Li Wei straightened his rumpled collar while staring at the Auspex he had stolen from the engineering vehicle.
The red light from the screen reflected off his cold, stern face.
"The source of that 'Stasis Pulse' is in the underground core.
"As long as it isn't shut down, the surface will be swept every few hours."
"And according to these readings, the pulse frequency is accelerating. Before long, the surface will become a permanent stasis zone. Even the air will freeze solid, and we'll be trapped up there like insects in amber."
Sister Elena leaned against the cold Blackstone wall, still struggling to calm the shameful aftereffects from earlier.
Hearing this, she raised her head, her face pale.
"So... the only way is down?"
"The only way is the control room." Li Wei pointed at a high-energy node displayed on the Auspex.
"Necron Tomb Worlds usually have teleportation gates—Stone Gates—or at least some central hub capable of controlling the planet's defense systems."
"We need to shut down that damned pulse, or steal a teleportation gate and get out of here."
"But that lord..." Elena remembered the horrifying metal giant, and her body trembled again.
"It went on patrol. Or it went to report to a higher-ranking lord." Li Wei put away the Auspex and gripped his broken sword.
"This is the window it left us. It's short, but we have no choice."
"Either wait up there to die, or go down and gamble." Li Wei looked at Elena. "That Archmagos captain of yours went down too, didn't he? If he's still alive, maybe he knows how to operate this junk."
At the mention of the Archmagos, a glimmer of hope flashed in Elena's eyes.
"Archmagos Kilgrave... he's an outstanding xenoarchaeologist of the Adeptus Mechanicus. If he's down there, we can definitely be saved!"
"Then pray he hasn't turned to ash yet." Li Wei did not shatter that faint hope.
In this universe, disappearance usually meant death—or something worse than death.
The two began descending deeper.
The underground structure beneath the obelisk was less a tomb than an enormous precision instrument.
There was none of the gloomy stench of corpses here, only an extreme, suffocating sense of order.
The corridors were broad and straight. The walls were made of some black Living Metal capable of absorbing light, their surfaces covered in geometric patterns flowing with green radiance.
The air was cold and dry, utterly devoid of dust.
Silence.
Absolute silence.
Even their footsteps were swallowed by the strange metal floor.
The environment made Li Wei deeply uncomfortable.
This did not resemble a place where living things dwelled. It was more like the interior of a computer motherboard.
Here, life was superfluous garbled code.
"Careful." Li Wei suddenly stopped and reached out to block Elena.
The corridor ahead had changed.
The floor was gone. In its place were countless enormous black gears rotating slowly.
The gears floated over an abyss, meshing with one another as they produced a deep hum.
Deadly green arcs of electricity flashed now and then between their gaps.
This was a path of mechanisms.
Or rather, this was the "organs" of the Tomb World at work.
"We need to jump across." Li Wei studied the rotation pattern of the gears.
"Follow my rhythm. Step on the gear that isn't charged."
He jumped onto one first.
Click.
The instant he landed on the gear, Li Wei felt the metal beneath his feet twitch.
The gear had been turning clockwise, but the moment Li Wei, a Pariah, stepped onto it, it stuttered as if suffering from a bad connection, its rotation slowing by half a beat.
"Hm?" Li Wei's eyes lit up.
Though Necron technology was material technology, its core—Living Metal—relied to some extent on a divine power known as the C'tan, or on extraordinarily complex quantum entanglement.
Li Wei's Void Field seemed capable of interfering with that delicate quantum balance.
Even machines could feel "confused" by his presence.
"Get over here!" Li Wei shouted back. "While it's slow to react!"
Elena gritted her teeth, lifted her robes, and stumbled as she jumped over.
The moment she landed on Li Wei's gear, it immediately resumed its normal speed. It even began accelerating, as though trying to throw the two intruders off.
"Hold on to me!" Li Wei seized Elena's hand. This time, she did not pull away; her desire to survive had overcome her disgust. Using the gear's centrifugal force, he leaped fiercely toward the next platform.
The two were like fleas jumping through the insides of a giant clock.
Around them were countless spinning black wheels, while beneath their feet stretched a bottomless abyss flashing green.
At last, they landed on solid ground across from them.
Elena dropped to her knees and retched, seized again by that familiar motion-sickness feeling, while Li Wei warily surveyed their surroundings.
This was a circular hall.
At the center of the hall stood a massive control console.
And connected to the console was a... thing.
"That..." Elena lifted her head, then covered her mouth as tears spilled from her eyes.
It was a half-human, half-machine monster.
He wore the tattered red robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus. His lower body had already been dismantled, and countless cables had been inserted directly into his spine and internal organs, fastening him to the Necron console.
The top of his skull had been opened, with several glowing green optical fibers inserted directly into his gray matter.
Archmagos Kilgrave.
He was still alive.
Or rather, he was "alive" in an excruciatingly painful way.
The Necrons had not killed him.
They had turned him into a translator.
Or a biological CPU used to understand human Logic.
"...Archmagos!" Elena cried as she rushed forward.
"Don't touch him!" Li Wei tried to stop her, but he was a step too late.
The moment Elena's hand touched the Archmagos.
The cyborg, who had been hanging his head as though dead, suddenly convulsed violently.
His one remaining electronic eye flared red and locked onto Elena.
"Run... quickly..." The Archmagos's vocal unit emitted a burst of piercing noise, a mixture of human speech and Necron binary code.
"They're... watching... through my eyes..."
"I am watching as well." Another voice, cold and utterly emotionless, directly drowned out the Archmagos's voice.
It came from the walls in every direction, from the abyss below.
The Tomb Technician.
The true administrator of this Tomb World.
"An interesting variable." The voice echoed through the hall.
"An Adeptus Mechanicus member who refused to surrender the code no matter how he was tortured."
"A female bound by faith."
"And one more..."
All the lights around the hall suddenly turned crimson.
The Archmagos's body began to shake violently. The cables inserted into his brain started flowing in reverse as green Necron energy was frantically pumped into him.
"...a void."
"A perfect container for the Destroyer Virus."
Crack!
The mechanical arm on the Archmagos's body suddenly reversed and grabbed Elena in front of him. Enormous hydraulic pincers clamped around her neck and lifted her into the air.
"Elena!" Li Wei raised his broken sword and prepared to charge.
"Stop, Soulless." The voice carried a trace of mockery.
"If you take another step closer, I will crush her spine."
"Though I have no interest in such a lower carbon-based lifeform, I am curious..."
The Archmagos turned his head, his red-glowing eye fixed on Li Wei.
"Would a man without a soul possess an emotion known as... 'sacrifice'?"
Li Wei stopped.
He looked at Elena hanging in midair, her face turning purple.
Then he looked at the Archmagos, who had been completely controlled.
This was no longer a beast's hunt.
This was an experiment by a highly intelligent AI.
It was playing with them.
"What do you want?" Li Wei asked coldly, lowering his sword.
"Very simple." The ground at the center of the hall split open, and a transparent energy cage rose from within.
The cage was empty. Only countless bolts of green lightning danced inside it.
"This is a Soul Stripping Chamber. It is normally used to dismantle stubborn Psykers into batteries."
"But I cannot calculate what will happen if I place you inside. Will the machine overload? Or will you produce a soul?"
"Such unknown data brings me... pleasure."
The Archmagos's mechanical arm tightened slightly, and Elena let out a pained groan.
"Go inside." "If you survive stripping at 100% power, I will release this female."
"Or you can turn around and leave. I will crush her to death, then resume my sleep."
"Choose, variable."
Li Wei looked at the green electric chair.
Then he looked at Elena.
She struggled, her eyes full of terror, but when she looked at Li Wei, she laboriously shook her head.
"Don't... don't worry about me... go..."
Li Wei fell silent.
He was an egoist.
He had come here to survive.
Would he sit in an electric chair for a woman he had known less than a few hours, one who had even been disgusted by him?
That was illogical.
It violated the laws of survival.
But.
Li Wei suddenly smiled.
"You know, tin can." Li Wei threw away his broken sword and strode toward the energy cage.
"You calculated one thing wrong."
"I'm not doing this to save her."
"I'm doing it... to show you what a real 'Bug' is."
Without the slightest hesitation, he walked into the green cage.
"Come on!" Li Wei spread his arms and roared at the void.
"Turn your power all the way up! Let's see whether your machine explodes first, or I die first!"
"As you wish." The cage closed.
Countless bolts of green lightning struck Li Wei's body in an instant.
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