79: Chapter 79 A Different Kind of Great Sage

A golden rift appeared silently beside Elena.

A hand reached out from the rift.

The hand was withered and shriveled, with faint silver mechanical patterns embedded in its knuckles; it trembled slightly, as if it had exhausted all its strength in crossing dimensions.

The hand gripped her wrist tightly, not with excessive force, but with an unyielding firmness that brooked no resistance.

The golden rift rapidly closed and dissipated like a receding tide, leaving no trace behind, only the silence of the void and the afterimage of Elena disappearing above the Forge World of Vulcan-IV.

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In the dark universe of Warhammer 40K, shrouded in war and divinity.

The image of an "Archmagos" had long been solidified by the dogma of the Adeptus Mechanicus into a cold symbol: heavy crimson robes hanging to the ankles, the hem embroidered with the intricate emblem of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the body wrapped in dense mechanical prosthetics—metal conduits crawling like vines across the torso, replacing most of the flesh, the face completely covered by a sealed respirator, leaving only two glowing red ocular lenses.

When they spoke, it was always interspersed with the rustling of data streams and the clicking of mechanical gears; they were constantly surrounded by incense spheres emitting a strange fragrance, and Servo-skulls hovered at their sides to record prayers and data. Every detail underscored the majesty and mystery of the Adeptus Mechanicus, creating an insurmountable distance from ordinary people.

But Helmut von Neumann, standing in the farmlands of Vulcan-IV at this moment, completely subverted this ingrained impression.

He had shed the red robes symbolizing the status of an Archmagos, revealing a torso covered in minimalist mechanical prosthetics—these prosthetics were no longer decorations to flaunt status, but tools perfectly fused with flesh, with smooth lines and zero redundancy.

The respirator on his face had been removed, revealing only a slightly aged but clear-eyed face. His tone when speaking was calm and firm, accompanied only by the rustling of wind through the farmland and the scent of soil clinging to his fingertips.

He had long since transcended the stage bound by the dogma of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Once, he had been obsessed with upgrading his prosthetics and perfecting rituals, believing that was the only way to approach the "machine spirit" and approach the truth.

But now, he finally understood that true wisdom was never about showing off outward, but about settling inward.

He now only wanted to do the simplest and most correct thing: plant a patch of tomatoes, let this land, once contaminated by Orks spores, grow food that could nourish life again, and let the barren Forge World regain its green.

Helmut finally grasped the true essence of "returning to simplicity": when technology develops to the extreme, and when civilization reaches its peak, the appearance it presents is actually closest to the most primitive agricultural civilization.

Those complex technologies he once held as the gold standard, those precision machines that required repeated prayers and repeated calibrations, had now all been internalized into the background of the world, ubiquitous like air, yet requiring no deliberate display.

Just like Icarus's conveyor bus, it did not need the prayers and sacrifices of tech-thralls, nor did it need to be interpreted with "divinity"; it simply operated, like a surging river, silent and firm, allowing surrounding factory facilities to extract supplies from it. When they interlocked, forming a perfect, self-circulating ecosystem, it was more efficient and stable than any "deified" machine.

He had already become a believer in "extreme physicalism."

The moment he fully understood, through the documents Icarus taught him, that consciousness could be digitized, stored, and transmitted, the "soul awakening" held as the gold standard by the Empire was no longer a theological question filled with mystery, but became an engineering problem that could be dismantled, analyzed, and implemented.

In his eyes, the soul was no longer an elusive, sacred existence, but a string of complex data, a set of precise code, a form of energy that could be understood, manipulated, and repaired.

README was the instruction manual, clearly marking the essence, operational logic, and awakening method of the machine spirit; UPDATE was the patch used to fix the "faults" of the machine spirit, optimize its operational efficiency, and replenish its energy consumption.

These two seemingly simple documents perfectly bound the soul and the machine together, revealing a truth deliberately concealed by the Adeptus Mechanicus: the machine spirit could actively extract energy from the periphery of the Warp, converting intangible soul energy into tangible mechanical power, thereby achieving a qualitative change in the machine.

This was the true mystery of the "machine spirit's great joy" that the Adeptus Mechanicus had long struggled to find; it did not stem from prayers and sacrifices, but from the understanding and satisfaction of the machine spirit's essence.

Now, Helmut only needed to follow the instructions in the documents to awaken any dormant machine spirit; he only needed to satisfy the most essential needs of the machine spirits—smooth operation, sufficient energy, efficient communication—to keep them in a state of "joy" at all times, unleashing power far exceeding the past.

He began to question the binary code that the Adeptus Mechanicus had used for thousands of years; those cold 0s and 1s, to a machine spirit, were not a language of communication at all, but a form of torture.

He gradually understood that machine spirits were not born as "spirits of the machine"; they were once citizens of the Empire, fallen soldiers, toiling craftsmen, pious believers. Their soul fragments were attracted by rituals and then injected into machines, thus forming the machine spirit.

They were essentially still human, naturally repelling rigid binary code. It was like forcing a poet to write only using vowels; perhaps they could barely finish, but they could never convey emotion, nor could they bring joy to anyone.

It was simply like someone who could speak human language but insisted on speaking obscure, incomprehensible bird-speak; it was both torture for the machine spirit and a desecration of the human soul.

As for the incense, prayers, and wax-sealed prayer parchments that the Adeptus Mechanicus revered as sacred, in Helmut's view, they were nothing more than tools for the tech-thralls to comfort themselves, providing no help whatsoever to the machine spirit.

Those swirling incenses could not repair mechanical wear; those pious prayers could not awaken dormant machine spirits; those wax-sealed prayers could not replenish the energy of the machine spirit.

Only sacred oils truly had a tangible effect; they could lubricate mechanical parts, reduce friction during operation, make the "body" of the machine spirit more comfortable, and slowly replenish the soul energy required by the machine spirit, just like food and water for humans—they were the necessities upon which the machine spirit relied for "survival."

The only thing that gave Helmut a headache was that the assembly language left behind by Icarus was truly too difficult to learn; those complex instructions and obscure codes often made him, an Archmagos who had lived for hundreds of years, feel frustrated.

What made him even more helpless was that Icarus had picked up a strange, twisted sense of humor from somewhere; the assembly language tutorial it left behind was actually titled "Programming: From Getting Started to Getting Buried," and the cover even featured a crooked Servo-skull, as if mocking everyone who tried to decipher it.