Physical Laws

Heat.

Not merely the temperature of the air, but a dry heat seeping out from between his bones.

Li Wei clung tightly to the enormous energy conduit over five meters in diameter.

His hands had long since been mangled into a bloody mess, but he did not dare loosen his grip.

Because the pipe was vibrating—a violent pulse like a heartbeat, beating sixty times a minute.

With every pulse, a layer of scalding oily sweat seeped from the conduit's surface, accompanied by a muffled growl like that of a deep-sea leviathan.

"Hold on... Don't let go..." Li Wei gritted his teeth and shouted to Atticus below him.

The Space Marine's remaining hand gripped a protrusion on the pipe wall like an iron clamp. His legs locked around the conduit as he spared attention to protect Elena on his back.

"Mortal, what's inside this pipe... isn't energy." Atticus's voice was distorted by the roar, carrying a trace of unconcealed disgust.

"I can hear something flowing inside. It's liquid. Is that blood?"

"Worse than blood." Li Wei closed his eyes.

He did not want to look, but his brain forced him to "see."

Deep within his cerebral cortex, the Necron Library that had been forcibly implanted into him was frantically throwing errors.

Dense green warning characters flickered across his retinas, dissecting the ugly pipe before him layer by layer:

[Structural Analysis: Composite polymer of high-purity adamantium and daemon flesh.]

[Internal Fluid: High-energy Plasma (contaminated).]

[Warning: Anti-physical constants detected. The Second Law of Thermodynamics has failed in this area. Entropy reduction phenomenon in progress.]

[Conclusion: This is not merely a pipe. It is a nerve used to "transport suffering."]

"Don't ask what's inside." Li Wei panted, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose onto the pipe wall and instantly turning into a wisp of blue smoke. "Treat it as a ladder. A ladder leading to the eighteenth level of hell."

Climbing upward was a long torment.

The darkness around them was not empty. As they rose, they passed through layer after layer of scaffolding like spiderwebs.

The scaffolds were hung with shriveled corpses. They were not prisoners, but maintenance Servitors from before.

They seemed to have starved to death while working, or been burned to death by radiation. Even in death, they remained in maintenance postures, like a group of loyal gravekeepers.

"Don't touch the bodies," Li Wei warned.

The Necron data told him that the corpses were covered in Waste Code Virus spores.

Once touched, that virus designed to target mechanical Logic would attempt to infect the contactee—Li Wei was not afraid of it, but the systems of Atticus's Power Armor could be instantly paralyzed.

"It's too quiet here," Atticus suddenly said.

It was an abnormal kind of sharpness.

Around this roaring conduit, apart from the machines, there was not a single sound from any guards.

"Because the radiation here is too strong." Li Wei looked up at the dark crimson fog overhead.

"This is an Aetheric Radiation Zone. An ordinary person would mutate into a pile of rotten flesh within a minute of entering. The Skitarii don't dare patrol here."

"Then why are we all right?" Elena, who had just awakened, asked weakly.

She lay across Atticus's back, her face pale as paper.

"Because of me." Li Wei's voice was cold as ice.

"I'm a black hole. Radiation goes around me."

"And you're pressed against me, like hiding in the eye of a typhoon."

It was an exceedingly ironic form of protection.

On this ship filled with Warp sorcery and daemon technology, the only thing able to provide shelter was this mortal regarded as "soul-deficient."

At last, the conduit reached its end.

Above them was a huge, circular valve interface.

Though the edges of the interface were somewhat rusted, its precise interlocking gears could still be seen.

"We're at the exit." Li Wei climbed to the edge of the interface and poked his head out.

The sight before him made his breath catch, even though he had prepared himself mentally.

His brain was instantly flooded by the Necron database.

This time, it was no longer warnings.

It was rage.

A supreme fury from tens of millions of years ago, belonging to the Necrons as a race toward the "misuse of technology."

[Blasphemy!]

[This is an insult to the laws of physics!]

[Unforgivable low-grade patchwork!]

Li Wei forcibly suppressed the rage in his mind and stared wide-eyed at the so-called "core laboratory."

This was an enormous spherical interior. Rather than a laboratory, it looked more like an inverted cathedral.

The walls were covered in dense Gothic spires and arches, but all of them pointed toward the center.

Countless enormous energy conduits like the one they had just climbed converged from every direction, like bloodsucking tentacles, plunging into the colossal thing at the center.

And at that center floated a machine.

The machine was as large as a mountain.

It was composed of countless rotating brass gears, pistons, coils, and black steles.

It was running. But the way it operated violated every mechanical principle Li Wei knew.

Gears passed through one another, pistons reciprocated without cylinders, and what erupted from the coils was not current, but black lightning.

Demon Engine Core.

But that was not the most terrifying part.

The most terrifying part was the machine's "battery."

At the very heart of the machine, a luminous entity was imprisoned.

It was not flame, nor was it a fusion reactor.

It was a humanoid silhouette of light.

It possessed a perfect body formed from brilliant starlight.

But now, that body was pierced by countless chains carved with blasphemous runes.

Those chains were not meant to restrain it, but to torture it.

Every time the machine operated, the chains tightened, cutting into the light figure's "flesh" and tearing strands of starlight from its body.

The figure roared.

It was a soundless roar.

With every roar, cracks appeared in the surrounding space, only to be forcibly repaired by the Warp field generated by the machine.

[Identification: C'tan Shard.]

[Codename: Void Dragon Derivative.]

[Status: Extremely weakened / forcibly extracted.]

The Necron data in Li Wei's mind screamed wildly.

He finally understood.

What that madman Axis was doing.

The Necrons used C'tan Shards as batteries through imprisonment based on physical laws—the Tesseract Labyrinth.

And the Dark Mechanicum... they had actually used daemon sorcery to imprison a god of physics!

This was a cruel torture of materialism by idealism.

That C'tan Shard was not only suffering physical torment, but conceptual contamination as well.

Warp energy was being forcibly poured into its body, attempting to transform this god that represented "absolute physical laws" into an obedient Demon Engine.

"Insane..." Li Wei muttered.

"This is like forcibly mixing water and oil together... like using antimatter to cook soup."

"So that's... the power source?" Atticus climbed up and looked at the imprisoned man of light, shock and horror showing in his single eye.

As an Astartes, he had seen countless heretics.

But he had never seen heresy on such a "grand" scale.

Elena had also awakened by then.

"That is the height of blasphemy." Elena made an Aquila Salute, her fingers trembling.

"That glowing thing... It looks like it's in terrible pain. Even worse than those people sacrificed before."

"Because it was never meant to be here." Li Wei stared at the man of light. "It is a cornerstone of the real universe. And those madmen are trying to contaminate that cornerstone with nightmares."

Just then.

The C'tan Shard floating at the center of the machine seemed to sense something.

Its featureless face slowly turned. Across a distance of several hundred meters, through countless spinning gears and bolts of lightning—

It "looked" at Li Wei.

Bzzzt! Li Wei's brain felt as though it had been struck by lightning. But this time, it was not the cold mathematical formulas from before.

It was a... plea for help.

No, a transaction.

[...empty...]

[...you can... sever...]

[...shut them... down...]

That voice bypassed Li Wei's hearing altogether and echoed through the Necron database in his mind.

It had recognized Li Wei.

Or rather, it had recognized the knowledge in Li Wei's mind.

That knowledge belonged to the Necrons—the ones who had once enslaved it, but who also understood it best.

In this hell filled with Chaos contamination, Li Wei, a Pariah carrying Necron knowledge, was the only "tool" it could understand and use.

You want me to save you? Li Wei asked in his mind.

[...no...]

[...I want you to... turn this ship... into my... body...]

Li Wei's pupils contracted.

Well, damn.

This shard was even crazier than the one in that tomb.

It did not merely want to get out. It wanted to devour this warship made of daemon flesh and turn it into a new shell for itself in the material universe.

If it succeeded... a living warship possessing the power of a C'tan and fused with daemon technology?

That would be the end of the entire sector.

"But I don't have a choice, do I?" Li Wei gave a bitter smile.

If he did not help it, Axis would sooner or later stuff him into that machine as well.

"Someone's coming." Atticus shoved Li Wei down, and the three of them hid behind a cluster of massive cooling pipes.

A group emerged onto the platform below.

At their head was Archmagos Axis.

He still floated in midair, the Mechanical Tentacles behind him waving as he appeared exceptionally excited.

Behind him followed a squad of Skitarii, escorting a new batch of "fuel."

They were dozens of captured Psykers.

Their clothes had been stripped away, their heads shaved bald, and their bodies covered in Chaos runes.

"Great Vashtorr... bear witness to this sacred fusion." Axis's voice echoed through the vast space.

He waved a tentacle.

The Skitarii shoved the screaming Psykers to the edge of the machine.

There were several feed ports there that resembled meat grinders.

"To break the boundary between reality and illusion! Feed them in!"

Amid screams, the Psykers were thrown into the feed ports.

Crunch! Crunch! Flesh and blood flew everywhere.

But the machine did not need flesh. What it needed was the fear-fueled psychic energy that erupted from them before death.

Streams of visible purple psychic mist were drawn through the pipes into the core, forcibly injected into the C'tan Shard's body.

ROAR!!! The C'tan Shard let out a pained bellow.

Its light began to grow murky, purple Chaos energy mixing into its formerly pure starlight.

It struggled, making the entire core hall shake violently.

"Not enough! Still not enough!" Axis shouted fanatically.

"Its will is still resisting! It's still clinging to those ridiculous physical laws! Increase the dosage! Connect the reserve 'Scream Batteries' too!"

Watching this, Li Wei felt a chill run through him.

No matter how many times he saw people being burned like firewood, he could never get used to it.

"We have to act." Li Wei turned to Atticus.

"Do you see that black base at the very bottom of the machine?"

Atticus narrowed his single eye and adjusted his focus. "I see it. There are a lot of guards there."

"That's the Suppression Field Generator." Li Wei's Necron perspective identified the weakness.

"It is the key to suppressing the C'tan's will to resist. It operates through Warp sorcery."

"You want me to blow it up?" Atticus asked.

"No." Li Wei shook his head. "We can't blow it up. That thing is protected by a Void Shield."

He pulled the broken sword from his chest.

This weapon had been brought out of the Necron Tomb. Though broken, it was made of Living Metal.

It was the only medium capable of piercing a C'tan's defenses and conducting a C'tan's power.

"I'm going there." Li Wei pointed at the pedestal. "I'm going to stick this sword into it."

"Then... I'll become the conductor."

"You mean..." Elena seemed to guess something. She covered her mouth in horror. "You want to use your body to connect with that god?"

"I'm an insulator." Li Wei looked at the broken sword in his hand. "But I'm also the only short circuit."

"If I stick this sword into the pedestal and touch the energy flow released by that C'tan at the same time..." "My Void trait will trigger a collapse of Logic."

"Just like what happened in the tomb."

"But this time..." Li Wei glanced at the horrifying machine. "This time, the energy level is ten thousand times higher. I might be vaporized instantly."

"Then why are you still doing this?" Atticus asked in a low voice.

Li Wei looked at the Psykers below, being used as fuel.

Then he looked at the battered Elena beside him and the maimed Atticus.

"Because this is the only way to flip the whole table." Li Wei took a deep breath. "And... that big guy locked inside promised me that if I helped it break out, it would send us home."

"You believe an alien god?" Atticus snorted.

"No." Li Wei grinned. "But I trust that deranged old man who wants to slice me up even less."

"Ready, big guy?" Li Wei looked at Atticus. "I need a path. A path that lets me charge straight to that pedestal."

Atticus fell silent for a second.

Then he stood up.

His massive figure looked impossibly imposing in the shadows.

He no longer had the protection of Power Armor or a Bolter. He had only one hand and an iron pipe he had picked up.

"I am Iron Hands." The giant let out a low battle cry. "My flesh may decay, but the will of iron endures."

"A path..." Atticus suddenly leaped out, crashing toward the platform below like a meteor. "I'll carve one out for you!"

Boom! The giant landed and crushed a Skitarii beneath his foot. Battle erupted in an instant.

"Go!" Li Wei grabbed Elena and jumped down after him. This was their final gamble. Win, and they went home. Lose, and they became scraps.

Chaos.

Total chaos.

Atticus was like a lion charging into a flock of sheep.

Even with only one hand, his strength still utterly overwhelmed the Skitarii.

He swung the iron pipe, each blow smashing an enemy's head into its chest. But he had no armor, after all.

Laser beams and Bolts struck him, bursting blood across his body.

But he did not stop. With his flesh and blood, he forcibly tore open a gap in the dense defensive line.

"Stop him! Don't let him get near the core!" Axis screamed from above. He had seen through their intentions as well.

Li Wei sprinted behind Atticus. Elena stayed at his side, desperately using her not-so-sharp Medicus Staff to strike Servo-skulls that tried to get close.

"Almost there!" Li Wei stared at the black pedestal. Only fifty meters remained.

But then.

A huge Mechanical Tentacle descended from above and lashed brutally across Atticus's back.

Pfft! Atticus spat out blood and was sent flying, crashing heavily into the wall. It was impossible to tell whether he was alive or dead.

Axis had made his move personally. The half-man, half-machine monster hovered in the air, countless lethal weapons extending from behind him.

"Trying to destroy my masterpiece?" Axis's red electronic eye fixed itself on Li Wei.

"Pariah... I gave you the chance to become a specimen, yet you chose to become ash."

A blazing Melta Ray shot from one of his tentacles, aimed directly at Li Wei.

"Li Wei!" Elena lunged forward and shoved him away.

The Melta Ray grazed her shoulder, scorching her flesh.

Li Wei rolled across the ground.

He was only ten meters from the pedestal. But Axis stood in the way.

"Despairing?" Axis raised his chainsaw. "Your friend has fallen. Your path has been cut off."

Li Wei lay on the ground, gasping heavily.

He looked at the arrogant Dark Magos.

Then he looked at the C'tan Shard roaring furiously overhead.

Suddenly.

A piece of Necron data flashed through Li Wei's mind.

[C'tan trait: Absolute control over physical matter.]

[If I can't reach the pedestal... then I'll make the pedestal reach me.]

Li Wei did not try to get up and charge.

He raised the broken sword in his hand.

Facing the imprisoned C'tan, he shouted:

"Hey! Big lightbulb! This is your bone! Catch!"

He hurled the broken sword in his hand—the fragment of Living Metal—toward the C'tan Shard in the air with all his strength!

The move completely caught Axis off guard.

He had thought Li Wei was going to blow up the pedestal, but the kid had thrown away his weapon?

The broken sword traced an arc through the air, passing through layers of lightning and shields.

Those shields were fatal to ordinary matter.

But this sword was made of Necron metal.

The instant the broken sword flew into that body of light and shadow.

Bzzzz! The C'tan Shard caught it.

Like a drowning man clutching at a straw.

Though it was only a small fragment, it was solid matter.

It was an anchor it could cling to in this material universe.

[...Received...]

A crack suddenly split open across the C'tan's featureless face.

It was a smile.

A savage smile.

Now that it had a physical medium.

It could wield its authority.

"Get... on your knees!" Li Wei did not speak, but the god spoke for him.

BOOM!!!

Gravity.

Terrifying gravity descended in an instant. It did not target everyone.

It targeted only Axis, who stood in Li Wei's path.

The Dark Magos, who had been hovering in midair, suddenly felt as though a mountain had fallen onto his back.

Crack! Crack! His mechanical limbs let out explosive groans under the unbearable strain.

His prized anti-gravity engine overloaded and exploded instantly.

"No!! Impossible!!" Axis screamed as the invisible force slammed him brutally out of the air.

Like a flattened fly, he smashed into the ground. His entire body was pressed into the metal floor, unable to move.

The path was clear.

Li Wei climbed to his feet.

He did not even spare the Magos flattened into pulp a glance.

He rushed to the black pedestal.

He picked up the broken sword. The C'tan no longer needed it.

"It's over." Li Wei placed both hands on the core rune of the pedestal.

Full-power release: Void Collapse.

Sizzle—!!!

At that moment.

Black lightning swallowed the entire core chamber.

The machine imprisoning the C'tan exploded.