Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

In Perturabo's Terra Workshop, due to the price of native natural wood in the Throne World, it is probably among the best in the entire galaxy. The wooden frames of tables and chairs, etc., that were originally made of wood in Olympia, are now Here, everything is basically replaced with steel and covered with wooden paint.

The surrounding paintings also follow the characteristics of the place, changing from the blue sky of Olympia, the running waterwheel and the fruit farmers picking olives, to the steel city under the neon lights of the hive at night, factory chimneys and factory chimneys emitting gray and black poisonous gas. Drainage channels carrying high concentrations of chemicals.

The former are mainly oil paintings, while the latter are mostly pencil sketches of the Lord of Iron when he was unhappy. The common feature of both is that they focus on realism. Apparently, Perturabo often cast his gaze through the window of the workshop. into his environment.

Morse listened to the sounds in the air: "The soundproofing here is good, you can't hear anything going on underneath."

"I can hear something that should be inaudible to mortals," Perturabo corrected, rummaging through his desk after desk.

From time to time, he would lift up a stone statue covered with dust-proof cloth, or remove some layers of parchment, and use the simplest pen and paper to draw the military design drawings of the most cutting-edge technology of the entire human empire, back and forth indifferently. flip.

The moment these design drawings were completed, they were already stored in one of the world's largest and most reliable databases, namely Perturabo's brain.

"What do you think of the Word Bearers?" Morse asked, not finding a chair he could make indoors, so he pulled one out of the air.

"What do you think?" Perturabo paused for a moment, "No, I have nothing to say."

"It doesn't matter, Lord of Iron. Even if you are on Terra, the Emperor will not come thousands of miles away to listen to what you are saying." Morse smiled and made dangerous persuasion.

Perturabo seemed to have found what he needed. He wrapped the thing in a piece of drawing, held it in his hand, and sat down on the iron chair opposite Morse.

"I can see the same pious look on the faces of many mortals from worlds conquered by the Empire. They believe in a series of self-defeating dogmas, with their own rituals and prayers.

"I don't allow the Iron Warriors to do this. I need my warriors to put their spiritual sustenance on matters that are more reliable and more practical, but I allow vulnerable individuals to seek refuge from religion to get what they can't get. strength."

He opened the blueprint, looked at the contents, and continued: "But the Word Bearers are an army, a legion of Astartes warriors, ordered by the Emperor to unify mankind. They should not be confused with some Like people who are still in the early stages of social development, they indulge themselves in a few scriptures."

"But the most unfortunate thing is that what they are doing is beneficial to the Crusade from the perspective of the Empire. So the Emperor pinches his nose and tolerates the Word Bearers coming to his throne world to open a charity hospital."

Morse smiled, put his hand on the armrest of the seat, and knocked gently, "Ten minutes ago, I asked Malcador if the emperor knew about this, and reminded Malcador not to use 'him' "Don't know" is used to confuse people, or "He knows everything" is used to further prove that He is His."

"The Emperor knows," Perturabo sighed.

"Of course," Morse shrugged. "The Word Bearers arrived on Terra two weeks earlier than the Iron Warriors, almost at the same time as Corvus Corax; three days after they entered Terra, they quickly ran to various lairs. Giving - in a sense, it can be regarded as providing the plundered property to the emperor's place on earth. "

"We will be next, and the Space Wolves and Leon El'Jonson are half a step slower. They may be able to come back at about the same time as the Luna Wolves."

"Afterwards, we will meet the Emperor together in the Terran Palace." Perturabo said, recalling the information sent by Terra's ground command. The unknown situation made the Iron Lord feel a rare uneasiness.

"Feeling tired?" Morse asked. "You just finished a big battle."

"And you have been on vacation for a few months in Chogolis, Morse." Perturabo said, "Steel is not so easily tired, and military affairs come first."

"That's good, so, I mean, can you wake up Magnus?" Morse changed the topic and pointed at the packet of paper in Perturabo's hand.

Perturabo shook his head slightly helplessly, took the small Magnus out of the scroll and placed it in the palm of his hand.

The moment the Primarch's skin touched the small Magnus, the latter was successfully activated. Yigulu stood up from Perturabo's hand, shook his head in confusion, and his eyes returned to clarity.

Apparently, Magnus had added additional triggering mechanisms to his outer shell.

"Hey, Perturabo," Magnus said cheerfully, until he saw Morse and his smile suddenly turned awkward, "and, hi, wizard."

"You and Mortarion learned this title?" Morse asked.

"No, hello, Artisan!" Magnus quickly changed his words regretfully, "From a theoretical logic perspective, a limited period of time together will not affect Mortarion's numerology and its related derivative theories. My inherent thinking mode and scientific mathematical methods... No, forget it, Morse..."

"Okay, I just want to know what you plan to hide from me and tell Perturabo face to face." Morse said happily.

"I'm not hiding it from you. I just wanted to introduce my new discovery to Perturabo face to face. I didn't expect you to be here." Magnus jumped away from Perturabo's hand and relied on his otherworldly strength. Jumping to Perturabo's table. "Give me a piece of paper and a pen."

Perturabo pulled out a pen from the hidden compartment on the side of the table and handed it to Magnus: "The paper is on your right."

Magnus pulled out a blank piece of paper. Thanks to Perturabo's lack of ritual sense of using parchment for everything, most of the papers he uses here are light and thin, suitable for Magnus's body type.

He drew a figure similar to a geometric circle on the paper as quickly as possible, and introduced at the same time: "You know, I have never understood how Mortarion could use a compass to calculate the location of the Terra Webway Gate. Not even Conrad Coates’s predictions could do that, could they?

"So after that, I tried to use the method in the article Mortarion submitted to me to reproduce his calculations - for this reason, I even published his article in one of our more useful internal conference journals... …”

"Then, although I don't understand why, I found that his mathematical logic does have merit - only for this calculation of the Webway Gate!"

"You see, this is a shortened version of the Galactic Overview of the Webway map recorded in the Infernal Map given to us by the Emperor," Magnus said, pointing to the sketch he had drawn.

"It's impossible to finish the full version, but there's no need for it. I followed Mortarion's logic and carried out the distribution of Webway nodes in the galaxy... well, that is to separate statistically randomly generated clusters and draw them from a large amount of data. Determine statistical significance by selecting the favorable data and discarding the rest...

“Then I actually got this image that almost worked directly as a rune.”

He emphatically tapped the drawing on the table with his pen, tapping hard at several turning points to attract the attention of Perturabo, who had almost no knowledge of psychic powers. "Look, do you feel that this rune... Is it somewhat familiar?"

"Thutmons, your psychic forbidden rune. In Olympia, we used it to tear off a corner of..." Perturabo said, watching Magnus draw so many words on the wall of the webway. The more he draws, the better he can remember even if he memorizes them by rote.

"To be precise, it is the mutual interference of the surreal effect of isolating the inside and outside. That is, let's imagine that after Conrad came back, he was so nagging, and we all knew the story of the Eldar isolating the Pantheon..." Mag Nus said, excitement gradually rising on his small face, "If we can activate this rune within the galaxy..."

"The Emperor was drained," Morse said. "Probably not enough."

Magnus' expression darkened and he sighed regretfully: "You're right, I just thought about it... Well, I just said that I finally figured out how Mortarion found the Webway Gate, because Tai The Pull Web Dao Gate is at the core of this rune. As long as you check it according to the mathematical rules, you can easily know that there must be something there. "

"The Webway has millions of passages, maybe more," Morse said. "I believe that any kind of rune can be combined with such a huge basic number."

"Anyway, I got the answer: Yi Zhi, Mortarion just happened to hit this rune. Maybe he saw it on the wall of my room and wrote it down..."

"Did you let him into your study?" asked Perturabo.

"The throne is yours, I can't refuse! That's why I don't want to stay on Terra..." Magnus said angrily, "Goodbye, Perturabo!"

After saying that, Magnus' will was withdrawn from the small Magnus and returned to the distant stars.

Perturabo found a shelf and put Magnus on it.

"I guess that's why he-he wasn't found by Mortarion, and why you brought me here." Morse shrugged. "He has been here, not in the Palace of Terra. It seems that you and your companions have also begun to create secrets behind my back, Perturabo."

Then Morse heard a rare laugh. Considering how well the workshop was soundproofed, he believed the chuckle could only have come from one person.