Faith from Slaanesh's Realm?

Flames surged upward as that pitch-black, icy yet scorching gaze descended from the Golden Throne.

That gaze was not directed at the Blind Witch, yet she still saw everything within it.

All the suffering humanity had endured since ancient times, every sacrifice it had made, every life and death it had borne—all lay within that gaze, vast and enduring, mournful and magnificent.

It began with murder amid rippling golden wheat fields and ended with a golden sovereign seated upon a golden throne. Everything was contained within it.

All of it was burning, like offerings upon an altar being scorched by raging flames. Once everything had been destroyed by fire, it became hollow smoke, offered to a god that would one day be sacrificed as well. This was a truly grand sacrifice. Compared to it, the Blind Witch's sacrifice was nothing more than a pathetic joke.

The Blind Witch opened her mouth. Fire surged from within her soul. Her soul, her body, even the tiniest atom inside her were burning fiercely. The pain of that single instant surpassed every torment she had ever endured, yet it was merely the faintest wisp of flame from the desiccated corpse-emperor upon the burning throne.

Within that fire, the Blind Witch finally understood the magnitude of her sin.

"Forgive me..." she wailed, begging, praying, repenting.

"No." Zhou Yun, rising into the heavens and merging with the Golden Throne, softly uttered that single word.

And so, bone-deep agony burned the Blind Witch's soul into ash. Every wisp of ash howled in endless suffering.

To others, that agony lasted only an instant, but to the Blind Witch, that instant stretched into eternity.

Yet the flames did not disperse. They followed the threads of the sacrifice, flooding into Slaanesh's Realm and surging toward the sixty-six souls that had willingly offered themselves.

Warm. Scorching. Blistering. Sakofi Paulus, held in the bull-headed monster's hand, suddenly felt warmth wash over her, like being bathed in the late-summer evening sun, her face heated by the golden orb hanging low on the horizon.

How warm... Sakofi saw the sun drawing closer and closer. It was cold. It was dark. Yet it was also so sorrowful and gentle. Sakofi's soul was burning. She felt pain. She understood what awaited her, but she smiled.

This was... liberation.

O sun...

She did not beg. She did not resist. She merely accepted this fate...

"CURSED ONE!!!!"

The bull-headed monster let out a shrill wail. The Greater Daemon of Slaanesh frantically tried to throw Sakofi away, but her soul had already become a blazing torch. In an instant, searing light engulfed the bull-headed monster.

Sobs and shrieks rose from the flames. That hollow, lifeless pain brought not the slightest pleasure. Suffering that could not stimulate the senses drowned the daemon, leaving only ash to scatter away.

Semuneta, whose nerves had been pulled out and fashioned into a human harp, struggled to raise her head and watched the scene with uncertainty and shock.

The sixty-six souls who had been deceived, swindled, and lured into sacrifice were suddenly ignited by golden fire. The flames spread onto the daemons attempting to feast upon their souls, and in an instant, ninety percent of the daemons waiting beside the banquet table were swallowed by fire.

But the strangest part was that after the flames died out, the few daemons fortunate enough to survive seemed to have forgotten everything that had just happened, including their companions who had burned to death.

They merely stood where they were, looking around in confusion. Seeing that there was nothing on the banquet table, they scattered in boredom.

It was as though... as though the daemons that had burned to death had never existed, erased from the present, the past, and the future alike.

Even in Semuneta's own memories, the forms of those daemons were beginning to grow hazy and indistinct.

"Cursed One," Semuneta softly murmured the name.

It was the name the daemons wailed and cried out as they died. It was the name they feared.

Yet Semuneta felt no fear in those flames. Instead, she saw within them a cold kind of hope.

Then she quickly realized something... well, the Greater Daemon of Slaanesh guarding her had burned to death too.

For the moment, it seemed, perhaps... she was free?

Though she still could not escape this courtyard, before another Greater Daemon took charge of her, she had every chance to send a message to her followers...

Beside the altar, Libo panted heavily, staring at the scene in utter bewilderment.

The Blind Witch and the sacrifices suspended in midair had suddenly burst into flames without any source of fire. Golden flames poured from their facial features and pores, illuminating the dim altar like dozens of suns before finally burning them into piles of ash.

Libo stared at the ashes, which had not yet fully cooled, and his expression gradually turned fearful.

What exactly was Zhou Yun?

Zhou Yun watched the scene with some helplessness and could not stop shaking his head. What pathetic cultists.

He had previously thought that no daemon would be stupid enough to take Zhou Yun's little side path.

After all, other psykers led to the Warp, but Zhou Yun's little path led straight to the Golden Throne.

Daemons might have brains, but cultists truly did not.

Zhou Yun could vaguely sense a wisp of flame from the Golden Throne following the sacrificial threads into Slaanesh's Realm, apparently burning more than a dozen daemons to death.

But... Zhou Yun frowned.

+Cursed One...+

+O sun...+

Two voices flashed past Zhou Yun's ears.

This was... faith?

What kind of place did this faith come from?

Zhou Yun sensed two streams of faith flowing into his body. One of them increased his psychic power by a full ten percent. The other was much weaker, but it was still far stronger than any faith Zhou Yun had gathered so far...

And the place this faith came from was... Slaanesh's Realm?

Had he given a couple of Slaaneshi daemons Stockholm syndrome by burning them?

They could get off on being burned by the Golden Throne? Shouldn't they hurry over to have a chat with the Golden Throne, then? Zhou Yun was willing to step down and let them take his place.

Or could burning Slaaneshi daemons earn faith? Or had someone among those sacrificed souls turned to believe in Zhou Yun just before death?

Zhou Yun felt the second possibility was the most likely, but the faith that had increased his psychic power by a full ten percent... he had a feeling it definitely had not come from an ordinary mortal.

But since that faith came from Slaanesh's Realm, Zhou Yun had no way to investigate it. He could only put the matter aside, take a deep breath, and return his consciousness to the Golden Throne.

Scalding flames nearly burned through Zhou Yun's soul, charring his bones, melting his flesh, and shriveling his pupils into collapse.

Yet the same strange thing happened again—amid such intense pain, even Zhou Yun was surprised that he still retained clear consciousness.

Almost immediately, he projected his consciousness into the newly discovered body.

Breath—

Dry sand rushed into his nostrils. Flames from the Golden Throne burned every cell in his body, then reshaped them in an instant.

Zhou Yun opened his eyes and found himself lying in a stretch of yellow sand. Collapsed pillars lay around him, and he could vaguely make out other figures lying nearby.

The blazing fire of the Golden Throne, the dim room on Macragge, and the ruins amid the sands seen by this new body appeared before his eyes simultaneously.

Zhou Yun gave it a try. This new body began to stand, while his body on Macragge continued moving normally.

The sensation was strange. These two bodies were like his left and right hands, both freely controllable at the same time without affecting one another.

Fragments of memories began pouring into Zhou Yun's mind.

Tizca... archaeological expedition... insects...

Zhou Yun vaguely remembered that this body had originally belonged to an archaeologist.

Moreover... Zhou Yun was somewhat surprised to discover that this archaeologist was actually a psyker. Unlike the Scholar, this archaeologist had already crossed the Realm and had systematically studied psychic arts.

He looked around and discovered that he was beneath a magnificent hall.

But the hall had long been abandoned. More than half of it was buried beneath yellow sand, and the dome above had shattered into pieces, carved into a honeycomb shape by wind and sand. Faintly, he could still make out depictions of ancient gods that had once been painted upon it.

And in the yellow sand nearby, Zhou Yun saw the archaeologist's companions.

They were all dead, sprawled in the sand with their eyes wide open, their skin gray, their lips purple, and their faces filled with terror, as if they had seen something horrifying before they died.

Zhou Yun stepped forward, crouched down, and examined one of the corpses... There were no wounds on the surface. It had not been killed by physical means.

A psychic method? What was it?

Zhou Yun's thoughts froze as the archaeologist's memories caused a term to surface in his mind.

Soul-Eater Bee.

The moment the name of this creature surfaced, a guess formed in Zhou Yun's mind.

Could this place be... Prospero??