The Day of Ascension

He would watch the Fury Chapter's gladiatorial matches with keen interest, then award the final victor an Axe of Glory fashioned from an overseer's spine.

He would personally visit the Hand of the Plague Father's plague laboratories to taste their latest holy water, which supposedly granted "rebirth" after seven days and nights of exquisite agony. In reality, it was a highly purified culture of mutant bacillus.

He would work with the Eye of Change's agents to plot how to secretly replace the Planetary Governor's favorite portrait of the Emperor with a doodle of the Four-Armed Emperor eating at a buffet.

He would even personally direct the Perfect Voice's annual fashion show, whose theme was "The Beauty of the Collision Between the Apocalyptic Wasteland and the High Heavens."

Under his leadership, the entire cult had become a contradictory blend of vitality, creativity, and lethal danger. They were fanatics, warriors, terrorists, and... artists.

Viridia's planetary government and the various Imperial institutions gradually noticed the increasingly turbulent undercurrent in the lower depths. They found that the miners' work slowdowns and acts of resistance were growing more frequent and increasingly organized. Some Inquisition agents and Adeptus Mechanicus spies sent down to investigate never returned, as though the dark subterranean world had swallowed them whole.

The planetary defense forces began tightening security. A storm that would engulf the entire planet was brewing.

But what none of them knew was that beyond this storm, a larger, darker shadow had already fallen over the entire Viridia system.

In the void, far from the planet's gravity well, an enormous shape like a vast shadow appeared without a sound, undetectable by any instrument.

A Tyranid scout ship had arrived.

The Broodlord's will-cold, vast, and driven by the pure instinct to devour everything-swept across the planet, which looked so plump and succulent.

He sensed the beacon deep within the planet, the one he had planted himself, belonging to his progeny.

[Beacon... normal.][Biomass... abundant.][Resistance... standard.]

As the Broodlord's will passed over the hive-mind network, it paused almost imperceptibly.

[...Beacon signal... anomalous fluctuations detected.][Emotions... excessively... active?][Faith... structure... complex.]

[...Irrelevant.]

[All things will ultimately become one.]

[Fleet, begin assembling.]

[The feast will soon begin.]

In the sanctuary in Viridia's deepest subterranean reaches, Liu Zhipeng felt increasingly powerful pulses coming from the depths of the hive-mind network, from the Patriarch's soul, mingling anticipation with ravenous hunger.

He knew that the "Day of Ascension" was truly coming.

He turned to look at the fanatical faithful behind him, already armed and ready, flames of four colors burning in their eyes.

"Brothers and sisters!" His voice echoed through the enormous cavern over the loudspeakers.

"Our god is answering our prayers!"

"His footsteps already echo among the stars!"

"The time has come! The time has come to show this world our true form!"

"Kindle your fury, embrace your resilience, unleash your wisdom, and sing of your joy!"

"For the Four-Armed Emperor! For the Day of Ascension!"

"For ourselves!"

"-RISE UP!!!"

As his final word rang out, the entire subterranean world of Viridia's primary planet erupted in the fury of war. After centuries in hiding, the Genestealer Cult, this monster armed to the teeth with the doctrines of the Chaos Gods, finally bared its most savage-and most magnificent-fangs to the world.

Viridia's uprising began in a form unprecedented in the Imperium's official records, brimming with art, madness, and bloodshed.

This was no simple rebellion. It was a grand festival dedicated to the four-in-one "Four-Armed Emperor."

When the first alarm sounded from the cloud-piercing spire of the Planetary Governor's palace, Viridia's rulers thought it was merely a somewhat larger miners' riot. They arrogantly dispatched local enforcers equipped with riot shields and shock batons, confident that they could easily drive those "burrow rats" back into their holes, just as they had for centuries.

They were wrong. Spectacularly wrong.

The Fury Chapter's berserkers greeted the first wave of riot squads. These third- and fourth-generation hybrids already possessed strength and speed beyond those of ordinary humans. Now, empowered by their faith in Khorne, they had become monsters born solely to slaughter. Bare-chested, they covered their bodies with runes of wrath in fluorescent paint. They had no finely crafted weapons, only sharpened mining picks or enormous chainaxes converted from cutting machines. Roaring "Skulls for the Skull Throne! Blood for the Blood God!", they ignored the suppression rounds fired by the enforcers and crashed into their lines like a red tide.

Before the enormous chainaxes, riot shields might as well have been paper, while shock batons could not even penetrate their tough skin. It was a massacre. The terrified enforcers realized that these miners did not merely want to kill them; they seemed to have a morbid obsession with collecting heads. In the final instant before a chainaxe split his skull, one enforcer squad leader saw an expression of fanatical satisfaction and glory on the hybrid's face.

At the other end of the city, another silent slaughter unfolded at the central facility for the planet's water supply and air circulation systems.

Like ghosts, the faithful of the Hand of the Plague Father slipped into this heavily guarded area through secret tunnels they had spent decades digging. They launched no frontal attacks. They merely poured barrel after barrel of the prepared, cloyingly fragrant "holy water" into the enormous reservoirs and air filtration systems.

Soon, the residents of the upper Hive City discovered that the pure water they took such pride in had begun to give off a strange fruity scent. The air, too, carried a drowsy smell like a rotting garden after rain. At first, people paid it little mind. Some young noblewomen even thought this "fragrance" was rather charming.

But a few hours later, disaster struck.

Everyone who had drunk the "holy water" and breathed the "holy breath" began exhibiting strange symptoms. First came an exquisite sense of relaxation and pleasure, as though all their troubles had vanished. Then their skin began to itch, sprouting tiny, rainbow-colored pustules. These pustules caused no pain. Instead, when they burst, they released an even richer fragrance, allowing those nearby to share in the "blessing."

In a single day, the entire upper Hive City became a "Nurgle's Garden," filled with giggles and contented sighs. Nobles and officials who had once dressed in immaculate finery now lay contentedly on the ground, admiring the lesions blooming on their bodies, as brilliant as flowers. Their will to resist dissolved completely in the Plague Father's gentle, lethal "love."