The Weight of the Gaze

Li Wei pulled the trigger.

As he expected, the high-energy laser beam fired by the Hellgun should have instantly pierced Valorian's giant cyclopean head, just as simple as blowing up that flayed second brother earlier.

After all, he was a Pariah. Any psionic shield in front of him should have been as fragile as paper.

Bzz--

The laser fired.

But the scene that followed made Li Wei's scalp go numb.

That red laser beam curved the moment it touched Valorian's body.

It wasn't blocked, nor was it reflected.

Instead, as if the light shot into a massive gravitational black hole, the straight laser drew a bizarre arc around Valorian, circled his body, and finally shot toward—Li Wei himself.

What the hell! Li Wei instinctively lunged sideways.

Screech! The laser beam flew past the soles of his shoes, scorching a burn mark on the floor.

"The laws of physics... broke?" Li Wei climbed up from the ground, looking ahead in disbelief.

Valorian was still standing on the edge of the cliff, and that huge purple cyclopean eye that occupied his entire face didn't even blink once.

He—or it—didn't care about Li Wei's attack at all.

Because in its dimension, this kind of three-dimensional straight-line attack was like graffiti on a two-dimensional paper surface; as long as the space was slightly folded, it could be easily avoided.

"Soulless..." Valorian had no mouth, but the air vibrated, emitting that overlapping, sickening synthetic voice.

"You are a stubborn stone."

"Since I cannot digest you, then I will... excrete you."

With these words, Valorian's body suddenly collapsed like a melting wax figure.

No flesh and blood, no bones.

That gorgeous purple robe and that terrifying single eye instantly turned into countless purple spore mists, merging into the surrounding frantic wind.

No battle, no death.

He just... evaporated like that.

"He ran?" Aurelia's hand holding the axe was trembling.

Her ice-blue eyes were bloodshot at the moment, because in her field of vision, a huge, slowly rotating flesh-colored vortex had appeared where Valorian had just disappeared.

"Don't look there!" Li Wei covered her eyes with one hand. "That's an illusion! There's nothing there! Only the wind!"

Rumble... A low roar came from overhead.

Li Wei looked up.

He thought the governor's ship had returned.

Something had indeed come down.

But this was not a spaceship at all.

It was an inverted palace.

A huge building made of gold, marble, and crystal was slowly pressing down from the clouds upside down.

If you looked closely, you would find that it wasn't a real building at all.

It was the mirrored reflection of the Crown of Atalos below.

"Gravity reversed?" Li Wei felt the floor beneath his feet vibrate.

No, it wasn't a gravity reversal.

It was reality distortion.

The psionic projection of the Hive Mind was so powerful that it began to rewrite the physical rules of this area.

The sky became the ground, and the ground became the sky.

"Where is the ship?! Where is the ship Valorian talked about?!" Aurelia screamed.

In her perception, she was hanging upside down above a bottomless abyss, about to fall into that purple sky at any moment.

"There!" Li Wei pointed to a corner of the "inverted palace."

There was indeed a ship parked there.

The Golden Eagle, the governor's private yacht.

Right now, however, its condition was very... wrong.

It wasn't parked on the landing pad.

It was growing on the landing pad.

The spaceship's landing gear had turned into metal tentacles similar to tree roots, deeply pierced into the concrete.

The metal shell of the hull rose and fell as if breathing, and layers of purple crystals similar to barnacles grew on the originally smooth surface.

What seeped from the portholes was not light, but a dim, amniotic fluid-like liquid luster.

This ship did not fly away.

It had been vitalized.

"We can't get on that ship!" Li Wei shouted. "That thing has already become part of this freak!"

"Then where do we go?!" Aurelia pointed around.

He saw that the edge of the landing pad was shattering like a biscuit.

Those fragments did not fall, but floated upward, flying into the inverted palace.

If they didn't leave here, in a few minutes, they would also "fall" into that huge purple cyclopean eye like these gravels.

At this desperate moment.

Crack. The half-biologized Golden Eagle had its hatch suddenly open.

No stairs extended out.

Only a moist, flesh-red "tongue" spit out from the hatch and rested in front of Li Wei.

From that pitch-black hatch came a familiar voice belonging to the old Governor Tiberius.

It was a broadcast, a recording snippet of the governor's previous speeches, but processed in some way at this moment, it sounded extremely eerie:

"Children... come home... dinner... is ready..."

The ship was inviting them.

"It's a trap." Li Wei's palms were covered in cold sweat.

This was obviously that kind of haunted house horror movie trope where "whoever goes in dies."

The next second, however, reality made the choice for him.

Crash! The landing pad under their feet completely broke apart.

The huge concrete block detached from the spire and began to "fall" toward the sky.

"Ah!!!" Aurelia's body lifted into the air.

Without grip, they would fly straight into that giant face in the sky.

"Dammit!" Li Wei made the only reaction in the moment of weightlessness.

The chainsword in his hand stabbed out fiercely, deeply embedding itself into the "flesh tongue" extending from the spaceship.

Squish! The flesh tongue felt the pain and shrank violently.

Taking advantage of this retraction force, Li Wei dragged Aurelia tightly, and the two of them were rolled directly into the spaceship's hatch by that tongue like bugs caught by a chameleon.

Clang! The hatch closed heavily behind them.

Like a mouth shutting.

Inside the spaceship.

There were no tentacles and mucus all over the floor as imagined.

It was... far too clean here.

Clean enough to drive someone mad.

The corridor was covered with brand-new red carpets, and exquisite oil paintings hung on the walls. The people in the paintings were all smiling, but their eyes were moving, and the air was filled with the scent of expensive incense.

Except for the slightly strange gravity, it looked like a normal, luxurious royal yacht here.

"We... got in?" Aurelia slumped on the ground, still shaken.

The fire axe in her hand was still there, but the blade was stained not with blood, but with the transparent mucus from the "tongue" just now.

"Don't relax." Li Wei raised his gun, watching this dead-silent corridor vigilantly.

"This ship is alive. We're in its belly now."

They advanced cautiously.

The guest room doors on both sides were tightly closed.

Passing an open dining room, Li Wei glanced inside.

The long table was filled with sumptuous food.

Roast chicken, red wine, fruit.

Yet, in Li Wei's Eye of True Sight, were those foods at all?

They were plates of stones, rusted screws, and rotting rats.

Beside the dining table sat several crew members in uniform.

Their backs were to the door, motionless.

Li Wei walked over and gently patted one of them on the shoulder.

That person turned his head.

No face.

His facial features were flat, like a poorly kneaded piece of dough.

And on that smooth face, a big smiley face had been drawn with lipstick.

"Welcome aboard, esteemed guests." This "dough person" without a mouth actually made a sound. The sound didn't come from his throat, but from the resonance in his chest cavity.

"The destination of this flight is—the digestion pool."

Li Wei's scalp was about to explode.

This was not ordinary Genestealer infection.

Was this Chaos? Or some older Warp distortion? In this psionic-overloaded area, reality had been smeared at will.

"Ignore them! These are all fakes!" Li Wei pulled Aurelia, who was already frightened silly, and sprinted toward the cockpit.

As long as they could control the cockpit, as long as they could cut off the "biological nerves" of this ship, maybe they could pilot this thing out like a normal spaceship!

They rushed through the long corridor.

The "dough people" behind them stood up one after another, following behind with stiff movements.

They didn't run, they just walked.

As they walked, they shouted with that chest-resonating cheerful voice: "Please fasten your seatbelts..." "Please enjoy your last meal..."

Finally, the cockpit arrived.

The door was wide open.

Li Wei rushed in, raising his gun to aim at the pilot seat.

"Don't move! Stop the ship!"

The next second, however, his gun barrel lowered.

There was no one in the pilot seat.

Or rather, the pilot seat itself was a person.

That old Governor Tiberius.

He hadn't "left" as Valerius had said.

He had melted into the pilot seat.

His spine had turned into the control stick, and his blood vessels had turned into cables connecting the entire ship's instrument panel.

His face was like a stretched mask covering the main display screen, and those turbid eyes were still rolling, acting as radar.

Hearing Li Wei's voice, that face plastered on the screen moved.

"Ah... the new batteries have arrived." The old governor's face made a sound.

"That soulless little fellow... did you really think you were here to fly the ship?"

"No... you are the... insulating fuse urgently needed by this ship."

Crack! The cockpit door locked abruptly.

The entire spaceship suddenly vibrated violently.

Through the cockpit's view, Li Wei saw the scene outside change.

The spaceship was not flying into space.

It had turned around.

At the speed of a lifetime, like a meteorite, it was diving toward the bottommost depth of the Atalos Hive City, right down to the bottomless geothermal core!

"What is it doing?!" Aurelia screamed.

"It's committing suicide!" Li Wei looked at the rapidly approaching ground fire.

"No... it's taking us deep underground. There must be something down there... that's the bug's hatchery!"

"We've been kidnapped." Li Wei looked desperately at the wildly jumping instrument panels.

"And the driver is a lunatic who wants to drag everyone in the car down with him."

Amidst this rapid descent, Li Wei suddenly felt the Data-slate in his arms start to heat up.

No, not heating up. It was vibrating.

That Inquisition Data-slate, which had always been regarded as a dead object, automatically activated when it approached something deep underground.

Li Wei pulled out the Data-slate.

The red light on it turned into a rapid green light.

A small holographic projection popped up automatically.

That wasn't a roster. That was a countdown.

[Exterminatus Protocol activation conditions met]

[Time to Vortex Torpedo impact: 00:15:00]

Li Wei froze.

He finally understood.

This Data-slate was not any kind of evidence at all.

It was a targeting beacon.

Inquisitor Gregor had long known this planet was beyond saving.

As long as the beacon was activated, the Imperial Navy in orbit would lock onto this place.

And carry out a direct orbital bombardment.