192: Chapter 192 Imperial Retreat

Karbha dipped the wound of his severed arm into the torrent of blood sacrifice, and a new limb—thicker and more hideous than before—burst forth from his shoulder blade. One-third of Kugath's body had been vaporized by the Starfall Cannons, but Nurgle's blessing allowed him to be reborn amidst the rot, with more swarms of flies and plague spores erupting from his mangled remains.

For the first time, Kairos's two heads reached a consensus: retreat was a choice more terrible than death, yet the enemy before them was more worthy of fear than death itself. Angron didn't care about the state of the battle at all; he only needed more slaughter.

The other Traitor Primarchs, after a brief moment of shock, began to regroup.

Magnus's lone eye locked onto those eleven eternal-class titan ships. Mortarion's plague clouds began to slowly advance toward the abyssal scythe's battle line. Fulgrim's face regained its composure, but beneath that calm lay a hatred deeper than any rage.

Guilliman's emperors sword was still burning. Lion and Corax recalibrated their charge directions. However, they also saw that the power displayed by the Human Federation's support fleet had far exceeded anything that could be explained by Imperial technology.

C'tan. Guilliman's Adam's apple bobbed. They had mastered shards of the C'tan.

Deep within the Imperial Regent's pupils, an emotion heavier than concern surfaced for the first time. It wasn't fear—the Primarch had long since forgotten what fear was. It was vigilance, a vigilance directed toward a future more unpredictable than Chaos and more dangerous than heresy.

Just then, Han Zhe's second command spread throughout the Human Federation fleet:

"Void Barrier Mobile Units, deploy at full power."

"Target: Isolate the Four Chaos Primarchs from the battlefield."

The bellies of the eleven eternal-class titan ships opened simultaneously, projecting 2,222 medium-sized devices shaped like Polyhedral Cages with surfaces pulsating with dark gray deadlight. These mobile Void Barriers suddenly expanded after reaching their designated coordinates, each one ballooning from a ten-meter square metal block into an Isolation Field Generator three hundred kilometers in diameter within three seconds.

The 2,222 force fields intertwined, nested, and resonated with each other, carving the airspace within a 0.3 light-year radius at the edge of the Eye of Terror into isolated pockets of Warp Vacuum.

Karbha's roar could not escape his own field cage. The plague sown by Kugath quickly withered like water without a source after losing its Warp essence. Kairos's head of the past and head of the future simultaneously lost their frame of reference; there was no past to remember and no future to prophesy, only the present, and this present was being redefined by the order of the Human Federation.

Angron slammed into the boundary of the force field, bounced back, slammed again, and bounced back again. For the first time, his never-ending fury could find no outlet.

The other Chaos Primarchs were trapped within the core of the same extra-large Void Barrier. This was no random assignment; it was a meticulous design.

Fulgrim's liquid metal body began to solidify within the isolation field. Mortarion's plague blessings were cut off at the source, and for the first time, his body felt cold. Magnus's lone eye attempted to tear through this cage, but every psychic storm he released was absorbed at the field boundary, converted, and injected into Zero-point Energy Reactors to become energy reserves for the Human Federation fleet.

Angron was still slamming. Once, twice, three times. The barrier remained motionless.

"Titan fleet," Lei Huan's voice was calm and steady, "Main cannons finished recharging. Target: Fulgrim."

"Fire."

Eleven Starfall Cannons simultaneously locked onto the Slaanesh Primarch.

Fulgrim roared to the heavens, his liquid metal body suddenly expanding to three times its normal size, intending to meet this ultimate profanity in a perfect state. But what met him was not destruction, but a rewriting of laws.

The Starfall Cannons did not kill him.

They locked him down.

Fulgrim's body was frozen at the level of the Gravitational Constant, Electromagnetic Interactions, and even the Spacetime Metric. He was still alive, still conscious, and still able to perceive everything around him, but he could not move a single finger, twitch a lip, or release a shred of divine power.

He had become a sculpture. A perfect, imprisoned sculpture.

"Target capture complete," Lei Huan reported without any emotional fluctuation. "Commencing transfer to Time Tomb Containment Unit No. 6."

"No—!" Magnus's lone eye nearly burst. He abandoned his attempt to tear the Void Barrier and instead poured all his strength into attacking the field's base protocols. But those protocols were logic forged from Necron Phase Technology and STC-Ω Spacetime Theory, iterated 4,700 times by the adjudicator; even the chief Greater Daemon under the Lord of Change could not find a flaw in such a short time.

Mortarion did not attempt to break out. He simply stared fixedly at Guilliman.

And Guilliman, the Imperial Regent, was currently facing the most difficult choice in his ten-thousand-year career of rule.

The emperors sword burned in his hand. The blades of Lion and Corax still pointed at the traitors. Although the Imperial Fleet had suffered heavy losses, it still possessed the strength to counterattack.

But the Human Federation had just captured a Chaos Primarch alive right before his eyes.

With technology he completely failed to understand. With power he completely failed to counter. With a will he completely failed to predict.

And the Eye of Terror, the wound the Empire had been unable to close for ten thousand years, had already been half-sewn shut.

What about the other half?

If the Empire continued to fight alongside the Human Federation in this battle, the fruits of victory would fall entirely into the hands of that heretical regime. They would claim the closing of the Eye of Terror as the Human Federation's achievement, demonstrate to the entire galaxy that the Human Federation's order was superior to the Empire's faith, and use this victory to persuade more frontier worlds to defect to them.

If the Empire retreated now, giving up this ten-thousand-year opportunity to annihilate the four Traitor Primarchs, those traitors would have a chance to regroup, the remaining half of the Eye of Terror would continue to bleed the poisonous blood of Chaos, and the Empire would bear the shame of shrinking back at a critical moment.

But if the Empire did not retreat... Guilliman's gaze swept across the battlefield.

The main cannons of the abyssal scythe's eleven eternal-class titan ships had already re-locked onto their targets. This time, it was Mortarion, Magnus, and Angron.

They could capture the Emperor's traitorous sons one by one, just as they had captured Fulgrim alive.

And then what?

Then, these captured Primarchs would be sent to some deep-space laboratory of the Human Federation to be analyzed, extracted, and transformed into weapons against the the cold observer, just like the Avatar of Slaanesh.

Guilliman did not know what the the cold observer was. But he knew that any knowledge related to the essence of a Primarch falling into the hands of the Human Federation would become a forbidden weapon capable of subverting the very foundations of the Empire.

He slowly lowered the emperors sword.

"Imperial Fleet." His voice was low, like a massive cauldron sinking into the deep sea. "All units, cease your advance."

"Consolidate formations. Prepare to evacuate the battlefield."

The Lion's cold inquiry came through the communication channel: "Are you certain?"

"I am certain." Guilliman did not look back. "The sealing of the Eye of Terror is already a fait accompli. Though the traitors have not been executed, they have been heavily wounded. If we continue to remain here, we will be fighting on two fronts simultaneously."

He did not say who the other front was. The Lion did not ask.

The Primarch of the Dark Angels remained silent for a long time before finally sheathing his sword.

"Long live the Empire." His voice sounded like an inscription on an ancient tombstone. "One day, we will return to end all of this."

Corax said nothing. He only stared deeply at the silhouette of the Human Federation's flagship in the distance, and at the holographic projection on the bridge that remained as calm as a deity from beginning to end. Then, he turned, fragments of his Raven-wing Battle Armor scattering a few sparks of light in the void.

The Imperial Fleet began an orderly retreat. The battered ships of the Ultramarines gathered the wounded. The Dark Angels' assault craft withdrew from the front lines. The Death Guard, bearing their unhealable wounds, covered the flanks of the main formation.