Warhammer: Saving Humanity Begins with the Resurrection of Horus

Page 93

As Yuan Zhuzhi spoke, he took a step forward and crushed a still-wriggling mechanical head.

Lin Qi suddenly exerted force on his wrist, and the power spear, propelled by this sudden movement, became like a heavy hammer, completely smashing everything in its path into a pile of useless scrap metal on the ground.

"Why did these mechanical worms suddenly appear? Don't you think it's too coincidental? We just discovered that the current passage is a Möbius strip structure, and they appeared shortly after, blocking our way forward."

"you mean........"

The Forged Leader frowned, his thoughts divided in two. On one hand, he continued the battle at hand, while on the other hand, he recalled the conversation he had with Lynch a dozen minutes earlier, after he had exited the psychic reconnaissance state.

Möbius strip.

To destroy something, to damage the structure.

veto.

Perform the analysis.

Unable to achieve.

Keep going.

In this process, unless there is some kind of thought detection method that even powerful psychics cannot detect, only the last step can be observed by the other party.

The original builders quickly accessed the forward data recorded in their power armor. They had stayed in place for fifteen minutes, and then continued forward for ten minutes before encountering these mechanical worms.

If this really represents some kind of pattern...

"Advance." The leader of the original forge took a deep breath. "The fighter soldiers will stay behind to cover the rear. We will continue advancing, this time for ten minutes, and then stop immediately when the time is up."

Lynch and Evelyn realized that the Forged One had discovered something, so they immediately did as he instructed.

Lin Qi took a round little gadget from his waist and charged directly at the oncoming mechanical worms, as did the Primal Forge Leader. The two round "iron balls" collided, and the next moment, accompanied by a sound like a bird's cry, a huge electric net appeared, briefly blocking the mechanical worms' path.

The round "iron ball" is an arc grenade that Kaul developed in the past. He originally intended to use it on the original Astartes, but recent breakthroughs in research led to changes in the situation, and the research project was halted for various reasons, eventually being sold off.

When advancing, the fighter pilots led the way, but now they were at the rear, responsible for covering the retreat. Evelyn sighed helplessly; as the rearguard, this divine machine would inevitably be destroyed in the future.

"Unleash Omnisiah's fury to its fullest extent," Evelyn whispered, simultaneously maximizing the efficiency of the fighter soldier's combat mode.

A blinding crimson light appeared, and the fighter pilot's machine began to spew out white steam. At this moment, the shoulder-mounted heavy machine gun not only increased its rate of fire, but also its power.

Countless mechanical worms were torn apart, even after breaking through the electric grid.

"keep going!"

The leader of the original forge led his team and successfully arrived at an empty corridor section fifteen minutes later. In the distance, the sounds of fighter soldiers and swarms of mechanical worms fighting rose and fell. The three stopped and simultaneously looked around, trying to find something unusual.

However, after searching for a full five minutes, the three of them found nothing, and the sounds of the fighters gradually faded away. Facing an almost endless number of enemies, it was already an unexpected fact that the enemy could hold out for such a long time on their own.

Yuan Zhuzhi frowned, about to speak and continue forward, but was suddenly interrupted by Lin Qi.

"Wait a little longer," Lin Qi said, while replacing the magazine in his explosive gun, which he had just fired, with a fully loaded magazine. "There should still be a chance."

The sound of mechanical worms charging filled the air, and Lin Qi raised his explosive gun and fired. However, without the support of the combat soldiers, the once impenetrable firepower network was now riddled with holes. Countless mechanical worms charged forward, and the scene they formed resembled the composite of demons from hell.

The mechanical worm rushed towards him, and Lin Qi stood up at that moment and immediately ran forward.

A strong sense of unease arose, followed by a violent tremor in Lin Qi's mind. At the same time, the mechanical worms that had been frantically attacking Lin Qi and his companions suddenly stopped. However, the trio had no time to pay attention to this and continued running forward. But this time was different from before. After advancing about a kilometer, a steel gate appeared, its surface simple and seemingly without any decoration.

Lin Qi reached out and easily pushed the door open. The three entered and, upon seeing the vast, empty world before them, gasped in astonishment.

This is completely a ruin, giving the feeling that a small town or even a metropolis has completely collapsed and sunk underground.

Dense piles of rocks formed a stepped structure. No living things existed; ruins of houses of all sizes lay stacked upon each other. In some remote areas, there weren't even ruins; as far as the eye could see, there was only bare white land.

After realizing what was happening, Lin Qi breathed a sigh of relief. He could finally take the first step into the ruins. All he had to do now was to explore step by step and he would be able to achieve his goal.

The leader of the original forging seemed to notice something, and he took a step and walked behind a wall where ruins still remained.

He quickly arrived at his destination, and upon seeing the thing with a small shoulder peeking out, his expression darkened, and he called out to Lin Qi over the channel.

"Come and take a look at this."

"What the hell... Holy crap!"

Lin Qi approached the head of the original forging, and after seeing clearly what the latter had shown him, he couldn't help but swear.

An Astartes leaned against the wall, its drooping head clearly indicating its death. It wore black power armor, but its design was unlike anything popular within the Empire; it bore some resemblance to the MK3, but was mostly composed of twisted and mangled parts.

The insignia on his shoulder armor was none other than the very thing that Lynch hated, yet knew he would have to face sooner or later.

An eight-pointed star pattern symbolizing chaos.

Fortunately, all communication with the outside world has been cut off here.

Lin Qi thought this way and contacted Horus for the first time.

"Your children..."

"Give them a quick death."

Horus's voice rang out. Although his face was not visible, just hearing the voice made Lin Qi think of hard stone and cold steel.

"Consider it my request: give them a quick death. This is... the last thing I, as an unworthy father of genes, can do for them."

Chapter 119 Iron Man

After confirming the identity of the body, the three-person team did not linger and quickly continued on their way.

Just before leaving, Lynch asked Evelyn to dispose of the body. She took out her pistol, adjusted the power, aimed it at the corpse, and pulled the trigger.

A ball of white flame shot from the muzzle of the gun, striking the power armor on the corpse. In the next three seconds, the fist-sized flame rapidly expanded, quickly engulfing the corpse and filling the air with a strong aroma of roasted meat and an indescribable stench.

Phosphorescent weapons are a type of weapon whose manufacturing method has been lost in the present-day Empire. The one Evelyn is holding is an exquisitely crafted phosphorescent serpent gun, a rare find even among ordinary sages within the Mechanicus.

Of course, this was also given to me by Kaul.

Thanks to angel investor Kaul for his sponsorship.

Lin Qi let his mind wander. At the same time, he looked around at the scene, silently watching to see if anything amiss might appear.

With the loss of the fighter pilots, the advancing ranks naturally changed. Now, leading the ranks was none other than Lin Qi. Armored with the Moon Wolf Armor, his defensive capabilities surpassed even the Terminator's by three points, and even the Skyhawk-type power armor worn by ordinary Imperial Guards couldn't compare.

Behind him was Evelyn, the weakest of the three, and also a mechanical engineering professional. This tech-savvy girl naturally received the best protection to prevent her from losing her life to some random, strange thing.

The leader of the original forging walked at the very back of the group, remaining silent, but his hands were always gripping the explosive gun, ready to fire at any moment.

The three-person team continued forward. When they first entered this place, they saw layers upon layers of rocky mountains and the ruins of collapsed houses everywhere. However, as they continued to move through the ruins, the rocky mountains and ruins gradually disappeared, replaced by a thicker fog, and within the fog stood obsidian sculptures shaped like crosses, resembling soldiers.

These sculptures are densely packed together. According to observations, the distance between each sculpture and the others in all directions is exactly ten meters, no more and no less.

They walked here aimlessly, giving the impression that they were simply wandering.

"We just left one strange place," Lin Qi said with a sigh in the channel. "And now we've arrived at yet another strange place."

“Yes,” Evelyn said, looking around and using her past knowledge to determine the situation of their current location. “If the previous one was a hidden Möbius strip, then this place feels like a complex maze.”

The three-person team stopped in their tracks, the problem with their exploration of the ruins already apparent. They were completely clueless about the specifics of the ruins, knowing nothing except that it was a product of the Dark Ages and contained remnants of STC and scientific research.

A normal exploration of a ruin would never be like this, entering it without any prior knowledge.

Normal exploration usually involves the Mechanicus taking the lead, with one or more Forge Worlds contributing manpower, equipment, and personnel to the planet's surface. It can take several years to explore even a tiny bit of the surface ruins.

However, here, near the Eye of Fear, normal exploration is impossible.

Just look at what the Dark Mechanicus does to understand. The Eye of Terror is a very special place. The Empire and Chaos have been locked in a standoff here for millennia, and even the slightest move will trigger their sensitive nerves.

If the exploration process proceeds normally, the exploration fleet will arrive on the first day, and a local war between the Empire and Chaos will break out on the second day.

Therefore, the only option for both the Empire and Chaos is to bring a small number of their people here and throw them into the ruins for exploration without any preparation.

The advantage of doing this is that it is not easy to be detected, and the fleet dispatched is very small, often only two or three ships or even one ship can solve the problem.

The downside is that, like Lin Qi and his group now, they have no intelligence whatsoever and are relying purely on their instincts to navigate this place.

Lin Qi took a deep breath and looked at the head of the original casting, his meaning already self-evident.

Psychic power.

Yuan Zhuzhi nodded and took out a small bottle that looked just like the one from not long ago. But before he could do anything, Lin Qi stopped him and took the bottle away.

“I’ll handle this,” Lin Qi said over the channel. “My psionic abilities are more stable than yours, and you’ve already used them once, so leave this one to me.”

"Do you know how to use related psionic spells?" The Forged Leader frowned. During the year he spent on the Explorer King, he had not given Lynch any psionic training.

“I have read books, and I understand the techniques for using Holy Scripture-based psionic energy, but I haven’t had the opportunity to practice them on the spaceship,” Lin Qi said, answering the question from the Former Chief.

The leader of the original forging team frowned even more deeply. He simply knew the techniques, but had never actually practiced them...

Three seconds later, his brows suddenly relaxed, and he nodded to Lin Qi.

"Be careful," the Forged Leader said, grasping Lin Qi's hand. "If anything happens, don't hesitate to immediately sever your connection to the warp."

Lin Qi felt an invisible energy enter his body—this was the psionic energy from the Primal Forged Leader—at this moment, it came into Lin Qi's body and gently lay dormant in a corner, existing as a kind of artificial insurance.

Lin Qi let out a long breath and nodded to the head of the original casting.

He unscrewed the bottle cap, and white ashes flew out automatically. They formed a line, an extremely thin line that encircled Lynch's body. At the same time, bright silver lightning began to flash deep within Lynch's black eyes, growing brighter and brighter until it completely filled his pupils.

Psychic power.

This was probably the first time Lin Qi had seriously used his psychic powers since undergoing genetic modification. He clearly felt that his psychic powers had become more powerful and more responsive than before.

A burst of noise rang in my ears, then fell silent and nothingness.

The world before Lin Qi's eyes began to distort, and his perception of his surroundings suddenly became abstract. At this moment, he felt as if he were in an extremely dark space, only able to vaguely perceive some distorted figures around him that flickered with a faint white light.

This is a type of Scripture-based psionic energy recorded on the Explorer King and used by the Astartes Chapter's intellectual treasury. Its effect is to sense spatial structures and biosignals within a ten-kilometer radius of the caster, much like a radar.

The two closest biosignals to him should be Evelyn and the Primal Forged Leader.

Lin Qi thought to himself, and then he immediately adjusted his vision, looking toward the biological signals of those creatures that were clearly hostile rather than friendly, and were at least five kilometers away.

Several blurry images flashed through Lin Qi's mind. He saw a disheveled man wearing a tattered red robe, his modified body covered in various blasphemous runes. He seemed to be fleeing from something, running haphazardly, and then tripped and fell heavily to the ground.

Lin Qi wanted to continue sensing, but at that moment, the still flickering blurry images suddenly stopped, as if a surveillance signal had been cut off.

This is.......

Lin Qi frowned, realizing something was wrong. But the next moment, the flickering images that had disappeared reappeared, only this time the red-robed man was lying on the ground, his limbs and brain torn off, leaving only a lone torso on the ground, flowing with blood mixed with engine oil.

"Monitoring, psionic response, level assessment in progress..."

What the hell?

His body began to warn him. Lynch's intuition told him that the voice that suddenly appeared in his ear was neither a hallucination nor a murmur, but a real psychic being that had sensed his energy and was conducting a so-called "assessment" of him.