood, shaping one's own body or another's through will, mastering cells, and controlling a living being's internal energy.
The Pyrokinesis School, which controlled flame and heat, excelled at burning enemies with Warp fire, and could even turn oneself into pure flame.
The Telekinesis School, which excelled at transforming psychic power into pure physical force, moving objects with thought, generating force fields, and releasing kinetic energy.
And the Telepathy School, which excelled at infiltrating others' minds, establishing mental communication, altering perception, twisting memories, and even turning others into puppets—the Scholar may previously have been controlled by this type of psyker.
Although there were some even more unusual psykers whose talents lay in more dangerous and rarer fields such as daemonology, these five classifications accurately covered the talents of most psykers... If this classification system were not so obviously the five great cults of the Thousand Sons Legion from the Great Crusade with different names, Zhou Yun might have admired the Inquisitor who invented it.
Hmm... Zhou Yun tried several minor psychic techniques Greyfax had taught him.
He successfully made the candlestick before him float, and also successfully awakened a memory within his mind.
Telekinesis and Telepathy. The Scholar's psychic talent primarily lay in the Telekinesis School, with a smaller portion in Telepathy.
That made things somewhat troublesome for Zhou Yun. He did not know many techniques from either school. Telepathy was slightly better, since Greyfax was skilled in Telepathy and had taught Zhou Yun some while instructing him in Precognition techniques.
As for Telekinesis, Zhou Yun only knew a few minor psychic techniques. He knew almost none of the higher-level techniques, so he could not make full use of the Scholar's talent in Telekinesis at all.
On the other hand, because the Scholar's psychic power had merged into him, Zhou Yun's precognitive ability had improved considerably.
The Inquisition had two systems for grading psychic power.
One was a system that evaluated pure psychic strength, using twenty-four ranks from Ω to A.
Of these, Ω, Ψ, Χ, Φ, Υ, Τ, and Σ were the seven ranks for negative psykers, otherwise known as Untouchables.
Ρ was Rank 0, the baseline for ordinary humans.
Rank 1 was Π, called the latent psychic level, and was not considered a true psyker.
Above that, from Rank 2 Ο through Rank 7 Κ, were known as low-level psykers. In theory, they should be regulated by the Inquisition, but because psykers of this type were as numerous as hairs on an ox, it was practically impossible to manage them all. Fortunately, most of them posed no real danger.
Only from Rank 8 Ι onward were psykers truly required to be taken away by the Black Ships for training and screening.
When Zhou Yun was a Diviner, he had originally been at the limit of low-level psykers, Rank 7 Κ. After Greyfax discovered him and trained him, he reached Rank 8 Ι.
Now, after combining the psychic powers of the Scholar and the Diviner, Zhou Yun believed himself to be at Rank 9 Θ, or close to that level.
Apart from this ranking of psychic strength,
The Inquisition's other grading system was aimed at psychic technique. The five common psychic classifications were each divided into six levels.
Telepathy and precognition, the two categories closely tied to the mind, used the same ranking.
They were, respectively: Crimson Tier, Golden Tier, Silver Tier, Esoteric Tier, Silent Tier, and Umbral Tier.
Zhou Yun's precognition had reached the third level, the Silver Tier, while his Telepathy stood at the second level, the Golden Tier.
The grades for Telekinesis were: Grammarian, Rhetorician, Dialectician, Trivium Master, Quadrivium Master, and Supreme Grandmaster.
Zhou Yun's Telekinesis techniques were probably at the first level, Grammarian.
Zhou Yun pressed a finger to his brow, and his pupils abruptly contracted.
Zhou Yun activated the Precognition School psychic technique known as "Foresight."
The technique's effect was exactly as its name implied: Foresight. Through a psychic perspective, it peered into the future, seeing a web woven from countless possibilities and seizing fragments of future scenes from within it...
Shattered Blackstone... an obelisk... a Lighthouse... twinkling stars...
Fragmented images flickered before Zhou Yun.
He saw a towering mountain rising from lush green land, piercing the clouds like a Lighthouse.
He saw a strong man with short golden hair walking ahead of him, lifting his head to gaze at that mountain.
He also saw Tita, older than she was now, standing beside him with a clay tablet in her hands. Macragge's cuneiform script was carved upon it.
"Lighthouse." Zhou Yun vaguely heard Tita's voice.
Lighthouse.
A powerful light suddenly engulfed Zhou Yun's vision. Dazzling radiance pierced through metal.
The mountain—the towering mountain was looking down upon Zhou Yun.
That was...
Lighthouse.
We are the Lighthouse.
Broken Lighthouse.
You are watching us.
We are also watching you.
The mountain's voice—something resembling a voice, yet different from one—rang out.
Zhou Yun could be certain that it was not psychic power, but rather... someone speaking through space-time itself.
The endoskeletal cavity containing matter-nonmatter interaction organs faces the light.
Incomprehensible words sounded out, then gradually thinned within the future Zhou Yun saw, until they vanished completely.
Zhou Yun slowly moved his finger away from his forehead.
Lighthouse...
Zhou Yun turned the word over in his mind.
His first thought was the Astronomican that the Emperor would ignite in the future.
But what he had seen in the prophecy did not feel like the Astronomican—after all, he was all too familiar with that thing. It was so close to him, roasting him until his whole body ached all day long. Like the Golden Throne, it was utterly annoying.
If it was not the Astronomican, was it something else?
Zhou Yun let out a soft breath.
It seemed Macragge was quite the gathering place for exceptional figures after all!
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