129: Chapter 129 Gaze

Nothing!

There was absolutely nothing!

His massive spiritual tentacles swept across the airspace where dozens of aircraft had just detonated.

He discovered with horror that these mortals, who were dying like raindrops... actually had no souls!

No.

To be precise, it wasn't that they didn't have souls.

Rather, the consciousness and spiritual bodies of these mortals were being forcibly extracted from this physical universe at the absolute instant of their bodily death by some underlying logic that was even higher-order and more incomprehensible than his own!

Like computer data when the power is pulled, they vanished without a trace, leaving not a single scrap of residue behind!

"No souls?!"

For the first time, a trace of uneasy trembling appeared in Vashtorr's voice.

"How is that possible?!"

"The physical universe follows the most basic laws of energy conservation! When life dies, the soul must dissipate! How can something simply vanish into thin air?!"

"This kind of illogical annihilation should only happen in the deepest depths of the Warp, when being directly consumed by the Chaos Gods themselves!"

Vashtorr stared fixedly at the group of humans below who were howling as they continued their charge, and for the first time, an extremely rare chill rose in his heart.

Just what kind of monsters were these?!

...

The ruins of the ground position.

Black Tiger A-Fu watched Lin Li, who had begun a slow descent from the sky, as well as his fellow player brothers who were falling to their deaths or being crushed by the force field like dumplings being dropped into a pot.

His eyes were bloodshot as he ripped off his heavy flak armor and tossed away his extra ammunition pouches.

Gripping only a heavy Power Axe, he prepared for a final charge.

"The Boss can't die, and the server can't go down!"

A Fu gritted his teeth, about to leap up from a section of collapsed city wall ruins.

Just then.

A cold, mud-stained hand firmly grabbed his wrist.

A Fu turned his head.

It was Bailey.

This strong woman, who had held out for days and nights in the meat grinder of the battlefield without breaking, was now looking at him with a gaze that was almost pleading.

In her dull eyes, a circle of tears was welling up.

"A Fu..." Bailey's voice choked, carrying an uncontrollable tremble, "Don't go. Please."

"You'll die just like them. You'll turn to ash."

Looking at the tears on Bailey's face, A Fu was momentarily stunned.

In this moment, a flash of daze crossed his mind.

Was this living, breathing woman who could cry really just a piece of NPC code made of data?

Why did her despair and sorrow make him feel such a heart-wrenching weight?

A Fu was silent for two seconds.

He reached out with his rough, large hand and gently pushed away Bailey's fingers that were gripping him tightly.

"I have to go."

A Fu grinned, his smile revealing a calm acceptance of death,

"If I don't go, none of us will have a home anymore."

With that, A Fu spun around abruptly.

Stepping onto the surrounding wreckage of scrapped tanks, he exploded with all the strength in his body and leaped with his legs!

His body soared into the air, facing that suffocatingly distorted gravity field, as he wildly swung his buzzing Power Axe in mid-air!

"I don't care if you're Wa Banxian or some trash Chaos God!"

Mid-air, A Fu let out the wildest roar of this entire campaign:

"As long as you have a health bar! Even if you're a god, you're dying today!"

Boom!

The Power Axe, carrying immense force, slammed heavily against the invisible force field around the giant hand!

The recoil force instantly shattered the webbing of A Fu's thumb and forefinger.

The teeth of the Power Axe ground violently against the force field, erupting in blinding sparks.

Finally, the axe blade struggled to cut through the force field, leaving a faint white mark on that pale mechanical finger that didn't even count as a scratch!

However.

The price for a mortal to face a god was cruel.

In an instant, the corrupting energy of the Warp surged back through the axe handle and into A Fu's body.

A Fu's body, which was originally as strong as an iron tower, became like a mummy stripped of all moisture in less than a second.

His muscles atrophied and his skin shriveled, turning into a lifeless skeleton that fell powerlessly from the air.

He became just another unremarkable member of the countless mummies throwing themselves into the fire like moths.

Below.

Bailey looked up, watching the moment A Fu turned into a mummy and fell.

"NO!!!"

Her heart-wrenching cry echoed through the trenches.

The tears welling in her eyes could no longer be contained, mixing with the mud and smoke on her face as they rolled down like broken strings of pearls.

On the towering walls of Coastal City.

There was a deathly silence.

The constant roar of the artillery had ceased.

Thousands of Defense Force soldiers stationed on the walls were now gripping the edges of the battlements, their eyes vacant as they stared at the wilderness outside the city.

It was a shocking scene that surpassed the limits of mortal comprehension.

In the sky, the purplish-red Warp rift looked like a bleeding wound.

And tens of thousands of outsiders were piloting damaged aircraft or simply using their legs to leap across the ruins, throwing themselves one after another like moths to a flame against that giant demigod hand bringing destruction.

There were no tactics, no formations.

Only pure, irrational sacrifice.

The soldiers watched those people turn into fireballs in mid-air, watched them be drained of moisture by Warp energy and fall as mummies.

But the crowds behind them didn't pause for a second, even charging with smiles on their faces.

Astra Militarum Political Commissar Arthas stood on the city wall like a statue.

He watched all of this in silence.

The iron-blooded commissar's fingers dug deep into his palms, and he was oblivious to the blood dripping onto the stone slabs.

He had seen the most fanatical Ecclesiarchy Penal Legions and Astra Militarum suicide squads who viewed death as a homecoming.

But when those people went to their deaths, there would be fear of death in their eyes, or a fanaticism for the God-Emperor.

But these outsiders outside the city were different.

When they went to their deaths, they had no psychological burden whatsoever. It was a resolve that transcended faith, even transcended the instinct of life itself.

"Just what kind of faith, what kind of determination..." Arthas muttered to himself, his voice raspy, "could allow them to face that kind of monster with a smile?"

It wasn't just the soldiers and the commissar.

The nobles of Coastal City, as well as the low-level gang thugs who had just been pulled up from the Hive City below to fight.

In this moment, everyone's worldview was completely shattered by the madness of the The Fourth Calamity.

They couldn't understand it, but they were profoundly shocked.

...

Deep within Coastal City, in a small Ecclesiarchy chapel.

The light was dim. Sister Frannie knelt alone on the cold floor tiles.

In front of her, a relic—a pure white finger bone of a sister—was enshrined.

Frannie didn't look at the sky outside.

Her hands were crossed over her chest, and she was weeping as she continuously recited Exorcism Prayers.

She seemed to have long foreseen everything happening today.

The purple light filling the sky, the twisted mechanical demon, and the Warp disaster capable of destroying the entire sector.

"God-Emperor protect us... God-Emperor protect us..."

Frannie's tears soaked the collar of her habit, her desperate and devout prayers echoing powerlessly in the empty chapel.

...

At the same time, hundreds of kilometers away from Coastal City.

Fire Seed Shelter.

In the underground genetic laboratory, Stone Man Hong stopped his work on the genetic test tubes.

Those silver eyes, devoid of any ripples, looked eastward through the heavy layers of earth.

Iron Man 73's massive waterfall of data calculations came to a sudden halt.

Its red optical lens flickered wildly, and its mechanical core emitted a low-frequency hum of overload as it locked onto the unparseable chaotic code in the eastern sky.

The surface weapons workshop.

The heavy wrench in the Tech-Priest Kane's hand fell to the floor, hitting his toe directly, but he showed no reaction as if he had lost all sense of pain.

His bionic eye, hidden under his red robe, stared at the purplish-red sky to the east, his mouth emitting an involuntary mechanical tremble.

It wasn't just the Shelter.

The Nomad tribes on the wasteland, the laborers in the Shahe Town refinery.

In this moment, everyone felt that terrifying aura that suppressed the very depths of their souls.

They all stopped what they were doing.

Whether they were holding shovels or clutching hunting rifles.

Everyone stood tall on the wasteland, facing east, looking at that purplish-red rift that seemed to split the world in two.

The entire world seemed to have its pause button pressed under the gaze of this demigod.

...

The eastern battlefield of Coastal City.

Lin Li felt his body suddenly sink.

The weightlessness of floating in mid-air with no leverage for his limbs instantly vanished.

His feet slammed heavily onto the muddy, scorched earth, producing a dull metallic thud.

Lin Li gasped for breath, cold sweat soaking his inner hazmat suit.

"Gravity... has returned."

Lin Li looked up, glancing at the player mummies falling like rain around him.

He had some suspicions.

This wasn't Wa Banxian showing mercy and withdrawing his power.

Rather, this group of The Fourth Calamity players had used countless lives and pure, madman-like will to forcibly crash a buffer zone of physical laws into the Warp's twisted reality!

Lin Li stretched his wrists and ankles.

The various system self-checks of his Power Armor all returned to normal, and the engine emitted a low roar once again.

If he wanted to run now, pushing the thrusters to an overload state.

While that demigod in the sky was still wondering where the souls had gone, he had an eighty percent chance of escaping this death beach directly.

Escape back to the fifth underground floor and lock the big door.

Even if the world outside was torn apart, he could still survive for a long time.

"But... then what?"

Lin Li stood his ground, not taking that step back.

The players were giving up their lives just to protect the server and protect him, their faction leader.

If he were to desert in front of tens of thousands of people, he would never be able to lead this team again.

Once cohesion was lost, Fire Seed Shelter would exist in name only.

"Damn it, I can't run."

Lin Li gritted his teeth, looking up at the giant mechanical hand in the sky that was starting to writhe again, preparing to grab downward.

"But if I don't run, how do I fight? Fight a demigod with my bare head?"

Just as Lin Li's mind was racing, desperately thinking of a strategy.

His fingers brushed against a pocket on his inner layer.

There, he felt a round pendant that was somewhat soft to the touch.

It was the thing that sister had given him before she left.

The sister had repeatedly urged him to make sure he wore it around his neck during this time.

Back in Shahe Town, when facing the fatal blow from that heretic Psyker.

If it hadn't been for this thing suddenly erupting with blinding golden light and forcibly dispersing the psychic energy, Lin Li's ashes would have been scattered by now.

Lin Li pulled the pendant out of his pocket.

He stared at the pendant intently, recalling the scene when it last worked.

Golden light, forcibly repelling Warp psychic energy, a holy relic given by a Battle Sister...

Anyone who knew even a little bit about the warhammer 40,000 setting could figure it out with their toes.

The power contained within this thing was absolutely, inextricably linked to the man sitting on the Golden Throne on Terra—the Lord of the Imperium of Man, the Emperor!

In fact, Lin Li usually felt somewhat dismissive and resistant toward this Old Man Huang.

He strongly disliked the Emperor's cold political maneuvering, viewing all things as chess pieces and everyone as disposable tools.

Ushtan, the Thunder Warrior who had just sworn loyalty to him, was the most direct victim of the Emperor's ruthless methods.

Lin Li especially didn't want to become a disposable tool in the Emperor's hands.

But despite his dislike, deep down, Lin Li still felt full of admiration for the Emperor himself.

During the Great Heresy, in the face of the desperate situation where the Four Chaos Gods had all personally intervened to bless Horus.

The Emperor actually had every chance to abandon humanity and complete his ascension to become the Dark King, the fifth supreme god in the Warp.

But for the sake of the disaster-ridden human race, he gave it up.

That man, who was stubborn and conflicted to the extreme.

He chose to sit on the Golden Toilet for ten thousand years, unable to live and unable to die, his body rotting into a skeleton, using his burning soul to light the Astronomican for humanity in the dark galaxy.

That alone was enough to inspire awe.

Lin Li looked up at the sky.

The massive mechanical hand had lowered its height once again.

"It seems I can't avoid this favor."

He was someone who hated owing favors, because in this shitty world, material debts were easy to pay, but debts of gratitude were the hardest.

Especially once he became entangled in karma with an existence like the Emperor, who had one foot on the altar, he probably wouldn't be able to wash himself clean ever again.

He would absolutely be dragged into an even more terrifying galactic meat grinder.

"But right now, besides borrowing your power, I don't have any other cards left."

Lin Li took a deep breath of the air thick with smoke.

He took off his Power Armor helmet, stretched the pendant's cord, and slowly hung it around his neck.

The warm pendant rested against the skin of his chest.

Lin Li put his helmet back on, looked up, and stared directly at the crimson giant eyes belonging to Vashtorr behind the Warp rift.

He didn't make any fanatical prayer gestures, nor did he kneel like an Ecclesiarchy believer.

He just stood there, as if negotiating terms with a stubborn old man from far away.

Lin Li muttered silently in his heart:

"Emperor, Lord of Mankind, you stubborn old man."

"If your skeleton on distant Terra can still hear my voice..."

"Lend me a high-interest loan to spend."