183: Chapter 187 This isn't a virus; it's an injury I sustained while fighting prostitution and organized crime.

The star sector where the Silver-White Federation was located fell into a state of absolute silence.

That once-prosperous primary material trade planet had now been completely erased from the physical map of the universe. All that remained was a ring of desolate asteroids formed by gravitational turbulence.

The equatorial loading zone of death star no. 3, which resembled a giant abyssal maw, slowly closed its heavy adamantine alloy isolation layers.

A massive shadow glided silently through the vacuum. The dark red exhaust flames from the Death Star's engines, having consumed the resources of an entire planet, became deep and stable.

Li Cang sat alone within the command cabin isolated in the deepest depths of the Death Star.

His body was sunk deep into a shock-absorbing metal mesh chair. On the holographic screen unfolding before him, the numerical bars representing energy reserves and genesis points were climbing at a dizzying speed. The high-purity energy cells and rare ores forcibly siphoned from the Silver-White Federation filled all the deficits left by the engine overload.

This should have been a moment to enjoy the harvest.

But on the left side of the console, the proprietary boundary panel belonging to the [history creator] suddenly erupted in a heart-stopping, blood-red glow without warning.

There was no alarm sound, only the deathly silent red light flashing urgently against the bulkheads of the entire command room.

Li Cang snapped upright, his gaze fixed intently on the deduction tree diagram representing the "Underlying Logic of Civilization."

The originally stable root structure was peeling away in large areas.

A series of eye-searing system error codes flooded the screen like a bursting dam.

[Warning: Civilization logic self-consistency has dropped below the safety red line.]

[Detected large amounts of unpurified Abyssal Star Beast genetic residue.]

[Detected deep infection of Men of Iron scrapcode from the Dark Age of Technology.]

[Severe malignant mutation has occurred in the civilization subject. Immune mechanism has been forcibly activated.]

[Deducting genesis points: 200,000 points.]

[Manifesting punishment entities within the world: Ordo Hereticus Inquisition and Stormtroopers.]

The corner of Li Cang's eye twitched violently.

He saw the point deduction prompt clearly. The system hadn't asked for his opinion at all, directly slicing a massive sum from the loot he had just seized. Then, using that money, it spawned a group of punishment troops in his own base specifically designed to deal with him.

The creations of a civilization possessed a free will that brooked no tampering.

Within the underlying code of the Warhammer universe, there was absolute zero tolerance for genetic mutations and Chaos-tainted artificial intelligence. To pursue ultimate combat power, Li Cang had stuffed veterans into toxin-laced dreadnought mechs and used Men of Iron scrapcode as network bombs. These operations slaughtered all before them in the outside world, but within the civilization's logic of faith, this was the purest form of heresy.

Now, retribution had descended into his lower decks in the form of a forced system event from a god's-eye view.

Li Cang quickly switched the main screen's perspective to the third-level maintenance hangar of the Death Star fortress.

That was the widest metal plaza inside the Death Star. Three thousand mutated Astartes, who had just completed a round of slaughter, were arrayed like black statues. Their surging muscles caused their master-crafted power armor to bulge and crack, and they exhaled acidic toxic mist with every breath.

Standing at the very front was that mountain-heavy Number Fourteen Toxic Holy Dreadnought. On the iron plating of the mech's chest, the dark green patterns of fleshy tumors were still clearly visible.

Directly beneath the ceiling of this hangar, space suddenly underwent a violent distortion.

It wasn't a stealth warp jump, but a more arrogant manifestation of rules.

Accompanied by the deafening roar of thunder breaking through the air, five heavy gravity drop pods, painted pitch black and branded with the massive skull and Warhammer emblem, appeared out of thin air above the hangar.

The drop pods slammed onto the metal floor with a boom, and the heavy hatches snapped open amidst the hiss of hydraulic gases.

A hundred Stormtroopers, clad in full-body heavy carapace armor and wielding high-energy Hellguns, poured out in a flawless tactical formation.

Walking in the center was a tall, thin man wrapped in a dark red flame-retardant cloak and wearing a wide-brimmed Inquisitor's hat. His left eye had been replaced by a red-flickering mechanical bionic eye, and he held a sizzling Melta Sword upside down. On his chest hung a brass seal representing the power of absolute purgation.

The Inquisitor looked up, his emotionless mechanical eye scanning the three thousand toxin-breathing black heavy giants before finally locking onto the dreadnought mech emanating the aura of Chaos Men of Iron scrapcode.

The air in the hangar instantly froze to the breaking point.

The barrels of the Number Fourteen Dreadnought began to glow with the faint light of preheating. As a stitched-together monster stripped of reason and left with only killing instincts, it sensed the intense hostility coming from directly ahead.

"In the name of the Holy God-Emperor."

The Inquisitor's voice broadcast through the hangar speakers, dry and cold, without a trace of human warmth.

"This place is filled with fallen things tainted by the Abyss. Unforgivable, irredeemable. No interrogation needed; purge them on the spot."

The safety locks of a hundred Hellguns clicked open in the same second, their muzzles charged with high-energy beams capable of melting through adamantine.

In the command room, Li Cang's hands almost deformed the edge of the console.

He couldn't rush down to stop it.

The absolute rule of the fourth wall stood between him and his creations. He was an observer, a god arranging tactics and deploying blueprints behind the scenes. He had no way to shout down to the hangar below; even if he did, the Inquisitor manifested by the system's logic of faith would only purge him as a blasphemous demon.

If he allowed them to open fire in the hangar, it wouldn't just be a tragic internal conflict.

The core reactor of this Death Star fortress was located directly beneath the hangar. Once the artillery fire breached the isolation layer, the entire planet would explode into fragments from the inside.

Li Cang stared fixedly at the red needle on the screen representing the "Firing Threshold." The needle was less than a second's gap away from the peak.

He didn't despair; the sparks of his mind, calculating frantically, instantly cut into an extremely tricky and dangerous path.

"Heretics truly deserve to die. But in your creed, is there a rule for which kind of heretic deserves to die the most?"

Li Cang suddenly slammed his palm onto the area's forced override panel on the command console.

His hands moved so fast they became a blur of afterimages.

He didn't try to modify the locked safety settings of the hangar turrets. Instead, he directly pulled up the return database of the Whisperer Radar Sensing Matrix on the outermost layer of the Death Star fortress.

Outside the Death Star system, thirty light-years away.

Space curvature was undergoing a disturbance of being forcibly torn apart. The vanguard reconnaissance fleet of the Eternal Star Crown Federation, following the high-dimensional trail left by the destruction of the Silver-White Federation, had cut into this star sector like a sharp white surgical knife.

They were a group of High Elves with slender, elegant bodies. Their ships radiated pure light, and psionic waves recognized by the great map rules as "elegant magic" flowed within their warriors.

In the Warhammer worldview, what were these non-human alien creatures, who also blatantly used magical psionics, called?

[Xenos] and [Inferior Malignant Sorcerers].

Li Cang directly severed the tactical neural connection network inside that Inquisitor's mechanical bionic eye.

Using his status as the highest-level administrator of this planet, he took the high-definition images, genetic spectra, and those nauseating psionic shield frequencies of the elven fleet that the external radar had just captured, and forcibly projected them without reservation onto the bottom layer of the Inquisitor's bionic eye retina.

Furthermore, on that pile of data, he used an extremely crude system tag editor to slap on a massive, blood-dripping red tactical mark:

[Highest Threat Directory: Psionic Xenos scum attempting to subvert human existence have invaded the front line.]

Inside the hangar.

The Inquisitor's arm, which was about to swing down the Melta Sword, suddenly froze in mid-air like a piece of hard fossil.

That mechanical bionic eye zoomed in and out frantically.

The data stream transmitted to his nerves hammered against his brain, which was filled with faith.

The mutated Space Marines and that foul dreadnought mech before him were indeed tainted, inferior rejects—sinners who needed to be hung on pyres and burned to ash.

But the external information fed back to him by the bionic eye showed thousands of Xenos sorcerers attempting to lay hands on pure human star sectors, preparing to build their blasphemous altars outside the defensive line.

For the Inquisition, internal ulcers could be slowly excised in the torture chambers later. But those Xenos who dared to show their true forms within human territory must be ground to dust; even the concept of their existence would not be allowed to survive.

The Inquisitor slowly lowered his Melta Sword.

On his skeletal face, the anger originally aimed inward twisted into a purer, more destructive, and boundless fanaticism directed toward the outside world after this brief information shock.

"Stow your weapons."

The Inquisitor's voice rang out again in the hangar. He turned his back to those stunned black-armored mutated recruits and used the sword in his hand to point precisely at the closed, heavy hangar ceiling. That was also the direction of outer space where the enemy fleet was approaching.

"Internal sins shall be settled by the flames of purgation after the fires of war are extinguished."

He strode toward the heavy Boarding Launch Wells at the edge of the hangar, specifically used for orbital drops. His dark red cloak billowed before this group of violent, mutated giants.

"But now, the time for atonement has come. Every breathing body, every wreck that can still pull a trigger—follow me, and we shall tear those filthy Xenos scum into meat paste in space."

In the command room.

Li Cang let out a long breath of turbid air. The anti-static suit on his back was completely soaked with cold sweat.

He watched the screen as that group of absolute reapers, originally meant to wipe out his own assets, now held high the totem of the Inquisition and led that group of mutated Astartes—who couldn't even distinguish friend from foe—crowding into those cold Boarding Torpedo bays like a pack of mad dogs that had slipped their chains.

External radar showed that the unlucky Federation Elven vanguard fleet was already less than five thousand kilometers from the Death Star fortress.

Li Cang leaned back in his chair, his lips curling into an arc full of opportunistic and malicious calculation.

He hadn't just gotten a high-end elite force for free from the points the system deducted; he had also successfully aimed the muzzles of these military police at the unlucky bastards rushing over to their deaths outside.

"Go then, burn to your heart's content."

He gently pushed down the master drop launch switch before him.

"Since you love purging heretics so much, then those pointy-eared magic young masters outside are all yours."