Ultramar Will Become a New Human Imperium

A vessel that could be entered... It had not been noticed upon the Golden Throne, but seen within that storm of blue and gold...

Zhou Yun made his self upon the Golden Throne remember the planet's location, then swiftly withdrew the fragment of will he had infiltrated into the child's mind.

Reality became solid again. The mirror restored itself, bricks and stones reassembled into a room, dust drifted through the flowing air, and the shadows cast by the setting sun slowly shifted, as though everything just now had merely been Zhou Yun's hallucination.

But Zhou Yun understood that if he had gone any deeper, piercing the outermost layer of the child's mind, the terrifying Warp power within the child would have followed Zhou Yun's will into reality and torn this body's brain tissue into pulp.

Now, Zhou Yun was certain of his guess. What lay beyond the mirror could not possibly be some Marcus Guilliman's fortieth illegitimate son—unless Marcus was the Emperor walking among mortals, or the Emperor had been cuckolded by him.

With such a powerful Warp projection, there was no doubt that the one beyond the mirror was the Primarch Roboute Guilliman.

But... something was wrong. That feeling... was somewhat terrifying. If an ordinary person caught even a glimpse of that cold, multithreaded mind, they would probably be frightened mad.

"What did you do?" A cold, indifferent voice with barely any emotion sounded beside Zhou Yun's ear.

He had been discovered... No, Roboute Guilliman had never received even the slightest psychic training, not now and not throughout his childhood. Among all the Primarchs, he was practically the most illiterate when it came to the Warp.

Russ had his mysterious little runes, Jaghatai Khan had his Heavenly Way, Angron could sense others' suffering before the Nails were driven into him, and even Mortarion, the vanguard of anti-psyker sentiment, knew Numerology.

As for Guilliman, his only psychic attack method in the future would be the Emperor's flaming straight sword, capable of erasing daemons from existence.

He had not noticed what Zhou Yun was doing on a psychic level.

Was it instinct? Had he observed Zhou Yun's expression? Or had subtle secondary psychic phenomena caught his attention?

Zhou Yun did not even know how much Guilliman had noticed. Guilliman did not tell him either. He merely told Zhou Yun that he knew, without saying what exactly he knew.

That sense of the unknown was instead intensely oppressive, especially the threat Zhou Yun could clearly feel even through the mirror—the threat of a lion to a gazelle...

Had Zhou Yun's will not been tempered by the Golden Throne, he might have fled in panic like Cicero right then.

"Want to learn?" Zhou Yun merely smiled in reply.

The air fell silent once more.

Lady Euten looked blankly at her child, then blankly at Zhou Yun.

Learn what... She did not quite understand what the two of them were talking about.

But she sensed that this teacher was extraordinary. He was not afraid of this child at all...

Zhou Yun was cautiously considering whether he should lay everything bare, tell Guilliman all about the future and the Emperor in one breath.

If, if it were the Roboute Guilliman of the future, the Primarch most like a human, Zhou Yun might truly have risked doing so.

But this child... he seemed like a machine.

Zhou Yun had only briefly skimmed the surface of his thoughts, yet had felt within them a biting indifference and coldness. He was not yet the Roboute Guilliman of the future; much of his mind still belonged to the Thirteenth Primarch shaped by the Emperor.

In a sense, he resembled the Emperor as he appeared in this thirtieth millennium: he loved all humanity, but not any specific person—or rather, he had not yet learned how to love.

The current him might be a Primarch who could make Macragge, Ultramar, and the galaxy better, but he would never be one who could make every individual better.

If Zhou Yun revealed everything, what choice would Guilliman make? How would he view Zhou Yun?

The moment Zhou Yun considered using his gift of foresight, alarm bells blared in his heart.

He had to settle down and teach him bit by bit, influence him subtly, and warn him of future dangers without letting him realize it.

Of course, most importantly, he had to pray that Lord Conor, the true great educator, would hurry up and straighten out this damned child.

"What do you think of Ultramar?" A calm, level voice sounded beside Zhou Yun's ear.

"The Five Hundred Worlds..." Zhou Yun blurted out, then his expression twisted.

Guilliman had clearly used no psychic power, yet through pure questioning technique—the timing of the question, catching the instant Zhou Yun's thoughts were racing, the sudden inquiry, and his carefully designed tone—he had made Zhou Yun reveal his true thoughts without thinking.

"...The Five Hundred Worlds." The child's voice rose slightly. He seemed immensely interested in Zhou Yun's words.

It was like a parent pulling out the toy their child had been longing for...

"Your thoughts are the same as mine." Guilliman's voice carried an earnest sincerity. "There must be five hundred worlds. Five hundred worlds expanding outward from Macragge as their core, joined into a whole, forming the new core of Ultramar... Since you knew there must be five hundred worlds, you must have carefully studied the ancient star charts of the Golden Age, yes? You understand the purpose of each of those five hundred worlds, yes? Then do you understand the role those five hundred worlds will play in the galaxy?"

Listening to Guilliman, Zhou Yun immediately understood: at this point in time, Roboute Guilliman already had the concept of the future Five Hundred Worlds. He had even decided upon the list of those five hundred worlds and the roles they would serve.

And the role those Five Hundred Worlds would play in the galaxy...

"It will be a Lighthouse, an example." Zhou Yun spoke solemnly to Guilliman beyond the mirror. "Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds will be a model, an example for all humanity. When everyone looks to Ultramar, they will know how they should live, how they should develop, and what heights they can reach."

"It will be a light in the Dark Age, hope in an age of suffering. People will look toward Ultramar and draw closer to it, spiritually and materially alike. Ultramar will become a new human Imperium."

"Theoretically possible." Guilliman's voice sounded, carrying obvious approval.

Of course he approved. This ambitious rhetoric was Guilliman's own idea. In the future, guided by this very ideology, he would create the Second Imperium—that faithless, disloyal thing which all three Primarchs regarded as a dark chapter in their history.

Zhou Yun had merely used Telepathy School psychic power to forcibly dig this passage out of memories from his previous life and repeat it to Guilliman.

"Then..." Zhou Yun hesitated. "Suppose, and I mean suppose, that humanity's government reunites in the future, but someone takes advantage of a crisis in the human Imperium to establish a new separatist Imperium with Ultramar at its core. How would you judge that?"

"Such behavior is unquestionably a crime. It is a betrayal of humanity and Ultramar itself, the act of a pure opportunist. Only the most ambitious person could commit such a shameless deed," Guilliman behind the mirror judged bluntly.

...What should he do?! He really wanted to record that!