Zhou Yun gave a once-over to the hazy figure calling itself "Sanguinius."
That was a figure at least four meters tall, with wings like a white dove, its whole body aglow with warp energy.
Severe height abnormality, body sprouting scales and feathers or animal fur, body luminescence, two extra limbs, beastlike features, localized warp anomalies…
Noticing Zhou Yun's gaze, the winged figure in the white light couldn't help but laugh:
"You're judging me by that standard?"
Oh, and questioning the necessity of the examination. Three moderate mutations, two severe, and two extreme… a total score of 129.
Purgators, someone come quick! There's a shameful mutant here! Zhou Yun mocked inwardly.
"Why don't you apply that standard to the one on the throne?" the winged figure in white light said with a shake of its head. "By the Departmento Munitorum's standard, both I and my father are extreme mutants, scoring at least fifty points. Oh, and besides Guilliman and a few others, few of my primarch brothers would escape it either."
Hearing the joke, Zhou Yun chuckled and nodded in agreement:
"By the Munitorum's standard, the Emperor and many primarchs would all have to stand against the nearest wall, put their hands behind their backs, and loudly shout: 'I'm a shameful mutant! I'm a shameful mutant!' while waiting for purgators to efficiently immolate them."
Listening to Zhou Yun, the winged figure couldn't help but laugh softly:
"If I said that in front of an Inquisitor or an Ecclesiarch priest, what do you think would happen?"
"Then I'd probably end up on a phosphor pyre." Zhou Yun shrugged.
He glanced toward the corpse guild hall.
After Mong and Markit entered, a faint smell of corruption rose inside, chilling and eerie.
"You planning to go in?" the winged figure asked with a faint flap of its wings.
But Zhou Yun shook his head. He reached into his four-dimensional pocket…
Mong and Markit walked through the guild's corridor, the dim passage covered in thick moss and rotting fungus, mushrooms between the cracks squirming like lumps of flesh.
Between the moss lay corpses, rotting yet unconsumed, their pale eyes following the pair's steps.
Mong and Markit chanted the seven-syllable incantation in low tones, their aura convincing the corpses they were kin.
Had anyone else entered this corridor, they would have been torn apart instantly, becoming fodder for moss and fungus.
"Brother, up ahead is the branch director's office," Mong said as they stopped before a heavy, ornate door.
Carved with layer upon layer of skulls symbolizing humanity's purity—though between those skulls sprouted multicolored, writhing fungus, as if hinting at purity's corruption.
Markit nodded slightly and pushed open the door.
Inside was a spacious office, its walls adorned with magnificent carvings depicting the pale work of the corpse guild. Embedded into one wall was a man-sized plasteel safe, seemingly reinforced by a low-powered stasis field.
Markit suspected the ancient artifact they sought might be inside—but he quickly dismissed the thought.
Because beneath the filthy window sat a woman in a pale ceremonial dress, reclining in a comfortable chair with her eyes shut.
Her gown was white as death itself, her corset engraved with ossuary symbols, her face veiled by white silk cascading from a golden crown.
But even through the veil, Markit saw her sickly face—pale, splotched with lesions, her lips drooling foul saliva, and bloodless, withered veins crawling across her skin like dead vines.
She seemed riddled with a hundred diseases.
In her hand she clutched a rusted, twisted, rotting triangular dagger, the corroded metal revealing living flesh writhing within, exuding an aura of corruption.
It was a plague-forged weapon, cast in that lush garden of rot and rebirth.
This was what Mong and Markit had come for.
Markit carefully approached her side, extending his hand toward the triangular blade—
SSSHHK!!
The blade slashed through the air with a stench of decay. Markit quickly leapt back, narrowly avoiding a cut.
"No!!" a sharp, grating voice erupted from her decayed vocal cords.
The pale woman stirred her stiff body, rising inch by inch, opening her eyes.
Those eyes were dead, pale and dim—yet one could still feel the madness surging within.
Markit frantically recited the seven-syllable incantation.
"Noooooo!!"
But only frenzied howls answered him.
The "angel's" delighted voice rang in Markit's mind, telling him the governor's bombardment had ruined the original ritual, and warp energy gone awry had poured not only into the triangular blade, but also into her body, driving her to madness.
Markit ducked desperately as her writhing, fleshy blade swept toward him, sensing the lethal corruption within.
"GAAAH!!" He vomited a stream of putrid digestive acid onto her, burning holes through her dress and flesh, exposing pale bone beneath.
Yet she only grew more frenzied.
Markit felt the dreadful malice in her sword.
Mong cut open his own wrist, his corrosive, poisonous blood splattering her.
But the pale woman leapt, her triangular blade thrusting for Mong's throat, moving with superhuman speed—the rotten blade a sharp insect's sting in the air.
SSSHHK!!
A searing beam of light pierced the office window, melting the glass and striking her leg.
A small explosion blossomed where the beam hit, molten flame devouring half her leg.
"A lasgun?!" Markit cried.
Mong reacted faster, dodging her thrust and turning joyfully to the window: "Rai–n. Rus?!"
But before his joy could settle, more laser beams raked across the corpse guild, one grazing Mong's cheek and blowing up behind him.
Mong froze.
"The hell, why are you shooting me too?!"
(End of Chapter)
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