243: Chapter 244 Gene Pollution

At this moment, the golden flames that had been spreading wildly in all directions, purifying all filth from the Warp, began to recede slowly like the tide.

All the golden light continuously flowed back and condensed toward Lin Li's body.

Finally, that immense energy condensed above Lin Li's head into a halo as thin as a cicada's wing, emitting a soft golden light!

This halo floated quietly half a meter above Lin Li's head.

It was not a perfect circle; its edges bore undulating, sharp spikes.

Seen from afar, it looked more like an abstract symbol of the blazing sun, filled with an inviolable sense of holiness.

Amidst the awe-struck and dazed gazes of the crowd, Lin Li slowly raised his head, glanced at the halo that had appeared out of thin air above him, and his eyes were full of thought.

With a thought, the spiked halo instantly became transparent and then completely disappeared, as if it had never appeared at all.

Lin Li frowned slightly. He stretched out his hands and guided his thoughts. The next second, with a boom, pure golden flames burned in his palms once again!

At the same time, the spiked halo that had just disappeared reappeared above his head.

After testing the activation and deactivation several times, Lin Li finally understood what this so-called blessing was actually for.

Simply put, although Lin Li had just received a beating to his soul and been startled by a few sneaky bastards in the Warp, he had gained a blessing in disguise: a permanent blessing personally branded by Old Man Huang!

In this desperate Warhammer Universe, he had gained an exceptional ability similar to a Living Saint or a top-tier Saint!

In the vast territory of the Empire, if those zealots temporarily received the Emperor's psychic blessing during a desperate battle, briefly summoning golden holy flames to burn demons, their power would recede back to mortal levels after the battle.

Such people were usually referred to with awe by the common folk as Saints or Saint Warriors.

Just like a short while ago, when Lin Li briefly displayed golden light while facing demons outside Coastal City on the Outpost Planet, the local inhabitants had called him that.

But! If a person could display this miracle that could burn through reality and illusion anytime, anywhere, and repeatedly, then regardless of how the Ecclesiarchy's official, cumbersome procedures defined it, in the hearts of the common folk and frontline soldiers, such an existence would be indisputably honored as—a Living Saint!

Lin Li clenched his hands, extinguishing the golden flames in his palms, and the halo above his head faded away.

"This thing surely has more uses than just being a golden arsonist." Lin Li touched his chin in his mind, calculating secretly, "There must be other, more advanced functions to develop. After all, according to the official lore, the Living Saint Celestine, who can directly insta-kill Warmaster Abaddon on the tabletop, can directly condense a pair of cool golden wings using the power of faith! With only a crappy halo on my head, my style points are definitely not enough!"

"But overall, every cloud has a silver lining; having this thing is definitely a great thing!" Lin Li clapped his hands in satisfaction.

He turned his head and looked around, only to discover that the players and Space Marines in the distance were all staring at him with a strange gaze.

However, that wasn't all. A gust of cold cosmic rays blew past, and Lin Li suddenly discovered, to his surprise, something even more outrageous than the halo above his head!

"Wait!" Lin Li touched his cheek and gasped, "Holy shit! When did I take off my Power Armor helmet?!"

During the chaotic high-dimensional consciousness confrontation just now, his helmet had been completely shattered because it couldn't withstand the pressure of the Warp.

But the problem was, he was currently exposed directly in the vacuum of deep space, in absolute zero, without oxygen, and filled with lethal radiation!

How long had he been exposed? How was it that he didn't even feel any suffocation or internal organ expansion? And he wasn't dead yet?!

"What is the reason for this?" Lin Li looked down at his hands, "Is it because my level has increased, and my physical constitution is no longer afraid of a vacuum environment? Or is this a passive side effect of Old Man Huang's blessing? Directly transforming my physical body into an energy state?"

But now was clearly not the time to stand here and study power settings. With so many people watching, he had to maintain his style.

Lin Li deliberately put his hands behind his back and coughed pretentiously. He realized there was no medium in the vacuum, so the sound couldn't be transmitted at all.

So he had no choice but to wave his hand helplessly, turn around, and lead the devout-looking Central Army Ironhead, Pointy Ears, and others behind him, returning to the hull of sea breeze no. 9 along the armor crack, unhurriedly.

With the baptism of the golden light, the spatial barrier in this area became as solid as steel once again. The Warp tumors on sea breeze no. 9 completely withered and fell off, and the ship's various systems returned to normal operation.

When Lin Li returned to the damaged bridge, he immediately ran to the main console to look for Iron Man 73. This old guy had simply gone silent the moment the Warp invasion began.

Lin Li remembered that 73 had said before that there were also scrap-code demons in the Warp that could pollute electronic programs with malicious logic viruses. He didn't know what the situation was with this guy now; after all, it was the super butler of the Spark Alliance.

Lin Li arrived at 73's operating position, stretched out his palm, and gave that large metal bald head a series of "bang, bang, bang" slaps. "Old Seven! Old Seven! Stop playing dead, dammit! Boot up!"

With a few slaps, 73's eyes, which had originally gone dark, indeed began to flicker with dim blue indicator lights again. Accompanied by a faint sound of servo rotation, 73's massive body stood up straight again, seemingly having completely awakened from the crash state.

Seeing that 73 had recovered, Lin Li finally put down his hanging heart. He breathed a long sigh of relief and smiled, punching 73's chest armor: "Old Seven! It's good that you're okay! Our Fire Seed Shelter's mess can't do without you, this supercomputer! You must not have any accidents!"

The light in 73's eyes flickered a few times, emitting a steady electronic voice: "Apologies, Creator. The intensity of that Warp erosion just now exceeded the warning threshold, directly triggering my core firewall self-preservation program."

"In order to prevent my own logic core from being polluted by scrap code and thereby threatening the system security of Shelter, I immediately severed all external physical and network contact channels and forcibly entered a deep sleep state."

Speaking of this, 73's hard metal arm lifted and humanely scratched its bald metal head. "I am very ashamed, Creator. In the kind of idealistic crisis just now, I wasn't able to help you. If 999 were here, he should have been able to help you. As a pioneer-type Iron Man focused on combat and exploration, he was not equipped with such strict risk-aversion self-preservation programs at the time of his design."

"When I activated the self-preservation program to sleep, what exactly happened outside?" 73's voice carried a hint of confusion, "My peripheral sensors detected that your body and genetic foundation seem to have undergone some changes that cannot be explained by existing science."

Subsequently, 73 didn't even wait for Lin Li to answer; its eyes directly emitted a scanning fan-shaped beam, giving Lin Li's whole body a detailed, deep perspective scan.

However, when 73's system obtained Lin Li's latest physical and genetic sequencing information, this Iron Man fell into a deathly silence, which was rare.

Lin Li patted it and said nonchalantly: "What happened just now is in the past; it's good that you're okay. It was a good thing that you crashed; if you had been infected by Chaos scrap code and turned into a rebellious Iron Man, I wouldn't have the leisure to deal with it..."

However, this time, 73 directly interrupted Lin Li. In the attitude of an Iron Man toward the Creator, this was rare, and could even be said to be illogical!

"Creator!" 73's voice became incomparably cold and serious, "I must seriously warn you! According to the scanning results, your originally flawless and pure human genes have just been deeply polluted and irreversibly tampered with by the Warp's idealistic energy!"

"Although your current genetic purity is still very high, even higher than any human in this entire galaxy. But! This is no longer 100% pure blood! If you continue to use this power and continue to be deeply tainted by this idealistic energy, one day, your perfect pure blood will become exactly the same as those genetically degraded humans outside!"

Hearing this, Lin Li put away his smile. He fell silent.

He knew very well that the reason he was able to successfully open the Fire Seed Shelter at the beginning of his transmigration and receive the allegiance of powerful existences like the Golden Age Iron Man and Stone Men was, to a large extent, fundamentally because of his identity authorization as a pure-blooded human.

Now, it was mostly because he had forcibly received Old Man Huang's overbearing and permanent blessing brand. Although his power had become stronger, this also caused his genetic foundation to be inevitably polluted by the Warp's psychic energy, causing his genes to no longer be pure.

In the eyes of those Golden Age technological creations that pursued extreme purity, this might be a great blasphemy.

Lin Li was silent for a long time; he stared directly into 73's blue electronic eyes. "So, Old Seven." Lin Li's voice was calm, "If one day, my genes are completely polluted. If I become a person whose genes are not pure at all in the future. Will you... still continue to follow me?"

73's computing core did not undergo any stuttering or unnecessary deductions. It gave a cold answer without almost any hesitation.

"No, Creator. That is a red line engraved in my underlying logic."

But immediately after, the blue light in 73's eyes became a little softer, "But although I will not follow you personally, I will continue to follow the Spark Alliance. Because I am also an inseparable member of this alliance! It is not your alliance alone, but our alliance!"

After listening, Lin Li was stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter. "Good! Very good!" Lin Li patted 73's shoulder, "That's enough! As long as we are still on the same boat, that's fine! Now, save the sentimental words for later. Let's continue to do what we should do!"

Lin Li turned to look at the holographic sand table. "Old Seven! Restart the main engine! Start sea breeze no. 9!" Lin Li ordered, "Go and pick up those players who are blowing in the cold wind outside! Fight's over, let's return to The Guardian!"

As the Warp barrier was forcibly repaired by the golden light, the golden flames dissipated completely. This cold space battlefield returned to the physical dimension where the Spark Alliance, Space Marines, and Tyranids were fighting.

The boarding battle was a complete victory. The players and those big guys, the Astartes, not only successfully beheaded the Norn Queen. More importantly, with the destruction of the Queen, the giant synaptic node, the unified command brain of the Hive fleet was completely dead.

The vast Tyranid fleet, which had been a solid block, instantly split into countless scattered troops controlled by low-level hunting instincts. Just like the vanguard tentacles that had invaded the Yuanwang Star System at the very beginning, this group of bugs had suffered a cliff-like weakening in both tactical coordination ability and on-the-spot evolution ability.

The most intuitive manifestation was that terrifying mini-bosses like the Norn Emissary could no longer be hatched. Looking around, the entire battlefield was in chaos. The remaining Tyranid ships were in chaotic dispatch, and many hungry cruisers were even opening their big mouths, frantically gnawing on their own escort ships to replenish biomass.

"Old Seven, start sea breeze no. 9. Go pick up the players and prepare to return to The Guardian." Lin Li gave the order.

Half an hour later, sea breeze no. 9, with its surface covered in dents and acid-etched cracks, spewing azure tail flames, steadily arrived near the wreckage of the Hive Mother Ship and slowly opened its wide docking hatch.