"Why..." Mortarion asked hoarsely. He had asked this question more than once. "Why does the Father's gift have no effect on you?"
This was what he could least comprehend. Nurgle's plagues were one of the universe's ultimate truths, embodying the inevitable entropy and decay of all things. No mortal being, nor even a god, could be completely immune to them. How had this Horus managed it?
"Oh, you mean that?" Horus stopped, an expression of "sudden realization" appearing on his face. His acting was so exaggerated that even Liu Zhipeng wanted to laugh.
"It's actually quite simple."
He cleared his throat and spoke in the tone of an elder imparting life lessons:
"As long as I hit faster than you, your debuffs can't catch up with me."
"As long as my will is stronger than yours, your psychic attacks are a joke."
"Most importantly," Horus pointed the tip of his warhammer at his head, "as long as I never believed in your bullshit philosophy of 'all life is suffering, so we might as well rot' in the first place, your power is nothing more to me than... a particularly nasty flu virus."
Those words were half true and half false. Half described the actual effects of [Glory of Bloodshed]; the other half was trash talk Liu Zhipeng used to undermine his opponent's resolve.
But to Mortarion, they were nothing short of divine punishment.
The faith he took pride in, the very foundation of his existence, had been reduced to nothing by the crudest, most contemptuous language.
That was harder for him to accept than physical defeat.
"You... what do you know?!" Mortarion finally lost control of his emotions. He roared, "You never endured the toxic swamps of Barbarus! You never watched helplessly as your brothers died in agony from plague!