As Zhou Yun stepped into the PDF compound, his brows furrowed almost immediately.
Lying beside the buildings were scattered corpses. They still wore the uniforms of the Asford Planetary Defense Force, their faces hollowed, marked with bite wounds and festering decay.
Most of the corpses were missing parts. Clearly, after the Governor ordered the bombing of Old District Eight and buried them all beneath rubble, these PDF soldiers had resorted to cannibalism.
But Zhou Yun didn't care much about that.
In the hive city, consuming the dead wasn't something that weighed heavily on one's conscience. After all, the infamous corpse starch contained at least some human remains.
The corpse starch was made by the Shitai Kōkai (Corpse Guild), who collected bodies with their hearse convoys and mobile factories and processed them into consumable starch.
Most hive dwellers had eaten corpse starch at some point.
What truly unsettled Zhou Yun, though, was that these bodies had lain here for at least a century… yet they had not rotted into simple skeletons.
Cautious, he raised his hand toward one of the corpses.
"Boom!!" he uttered a syllable.
The corpse's head burst like a melon struck with a hammer, red, green, and white fluids splattering across the wall behind it in a grotesque pattern.
Even after such time, the head had become soft enough that a blast from his Kūki Jūyaku (Air Gun Elixir) could shatter it.
Yet the other corpses didn't move, didn't rise like he suspected they would.
That wasn't right.
He frowned, raising his hand again.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Three more corpses' heads exploded, but the rest still lay motionless.
He glanced back at Marukitto and Mongu.
Marukitto nodded faintly.
So it was him.
Zhou Yun gave him a nod of acknowledgment, then swept his mechanical hat-hand over the whole wall.
One by one, the remaining corpses' heads popped, painting the walls red, green, and white.
Only when every corpse was reduced to an unmoving, shattered mess did Zhou Yun smile faintly and stride toward the PDF warehouse.
Marukitto shook his head with a sigh.
"So cautious…"
"He was afraid I might awaken the undead?"
"He… he noticed that you used the 'angel's' spell to keep them dormant?" Mongu asked quietly, astonished.
"He knows us better than we know ourselves," Marukitto said, his voice steady.
"Who is he really? 'Lain Rusu'… such an obvious fake name." Mongu's eyes followed Zhou Yun's back suspiciously.
But Marukitto stayed silent. He remembered the 'angel's' terrified shrieks.
Most of the time, the 'angel's' voice was carefree, almost joyful. He had never heard it scream in fear like that.
And in those shrieks…
"That name… might not be entirely false," Marukitto finally said gravely.
"The 'angel' said his face… looked like…"
Mongu caught the hesitation in his brother's tone, as though he was struggling with whether to speak the name aloud.
"Looked like who?" Mongu pressed.
"During the Great Crusade ten thousand years ago… the demigod of the First Legion."
Marukitto took a deep breath.
"Lain Eiru Jonson. His face is almost identical to Lain Eiru Jonson's."
"But the size doesn't fit. And neither does the temperament."
"You're saying… 'Lain Rusu' looks like a Primarch?" Mongu inhaled sharply, chills running through him. His mind ran wild with terrifying possibilities.
"Don't think too much about it. He didn't pry into our secrets, so we won't pry into his," Marukitto cut him off. "Finding that relic is more important."
Marukitto glanced around, his eyes falling on the PDF's office.
He clapped his brother on the shoulder, leading him toward the building.
The Imperium stored its information in many forms, but most commonly on parchment or data-slates.
The most valuable and critical information was kept on parchment, the rest on data-slates.
Mongu rummaged through stacks of data-slates, searching for the ones they needed.
Marukitto worked methodically through the parchments.
"Found it."
He pointed to one parchment covered in dense Low Gothic script.
It was a detailed PDF record of the plague that had ravaged Old District Eight a century ago.
He waved Mongu over. "Find me a data-slate with a map of Old District Eight."
Mongu quickly plucked one out, remembering they'd promised Zhou Yun they'd find him a map.
Marukitto studied the map displayed on the data-slate, marking each location where the plague had first broken out.
The marks formed a loose ring, with one particularly dense area in the center.
"The plague covered half of Old District Eight. This half must be where the source was," Marukitto murmured.
"According to the PDF's records, the first infections appeared here."
He connected the densest points into a rough circle and then traced the building in the center.
"Shitai Kōkai," he said, his finger tapping the map.
The Corpse Guild building stood right in the middle of the earliest infections.
"So it was the Corpse Guild that spread the plague, channeling the power of the 'angel's' garden into the material universe."
"According to the 'angels,' that power was being infused into an ancient artifact."
"But before they could finish, the Governor realized what was happening and ordered the whole district bombed and buried."
Marukitto's voice trembled slightly with excitement.
"But that nearly-finished artifact is likely still there, inside the Corpse Guild!"
"If we can find that artifact, and then recover the Warp engine from the underhive… we can save all of Asford."
Indeed… not every hive world formed monopolistic Corpse Guilds…
(End of Chapter)
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