Capital of the Second Imperium

The hemp rope was cinched tight, gripping Zhou Yun's throat and constricting his arteries, pouring the sensation of suffocation into his windpipe like viscous tar.

Then the feeling of oxygen deprivation rose from his windpipe and climbed into his brain. His brain cells wailed under the lack of oxygen, while the intense pain urged his brain to secrete endorphins, flooding Zhou Yun's consciousness with a hazy, cloying euphoria.

That euphoria was like slick snakes coiling around Zhou Yun's nerves, trying to drag him into that indistinct sensation and let the hemp rope around his neck strangle him to death.

The euphoria seemed to possess some sort of power, a will of its own. It whispered in Zhou Yun's ear that struggling would only bring pain, while calmly accepting death would let him enjoy the bliss brought by endorphins.

But Zhou Yun still struggled.

Compared to this little bit of pain from struggling,

he feared the pain of returning to the Golden Throne after death even more.

Suffocation could make a person dizzy, cause their muscles to convulse, and make them lose control of their body in a short time. Under normal circumstances, humans had no way to struggle effectively while hanging.

But perhaps the torment of the Golden Throne had tempered his will, to the point that his will had shut out the pain brought by suffocation. Zhou Yun could still struggle while remaining conscious.

His fingers clutched at the rope biting into his throat, trying to tear it apart. But this body was not particularly strong. Zhou Yun could feel it failing from oxygen deprivation, his organs faintly aching and his muscles weak. He pulled at the rope, but could not muster much strength.

Compared to the hunter whose body Zhou Yun had inhabited in the forest the first time, this body was far worse.

That forest hunter's body could even have torn apart this kind of rope around Zhou Yun's neck with bare hands...

Zhou Yun reached out again, trying to untie the knot securing the rope.

But the knot was tightly bound, like venomous snakes biting one another. Zhou Yun could only feel it by touch; he had no way to undo it.

The dizziness grew stronger.

Zhou Yun's head felt as though it were splitting apart. The blood in his cheeks seemed to burn fiercely, and his eyes began to bulge from their sockets. The entire room seemed to spin and distort. The candle burning on the table beneath the window stretched out, burning and spiraling into a vortex of light.

Zhou Yun could almost feel the Golden Throne drawing his consciousness back, pulling the will that had escaped its cage onto the Golden Throne once more.

The candle flame spun into a whirlpool. The Golden Throne called from the Warp, and the veil of reality grew thin.

Zhou Yun felt psychic energy surging from the Warp.

He quickly realized that this new body, like the previous one, possessed a degree of psychic talent.

Of course, it was also possible that the psychic talent of his previous body had carried over into this one.

Zhou Yun clenched his teeth and forced out fragmented words.

The psychic energy of the Warp let out a low hum. The surrounding air abruptly turned cold, and the scent of ozone filled the room. A hole was briefly chiseled through the veil of reality, and psychic power flowed into reality through Zhou Yun's body.

The candle flame suddenly crackled. The fire spun upward and shot toward the rope hanging above Zhou Yun's head.

The rope burned through. Zhou Yun hit the floor with a thud, jolting the wine bottles scattered across the room's floorboards.

The dizzying sensation still lingered in Zhou Yun's mind.

But Zhou Yun was still delighted, because the Golden Throne's summons had become indistinct again, and the searing pain upon that throne had faded into a distant backdrop.

As long as Zhou Yun did not focus and return his consciousness to the Golden Throne, he could barely feel the pain anymore.

As the suffocating sensation in his mind receded, his thoughts became clear again, and scattered fragments of memory belonging to this body began to surface.

Zhou Yun saw that this body's former owner had once been a spirited scholar. He saw him teaching from the podium at a grammar school, and saw him becoming addicted to gambling dens and lingering in alcohol's temptation...

Zhou Yun rubbed his brow, absorbing those fragmented memories.

From his experience, as time passed, he would gradually recall this body's memories and acquire some of its former owner's skills...

The first thing he usually learned was language.

"Boundless darkness..." Zhou Yun cursed in the language from the scholar's memories. It seemed to be an oath used by a group of barbarians on this planet.

He climbed up from the floor and walked toward the wooden table beneath the window.

The candle on the table had already gone out, leaving only thin dark-red moonlight shining upon its surface.

Zhou Yun froze for a moment, then looked up. Beyond the narrow window, above the windswept wilderness beneath the dome of heaven, there were no fewer than four moons embedded in the sky.

The one that drew the eye most... that moon was covered in scarlet fissures, like an eye hanging in the heavens, bloodshot with rage...

Looking at that moon, the psychic energy within Zhou Yun stirred slightly.

Zhou Yun took a deep breath and lowered his gaze back to the table.

"First, I invite Vulkan; second, I ask the Emperor to lend me a flame..."

He muttered as he brought his finger close to the candle.

A wisp of flame leaped from his fingertip and lit the candle before him.

This was a simple application of psychic energy, yet Zhou Yun frowned slightly.

It felt... different from when he had been in the hive city.

When Zhou Yun drew upon psychic energy and passed it through the veil between reality and the Warp, it was far less smooth than it had been in the hive city.

It seemed that the veil where this planet was located was much thicker than that of the planet where the Diviner had been.

Under the candlelight, Zhou Yun pulled open the table drawer and found what he was looking for inside.

It was a notebook with slightly creased corners. In Zhou Yun's memories, the scholar had usually used it to record trivial matters.

"February 18: Played cards with Cicero. Lost fifty-four denarii."

"February 19: Cicero urged me to play cards. Lost forty-two denarii."

"February 20: Cicero asked me to play cards again. Lost sixty-six denarii. Had no money, borrowed sixty-six denarii."

"Aulus, Aulus, you cannot play cards again. Your debts are too great."

"February 21: Played cards with Cicero. Lost three hundred and ninety-six denarii. Borrowed three hundred and ninety-six denarii..."

Zhou Yun was briefly stunned.

Almost at the same moment, a golden flame suddenly ignited on the notebook. The scholar's name, "Aulus," was wholly swallowed by the fire.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the flame vanished. Everywhere that had originally read Aulus had been replaced with "Zhou Yun."

Zhou Yun's eyes narrowed slightly. Was this also some manifestation of the Emperor's great power?

He turned several more pages of the notebook. The more he read, the clearer the memories became. The scholar's life seemed to be gradually merging into Zhou Yun's own body.

The scholar's knowledge of grammar, education, literature, and history also began to emerge bit by bit in Zhou Yun's mind.

He stopped turning pages, his gaze settling on a single word in the notebook.

That word was the name of this city, and also the name of this planet.

"Macragge," Zhou Yun softly read aloud.

The homeworld of Roboute Guilliman, one of the lost twenty-one Primarchs and the ambitious Primarch of the Thirteenth Legion.

The homeworld of the Ultramarines, the capital of Ultramar, the capital of the Second Imperium...

But that was not all.

More than the location, what caught Zhou Yun's attention was the time.

There was not a single mention of the Imperium, the Emperor, the Primarchs, or the Astartes in this notebook.

(New book! Please keep reading, please keep reading, please keep reading!)