Whoosh—!!!
Like two dead leaves swept up by a hurricane, Li Wei and Aurelia were violently blasted thousands of meters into the sky by the biological airflow rising from deep within the planet.
The instant the weightless sensation vanished, gravity reclaimed everything.
The two of them crashed heavily onto a landing platform at the very top of Atalos Hive City.
"Cough, cough, cough..." Li Wei rolled several times before slamming into a broken pillar and coming to a stop.
Every bone in his body ached, but he had no time to care.
He raised his head and looked at this world.
Even though he had mentally prepared himself, the sight before him still filled him with a shock and insignificance that came from the depths of his soul.
Atalos Prime was dying.
The Hive City beneath his feet, that steel tower which had stood for thousands of years, was now twisting and collapsing like a melting candle. Massive fissures spread across its body, and crimson magma gushed from them like blood, devouring the Bottom Hive, flooding the Mid Hive, and spreading toward the upper levels.
And overhead—
The once-purple sky had been torn apart.
The atmosphere was burning, taking on a sickly dark-red hue.
Countless massive orbital bombardment beams stabbed down from space, precisely slicing through the surface like scalpels and detonating the xenos ships trying to flee in midair.
That was the Imperial Navy's blockade.
The Inquisition had not broken its word.
Now that the Vortex Torpedo had struck the planetary core, every second was meant to ensure that "not a single bug escaped alive."
"It... it split apart..." Aurelia knelt on the ground, staring blankly at the distant horizon.
The land there was buckling upward like a snapped biscuit.
Hundreds of millions of tons of seawater poured into the mantle, throwing up a wall of steam clouds ten thousand meters high.
This was a true apocalypse.
Nothing was more despairing than watching a planet physically come apart.
"Don't look." Li Wei climbed to his feet and yanked Aurelia up. "The torpedo blew up the core. This planet can last half an hour at most. We need to find something to get out of here!"
"How are we supposed to leave?!" Aurelia pointed at the empty landing pad. "The Golden Eagle is down below! Every ship is destroyed!"
Li Wei clenched his teeth and looked around.
This was the highest point of the Hive City, originally the VIP sector of the Starport.
Most of the ships had fled during the chaos just now, but perhaps there was still—
Just then.
Thunder rolled through the sky.
No, it was not natural thunder.
It was the sonic boom of some enormous object tearing through the atmosphere at supersonic speed.
Li Wei looked up.
Within the burning clouds, more than a dozen black meteors trailed long tails of fire as they plunged rapidly toward their platform.
"Meteors?" Aurelia asked.
"No..." Li Wei narrowed his eyes, studying the outlines of those black shapes.
Those rugged lines, that paintwork steeped in death.
Even if he had not been a Warhammer fan, he would never mistake them.
"Drop pods." Li Wei's voice trembled. "They're here."
Boom! Boom! Boom!
More than a dozen drop pods smashed into the platform like iron hammers.
The tremendous shockwave instantly blasted away the surrounding rubble and ruins.
Li Wei and Aurelia had to flatten themselves behind cover to keep from being swept away by the blast.
Amid the hiss of hydraulic valves venting, the drop pods, blooming like lotuses, abruptly opened their hatches.
What emerged from them were not mortals.
They were giants.
They stood over two and a half meters tall, clad in heavy dark-blue power armor edged with golden ornamentation.
A white inverted U-shaped insignia was painted on their shoulders—the Ultramarines.
They carried massive Bolters, their footsteps so heavy that the ground trembled.
Astartes warriors.
The Emperor's Angels of Death.
In mortal propaganda, they were saviors. They were hope.
But the moment Li Wei saw them with his own eyes, all he felt was fear.
An instinctive reaction known as "transhuman dread."
These giants were too fast, too strong, too perfect.
They were not human at all, but bioengineered weapons born for slaughter.
"For Macragge! For the Emperor!" The leading sergeant unleashed a thunderous battle cry.
They had not come to rescue anyone.
They had come to purge.
Even after blowing up the planet, they still feared something might slip through the net. Before the world completely collapsed, they had come to eliminate high-value targets.
At the other end of the platform, a group of surviving Genestealers that had crawled out of the sewers were trying to rush over.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The Bolters opened fire.
That was not shooting. It was slaughter.
Every Bolt precisely blasted a monster's upper body into pulp.
The deadly hunters Li Wei had needed to handle with caution were, before these blue giants, like helpless chickens awaiting the knife.
In just ten seconds.
The battle was over.
Only a heap of purple flesh remained on the ground.
The Ultramarines turned around, the red lenses of their helmets locking onto Li Wei and Aurelia behind the stone pillar.
"Come out! Citizens!" The sergeant's voice came through his vox-amplifier, cold, authoritative, and unquestionable.
Aurelia rose trembling.
Looking at these legendary angels, tears spilled from her eyes.
"We're saved... Li Wei, we're saved..." She tried to pull Li Wei out with her.
But Li Wei pulled his hand back.
As he looked at those giants, a powerful unease rose within him.
He was a Pariah.
And the Astartes' augmentation procedures included extraordinarily harsh enhancements to their minds, even their psychic faculties.
Their senses were a hundred times sharper than those of mortals.
If ordinary people merely found Li Wei "a little disgusting,"
then to these supersensory transhumans, Li Wei's existence was like a huge, filthy blind spot in their field of vision.
"You go by yourself," Li Wei said quietly.
But it was already too late.
The sergeant strode over. Every step came with the hum of servo motors.
He stopped before them, his enormous shadow swallowing them both.
The sergeant removed his helmet.
It was a resolute, scarred face, yet so perfect it seemed carved from stone.
His gaze first fell upon Aurelia.
A scanner swept across the medal on her chest and the remnants of her family crest.
"Identity confirmed." The sergeant's voice softened slightly. "Aurelia van Atalos. Daughter of the planetary governor. Inquisition records indicate that you are currently this planet's only lawful survivor and loyalist leader."
"I... I am..." Aurelia stammered, pointing toward the ruins behind her. "But my father... and everyone else..."
"Say no more. Your loyalty has been recorded." The sergeant pointed toward a Thunderhawk Gunship that had just landed behind him.
"Board the vessel. The Inquisitor requires your testimony to determine whether House Atalos must be completely erased."
As long as she boarded that ship, she would survive.
And as the sole survivor and collaborator, she would be used by the Imperium again. Perhaps some order of Sisters or an Inquisitor might even take an interest in her and grant her a new life.
Aurelia nodded and began walking toward the ship.
After two steps, she suddenly stopped and turned back toward Li Wei.
"Wait! Him too!" Aurelia pointed at Li Wei, who was huddled in the shadows. "He saved me! He was the one who planted that beacon! He deserves credit!"
The sergeant turned his head.
The pupils in his formerly calm gray eyes contracted violently the instant he looked at Li Wei.
"What... are you?"
The sergeant's hand instantly went to the Bolt Pistol at his waist.
The nearby Ultramarines raised their weapons at the same time, their movements perfectly synchronized as their killing intent instantly locked onto Li Wei.
That reaction was instinctive.
In their eyes, Aurelia was an injured human woman.
But Li Wei... through their transhuman vision, he resembled a humanoid void, a black hole devouring the light and emotions around him.
The sensation made them intensely uncomfortable, even... hateful.
"Don't shoot!!" Aurelia rushed over and shielded Li Wei with her outstretched arms. "He's human! He's a Pariah! He used his ability to block the bugs' senses—that's how we survived!"
"A Pariah..." The sergeant frowned deeply but did not lower his weapon.
"Possessing the traits of a Sister of Silence? Or some unregistered mutant?"
He showed him none of the respect he had shown Aurelia.
Under the Imperium's harsh dogma, mutants and heretics were separated by only a thin line.
Though Pariahs could be useful in certain situations, in most cases they were regarded as "soulless monsters."
"Let him board." Aurelia was ruthless too. She directly drew that bloodstained Fire Axe from her side—though before an Astartes, it looked like a toy. "If you don't take him, I won't go. What you'll get is a corpse that can provide no intelligence."
The sergeant fell silent for a moment.
He was evaluating the situation. Mission priority: acquire intelligence > purge heretics.
Aurelia was a key witness.
"...Permission to board." At last, the sergeant released the grip of his weapon, though his gaze at Li Wei remained full of cold disgust.
"However, you will be restrained."
"And confined in an isolation cell until we transfer you to a Black Ship or the Inquisition for assessment."
"Li Wei..." Aurelia turned back, her expression complicated.
She knew what that meant. Once he boarded that ship, Li Wei would no longer be free.
He would become a prisoner, a test subject, or some kind of disposable weapon.
Li Wei stepped out of the shadows.
He looked at the towering giant, then at Aurelia's anxious face.
Then he suddenly smiled.
It was an easy, helpless smile.
"So this is what they call being 'saved,' huh?" Li Wei raised both hands to show that he posed no threat.
"Fine. Staying alive beats turning into ash."
He walked toward the giants.
As he passed the sergeant, the battle-hardened Astartes instinctively shifted aside to avoid any physical contact with Li Wei—the revulsion, as if touching excrement, was that real.
Li Wei boarded the ship.
But two warriors roughly shoved him into a narrow metal cage at the bottom of the craft as though escorting a criminal.
"Stay in there. Don't speak. Don't look at anyone." One warrior coldly shut the heavy isolation door.
With the Thunderhawk Gunship's engines roaring, the ship rose into the air, broke through the burning atmosphere, and flew into space.
Through the tiny observation window of his cage,
Li Wei took one last look at Atalos Prime below.
That planet was coming apart.
Its crust shattered, and magma swallowed every sin and every splendor.
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