Terra, beneath the Himalayas.
The gene laboratory was bathed in an ominous golden glow. Twenty transparent incubation pods stood in neat rows, each with an infant floating inside. They were masterpieces the Emperor of Mankind had poured untold effort into creating, demigods who would one day command the Space Marine Legions and expand humanity's dominion.
But now, disaster had struck.
Above the laboratory's vaulted ceiling, the barrier of reality was warping and tearing. Those fissures were not physical damage, but the collapse of dimensions themselves. Through them, one could see the madly churning sea of Chaos in the Warp, and three terrifying storms of pure emotion reaching out from the abyss.
Liu Zhipeng stood in the void.
More precisely, he stood within an exceedingly subtle layer between dimensions. Here, he belonged neither to realspace nor to the Warp. He was like a sticker on a windowpane, able to see everything on both sides without being noticed by either.
Liu Zhipeng looked at those twenty unfortunate children, still sleeping and utterly unaware that they were about to be abducted, and felt a deep pang of guilt.
Of course he had the power to stop all this.
But he could not do it.
Because he knew that the moment he revealed a power capable of erasing a god's consciousness, the most terrifying monstrosity gestating in the Warp would sense the danger. If saving the Primarchs put that "Fourth God," poised to devour ten billion souls and tear the entire galaxy apart, on guard-or even prompted the Four Gods to join forces-then the grand game he had played across a reboot of the universe would end in total defeat.
"I'm sorry, children."
Liu Zhipeng looked at the twenty incubation pods and spoke softly. His voice was so quiet that even he could barely