106: Chapter 106 Gaia Enters the Highest Heaven (Part 1)

Life is always a miracle; often, it only needs a little sunlight and rain to thrive.

On the land of Vulcan-IV, time flew by; three years had passed since the ork war.

Icarus's 1,200-day transformation of the planet was complete.

Vulcan had been transformed into a Gaia planet where any species could live comfortably, possessing immensely powerful ecosystem resilience.

Meanwhile, the collective memories and emotions of the people and machine spirits on the planet gathered within Icarus's machine spirit network. Thoughts, events, creation, and destruction were etched here as veins of information.

A new Warp entity—Gaia—was born this way.

The moment she was born, she opened a bubble of materialism within the idealistic world of the Immaterium.

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Deep in the Warp.

The eternal battlefield never ceased.

Khorne's brass throne burned forever.

Nurgle's garden was forever reborn in decay.

Slaanesh's palace collapsed and stood tall again in pleasure.

Tzeentch's Maze of Change continued to reorganize infinitely.

The Chaos Gods were forever warring against each other, forever fighting, biting at each other's territories, without end.

A ripple spread from the edge of the Warp. Cold, desireless order appeared there—a milky white, transparent bubble of order, squeezing from the material universe into the Immaterium.

A material island rose in the idealistic ocean.

The gaze of the Chaos Gods converged upon her, and the eternal war of the Immaterium stalled for a moment.

She was like a diving bell in the Warp. Not a material bubble propped up by the dreams of a Psyker like a Geller Field—she was composed of real historical information encoding, naturally immune to the distortions of the Warp.

Thus, they stalled for that moment. Such an existence should not appear in the Warp. And they were ready to clear this threat that was not under their control.

Khorne stood up from the brass throne piled with skulls.

He grabbed the wheel-axe that forever stood beside the brass throne.

The last time he stood up was when Slaanesh was born. At that time, he struck the ground in a rage, causing tremors in both the material universe and the Warp. Other than that—even when his favorite Bloodthirster, Ka'Bandha, was bewitched by Tzeentch and struck his back with full force with an axe while he wasn't paying attention; even when he furiously twisted off Ka'Bandha's wings and banished him from the Warp—he had never stood up.

But now, he stood up.

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He was always the most direct of the Chaos Gods. He did not need to think. A threat existed, so he just needed to kill it.

He stepped back with his right foot, brought the axe behind him, and then kicked off with his right foot to exert force. When the power moved up to his waist, he twisted his waist to add a layer of force; the power continued to conduct to the arm wielding the wheel-axe, adding a second layer; finally, as the full body's power concentrated on the axe blade and slashed towards Gaia, a third layer was added.

A dark, bloody arc of light lingered on the giant axe—that was the power of his authority: hatred, anger, violence, and slaughter.

The axe blade fell.

And then—

There was no impact.

There was no tearing.

There was not even any resistance.

It was as if he had used all his strength to slash at the air. A feeling of discomfort from using force incorrectly swept through his entire body. He could only rotate with the inertia of the force, recovering it to avoid hurting himself, because even a god's own power could backfire if used improperly. In the end, he could only keep spinning and slowly stop behind Gaia.

A strike sufficient to shake the Warp and the material universe—missed.

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Then, flames of anger exploded in his chest.

The Warp twisted in his fury, and a new Warp storm began to take shape.

He did not need to understand why he couldn't see it; he only needed to keep hacking until that bubble shattered.

He gripped the axe handle again, gathering strength, preparing to unleash a second strike.

However, the moment his power made contact with the bubble wall for the second time:

A point of information fragment flowed back into the depths of his existence along the contact surface.

His divine authority gained a bit of Gaia's information.

The use of violence actually had a background.

Those slashes, those killings, those wars—in Gaia's records, they all had a "why."

Humans never killed for the sake of killing; they swung their swords for land, for family, for belief, for survival, or to protect someone behind them. Or, they created death to display power, for hunting, or for plunder.

This was completely different from his authority of "pure, meaningless violence."

In his records, there was no such thing as "pure, meaningless violence," at least not among humans, the largest race in the galaxy.

All violence had its "cause" and "result."

This meant that within Gaia's sphere of influence:

Inside her bubble, where her information network covered, his authority lost its foundation; it was not recognized.

His axe could shake the Warp and tear reality—but he could not hack through "information" itself.

Khorne understood, but he did not need to comprehend; he only needed to push the threshold of his attack beyond what Gaia could handle.

These things flashed through his consciousness like fragments, like reflections in blood, like a momentary hallucination.

He did not "understand" most of the content; his body just "felt" it.

He only knew that his authority had been challenged.

Thus, his anger grew even more intense.

He raised the battle-axe for the third time, this time pouring nearly all the power of his authority into it:

He didn't care what was on the other side; he just wanted it to disappear quickly.

Just as the axe blade was about to fall—

A golden figure appeared silently in front of the bubble.

It was the Emperor.

His human soul, the Star Child, had detached from the withered husk on the Golden Throne. He had come to Vulcan, observing and watching over it here.

At this very moment, he manifested at the intersection of matter and idealism created by Gaia's condensation.

His body was woven from golden light, as dazzling as in the historical paintings of 30K.

Only in his eyes burned ten thousand years of fatigue and pain, representing the wear and tear of time.

He did not waste words.

The Emperor's left hand precisely gripped Khorne's wrist, blocking the strike in mid-air, while his right fist had already smashed into Khorne's cheek.

Caught off guard.

Khorne was sent flying, the wheel-axe slipping from his hand, spinning and falling into an unknown part of the Warp.

"Corpse Emperor!"

Khorne's roar exploded in the Warp, like the echo of a planet shattering.

He lunged at the Emperor.

A most primitive, savage fight unfolded within the Immaterium.

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No flashing psychic powers, no brilliant magic.

At the level of gods, those ways of using power would only be a dissipation of energy.

Now, they only needed to concentrate power on the most direct points of contact: fists and faces, knees and ribs, elbows and chins.

Khorne was laughing.

Wild and unbridled.

How many ten thousand years had it been since he had such a satisfying fight?

The end of anger is laughter.

The Emperor was a very good target; he was a warrior worthy of being his opponent.

Direct, pure, every punch had a response, every kick had a block.

Although he was also engaged in eternal war,

His opponents were the other three guys: one played tricks, one played with pleasure, and the last one was basically putrid sludge.

It had been a very, very long time since anyone had engaged in direct physical collision with him, communicating with fists.

This fist-to-flesh brawl, that feeling of pain transmitted from the body and the surging of blood flowing rapidly, finally made him feel the long-lost, pure ecstasy of a warrior once again.

The Emperor had no expression.

He fought like a silent statue.

He did not laugh, nor did he roar, but every one of his attacks was imbued with the unshakable will of humanity.

That firm will of sitting on the throne for ten thousand years every day, resisting the temptation of ascension every moment.

You hit me once, I hit you back once, no dodging, no flashing, until someone admits defeat or falls.

This "turn-based" struggle lasted for a long time, until at one moment

Golden light began to burn slowly on the Emperor's body.

The Emperor's god-killing power could no longer be offset or suppressed by Khorne; it began to gather on the Emperor's body.

Finally, the Emperor leaped up, a knee strike slamming into the center of Khorne's skull.

A tiny crack appeared in the brass helmet.

Khorne's body was forced to lean back, even retreating half a step.

He lost, he was even wounded.

This was the essence of the Emperor's authority, marking the battle with Khorne, finally carving a crack on the level of Khorne's existence.

That crack was infinitesimal, but it existed.

Khorne steadied himself, roaring as he prepared to counterattack again.

Then he stopped.

Three other figures emerged from different directions.