Blue-and-Gold Storm

Cicero looked a little unhappy.

Watching Cicero scramble past him on hands and knees, pale-faced and terrified, Zhou Yun could not help stroking his chin.

What had he encountered? What had scared him into such a state...?

As he pondered, Zhou Yun walked through the corridors of Marcus Guilliman's mansion, following the attendant's guidance toward the room where Marcus's so-called fortieth illegitimate son was staying.

"It's right ahead," the attendant said, pointing to the room at the end of the corridor.

Zhou Yun gave the attendant a slight nod and reached out to push open the door...

Hmm?

Zhou Yun suddenly stopped and raised his head. Through the corridor's columns, he looked toward the courtyard of Marcus Guilliman's home, toward a three- or four-story tower on the far side of the courtyard.

The hunting instincts bestowed upon Zhou Yun by the Hunter made him aware of a gaze coming from atop that tower.

The tower window was open, and he could vaguely make out a small, blurred figure behind it.

However, there was no hostility in that gaze. It was merely filled with mockery and scrutiny, as though its owner was waiting to enjoy the ugly sight of the scholars emerging from the room...

Zhou Yun's pupils narrowed slightly as he activated a minor Biomancy School psychic technique.

Bright Feather: Eagle Eye... The structure of Zhou Yun's eyes was subtly adjusted, granting him vision sharp enough to make out the small figure in the tower.

That was a... child? No, not a child. A dwarf—a short figure with withered limbs and dry, short golden hair, who looked to be perhaps in his teens.

The dwarf was watching Zhou Yun through a telescope. Zhou Yun raised his head slightly, aligning his gaze with the dwarf's, then gave him a faint nod.

The dwarf's mouth fell open, and the telescope slipped from his hands.

Zhou Yun paid the peeping watcher no further attention. He gently pushed open the door and entered the room.

What met his eyes was a mirror stretching across the center of the room. A chair stood before it, and Zhou Yun stepped forward and sat down.

"Welcome, Lord Zhou Yun." The voice came from behind the mirror. It did not sound like the voice of a six- or seven-year-old child; it seemed older. And that voice...

Zhou Yun possessed the Hunter's keen powers of observation and had undergone Greyfax's training, yet even he could not detect the slightest hint of emotion within that voice.

For a moment, he almost thought that behind the mirror was... an Abominable Intelligence.

No...

Zhou Yun rested his hands on his knees and leaned slightly forward, slowly turning his eyes toward his reflection in the mirror.

Could it be that what lay behind the mirror was what Zhou Yun had vaguely suspected before...?

"You upset my friend Cicero quite badly," Zhou Yun said to the person behind the mirror.

"Oh, I refuted his On the Soul. Do you know his beliefs?" the voice behind the mirror replied.

"I do. He believes that people should pursue sensory experiences without limit, whether pain or pleasure."

Seeing how thoroughly Cicero had been shattered, he had probably been easily refuted by the child behind the mirror...

Zhou Yun continued to focus, psychic energy silently seeping from his body. The air grew slightly colder, and the faint scent of ozone appeared.

He did his best to suppress the secondary phenomena caused by the influx of psychic energy...

"What do you think?" the child behind the mirror asked again.

Hearing that, Zhou Yun could not help giving a soft laugh. He had never really agreed with Cicero's philosophy either, because...

"I bet he has never experienced real pain. Otherwise, he would think every day he lived now was happiness."

Cicero had simply lived too comfortably. If he sat on the Golden Throne for a few seconds, he would not want any sensory experiences at all. He would only want to live an ordinary life.

The air fell silent for two or three seconds before the child behind the mirror spoke.

"How strange. I do not know what pain you have experienced, but when those words come from your mouth, they somehow carry unparalleled credibility."

A trace of surprise entered his voice. During those few seconds, he seemed to have been judging the truth of Zhou Yun's words.

It was not as though Zhou Yun had suffered anything particularly painful. He had merely sat for a while on the galaxy's finest torture device—one that could make Dark Eldar weep at its mention, make blood flayers recoil at the sight of it, and make Slaanesh's daemons say it was too extreme.

Zhou Yun smiled. He did not answer, merely allowing his psychic energy to slowly pierce the glass before him, letting his will pass beyond the constraints of matter to look upon what lay behind that mirror—

The Hunter's hunting instincts were screaming. This was a beast more terrifying than the Caliban Beasts; even the legendary Caliban Lion could not compare to it.

The Diviner's precognitive ability was issuing a warning. This was by no means something mortal flesh could peer into. To examine its will was no different from suicide for a mortal soul.

The Archaeologist's psychic knowledge was rejoicing. The thing behind the mirror was the purest of the Warp's infinite wisdom, the primordial essence of the Empyrean settled within the mortal world.

The child behind the mirror slowly raised his head.

In the dim room, only his eyes were illuminated by the setting sun beyond the narrow window, his pupils deeper than the Macragge Deep flickering faintly.

Madam Euten, seated beside him, swallowed involuntarily. She felt that the child had become different from before. He seemed... to have become interested in the teacher behind the mirror, but that interest carried the scent of danger. Euten desperately wanted to shout for the teacher behind the mirror to run, but she seemed to be controlled by some powerful, forceful order and could not open her mouth at all.

The air stopped moving. Sound stopped traveling. Dust stopped drifting. Even the sunlight froze in midair, as though everything in this world had submitted to the order within that child.

"What are you doing?" the child asked softly.

Zhou Yun's heart skipped a beat... His will met the child's gaze.

A hurricane tore through the mirror. Countless shards reflected the radiance of hundreds of worlds. The room's bricks and stone were crushed beneath the vast starry sky, while the ceiling collapsed beneath chains formed from warships. All of it whirled before Zhou Yun's eyes, forming a roaring, resplendent storm of blue and gold.

Every strand of that storm seemed governed by order, converging into a lofty will of order and logic. It was not the will of a mortal. It was the will formed from a planet, a star system, hundreds of star systems, and countless billions of living beings—rising from Macragge as its core, spreading between the stars, seeking to sweep everything beneath this prosperous storm.

Zhou Yun's will bathed in the storm. A mortal would likely have collapsed in agony before such an immense will, but Zhou Yun's will had been tempered by the Golden Throne. Even while facing the storm head-on, it remained whole and clear.

He saw it clearly. He watched as the blue-and-gold storm submerged Macragge, covered the Thalassa Stars, commanded Lax, spread to Calth and Sotha, and made countless stars bow before it...

Hmm?

Zhou Yun sensed that among the worlds swallowed by the blue-and-gold storm, one seemed entirely different.

It lay on the border of the blue-and-gold storm, carrying the scent of blood and sand, utterly out of place amid the blue and gold, as though it had never belonged to him. And...

And Zhou Yun sensed a body there that he could enter...