Bread in the Ashes

Thirst. His throat felt as if he had swallowed a handful of red-hot sand.

The first sensation Li Wei felt after waking from unconsciousness was a thirst driving him to the verge of madness.

He licked his chapped lips, tasting only rust and dust.

This was that gray wasteland.

The sky remained that half-dead, leaden gray; there was no sun, only a faint, sickly white halo filtering through the clouds.

The wind howled, whipping up bone dust and grit from the ground, stinging his face fiercely.

I have to find water... Li Wei struggled to his feet.

His current state was terrible.

That expensive noble trench coat had turned into a tattered rag, and the shirt underneath was stained all over.

Yet he dared not take it off, for the temperature here was extremely low, probably around freezing.

If he did not wear these layers of rags, he would freeze to death tonight.

He gripped the broken sword in his hand tightly.

Only a sharp piece of metal remained.

This was his only tool.

Li Wei did not head toward that seemingly magnificent black monolith in the distance—that was courting death.

He chose to walk toward a low-lying area at the edge of this ancient battlefield.

According to survival common sense, water flowed to lower places.

Moreover, some massive metal wreckage was faintly visible over there.

Half an hour later, Li Wei dragged his heavy steps into the wreckage zone.

After seeing the sight before him clearly, his pupils contracted slightly.

This was not a spaceship.

This was the ruin of a ground camp belonging to an Imperial expeditionary force.

A huge tracked engineering vehicle lay overturned on the ground, its treads rusted solid.

A few polymer tents had been torn by the wind until only their frames remained.

And in the center of the camp, a dozen corpses were scattered about.

Li Wei approached cautiously.

These corpses were very strange.

They wore the red robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, their bodies bristling with bionics and pipelines.

Yet they had not rotted.

They had mummified.

It was as if all their moisture had been sucked dry in a single instant, turning them into withered, wooden sculptures.

What made Li Wei feel most creeped out was their posture.

They had made no defensive or fleeing motions.

Some of them were kneeling on the ground taking notes, some were holding up scanners, and some were holding water cups (the cups were already empty).

They had died suddenly while at work.

Instant dehydration? Or some kind of radiation? Li Wei held his breath (although he was immune to psychic radiation, physical radiation was still lethal).

He walked over to a mummified corpse that looked like a logistics officer.

This man was carrying a huge marching pack.

Sorry, buddy. Li Wei used his broken sword to cut the straps of the backpack.

The backpack was heavy. When he opened it, it contained various instrument parts, datapads, and what Li Wei desired most—a supply pack.

He fished out a silver metal canteen.

He shook it.

There was the sound of sloshing water!

Overjoyed, Li Wei unscrewed the cap.

A pungent chemical odor hit him in the face.

He poured a little onto his palm; the water was a murky, pale yellow, with some flocculent matter floating inside.

Purification tablets... purification tablets... He rummaged through the side pockets of the backpack and finally found a small medicine bottle.

Regardless of whether they had expired or not, Li Wei dropped two tablets into the canteen.

Watching the tablets fizz and dissolve, the water turned an eerie shade of blue.

He waited for five minutes, then closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and took a gulp.

Cough, cough, cough! The taste was practically like drinking swimming pool chlorine water mixed with expired motor oil.

It was bitter, pungent, and even carried a sickening, throat-clinging sensation.

Yet it was water. It was liquid life.

Li Wei forced down the urge to vomit and drank half the canteen in one go.

As the liquid entered his stomach, the fire that threatened to burn him dry finally died down a little.

Water taken care of, next came food.

He dug out a few blocks as hard as bricks from the pack.

The packaging read: "High-Energy Nutrient Block - Adeptus Mechanicus Ration (Flavor-Removed Edition)."

In the pursuit of efficiency, the Adeptus Mechanicus had even stripped "taste," a useless function, from food.

Li Wei picked up a block and banged it hard against the tire of the engineering vehicle.

Clang, clang, clang!

The sound was as crisp as striking stone.

Can this thing even be eaten? Helpless, Li Wei used the hilt of his broken sword to smash this "brick" into a pile of powder.

Then, he poured the powder into the remaining half-canteen of water and shook it into a paste.

He took a taste.

There was no flavor.

Truly, there was no flavor at all.

It was just like eating moist plaster powder or chewing wax.

Yet the texture was extremely coarse, scraping his throat raw as he swallowed.

This is my first meal. Li Wei sat beside a mummified corpse, eating these plaster pastes bite by bite.

All around him were the howling wind and over a dozen mummies of bizarre deaths.

After eating and drinking his fill, Li Wei began to scavenge for more useful items.

Though this expeditionary force had perished, their equipment remained.

He found a well-preserved cold-weather cloak; although it was of dark red Adeptus Mechanicus style, it contained heating coils (though out of power, the material was very thick).

He also found a las pistol.

Yet this gun was strange: its battery compartment was empty, and the barrel had melted—as if scorched from the inside by some ultra-high temperature.

Not just this one.

Li Wei checked all the weapons.

Bolters, lasrifles, even the heavy stubber mounted on the engineering vehicle.

All the weapons had overheated and self-destructed at the exact same time.

No signs of battle. Li Wei stroked those melted barrels, his brows knitted tightly.

This group died of instant dehydration. All the weapons were rendered useless by simultaneous overheating.

This was no skirmish.

This was a pulse.

A sort of... pulse capable of instantly stripping living beings of their moisture and detonating power cells.

Right at that moment, Li Wei heard a sound.

Rustle... click...

The sound came from beneath the overturned engineering vehicle.

Li Wei immediately grabbed his broken sword, rolled behind a rock, and held his breath.

A bug crawled out.

It was no living creature. It was a fist-sized scarab constructed of living metal.

Its back flickered with a ghostly green light, and several sharp metal limbs scuttled rapidly across the ground.

Canoptek Scarab.

The Necrons' most basic maintenance unit.

They were responsible for breaking down matter, repairing tombs, or gnawing intruders down to bone.

That scarab crawled onto a mummified corpse.

Its green-glowing mandibles went to work.

Buzz, buzz, buzz—the disintegration beam lit up.

That mummified corpse, along with the clothes on its back, was broken down into the most basic atomic dust within seconds, dissipating into the wind.

It was cleaning up.

Or rather, clearing away "trash."

Li Wei's heart jumped to his throat.

He had only a broken sword now.

Facing these metal bugs capable of breaking down atoms, he stood no chance of winning.

Having cleaned up the corpse, the scarab turned around.

Its single-eye-like sensor swept across the rock where Li Wei hid.

Li Wei pressed tightly against the ground, not daring to breathe.

The scarab's sensors flickered a few times.

If he were an ordinary human, even hiding behind a rock, his vital signs (heat, heartbeat, soul projection) would have been scanned.

However.

Within the scarab's processor, a vacancy appeared in its logic circuitry.

In its scan, behind that rock lay merely "an inorganic object with slightly elevated temperature but no soul reading."

To a program programmed exclusively to purge "living entities" or "energy sources," Li Wei, a pariah, was judged as ambient background noise.

The scarab turned away, continuing to crawl toward the next corpse.

It ignored Li Wei.

Li Wei let out a long breath, the cold sweat on his back already frozen solid.

He had won the gamble.

Advanced though Necron technology was like magic, it fundamentally still relied on detection.

And he was the highest-grade stealth fighter in this universe.

Yet just as he prepared to quietly retreat.

His gaze fell into the cab of the engineering vehicle.

There was something in there still flashing a faint red light.

It was an Imperial auspex.

Its screen was still lit, seemingly recording the final data before this expeditionary force was completely wiped out.

Li Wei gritted his teeth.

Information was life.

He had to know what had happened here, what the pattern of that "pulse" was.

Taking advantage of the scarab's focused work on breaking down corpses, he crept like a cat toward the cab silently, reached out, and grabbed the auspex.

The instant his fingers touched the instrument.

Hum—the auspex emitted a slight crackle of static.

The working scarab halted abruptly.

It turned around.

Though it could not see Li Wei's soul, its auditory sensors caught the sound, and its visual sensors spotted an object moving Imperial equipment.

"Warning. Non-Crypt sequence activity detected."

"Executing purge protocol."

The carapace on the scarab's back split open, revealing the disintegration gun muzzle within.

Ghostly green light began to converge.

Dammit! Without hesitation, Li Wei grabbed the auspex and turned to run!

Zzzt! A green beam lanced into the dirt beside his feet.

That hard rock instantly turned to flyash.

Li Wei sprinted among the ruins, using the wreckage as cover.

The scarab behind him emitted a harsh signal.

Squeak, squeak, squeak—answering its call, more and more green spots of light began to crawl out from the surrounding ruins and beneath the sand.

One, two, ten... buried beneath the entire camp were unexpectedly hundreds upon hundreds of scarabs!

Like a green tidal wave, they surged toward Li Wei.

I've really stirred up a hornet's nest this time! Running, Li Wei glanced at the auspex screen.

The screen displayed only a single shocking warning:

[Current Location: Tomb World - Edge of the Nachmund Sector]
[Awakening Progress: Stage One (Scarab Class)]

[Time until next "Stasis Pulse" eruption: 00:05:00]

Five minutes.

Five minutes later, that pulse capable of instantly draining a person dry and instantly burning weapons would sweep across this area once again.

And this swarm of bugs was driving him toward a dead end.

Damn... Damn... Li Wei looked around.

This wasteland was completely unobstructed; running could not outpace the pulse.

His only path to survival.

Li Wei's gaze turned toward that huge Black Monolith in the distance.

Although that was a Necron structure.

Yet data on the auspex showed that the source of the pulse was the underground core, and around that monolith... there was unexpectedly a "Silent Zone".

That was the eye of the storm.

It was the most dangerous place, and also the only safe place.

"I'll gamble on it!" Li Wei changed direction, no longer fleeing, but charging head-on toward that monolith exuding an aura of death.

Behind him was the endless green swarm of bugs.

Above his head, the countdown for that damned pulse was ticking down to zero.