Soul-Eater Bees were psychic creatures that were half-Warp, half-real. These uncanny lifeforms could travel between reality and the Warp, were drawn to psychic fluctuations, wielded terrifying psychic attacks, and could project their eggs into the brain tissue of mortals.
During Old Night, civilizations on many planets had been destroyed after sudden psychic awakenings attracted swarms of Soul-Eater Bees. The most famous example was Prospero, the homeworld of the Primarch Magnus.
The instant Zhou Yun recognized the term "Soul-Eater Bee" from his memories, he instinctively suspected that this world was Prospero.
The archaeologist's memories surged forth as well, confirming his suspicion.
Prospero... Tizca, the City of Light... the scarlet son who had fallen from the sky... Magnus...
This was the era after Magnus had descended upon Tizca, the last city of Prospero, and begun leading the Prosperoans. Most of the Soul-Eater Bee swarms had already been exterminated, but this archaeological team had been unlucky enough to encounter one of the remnants.
Really... huh?
At that moment, Zhou Yun felt his psychic precognition activate.
He saw the near future, a clear and certain future—
With the archaeologist's psychic power flowing into him, Zhou Yun now possessed the psychic talents of three bodies at once.
At the very least, he was now at Level 9, Theta-limit, perhaps even Level 10, Eta—the pinnacle attainable by mid-ranking psykers in the Inquisition's system. He had even touched the threshold at which Space Marines might recruit him as a Librarian seed.
Beyond that, Level 11, Zeta, was the realm of high psykers. On most Hive City worlds, only a handful of people born over several decades possessed the talent to reach that level, and usually only one or two ever truly did.
This strengthened psychic power, combined with Prospero's thin Veil, caused Zhou Yun's precognitive talent to automatically activate when it sensed danger...
He saw the Soul-Eater Bee swarm. An enormous swarm poured in from every direction, rushing toward Zhou Yun... No!!
The archaeologist's memories surged up again. He remembered... Soul-Eater Bees tracked psychic fluctuations. He had just used Level 10 Eta psychic power to foresee the future, so clearly he had already...
Zhou Yun saw the future of his own death.
A frenzied buzzing suddenly rang out through the air. That uncanny sound spread across both the Warp and reality, piercing into Zhou Yun's body.
A metallic taste filled Zhou Yun's mouth, blood flowing from between his lips as his eyes caught sight of the hungry swarm, their crystal-like twin wings beating.
Some of the swarm crawled out from the shadows. Some appeared from Zhou Yun's blind spots. Others simply materialized out of thin air.
The hideous creatures spread their six slender limbs and charged Zhou Yun with filthy, crystalline hooked feet. Disgusting mucus dripped from their swollen heads, which resembled human brains, falling over razor-like mouthparts and compound eyes that reflected Zhou Yun's image.
This damned precognition... it had gotten him killed again.
Piyang's... precognition really was the most harmful ability in this galaxy.
"Get lost!!" Zhou Yun roared, unleashing a Telepathy School psychic command and forcibly planting the order to "get lost" into the Soul-Eater Bees' minds.
But the Soul-Eater Bees only retreated half a step.
Not good... these damn things seemed to share a hive mind. Telepathy School psychic power was ineffective against them.
As if to confirm Zhou Yun's thought, the Soul-Eater Bees beat their wings in unison and charged him.
The hunter's skills from Caliban made Zhou Yun react at top speed. His body shifted, vaulting over a collapsed colonnade beside him and grazing past the mouthparts of a Soul-Eater Bee.
At the same time, his mind rapidly dug through the archaeologist's memories for useful information...
Drawn to psychic radiation. Capable of teleporting over distance. Their stingers could pierce almost any kind of armor. They could project eggs into a victim's brain without making contact. Merely vibrating their wings allowed them to release psychic waves that drove people mad... and they were swarm monsters!
Zhou Yun's expression stiffened. A hunter's instincts told him—these were absolute trash monsters, the kind fit to sit at the same table as Caliban Beasts.
He immediately concluded that this body would be difficult to preserve.
Even Jaghatai Khan, the future White Scars Primarch, the Primarch's Keshig Guard, and the famed Qin Xia had needed to expend considerable effort when facing a swarm of Soul-Eater Bees...
The air before Zhou Yun trembled as several Soul-Eater Bees teleported before him in an instant, their sharp claws stabbing straight at him.
Zhou Yun's pupils contracted sharply, and his arm swung forward on instinct.
An invisible force surged from Zhou Yun's hand. The Soul-Eater Bees hanging before him were abruptly crushed together. They let out piercing cries before their carapaces burst, slime spraying everywhere as severed limbs scattered in all directions.
Falcon School: Telekinetic Crush... the name of the psychic spell suddenly surfaced in Zhou Yun's mind. This was a... Telekinesis School psychic spell?
It was one of the archaeologist's abilities. This archaeologist specialized in Falcon and Brightwing—that was, Telekinesis School and Biomancy School psychic arts.
Zhou Yun violently flung both hands to his sides. The telekinetic field formed by his psychic power compressed into thin blades. Invisible and impossibly sharp, they sliced apart the Soul-Eater Bees closing in on him in an instant.
Falcon School: Psychic Blade.
Here, Prospero's Veil was so thin that his psychic power could be unleashed to its fullest extent.
On Macragge, his Psychic Blade would have been no more powerful than an ordinary blade. Here, however, it was as sharp as a monomolecular edge.
Two Soul-Eater Bees teleported behind Zhou Yun, into his blind spot. Their sharp claws stabbed toward his back, but they only scraped a trail of sparks across his body.
Brightwing School: Steel-like Body.
This Biomancy School psychic art instantly raised Zhou Yun's skin hardness to the level of steel.
A bolt of bio-energy lightning surged from Zhou Yun's fingertips, piercing through the two Soul-Eater Bees.
Zhou Yun let out a soft breath. Venting psychic power like this felt exhilarating, but he also understood that this body was about to die.
This was the limit... everyone in the archaeological team was a psyker, and several possessed psychic power comparable to the archaeologist's. Yet in the end, they had all died miserably at the hands of the Soul-Eater Bees.
The main reason was that Soul-Eater Bees possessed an impossible-to-defend-against ability... Zhou Yun felt dizzy, his head throbbing as though something was crawling through his brain tissue.
Soul-Eater Bee eggs. Those insects could project their eggs into a victim's body out of thin air.
Once injected with such eggs, it was essentially an incurable condition. Even after the Imperium arrived, its medical capabilities would have struggled to heal it.
Still, this body had already given Zhou Yun quite a harvest.
First, there was the powerful psychic strength and systematic psychic techniques, including Telekinesis School and Biomancy School psychic arts.
Second, Zhou Yun had memorized this planet—Prospero's location—and had fixed his gaze upon it through the Golden Throne. If a suitable body appeared in this world next time, Zhou Yun could enter it immediately.
After foreseeing that the eggs in his brain would eventually kill him, Zhou Yun stopped walking and raised his middle finger at the Soul-Eater Bees around him.
He sneered as psychic power began gathering in his head. He intended to detonate it and blast every Soul-Eater Bee near him into the sky.
If Zhou Yun's psychic power had not been connected to the Golden Throne, then on Prospero, where the Veil was so thin, he might even have blown some Warp daemons into existence.
His head exploded with a thunderous blast. Scalding psychic energy swept in every direction. The Soul-Eater Bees shrieked as their brain tissue began burning fiercely. One after another, they fell from the air and collapsed into the sand...
Hidden deep within the ruins, the grotesquely bloated queen bee screamed. So many Soul-Eater Bees connected to her will had died that she herself suffered considerable damage.
She shrieked, cursing that shameless human... but at that moment, Zhou Yun's former position was reflected in her compound eyes.
After Zhou Yun detonated his psychic power, a figure vaguely emerged within the howling vortex of psychic energy...
In the library atop Tizca's pyramid, a red-skinned giant in golden robes was reading an ancient parchment when he suddenly raised his head. A scene was reflected in his eyes...
He saw it. He saw psychic power tearing open the Veil, allowing something to enter Prospero's wasteland.
It was a powerful existence. Not as powerful as him, but far beyond mortal beings.
The giant's mind-form rose from his shell of flesh, arriving at the ruins in the blink of an eye. Floating in the air, he looked down at the dead Soul-Eater Bee queen.
A knight clad in power armor as black as night, his body wreathed in roaring flames and a golden laurel crown circling his helmet, stood with one foot on the queen bee's deformed head.
He pulled the black blade from the queen bee's skull and slightly lifted his head to look at the giant floating overhead.
That was not one of the living...
"What are you?"
The black knight said nothing. He merely turned into a cloud of ashes and slowly dissipated into the air, as though the power sustaining his existence had been completely exhausted.
Sensing that power, countless lights flickered in the giant's eyes.
"Father?"
"Or... my teacher?"
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