The Mid Hive, which had been billowing black smoke just moments ago, suddenly went dark.
The gunfire rising and falling from the Bottom Hive also stopped abruptly in the same second.
Even the howling wind outside the window seemed to vanish.
An indescribable, viscous silence sealed off the entire Atalos Hive City like Corpse Wax.
"What's going on?" Li Wei frowned.
He received no answer.
Aurelia was kneeling before the console.
Those hands that had once wielded a Fire Axe and killed without blinking were now clutching tightly at her own throat, her nails digging deep into her flesh and leaving bloody scratches.
Her eyes were stretched wide, her pupils dilated to their edges, and two streams of black bloody tears ran from the corners of her eyes.
Her mouth hung wide open, as if she were screaming, yet not a sound came out.
That expression was not one of pain.
It was the collapse of a soul confronted by ultimate horror.
"Aurelia?" Li Wei's heart jolted as he hurried over, intending to help her up.
But the moment his hand touched Aurelia, she sprang away violently like an electrocuted fish and cowered in the corner.
She stared at Li Wei, her eyes filled with incomprehensible terror.
"Don't... don't come closer..." Aurelia's voice was hoarse and distorted, as if her throat were full of sand. "Your face... your face is gone... You're the abyss... you're a black hole..."
Li Wei froze.
He touched his face.
His face was perfectly fine.
At that moment, a strange sound came from beyond the doors of the broadcast center.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
It was the sound of something wet slapping against the floor.
Li Wei raised his Hellgun and cautiously approached the doors.
Through the observation window, he saw the corridor outside.
It had originally been filled with the several hundred Rampant Servitors he had brought.
Those steel monsters that knew nothing but slaughter were now making an extremely bizarre move.
They had all stopped operating.
Every Servitor stood motionless, heads raised, staring fixedly at the ceiling—or rather, at something beyond it.
Their electronic augmetic eyes had all turned a gruesome blood red.
Then an Ogryn Servitor slowly raised its massive Power Claw to its own head—BOOM! It blew its own head apart.
Then came the second, then the third.
Creak—those Servitors fitted with chainsaw arms aimed their saws at their own abdomens and slowly cut inward.
There were no screams, only the hum of machinery and the wet squelch of flesh being shredded.
Several hundred Servitors were lining up to commit a silent mass suicide in that quiet corridor.
The sight was utterly absurd, yet utterly terrifying.
Like a pantomime sacrifice offered to the Void.
"What the hell is this?" Li Wei felt his scalp prickle.
He did not fear charging monsters or barrages of gunfire.
But this scene of "everyone possessed while I alone remain awake" filled him with a bone-deep chill.
He suddenly realized that there seemed to be a sensation in his own head as well.
Ringing in his ears.
A very faint buzzing, like the static of an old television screen.
It was merely irritating, like construction work next door.
But to every creature in this world with a soul, that sound was probably not "ringing in the ears."
It was a psychic shriek from the Genestealer Patriarch or the Hive Mind.
A Psychic Broadcast capable of directly destroying reason and taking control of the brain.
"The Choir."
Under such intense Psychic Pollution, ordinary people would instantly go mad, see the illusion they feared most, or be directly controlled into killing themselves.
Even a warrior as strong-willed as Aurelia had fallen into madness from psychic overload.
Except Li Wei.
Because he was a Pariah.
His soul was empty. He simply could not receive that "channel."
Others heard demonic sound powerful enough to shatter their brains.
Li Wei only heard, "Bzzzz..."
"Damn it, this is worse than a riot." Li Wei turned and strode toward Aurelia, who was huddled in the corner.
He knew reasoning with her was useless.
She was having a nightmare right now.
Smack! Li Wei swung his arm and viciously slapped Aurelia across the face.
The slap was so heavy that Aurelia's head snapped to one side, and half her face instantly swelled.
Physical attacks could often interrupt mental hallucinations.
"Wake up!" Li Wei grabbed her collar and shoved his "disgusting" face close to hers. "Look at me! I'm Li Wei! I'm that Soulless who disgusts you!"
Aurelia's pupils contracted sharply.
In her vision, the entire world was made of blood-red, twisted tentacles. Only the man before her was an absolute, icy black void.
That void was disgusting, but it blocked those red tentacles.
"Li... Li Wei?" Aurelia panted heavily, and a trace of clarity finally returned to her eyes.
Then, like a drowning person clutching driftwood, she seized Li Wei's arm tightly, her nails digging into his flesh. "Don't leave me... the sound... that sound is drilling into my head..."
"I know. That big bastard is panicking." Li Wei pulled her to her feet. "We need to go. The outside is definitely full of lunatics now."
He kicked the doors open.
The corridor had become a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
Several hundred Servitor corpses were piled together, their machine oil and blood mingling into a river.
The two of them stepped over the bodies and headed for the top-level landing pad.
This was when the true journey of horror began.
They passed a Noble Lounge.
The door was open. The nobles inside had not turned into monsters.
They were seated around a table, using exquisite silver cutlery to carve flesh from one another's bodies.
They carved as they maintained elegant smiles, as if they were taking part in a sacred banquet.
"Darling, your liver is so delicious."
"Oh, thank you. Your eyeballs have such a satisfying chew."
Aurelia vomited after one glance.
Li Wei walked past expressionlessly and casually shut the door behind them.
"Don't look. The hallucinations have reversed their sense of pain."
They passed a passage guarded by Royal Guard soldiers.
Those guards were still standing ramrod straight.
But a closer look revealed that they had gouged out their own eyeballs, cradling them in their palms as they muttered, "I can see clearly... I can finally see clearly..."
When Li Wei passed by, those blind guards all turned their heads in unison—despite having no eyeballs—their empty sockets staring fixedly in Li Wei's direction.
To their perception, Li Wei was the only filthy black stain in this world overflowing with radiance.
"AHHH!" A guard suddenly screamed and raised his gun at Li Wei.
"Void! That's the Void! He's devouring the light!"
Bang! Li Wei raised his gun and fired, blowing the man's head apart with perfect accuracy.
"I'm your father." Li Wei coldly holstered his weapon and stepped over the corpse.
There was no fierce gunfight.
Only endless, bizarre madmen.
Some danced at the walls, some gnawed on carpets, and some pulled out their own organs to arrange them into poses.
In this world where everyone had gone mad, Li Wei, the sole normal person, seemed like the real aberration.
He was like a man walking through a living hellish oil painting. Everyone else was being tortured within the painting, while he alone was the tourist looking at it.
"We're here." Li Wei stopped.
Ahead lay the final blast door leading to the Starport's Private Landing Pad.
It was also the highest floor of Valorian's office—the Gilded Rose.
But something was blocking the door.
Or rather... someone.
It was Valerius, Aurelia's second brother.
The man who had tried to resist the control at the banquet earlier.
He was kneeling before the blast door.
He had not mutated.
But the skin on his body... was gone.
He had completely peeled off all the skin from his body and hung it on a nearby coat rack like an overcoat.
Bright-red muscle fibers were exposed to the air, yet he seemed unable to feel any pain.
Using his own blood, he was drawing one complex, blasphemous symbol after another on the blast door.
Hearing the footsteps, Valerius slowly turned his head.
His eyeless-lidded eyeballs looked especially enormous and terrifying.
"Little sister..." Valerius grinned, his lipless mouth revealing two rows of ghastly white teeth.
"You're too late."
"The ship has already left."
"Father... left with the 'god.'"
Aurelia trembled all over, gripping the Fire Axe tightly in her hand, yet she could not bring herself to swing it.
This was more devastating than facing a monster.
"God?" Li Wei stepped forward and stood before that bloody, flayed man.
He still felt no fear, only an almost numb calm.
"You mean that big bug?" Li Wei pointed overhead.
"No... salvation..." Valerius looked at Li Wei, and his lidless eyeballs rolled.
Within the psychic tidal wave, Li Wei was the only thing he could see clearly.
But precisely because he was clear, he was even more terrifying.
"You..." Valerius suddenly recoiled, his voice trembling.
"Why don't you have a sound?"
"Why can't I see your soul?"
"Are you dead?"
From that higher-dimensional perspective saturated with psychic energy, Li Wei's existence was like a bug.
A bug that remained incomprehensible even after Valerius had peeled off his skin and opened his third eye.
"I'm not dead." Li Wei raised his Hellgun and pressed the muzzle against Valerius's vein-exposed head.
"I'm the one here to wake you all up."
Bang!
Valerius's head exploded.
Li Wei did not hesitate, nor did he show any mercy.
In this mad world, death was the only mercy.
He pushed open the blast door smeared with blood.
A violent wind poured inside.
The landing pad outside was empty.
The governor's Private Yacht was indeed gone.
But a figure stood at the edge of the landing pad.
It was Valorian, dressed in purple robes, with his back to them.
He stood at the cliff's edge with his arms spread wide, as though embracing the sky.
"Look." Valorian did not turn around, his voice drifting through the wind.
"How beautiful."
Li Wei and Aurelia walked to the edge and followed his gaze.
In the pitch-black night sky.
There was no starfield.
There was a face.
A colossal phantom composed of purple nebulae, tentacles, and countless eyes, covering half the heavens.
It was looking down over the burning Hive City.
As if it were staring at a piece of cake on a dinner plate.
"It's here." Valorian turned around.
His face had already changed.
His features had vanished, replaced by a huge vertical purple eye.
"Now, even a ticket off this ship is useless, Mr. Li Wei." Valorian let out layered, maddening laughter.
"Because this place is already its stomach."
Before you continue