Paradise for the Soulless

The wind was quiet.

The sand was quiet.

Even the sound of a heartbeat seemed swallowed by this white desert.

Li Wei took a deep breath of the dry, cool air.

The subtle background noise from the Warp, which had coiled deep within his mind like tinnitus ever since he transmigrated, completely vanished.

His mind was clearer than ever before, and a light, effortless sense of ease flooded his limbs and bones.

Here, he was no longer an anomaly.

Here, he was the standard.

This place is practically a vacation resort. Li Wei stretched, almost wanting to hum a little tune.

But a muffled thud from beside him interrupted his comfort.

Sister Elena collapsed onto the sand.

She had not passed out.

She merely knelt there, staring blankly at the white sand particles like a porcelain doll that had lost its power.

Her lips moved, seeming to try and recite a prayer, but no sound came out.

Her fingers let go of the double-headed eagle pendant that symbolized her faith, as if it were nothing more than a meaningless piece of scrap metal.

"Hey, Sister." Li Wei walked over, squatted in front of her, and waved a hand in front of her eyes.

"Snap out of it."

Elena slowly raised her head.

Those amber eyes, once warm and resolute, were now like stagnant water.

She looked at Li Wei, devoid of her previous disgust, and devoid of fear.

There was only a spine-chilling indifference.

"Who are you?" Elena's voice was as flat as if she were reading a manual.

"Who am I?"

"Why... do I feel like there's a piece missing in my chest? I don't remember what I'm supposed to do... I don't remember... who that person sitting on the throne is..."

The Stasis Effect.

This was the Dead Space of Exorcism's most terrifying weapon.

It severed humanity's connection to the Warp.

And in Warhammer lore, human emotions, memories, and faith were essentially intertwined with the Warp (the Sea of Souls) in countless ways.

Sever that connection, and a person became nothing more than a breathing lump of meat.

"Damn, she's turned into an idiot." Li Wei frowned.

Egoist though he was, in this unknown dead zone, having an idiot follow him around was definitely dead weight.

Besides, he still needed the Adeptus Mechanicus knowledge in Elena's head to operate those ancient devices.

"Listen, Elena." Li Wei grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard. "Look at me! I'm the bastard that makes you want to vomit! I'm the defiler!"

No reaction.

Elena let herself be shaken like a puppet.

Here, Li Wei's pariah field was assimilated by the environment.

She could no longer feel that special nausea, because the entire world was making her sick.

"I need to give her a shock." Li Wei thought for a moment, raised his hand, and once again—

Slap!

A crisp blow landed across Elena's face.

"..." Elena's face tilted to the side, a red mark blooming on her fair skin.

Her gaze fluctuated, a flash of dazed pain crossing her eyes.

Pain.

It was the truest anchor of materialism.

"Does it hurt?" Li Wei asked.

"It hurts..." Elena instinctively covered her face.

"If it hurts, it means you're still alive." Li Wei hauled her up from the ground, his movements rough yet unusually reliable.

"As long as you still know pain, you're neither a Necron nor a stone."

"Remember this pain. Stop thinking about the Emperor, and start thinking about how not to get punched."

This extremely bastardly physical awakening method seemed to work a little.

A shred of brilliance returned to Elena's eyes—though it was the brilliance of grievance and anger, it was still better than her previous living-dead look.

"Let's move." Li Wei picked up the medical staff from the ground and shoved it into her hand.

"There's a town ahead. Let's go see if there are any survivors."

At the edge of the white desert sat a small Imperial mining settlement.

A crude town of prefabricated houses and wind turbines, half-buried in sand and dirt.

Li Wei led the dazed Elena into the town.

There were no signs of destruction by the flames of war.

The streets were tidy, and even the streetlights were still on.

What was more, there were people here.

Dozens of miners in gray work clothes stood on both sides of the street.

Some carried empty crates. Others wiped windows that bore no dust.

"People!" Elena grabbed at the lifeline, stumbling toward the nearest miner. "Praise... praise who was it again... excuse me, where is this? We need water..."

The miner stopped wiping the window.

He turned around and looked at Elena.

Li Wei didn't stop her from behind, but he gripped his broken sword tighter, observing with vigilance.

The miner was a middle-aged man with a full beard.

Yet the look in his eyes as he regarded Elena was identical to Elena's a moment ago.

Hollow, dead, indifferent.

"Water?" The miner made a sound.

The voice was dry, monotonous, devoid of any inflection.

"Supply rationing time has passed. Work. Must work. For... for what?"

The miner tilted his head, seeming to jam.

He paid Elena no further mind, instead turning back around to resume wiping that already spotless glass.

Once, twice, thrice.

His movements were mechanical, precise, and tireless.

Walking corpses.

Though these people lived, their souls had been thoroughly sucked dry by the Dead Space of Exorcism.

Only the muscle memory of their flesh remained, like a group of pre-programmed flesh-and-blood robots.

"What's... wrong with them?" Elena retreated in terror, hiding behind Li Wei.

"They've been 'formatted'." Li Wei looked coldly at the bizarre town.

"No pain, no joy, no hope. This is the 'order' the Necrons want to bring to the galaxy."

Right at that moment.

The town's broadcast tower suddenly chimed.

There was no siren, only a harsh, hypnotic frequency of green static noise.

Bzzzz—

Hearing the sound, those "empty shells" on the street who had been performing meaningless labor all froze in their tracks.

Hundreds of hollow eyes turned in unison, looking toward the entrance of the town. Looking toward Elena.

To these empty shells that had completely assimilated into the "dead silence" of the environment, Li Wei was invisible (because he was also a part of that dead silence).

Yet Elena... despite being affected, remained a living person with a soul and emotional fluctuations.

In this black-and-white world, she was like a glaring point of colorful light.

"Noise..." The window-wiping miner suddenly dropped his rag and drew a wrench from his waist.

"Noise source detected..."

"Purge interference. Restore tranquility."

He walked toward Elena.

Not just him. The crate-movers, the sweepers, even the ones repairing antennas on the rooftops—everyone picked up their tools—shovels, pickaxes, even stones.

Hundreds of expressionless empty shells, like a group of activated zombies, marched in uniform steps and closed in around Elena.

"Are they... going to kill me?" Elena asked in disbelief. "Why?"

"Because you're too 'loud'." Li Wei yanked Elena behind him. "Your soul is screaming. Even if you can't hear it yourself, in their ears, you're a megaphone."

"Then what do we do? Kill them?" Elena's hand trembled on her medical staff.

These people looked like innocent civilians.

"We can't kill them all." Li Wei watched the crowds surging from all directions.

"Besides, killing people here, the smell of blood will attract something more troublesome—the true administrators buried beneath the sand."

He had to think of a way.

To make Elena "shut up" too.

Or... to hide her.

Li Wei watched the approaching crowd.

A crazy idea suddenly struck him.

"Sister, offense taken." Li Wei suddenly turned around.

Then, he did something that terrified Elena to her core.

With the sharp broken sword in his hand, he savagely slashed across his own palm.

Blood poured out.

Yet he did not stop.

He grabbed the back of Elena's head, pressing his bleeding palm fiercely against her forehead, her cheeks, and even smearing the blood across her nun's robes.

"What are you doing?!" Elena screamed.

"Shut up! Don't move!" Li Wei roared as he smeared his blood over her.

"My blood contains my genes, my 'pariah' trait."

"Though not as strong as I am personally, it's enough to cover your damn soul-light like an invisibility cloak!"

This was Li Wei's exclusive theory: physical coverage.

Using a pariah's bodily fluids to neutralize a psyker's signal.

When Li Wei's blood coated Elena's face.

A miracle occurred.

The miner holding the wrench, who had reached within two meters of Elena, suddenly stopped.

His hollow eyes swept back and forth over Elena.

Yet he seemed... unable to see her anymore.

Or rather, that "harsh noise source" had suddenly vanished, turning into a blurred, uncomfortable piece of background static.

"Noise... gone..." The miner lowered the wrench in confusion. "Resume... work..."

He turned around and walked back to the window, as if nothing had happened, and resumed wiping the glass.

The surrounding crowd likewise dispersed, returning once more to that cycle of dead silence.

The crisis was averted.

Elena slumped to the ground, her face covered in Li Wei's fresh blood, looking like a female ghost who had just devoured someone.

She touched the blood on her face, catching the nauseating scent of "void" that only she could perceive. "You..."

"Don't wipe it off." Li Wei tore off a strip of cloth and bound the wound on his hand.

His face was a bit pale, but his gaze remained cold and sharp.

"From now on, every two hours, I'll have to reapply your 'makeup'." Li Wei looked at her, a wicked smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Welcome to the Invisible Man Club, Sister."

"In this dead world, only by turning into a ghost can you manage to live like a human."