"Praise the Emperor!"
"Praise the Saint!"
The Sisters of Battle let out fervent war cries.
Zerath watched, the ghostly flames in his eye sockets flickering. A simulated "emotion" arose in his logic circuits-confusion.
"Strange creatures... Why resist when you've already lost all hope?"
But he soon put that insignificant question out of his mind.
"Very well. Since you want to die, I'll oblige you. Royal Guard, advance. Capture those armored giants alive. Kill the rest."
The Necron Praetorians began advancing.
The Imperium's defensive line teetered on the brink of collapse.
Just then, something unexpected happened!
The warped space, which had already collapsed completely into a singularity smaller than an atom, suddenly trembled.
Then a faint, almost imperceptible golden light shone from the depths of the singularity.
Zerath froze.
"Impossible..."
The light grew brighter and stronger.
"Impossible! The Transdimensional Folding Matrix is an absolute dimensional prison! Even a complete C'tan couldn't escape!"
But reality dealt him a brutal slap in the face.
The next second, Liu Zhipeng stepped out of it, completely unscathed.
The golden flames around him blazed even more fiercely than before, and cold fury burned in his golden eyes.
"The Saint!"
"He has returned!"
The Imperial soldiers erupted into earthshaking cheers.
Liu Zhipeng ignored them. His gaze remained locked on the metal skeleton hovering in midair.
"An interesting toy," he said coldly. "It almost trapped me."
Zerath's logic circuits descended into utter chaos.
"You... How could you... What exactly are you?!"
Liu Zhipeng did not answer.
He became a bolt of golden lightning, crossing hundreds of meters in an instant to appear before Zerath.
"What?!"
Zerath tried to activate Phase Shift and flee, but it was already too late.
Liu Zhipeng's right hand clamped around his skull like an iron vise.
Crack-
The indestructible living metal fractured like