Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 261 The Sleeping Primal Forge

The underground space of the Kaul furnace is a huge, suffocating warehouse-like facility.

The dark alloy walls are covered with thick pipes and servo mechanical tracks, while giant mechanical arms hanging from the ceiling are like sleeping steel tentacles, ready to maintain the static force field below.

The entire space was enveloped in a cold blue light, which came from thousands of neatly arranged stasis field hibernation chambers, which were densely embedded in the metal frame like a honeycomb, stretching all the way to the horizon.

This is indeed a warehouse, but it doesn't store ordinary supplies or machinery; instead, it houses a sleeping army.

Each stasis field hibernation pod emitted a faint blue glow, and within the translucent energy barrier, tall and still figures could be vaguely seen—these were the Proto-Forged Space Marines secretly created by the Great Sage Cal at the request of Regent Robert Guilliman.

They were frozen outside of time, and their genetically enhanced bodies looked so robust and powerful that they far surpassed even the modern Space Marines.

Servo-controlled skulls silently patrolled the compartments, monitoring the vital signs of every soldier, while the automated production line continued to operate deep within, as if silently proclaiming: this army is still growing, waiting for the day it will be awakened.

Ten thousand years ago, Robert Guilliman, before the embers of the Great Rebellion had even cooled, had already keenly sensed the impending crisis.

He gazed at the scarred Empire, realizing that the current Space Marines might one day be unable to withstand the full-scale backlash of Chaos.

He then secretly summoned Belisarius Caul, the most visionary sage of the Mechanicus, and gave him a mission spanning millennia: to modify and upgrade the old Space Marines, creating a more powerful army to prepare for the galaxy's potential annihilation in the future.

In fact, Guilliman was not the only one who foresaw this threat.

Rogue Dorn, the iron-fisted Primarch of the Empire, also worries that the forces of Chaos will eventually return.

His opposition to Guilliman's decision to split the Legion was not out of stubbornness, but based on cold strategic considerations—he believed that scattered Legions would be like a lone boat facing a raging storm in the face of a chaotic, large-scale invasion, unable to muster enough strength to resist the real threat.

History has proven that their concerns were not unfounded.

In the ten thousand years that followed, the Imperial Chapters were repeatedly exhausted by Abaddon's Black Crusade.

Despite the Empire's official claims that it "thwarted" Chaos's offensives every time, the success of the Thirteenth Black Crusade and the subsequent tearing of the Great Rift ruthlessly revealed the fact that Abaddon was never truly defeated.

Each of his expeditions weakened the Empire's defenses, until finally tearing open the veil of the real universe, unleashing fear and destruction upon the galaxy.

Ironically, when Guilliman awoke in the forty-second millennium, he was shocked to find that the Astartes, which he had written years earlier—a temporary manual meant to serve as a tactical reference—had been regarded by his descendants as an inviolable supreme classic and rigidly implemented for ten thousand years.

He never imagined that this "1.0 trial version" of toilet paper would be so blindly worshipped, even becoming a shackle that hindered the empire's military development.

However, in this gloomy atmosphere of despair, Belisarius Caul's existence became the only ray of light.

This solitary sage silently carried out Guilliman's instructions for millennia, single-handedly advancing two nearly impossible tasks: improving the Space Marines and paving the way for the Primarch's resurrection.

It was his persistence that made Guilliman's return possible, and gave the Imperium a glimmer of hope in the turbulent forty-second millennium. When the Primarch returned to Holy Terra, facing a shattered galaxy and the Imperium, Dorakal provided him with hundreds of thousands of Primitive Space Marines, enabling the Primarch to launch a new crusade to save the Imperium, just as he had done during the Great Crusade ten thousand years earlier.

This expedition, which lasted for more than two hundred years, is known as the Unyielding Expedition, and the new era that was ushered in by the Unyielding Expedition is also known as the Unyielding Era.

However, it will be some time before Primarch Robert Guilliman awakens and returns, and these Primarch Astartes slumbering in the stasis field must still await the call of fate.

They are like swords that have been sheathed, not yet ready to be drawn.

Although Chen Xi had secretly deployed small groups of Prototype Space Marines and allowed them to demonstrate their abilities in key battles, this secret, which was enough to change the military landscape of the Empire, was still strictly kept under wraps.

In fact, the only known original Space Marines are those unfortunate souls from the Weeping Chapter.

Although they had already been involved in the battle and were known to the Blackwatch and the Blood Angels, for various reasons, this matter had not yet spread within the Empire, and would not spread.

This secret is currently under wraps and will not be leaked.

Therefore, Chen Xi's purpose in visiting the underground armory of the Kaul Forging Furnace was not to awaken the 10,000 dormant original casting warriors and send them to the battlefield.

Although this terrifying force, comparable to an entire legion during the Great Crusade, could sweep across the Rostov Sector and utterly crush the resurrected Necromancer dynasty if deployed in battle.

This was an unprecedentedly large Astartes force since the Great Rebellion. Even the Battle of Badab, which was hailed as the largest Space Marine civil war since the Great Rebellion, did not involve so many Astartes.

Ten thousand genetically enhanced and well-equipped Primal Astartes warriors—such a force would be considered a formidable legion even in the Great Crusade era.

If used properly, they can not only help Chen Xi quickly quell the current threats in the sub-sector, but also win him unparalleled political capital and military advantages.

But reason ultimately prevailed over temptation.

Whether considering the potential political storm that prematurely exposes the Primitive Warriors, the possibility of an Inquisition investigation due to such a large-scale gathering of Space Marines, or the worry of disrupting the Grand Sage Caul's overall plan—Chen Xi had to restrain this impulse.

This force must make its debut at the most opportune time and in the most perfect way, and now is clearly not the time.

He didn't come for these sleeping warriors, but to retrieve something that Kaul had promised to lend him.

A prototype Titan-class machine with an autonomous machine spirit that can be deployed in combat without a pilot.

It was discovered by Kaul during an archaeological excavation. Although this Titan was not considered an antique by Kaul himself, it was a complete relic in the 40k era, as it was born in the M33 era.

(End of this chapter)