Faith from Slaanesh's Realm?

Flames surged upward, and that gaze—black, cold, yet scalding hot—fell from the Golden Throne.

That gaze was not directed at the blind witch, yet she still beheld everything within it.

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

It began with murder amid rippling golden wheat fields and ended with the golden sovereign seated upon the Golden Throne. Everything was within it.

All of it was burning, like offerings upon an altar being consumed by fierce flames. Once everything had been destroyed by fire, it became hollow smoke, offered to a god who would one day be offered in sacrifice as well. This was a truly grand sacrifice. Compared to it, the blind witch's sacrifice was nothing but a pathetic joke.

The blind witch opened her mouth. Fire poured from within her soul. Her soul, her body, even the tiniest atom within her all burned fiercely. The pain of that single instant surpassed every torment she had ever endured, and this was merely the smallest wisp of flame from the mummified corpse-emperor upon the blazing throne.

Within the fire, the blind witch finally understood the enormity of her mistake.

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

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

And so, bone-deep agony burned the blind witch's soul into ash. Every wisp of ash wailed in endless torment.

To others, the pain lasted only an instant. But to the blind witch, that instant stretched into eternity.

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

Warmth. Heat. Scorching heat. Sakofi Paulus, held in the hands of the bull-headed monster, suddenly felt warmth wash over her. It was like being bathed in the setting sun at the end of summer, her face heated by that golden disk hanging low on the horizon.

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

This was... release.

O sun...

She did not beg. She did not resist. She simply 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 fiercely burning torch. Scorching light swallowed the bull-headed monster in an instant.

Sobs and wails rose from within the flames. That hollow, lifeless pain held not a shred of pleasure; suffering that could not stimulate the senses drowned the daemon, leaving only ashes to scatter away.

Semuneta, who had been made into a human harp from stripped nerves and was barely clinging to life, struggled to raise her head and watched the scene in bewilderment.

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

But strangest of all, after the flames went out, the few daemons lucky enough to survive seemed to have forgotten everything that had just happened, including their companions who had been burned to death.

They merely stood where they were, looking around in confusion. Seeing nothing left on the banquet table, they dispersed in boredom.

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

Even in Semuneta's own memories, the forms of those daemons were beginning to blur and fade.

"Cursed One," Semuneta softly murmured the name.

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

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

Then she quickly realized something... well, the greater daemon of Slaanesh assigned to watch over her had just been 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 over, she had every chance to send a message to her followers...

Beside the altar, Libo panted heavily and stared at the scene in utter confusion.

The blind witch and the sacrifices suspended in midair had suddenly burst into flame without any source of ignition. Golden fire poured from their eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and pores, illuminating the dim altar like dozens of suns before ultimately burning them into piles of ash.

Libo looked at the ashes that had not yet fully cooled, and his expression gradually turned terrified.

What exactly was Zhou Yun?

Zhou Yun watched the scene with some helplessness and could not help shaking his head repeatedly. What clumsy cultists.

He had been thinking earlier that no daemon would be foolish enough to take Zhou Yun's little backdoor.

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

Daemons might lack brains, but cultists truly had none at all.

Zhou Yun could vaguely sense a wisp of flame from the Golden Throne slipping into Slaanesh's Realm along the threads of sacrifice. It seemed to have burned more than a dozen daemons to death.

But... Zhou Yun frowned.

+Cursed One...+

+O sun...+

Two voices flashed past Zhou Yun's ears.

Was this... faith?

What kind of place did this faith come from?

Zhou Yun sensed two streams of faith flowing into his body. One raised his psychic power by a full ten percent, while the other was much weaker, yet still far stronger than any faith he had gathered so far...

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

Had he somehow burned Stockholm syndrome into a pair of Slaanesh daemons?

They could get off from being burned by the Golden Throne? Then why not hurry over to have a chat with the Golden Throne? Zhou Yun was willing to abdicate and yield his position.

Or could burning Slaanesh daemons earn faith? Or perhaps someone among the sacrificed souls had turned to worship Zhou Yun just before dying?

Zhou Yun felt the second possibility was more likely, but that stream of faith which had raised his psychic power by a full ten percent... he could not shake the feeling that it had not come from an ordinary mortal.

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

The blazing fire nearly burned through Zhou Yun's soul, scorching his bones black and shriveled, melting away his flesh, leaving his pupils withered and sunken.

Yet the strange situation remained—amid such intense agony, even Zhou Yun was surprised that his mind remained clear.

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 rebuilt them in an instant.

Zhou Yun opened his eyes and found himself lying amid yellow sand. Fallen columns surrounded him, and he could vaguely make out the figures of other people lying nearby.

The inferno of the Golden Throne, Macragge's dim room, and the sandy ruins seen through this new body all appeared before his eyes at once.

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

The sensation was peculiar. The two bodies were like his left and right hands; he could control them freely at the same time without interfering with either.

Fragmentary memories began to flood Zhou Yun's mind.

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

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

And... Zhou Yun was somewhat surprised to discover that this archaeologist was actually a psyker. Unlike Scholar, this archaeologist had already crossed the Realm and had received systematic training in 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, sculpted by wind and sand into a honeycomb-like shape. Faint traces of ancient gods once painted upon it could still be seen.

Amid the sand beside him, Zhou Yun saw the archaeologist's companions.

They were all dead, sprawled in the sand with their eyes wide open, gray-skinned, blue-lipped, and faces filled with terror. It seemed they had seen something horrifying before they died.

Zhou Yun took a few steps forward, crouched down, and examined one of the corpses... There were no wounds on its surface. It had not died by physical means.

A psychic method? What was it?

Zhou Yun's thoughts tightened, and the archaeologist's memories caused a term to surface in his mind.

Soul-Eater Bee.

The moment the name of that creature appeared, a guess arose in Zhou Yun's mind.

Could this place be... Prospero??