Chapter Summaries

Liu Zhipeng encountered the Emperor after a night out discussing Warhammer 40K, then awoke in the Warp as a Nurgling. An Eternal Reincarnation System promised to protect his soul and grant him a permanent reward after each life.

• Liu Zhipeng left a gathering of Warhammer fans and walked home alone.
• The Emperor appeared behind Liu Zhipeng and asked what he thought the being looked like.
• Liu Zhipeng blurted out that the Emperor looked like a huge yellow rat, then lost consciousness after the Emperor gazed at him.
• Liu Zhipeng awoke in a Nurgling's body in the Garden of Nurgle.
• The Eternal Reincarnation System told Liu Zhipeng that he would be reborn randomly after death and keep a passive ability or talent from each life.

Liu Zhipeng adjusted to life as a Nurgling in Nurgle’s Garden, where he befriended a smaller Nurgling and began imagining how to organize the carefree creatures. He decided to win them over by taking the largest mushroom piece from a stronger Nurgling, then launched a sneaky attack.

• Liu Zhipeng learned that his actions in each reincarnation could become permanent passive abilities in future lives.
• Liu Zhipeng met a smaller Nurgling, and they played with other Nurglings by toppling a mushroom and sharing its pieces.
• Liu Zhipeng noticed that a stronger Nurgling had claimed the largest mushroom piece while the smaller Nurgling watched helplessly.
• Liu Zhipeng decided to organize the Nurglings by offering favors and demonstrating strength, and chose the largest mushroom piece as his first prize.
• Liu Zhipeng crept behind the stronger Nurgling and launched himself at the slippery fungal ground beneath it.

Liu Zhipeng won the Nurglings’ respect by sharing mushrooms and outsmarting a stronger rival, then founded the Nurgling Gang with Boji as his second-in-command. The new gang’s first goal was to taste everything in Nurgle’s Garden that looked like food.

• Liu Zhipeng shared a large mushroom with the smaller Nurglings, earning their gratitude and admiration.
• Liu Zhipeng repeatedly evaded and embarrassed the burly Nurgling until it gave up and the others respected his victory.
• Liu Zhipeng named Boji his second-in-command and declared that the Nurglings would share food and face bullies together.
• Liu Zhipeng founded the Nurgling Gang, with the Nurglings calling him Boss and setting out to taste everything that looked like food.

Liu Zhipeng organized the Nurglings in Nurgle’s Garden into a thriving gang, but Khorne’s invasion forced them to muster for war. Seeing both danger and opportunity, Liu formed a plan to insult the Blood God and win greater notice.

• Liu Zhipeng assigned the Nurglings roles and contribution-based food shares, building an organized gang that attracted new members through polluting team-building activities.
• Liu’s orderly system for spreading Nurgle’s corruption caught the attention of a being deep within the Garden, though Liu remained unaware.
• Khorne’s forces tore open a rift into Nurgle’s Garden, and daemons across the realm began mustering for war.
• Liu feared being wasted as cannon fodder but saw the war as a chance to gain status by doing something that would attract Nurgle’s notice.
• Liu devised a plan to survive Khorne’s wrath while gravely insulting the Blood God, as the realms of Nurgle and Khorne collided.

Liu Zhipeng led the Nurgling Gang in building a trench trap filled with a potent mixture he named Grandfather's Surprise Sauce. The gang used it and a barrage of bursting pustules to rout a Khorne patrol, leaving the Nurglings’ battlefield scheme in action.

• Liu Zhipeng rejected Boji’s suggestion to charge the Khorne daemons and ordered the Nurgling Gang to prepare a trap.
• The Nurglings dug trenches, gathered Nurgle daemon corpses, and mixed them with their vomit and excrement to create Grandfather's Surprise Sauce.
• Liu Zhipeng’s gang poured the sauce into the trenches, covered it, and taunted Khorne’s forces to lure them in.
• Flesh Hounds fell into the concealed trenches, where the sauce trapped and infected them.
• Bloodletters leaped toward the Nurglings, who bombarded them with bursting pustules.
• The Khorne patrol retreated in panic, leaving several daemons to be devoured by Grandfather's Surprise Sauce.

Liu Zhipeng’s Nurgling gang harassed the Khorne legions with rotting weapons, sabotaged war machines, and graffiti, drawing Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha into a trap. Liu prepared his gang for a dangerous plan centered on the wounded Great Unclean One Gragg, “The Vomiter,” and left the story before the trap began.

• Liu Zhipeng sent Nurgling squads behind Khorne lines to rot weapons, foul Skull Cannons, and deface Skull Altars with graffiti.
• The Khorne Daemons flew into a rage and diverted their attention from the front lines to hunt the Nurglings, easing pressure on Nurgle’s forces.
• Nurgle’s higher-ranking daemons noticed Liu’s gang after its antics distracted the Khorne legions.
• Ka'Bandha focused on hunting Liu’s gang and vowed to grind the Nurglings into dust for their insults.
• Liu gathered the gang’s core members and explained a plan to crown Ka'Bandha, telling them to wait in mud pits with Surprise Sauce until Gragg fell.

Liu Zhipeng and his Nurgling companions defeated Ka'Bandha by collapsing him into a pit of plague mixtures and detonating the Ultimate Pustule, causing the Khorne army to flee. After Liu died, the Eternal Reincarnation System protected his soul, forged a permanent ability from his first life, and began a random rebirth.

• Liu Zhipeng and the Nurglings lured Ka'Bandha into a pit of plague mixtures after he killed Gragg.
• Liu Zhipeng and his suicide squad struck Ka'Bandha and detonated the Ultimate Pustule, covering him in fungi and making him laugh uncontrollably.
• The Khorne army fled in disarray while the Nurgle army celebrated its victory.
• The Eternal Reincarnation System protected Liu Zhipeng's soul and awarded him the permanent passive ability Grandfather's Watch and Love.
• The system began Liu Zhipeng's random rebirth, and an unknown coordinate drew his consciousness into darkness.

Liu Zhipeng was reborn as a fourth-generation Genestealer Cult hybrid on Viridia Prime, bound to the cult’s broodmind but retaining his own perspective. Fifteen years later, his kindness to the desperate miners made him a trusted source of hope in the underground mines.

• Liu Zhipeng awoke as a newborn hybrid and learned that the broodmind tied him to the Tyranids and the cult’s Patriarch.
• Liu Zhipeng grew up in the cult and became a miner known as Brother Peng.
• Liu Zhipeng used his strength and saved rations to help exhausted and ill miners, and sabotaged a malfunctioning taskmaster servitor.
• The miners came to trust and love Liu Zhipeng, and Old He thanked him for helping again.

Vaughn tried to curb Liu Zhipeng’s influence, but Liu reframed the Patriarch’s love as the miners’ shared endurance and effort, winning even greater support. As Vaughn grew wary of him, Liu began planning a new doctrine built around the four Chaos Gods.

• Vaughn warned Kaz that Liu’s influence was turning the cult into a mutual aid society and ordered him to put Liu in his place.
• At a miners’ gathering, Vaughn challenged Liu to explain the Patriarch’s love before the crowd.
• Liu described the Patriarch’s love as shared endurance and urged the miners to nurture the hope of Ascension through their efforts and mutual aid.
• The miners cheered Liu, and Vaughn’s attempt to assert authority instead made Liu an even greater spiritual figure.
• Vaughn grew afraid to move against Liu, while Liu planned a new theoretical framework based on the four Chaos Gods.

Liu Zhipeng reinterpreted the Four-Armed Emperor as a union of Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh, giving Viridia Prime’s miners a doctrine that honored their anger, suffering, desire for change, and longing for pleasure. The new theology spread through the cult and began reshaping its members’ daily lives as Liu’s campaign to overthrow Vaughn gained momentum.

• Liu Zhipeng preached that the Four-Armed Emperor’s four arms represented the powers of Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh.
• The miners embraced the new doctrine and fervently chanted the four gods’ names, while Liu planned to use it to displace Vaughn and the old order.
• The doctrine spread through Viridia Prime’s mining districts, where believers beat makeshift war drums and openly glared down overseers.
• Nurgle’s followers organized care for sick miners, while Tzeentch’s followers secretly sabotaged machinery and work plans.
• Slaanesh’s followers created murals, music, unusual food, and makeshift fashion shows within the cult.

Liu Zhipeng’s influence transformed the Genestealer Cult into a fervent, chaotic community, leaving High Priest Vaughn isolated and desperate to regain control. Vaughn went to confront the Patriarch while Liu Zhipeng calmly anticipated the outcome.

• Liu Zhipeng guided the cult’s followers and reshaped their Broodmind around the four Gods, while Vaughn’s commands were twisted or ignored.
• Vaughn asked Bishop Kaz to help restore order, but Kaz supported Liu Zhipeng because his teachings made the warriors stronger and eager to fight.
• Realizing he had lost his allies, Vaughn decided to use the Patriarch’s psychic power to cleanse the Broodmind, despite the danger to his own consciousness.
• As Vaughn headed for the Patriarch’s lair, Little Claw told Liu Zhipeng where he had gone, and Liu Zhipeng declared checkmate.

Liu Zhipeng prepared to meet the Patriarch and announced the end of the old era, while Vaughn sought the Patriarch’s help against the cult’s new faith. Instead of purging the four Chaos powers, the Patriarch absorbed and reshaped them through Vaughn, whose sanity began to collapse as someone arrived at the lair.

• Liu Zhipeng told Little Claw that he would make the rules and ordered him to summon Bishop Kaz and the four divine hall leaders to witness a new era.
• Vaughn knelt before the Patriarch and reported the cult’s division, Peng, and the four false gods, pleading for divine punishment.
• The Patriarch explored the four powers and recognized aspects of the Great Devourer in their rage, resilience, wisdom, and sensation.
• The Patriarch reinterpreted the powers as harvesting, adaptation, hunting strategies, and the joy of evolution, sending the concepts back through Vaughn into the broodmind.
• Vaughn’s faith was overwritten as he became an amplifier for the Patriarch’s new ideas, and metallic scraping sounded at the lair’s entrance.

Liu Zhipeng was accepted by the Patriarch as the cult’s new High Priest after Vaughn’s mind collapsed. He reorganized the cult into four militarized departments and declared that they would begin striking first to overthrow Viridia.

• The Patriarch approved Liu Zhipeng’s teachings, withdrew his link to Vaughn, and appointed Liu Zhipeng in Vaughn’s place.
• Bishop Kaz and the four leaders of the Four Gods’ Halls knelt and pledged allegiance to Liu Zhipeng as High Priest.
• Liu Zhipeng told the cult to rise up and vowed to set Viridia’s skies ablaze in service of their god.
• Liu Zhipeng replaced the old management structure with four departments: the Fury Chapter, the Hand of the Plague Father, the Eye of Change, and the Perfect Voice.
• Liu Zhipeng directed the reorganized cult as its four departments prepared for the coming uprising.

A Tyranid scout ship reached the Viridia system as Liu Zhipeng declared the Day of Ascension and the Genestealer Cult launched its uprising. The rebellion began with bloody attacks and a plague that overwhelmed the upper Hive City.

• A Tyranid scout ship arrived unseen and the Broodlord detected an anomalous beacon, then ordered its fleet to assemble.
• Liu Zhipeng sensed the Patriarch's growing hunger and rallied the cult to rise up for the Four-Armed Emperor.
• Fury Chapter berserkers overwhelmed the planetary enforcers with mining picks and converted chainaxes.
• Hand of the Plague Father cultists poisoned Viridia's water and air systems with their holy water.
• Residents of the upper Hive City developed rainbow-colored pustules, and the city became a Nurgle's Garden as its people lost the will to resist.

Viridia fell to a coordinated Chaos uprising, then the Tyranids arrived and the Genestealer Cult welcomed them as divine emissaries. Liu Zhipeng urged the cultists and Chaos factions to embrace the invasion, turning the planet into a vast battle where they charged willingly into death.

• Tzeentch's agents sabotaged Viridia's defenses and communications while the Perfect Voice transformed the uprising into a citywide revelry.
• Planetary Governor Baltha von Court watched Viridia collapse as its armies, people, and defenses succumbed to the Chaos factions.
• The Broodlord's Tyranid swarm descended in landing pods and began slaughtering the revelers and residents.
• A Slaanesh follower welcomed a Termagant's attack as exquisite pain, and the Genestealer Cult responded to the invasion with religious ecstasy.
• Liu Zhipeng declared the Tyranids to be the Four-Armed Emperor's vanguard and urged the faithful to embrace their supposed ascension.
• The Fury Chapter berserkers, Hand of the Plague Father followers, Eye of Change technicians, and Perfect Voice artists confronted the Tyranids in their own ways as fighting engulfed Viridia.

Captain Kastor ordered the Iron Hands to retreat from Viridia after Liu Zhipeng sacrificed himself and his followers to summon Chaos daemons, who began fighting the Tyranids. The Tyranids eventually won but found no biomass, while Liu gained the Heretical Leader ability and moved on to reincarnation.

• Captain Kastor identified the cult as a new form of heresy, ordered an assault on the communications station, and called for Exterminatus.
• Liu Zhipeng and the Hall Masters sacrificed themselves in a ritual that tore open a warp rift above Viridia.
• Ka'Bandha and other daemons emerged and attacked the Tyranids, whose own forces retaliated despite the two sides being unable to consume one another.
• Captain Kastor ordered the Iron Hands and human troops to retreat from the senseless battle.
• Liu Zhipeng received the permanent Heretical Leader ability as his soul prepared to reincarnate.
• After decades of fighting, the Tyranids destroyed the last daemon, found no useful biomass on Viridia, and left the ruined planet.

Alexander von Lawrence grew up as a devout, compassionate noble child on Taranis Prime, using his inherited powers to inspire those around him. After Chaos-backed Space Pirates attacked the planet and killed his parents, he was rescued and sent to the Schola Progenium.

• Liu Zhipeng began his third life as Alexander von Lawrence, the infant son of Baron von Lawrence, and gained the abilities Grandfather's Watch and Love and Heretical Leader.
• As a child, Alexander questioned why Hive City children lacked basic comforts and declared that people had to become the Emperor's light themselves.
• Alexander treated the estate's servants kindly and taught his companions to understand loyalty and sacrifice as protecting and staying with those they loved.
• When Alexander was ten, Chaos-backed Space Pirates launched an orbital attack on Taranis Prime and destroyed the Lawrence Estate.
• Alexander's parents died protecting him from a Chaos Space Marine, and an Astra Militarum unit rescued him from the rubble.
• Imperial authorities sent the orphaned Alexander to the Schola Progenium.

At the Schola Progenium, Liu Zhipeng used his abilities to become a source of comfort and inspiration for his fellow orphans, guiding them to turn their grief into fervent training and loyalty to the Emperor. Commissar Imran questioned Alexander about his influence, then gave him a handbook and ordered him to formalize his “family theory” in a report.

• Liu Zhipeng shared food, helped injured cadets, and comforted classmates, becoming the heart of his class as Alexander.
• Alexander urged his companions to embrace their hatred as a sacred motive for vengeance and loyalty, and their training performance rapidly improved.
• Commissar Imran summoned Alexander and warned that the cadets’ devotion to him could be considered a cult of personality and treason.
• Alexander explained that he had given the orphans hope and a sense of family centered on the Emperor, and Imran found his argument convincing.
• Imran gave Alexander the Imperial Commissar’s Handbook and ordered him to write a systematic report presenting his family theory in the Imperium’s official language.

Alexander graduated from the Schola Progenium after his theory of “emotional fueling” won Imran’s support, then received an assignment to the broken 99th Infantry regiment. He arrived at its camp and faced a hostile veteran who accused Commissars of abusing and abandoning their soldiers.

• Alexander developed his “emotional fueling” theory and wrote a paper proposing that Commissars channel cadets’ emotions into collective loyalty and fighting spirit.
• Imran backed Alexander’s paper, which the Schola classified as a high-risk, high-value experimental theory, bringing Alexander to the Imperial Commissariat’s attention.
• Alexander graduated as the top cadet, and Imran gave him his Bolt Pistol, Chainsword, and assignment to the 99th Infantry, “Pride of Cadia.”
• Alexander arrived at the regiment’s camp and saw a drunken veteran humiliate a young recruit who hoped Cadia would be rebuilt.
• The veteran confronted Alexander and challenged him over whether he had come to execute soldiers or hide behind them in battle.

Alexander von Lawrence became the new Commissar and reached Orik, a traumatized Kasrkin veteran, by honoring his fallen comrades and asking him to carry on their legacy. After Orik pledged himself to the cause, Alexander told the soldiers they were not discarded refuse but embers still burning.

• Alexander asked the furious veteran his name and learned that Orik was a survivor of the Cadian 8th Regiment’s Kasrkin assault squad.
• Alexander recalled Orik’s unit holding off the Black Legion at Iron Gorge, and Orik blamed himself for surviving when his 326 comrades died.
• Alexander embraced Orik and reassured him that his brothers had wanted him to live and carry Cadia’s banner onward.
• Orik stopped drinking in despair, stood at attention, and pledged himself to Alexander as a Kasrkin of the former Cadian 8th Regiment.
• Alexander introduced himself to the camp and declared that the survivors were embers, not trash.