The Fool's Mask

Headache. That was hardly enough to describe the sensation inside Li Wei's skull at the moment. It did not feel like the dull throbbing of a hangover, nor the sharp pain of trauma, but rather a swelling feeling of foreign invasion.

It was as if someone had forcibly carved countless gullies onto his cerebral cortex and then poured boiling mercury into them.

On that white desert, when the green portal of light opened before him, Li Wei's vision had already blurred. Yet he could still see the "artificial sun" falling overhead—the vortex torpedo.

At that moment, time seemed to be drawn out. He saw the atmosphere torn apart by the torpedo's force field like a scorched piece of paper. He saw the distant horizon curl and vaporize under the high temperature. In the final 0.1 second of the planet's life, that giant mechanical claw mixed with brass and rotting flesh, stretching out from the green portal of light, grabbed him and Elena.

There was no warmth of salvation. Only coldness, grease, and a sickening smell of rust.

Following that was darkness. And along with it, a violent sense of spatial tearing.

"Ah—!!!" Li Wei violently spewed a mouthful of blood in the dark. His body rolled in the turbulence of the teleportation, but his consciousness still could not break free from that damned "data infusion."

It was not just data. It was memory, history, and the obsessiveness of the Necron spanning hundreds of millions of years. Countless grotesque geometric figures flashed before his eyes. He saw the scene of stars being enveloped by a Dyson sphere and drained dry, those formulas as clear as if carved onto his eyeballs. He saw detailed steps on how to detonate a gas giant planet with a mere three grams of antimatter. He even saw the final images of those creatures known as the "Old Ones" struggling in the tides of the Warp.

"Get out... get out of my head..." Li Wei wailed in his heart. This knowledge was too vast, vast enough to crush the soul of a mortal. If he did not seal it away, he would suffer brain death in less than three minutes.

Hide it. Must hide it.

Utilizing the void-like trait of his nature as a "Pariah," Li Wei constructed a "Wall of Oblivion" deep within his mind. He desperately shoved those emerging terrifying blueprints and weapons parameters capable of destroying galaxies into the black box of his subconscious, and then locked it tightly.

I don't know anything. I'm just a passerby. I'm an idiot. I'm illiterate.

He frantically chanted these few sentences in his mind, as if performing some kind of self-hypnosis.

In this universe full of madmen coveting knowledge, ignorance was the hardest armor.

When sensation finally returned to his body, Li Wei did not immediately open his eyes. This was the first rule of survival he had learned in the bottom hive: before confirming the environment was safe, playing dead was always the first choice.

The tactile sensation beneath him was cold and slippery.

It was like a metal plate, but covered with a layer of congealed grease.

His ears were filled with a chaotic roar.

It was not the rhythmic running sound of machinery, but a kind of... painful groan.

As if this machine were alive, every meshing of gears, every stroke of a piston, was grinding up bones and flesh.

The air was permeated with a strong smell of sulfur, engine oil, and a faint stench resembling burnt hair.

Li Wei carefully controlled his breathing, reducing the rise and fall of his chest to a minimum. He slightly squinted one slit of an eye, sizing up his surroundings through his eyelashes.

This was a huge, dim cabin.

Rather than the interior of a spaceship, it looked more like a combination of a slaughterhouse and a factory.

The walls were not flat metal, but covered in dark red, blood vessel-like pipes that pulsed beneath the armored metal plates.

Some places had even grown bone-like hyperplasias resembling teeth. Countless iron chains hung from the ceiling, and suspended from the ends of the chains were not cargo, but servitors consisting only of upper torsos.

They had no legs, thick cables connected beneath their spines. They were busily processing items on a conveyor belt with welding torches and cutting machines.

And what was transported on that conveyor belt... were corpses. Or rather, the raw materials for some kind of demon engine.

Li Wei's heart shrank violently. Inside his mind—in the "Necron Library" he had just sealed away—a piece of information popped up involuntarily: (Warning: Chaos contamination detected. Identification features: Flesh-Metal Virus. Affiliation: Dark Mechanicum. Threat level: Extremely high.)

Shut up. Li Wei cursed fiercely in his heart, forcibly suppressing that automatically popping thought. He could not display any trace of "knowing the ropes."

He rolled his eyeballs, searching for Elena. That poor battle sister was thrown onto an operating table right beside him. She was still unconscious, her battle robe already tattered and torn, and her face still smeared with Li Wei's long-dried and blackened blood. Several servo-skulls were buzzing around her, emitting a harsh scanning sound.

"An interesting... specimen..."

A voice came. That voice sounded like sawing bones with a rusty saw, hoarse, grating, and filled with an unsettling metallic echo.

Li Wei instantly closed his eyes, relaxing his whole body, feigning that he was still in a deep coma.

Heavy footsteps approached. It was the sound of prosthetic limbs striking the floor. One step, two steps, and finally stopping right in front of Li Wei's operating table.

Li Wei felt a cold mechanical claw with a sharp touch gently graze across his cheek.

Then, that claw roughly pried open his eyelids.

Li Wei was forced to "wake up." What came into view was a face sufficient to give any normal person nightmares.

It was a heretical tech-priest wearing a dark red, oil-stained robe.

Most of his skull had been excised, replaced by a transparent glass dome containing not a brain, but a mass of writhing green biological gel, with several electrodes plugged into it.

His chin was made of iron, only one of his eyes remaining organic, while the other was a multi-lens emitting a red glow.

And behind his back, seven or eight mechanical tentacles extended like a spider, the tip of each tentacle holding a different tool: a chainsaw, a drill, a syringe, and a pair of pincers still dripping blood.

"A soulless... empty shell." That tech-priest leaned close to Li Wei, his red electronic eye spinning and telescoping frantically, as if trying to see right through Li Wei's skull. "I can feel it... your very existence is a black hole. You make my sensors feel sick... What a wonderful nausea."

Li Wei's heart hammered wildly, but he forced himself to display the reaction a normal person should have.

Fear. Extreme, ignorant fear.

"Ah!!" Li Wei screamed in terror, kicking his hands and legs, trying to shrink backward. "Who... who are you?! Where is this?! Don't kill me! I don't have anything!"

His acting was spot-on.

Pupils dilated, body trembling, even the unique "nauseating" aura belonging to a Pariah became even more chaotic due to fear.

That tech-priest was not angered by Li Wei's scream. On the contrary, he seemed to greatly enjoy this mortal terror. He extended a mechanical claw, easily pressing down on Li Wei's chest to nail him firmly to the operating table.

"Don't be afraid, little mouse." The tech-priest made a laugh like a leaking bellows.

"This is the 'Forge of Vashtorr'. I am the master here, Archmagos Axis." "I saved you. From that planet burned into a glass ball."

Axis's organic eye stared fixedly at Li Wei, his gaze leaking a kind of greed. "Tell me, how did you get in? That Necron tomb." "My detectors show you were teleported out from the very bottom core area. That place is filled with a stasis force field sufficient to turn an Astartes brother into ash."

"How did you survive?"

This was the first and most fatal test.

Li Wei knew that if he uttered even a single word about the "principles of Necron technology" or "C'tan shards" at this moment, the next second, that drill would bore open his skull and read his memory zone directly.

Because for the Dark Mechanicum, the testimony of a living person was untrustworthy, and dissected brain slices were what you could trust.

Li Wei had to play the fool.

Not only play the fool, but act like a thoroughly terrified piece of trash with off-the-charts good luck.

"I... I don't know!" Li Wei cried out, tears and snot streaming down together (this wasn't entirely acting; that fall earlier really hurt).

"I was just running for my life! There were bugs everywhere! And green light!"

"I fell into a hole... and then I passed out! When I woke up again, I was in the desert!"

"I don't know anything! Please let me go! I have money! I have Throne Gelts!"

Axis's electronic eye flickered a few times, seeming to analyze the truth of Li Wei's words (along with his heartbeat and hormone levels). "Passed out? What a... disappointing answer."

The tech-priest was clearly unsatisfied. One of his tentacles raised a high-speed rotating bone saw, slowly approaching Li Wei's head. "Perhaps, opening your cranium, I can find a more honest answer." "Memories don't lie, even if you've forgotten, your gray matter will remember."

Damn it! These tech-madmen really didn't reason! Li Wei's mind flashed wild warnings. He knew he couldn't play the simple-minded trash anymore; he had to throw out some bait. Bait sufficient to make the other party pause the dissection, yet without exposing his "omniscient" self.

"Wait! Don't! Don't cut me!" Li Wei struggled frantically, shouting: "But I felt it! That place... that place is very 'empty'!" "Just like me right now! There was no sound there! Those green lights... they seemed afraid of me!"

The bone saw stopped right in front of Li Wei's forehead, the high-speed rotating wind rustling his hair.

Axis halted. "Afraid of you?" He retracted the bone saw, looking thoughtfully at Li Wei. "Interesting. You are a Pariah. Necron technology is based on anti-Warp principles, and you are a natural Warp black hole." "Perhaps... it was your constitution that interfered with their defense protocols?"

The tech-priest began rationalizing it himself. For these madmen obsessed with research, as long as there was a plausible "academic explanation," they tended to overlook the complexity of human nature. In his eyes, Li Wei was merely a special experimental material, not an opponent endowed with wisdom.

"A living specimen capable of interfering with the operation of a Necron tomb..." Axis's tentacles waved in the air, as if calculating something. "If I turn you into an 'Interference Generator', or skin you and implant you into the core of a demon engine..." "I could create an ultimate weapon immune to psychic attacks."

Li Wei felt a chill run down his spine. This old pervert not only wanted to kill him, but wanted to turn him into spare parts. Yet he had survived. At least for now, that bone saw had moved away.

"Lock him up." Axis waved a hand, and two tall Skitarii covered in iron from head to toe walked over. Their faces were faceless, replaced by gas masks and optical sensors, holding crackling electric spears.

"Throw him into D-9. Lock him up with the other 'special meat'." Axis turned around, no longer looking at Li Wei, and walked toward Elena over there. "As for this nun... reeking of the False Emperor's faith. Perhaps she can be used to test the new pain amplifier."

"No! Let her go!" Li Wei roared instinctively. This wasn't acting; he was genuinely anxious.

Although he and Elena were temporary partners, in this ghost place, she was the only "human." If she was tortured to death by this group of madmen, Li Wei would truly be left all alone in this universe.

Bang! A Skitarii fiercely smashed the butt of his rifle into Li Wei's stomach. Li Wei curled up into a shrimp in agony, vomiting bile.

Axis ignored Li Wei's cries. Using his mechanical claw, he was playfully lifting a lock of Elena's silver hair. "Such pure faith... When she prays to Chaos in despair, the sweetness of that corruption must be fascinating."

Li Wei was dragged off the operating table like a dead dog by two Skitarii. He stared fixedly at Axis's back. He searched frantically in his mind.

Inside that "Necron Library," there had to be something, something about the fatal weaknesses of this Dark Mechanicum vehicle or demon engine.

Found it.

[Waste Code]

This was a Chaos virus capable of infecting machine logic, but "counter-protocols" also existed within it.

The Necrons had fought against the Warp during the War in Heaven, and their data contained knowledge on how to "physically sever the bond between demons and machinery."

Gritting his teeth, Li Wei crammed this knowledge deep down into his heart. He couldn't say it now. To say it now was to die. He had to wait for an opportunity. An opportunity when Axis was distracted or the spaceship malfunctioned.

Just wait, old scrap-iron. Li Wei was dragged out of the laboratory door, his gaze finally falling on Elena. As long as I don't die... I will definitely dismantle this piece of junk of yours.

Li Wei was dragged through a long corridor filled with nightmarish sights. The walls here were bleeding. The floor was paved with carpets resembling human skin. Countless servo-skulls consisting only of brains and spines fluttered in the air; they were no longer the pure gold of the Imperium, but painted black, covered in blasphemous runes.

He was brought to Sector D-9. This was a huge, gloomy cell. Or rather, an animal pen.

"Get in." The Skitarii opened the iron gate and threw Li Wei inside.

Li Wei crashed onto a floor littered with straw and filth.

He climbed up, cautiously looking around. The beings imprisoned here were not only human.

Inside this huge cage squatted dozens of bizarre creatures. A few looked like servitors whose minds had been shattered by excessive augmentation. A few were mutants covered in scales and tentacles. Even in the corner, there squatted an Astartes wearing tattered power armor, massive in size yet looking extremely weak?

No, judging by the style of that armor and the scratched-out markings on it... that appeared to be a captured loyalist Space Marine.

When Li Wei was thrown in, all gazes converged upon him. Greed, madness, hunger.

Yet immediately afterward, those gazes changed.

Turning to disgust. Much like a pack of hungry wolves eagerly expecting a meal, only to suddenly discover a moldy rock had been thrown in instead.

That Space Marine squatting in the corner raised his head.

He wore no helmet, revealing a scarred face as hard as granite.

Yet one of his eyes was blind, black blood flowing from the socket.

He looked at Li Wei, his brow furrowing tightly as if smelling something extremely disgusting.

"Who are you?" The Space Marine's voice was deep and hoarse, like thunder rumbling in his chest. "Why... is there no light of a soul on you?"

Li Wei straightened his body.

He patted the dust off himself, and though his stomach was still convulsing from that rifle butt earlier, he knew that in this cage full of monsters, showing weakness meant death.

"I'm an unlucky bastard." Li Wei looked at the giant who was half a head taller than him, grinning. "An unlucky bastard who just crawled out of a pile of dead bodies only to fall right into a cesspool."

He walked over and sat down in the corner opposite the Space Marine, staying as far away from the others as possible. "If you think I'm disgusting, you're right." "Because I'm specifically meant to... make guys with souls like you feel uncomfortable."

The Space Marine narrowed his eyes, seemingly evaluating the threat of this frail mortal. In the end, he made no move. Because on this ship full of Chaos corruption, the "absolute void" emanating from Li Wei actually gave him a strange, long-lost sense of tranquility.

"I am Atticus." The Space Marine lowered his head again, a hint of exhaustion in his voice. "Former... Iron Hands Chapter Sergeant." "Now just... spare parts on this 'Pain'."

"Li Wei." Li Wei leaned against the wall, closing his eyes as he began to sort out the chaotic Necron knowledge in his mind. "I'm this ship's future... shipbreaker."

The cell was filled with the snoring and gibberish of various monsters.

Li Wei could not sleep. His head hurt terribly. The Necron data he had forcibly sealed away was battering his defenses of sanity.

Whenever he closed his eyes, he could see countless green codes flashing.

He saw the structural diagram of this ship—though modified based on Chaos technology, under the high-dimensional physical perspective of the Necrons, this ship looked like a puzzle toy full of loopholes.

(Left energy conduit shield frequency: Unstable.) (Demon engine core control rune: Logical backdoor exists.) (Axis's mechanical prosthetic: Utilizes 3rd-generation neural interface, rejection reaction vulnerability exists.)

This information scrolled before his eyes like bullet comments. This was the curse of knowledge. He didn't want to see it, didn't want to know, but his brain forced him to analyze.

Damn it... Li Wei clutched his head, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out. He had to learn to control this. He had to learn to retrieve information only when needed, like browsing a library directory, rather than letting the entire library crash down upon himself.

"You're shaking." That Iron Hands sergeant Atticus was not asleep. His single eye stared at Li Wei. "Are those the whispers of the Warp?"

"No." Li Wei squeezed a few words out between his teeth. "It's... knowledge." "Too much... damned... knowledge."

Axis wanted his brain.

Yet Li Wei knew that if he truly handed over this knowledge, the entire galaxy would suffer. Once the Dark Mechanicum mastered the Necrons' "Dead Space of Exorcism" technology or "time reversal" technology, the Imperium would truly be finished.

I have to hang in there. Li Wei told himself in his heart. I have knowledge. I am a Pariah. I am the most inconspicuous yet deadliest virus on this ship.

He looked toward the corridor outside the cell glowing with red light. That led to the laboratory, leading to where Elena was.

Just wait, Axis. Li Wei's gaze flashed with cold light in the dark. You'll regret picking me up. Because what you picked up wasn't a white mouse. It's a... time bomb.