Liu Zhipeng paid the highest possible tribute to the most hated character in Warhammer 40K history-he emptied the magazine.
Only after confirming that the man was utterly dead, so mangled that not even his own mother would recognize him, did he casually toss away the empty Boltgun.
Then he turned to the loyalist prisoners, who had all frozen like statues.
In his emotionless electronic voice, he spoke the words they would remember for the rest of their lives.
"What are you standing around for?"
"Pick up your weapons. Time to get out of here."
With that, he paid them no further attention. He turned and vanished without hesitation into the battlefield's endless smoke and chaos.
Dozens of seconds after Liu Zhipeng's red figure disappeared into the smoke, the deathly silence in the hollow was finally broken by the ragged breathing of a surviving Iron Hands veteran.
His name was Bartan, an ordinary sergeant of the Mogul Guard. Barely a dozen minutes earlier, he had been following his Gene-Father, savoring the thrill of vengeance. Now, missing half a leg, he knelt there, forced to watch his comrades being slaughtered as he waited for the traitor's "sermon."
He had already lost all hope.
But now, a faint yet fiercely stubborn flame rekindled in his eyes.
He looked at the heap of mangled flesh on the ground, something that could no longer be called a "corpse," then at Khârn the "Butcher" in the distance, who had been kicked to his knees and was still trying to reboot his sensory systems. Finally, his gaze settled on the direction in which the mysterious Tech-Sage had vanished.
"What... was that?" a young Raven Guard warrior asked in a trembling voice, Erebus's foul blood still spattered across his face.
"...A miracle," a Salamanders warrior beside him answered