He walked over, one step at a time.
He reached out and picked up the chip.
Its surface was smooth and gently warm, etched with incredibly complex circuitry he had never seen before.
His Primarch brain went into overdrive.
He remembered an entry marked as technology that he had skimmed past in Trazyn's immense collection catalog.
A complete Standard Template Construct (STC)... printout.
"Holy... shit..."
After the shock of the Krork, the C'tan Shard, countless xenos, and the entire Astartes gene bank, Liu Zhipeng's brain finally... crashed completely from sheer euphoria.
"I... I'm rich!"
He stared at the chip in his hand, as smooth and warm as jade, feeling as though he held not a Dataslate, but... the future of the entire Milky Way Galaxy.
"Warmaster? Are you all right?"
The Catachan Colonel's rough voice dragged him back to reality.
Horus raised his head and found everyone watching him with concern-or perhaps curiosity. His "fried CPU" expression had clearly frightened his "new employees."
"I'm fine." Horus took a deep breath, forcing his heart to settle before it burst from excitement. With exquisite care, as though handling the most precious treasure in the world, he tucked the STC chip into a storage compartment inside his breastplate.
"I just... found something... beyond imagination."
He offered no explanation. There was no way to explain this.
"Let's go."
Horus turned around.
The warship exhibition hall.
Aside from the Main Exhibition Hall, this was Trazyn's favorite place to spend time. Hundreds of rare, small warships he had "collected" from every corner of the Milky Way Galaxy were docked here.
There was an elegant, butterfly-like Aeldari Void Stalker destroyer, and even... an Ork Kill-class cruiser cobbled together from countless scraps of metal, frozen at the very instant its WAAAGH! energy erupted.
Now, Horus and his