Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 350 Corpse Guild
After careful consideration, Chen Xi decided to make significant adjustments to the Empire's original offensive strategy.

He abandoned the radical plan to simultaneously annihilate the two opposing forces, and instead adopted a more cautious tactical deployment: first, he ordered the Imperial army to adopt a posture of territorial expansion and launch a series of feint attacks in the surrounding star systems, carefully creating the illusion that the Empire intended to seize strategic locations.

When the time is right, we will gather our elite forces to launch a fatal blow to the Throne World of the Necromancers.

The core intention of this strategic adjustment is very clear—to avoid overstimulating the Necromancers in space and prevent them from being forced into a desperate situation.

Chen Xi hoped that by feigning weakness, the Space Necromancers would misjudge the true strength and strategic intentions of the Imperial army.

When the Necromancers of Space realize that they have no chance of winning a conventional war, they may take a desperate gamble and release the Star God fragments they have imprisoned as their last trump card—which is precisely the strategic objective that Chen Xi has carefully designed.

However, Chen Xi is not entirely convinced of the actual effectiveness of this strategic adjustment.

He was well aware of the paradox of Eldar prophecies: prophecies often become self-fulfilling curses.

The Eldar always foresee a disaster and then take various preventative measures, which in turn lead to the fulfillment of the prophecy.

This fateful paradox made Chen Xi wonder if his strategic adjustments might backfire and become the direct cause for the Necromancers in space to release the Star God fragments.

To verify the correctness of the decision, Chen Xi decided to personally perform a psychic prophecy.

When he focused his mind to peer into the future, he saw only a chaotic and unclear picture. The trajectory of the future was shrouded in a thick fog, making it difficult to discern.

But this prediction was not entirely fruitless—Chen Xi clearly sensed that every choice he made was shaping different possibilities for the future.

This crucial revelation gave him enough confidence to ultimately lead him to adopt Vallis's prophetic advice and make significant adjustments to the imperial strategy.

Meanwhile, Vallis was also closely monitoring the changing situation.

Like Chen Xi, she was well aware of the characteristics of the Spirit Clan's prophecies, and therefore could not be sure whether the future she foresaw had changed.

But based on the belief that "the future has changed and the Eldar have a chance to survive," Valis still did her best to improve the situation according to the prophecy.

After Chen Xi adjusted her battle plan, she immediately set about verifying the impact of this change on the trajectory of fate.

In the Warhammer 40K universe, while prophetic abilities are not entirely unattainable, differences in innate talent determine how much of fate a psyker can glimpse.

Some psionicists can only capture fragments of the future; their foresight is often limited to a few seconds—sometimes they barely sense danger before the enemy is already upon them.

Such prophets can at most issue hasty warnings, but they are unlikely to be able to take effective action.

For truly powerful psychics, predicting the future is as natural as breathing.

Take Ezekiel of the Dark Angels Chapter as an example. He could accurately foresee changes on the battlefield and command the warriors of the First Legion accordingly, enabling them to dismantle the enemy's offensive with a precognitive ability.

His prophetic abilities allow the Dark Angel to always gain the upper hand and even lay deadly traps before the enemy can act.

However, even the most outstanding prophets among humankind are but toddlers in the presence of the Eldar.

As an ancient race born with psychic abilities and having studied psychic technology for 60 million years, the Eldar have reached the pinnacle of prophetic skills, capable of discerning even the slightest ripples in the river of time.

Therefore, for an Eldar prophet like Valis, confirming whether her intervention has altered the future is a piece of cake.

With just a little concentration, she can detect the signs of change within the intricate web of fate.

When she finally confirmed that the future had indeed changed due to Chen Xi's strategic adjustments, a long-lost sense of hope welled up within her. Perhaps, the seemingly irreversible tragic fate of the Aidaling tribe truly had a chance to be reversed.

This discovery strengthened her resolve to continue turning the wheels of fate and fight for the last chance of survival for her people.
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While Chen Xi was busy dealing with the Eldar prophet and the Star God fragments, 32, MaiMai, and the others were venturing deep into the hive capital of the Mariupol sector, trying to find clues about the Unseen Brotherhood.

Each of them had their own killing squad, so they were certainly not lacking in combat power.

The fact that several killing squads were crammed together made the team seem somewhat bloated. In addition, there were too many targets to investigate, so they decided to split into several groups, with each person choosing a direction to investigate and reporting back as soon as they found anything.

After all, they are just playing pieces. Even if they are wiped out, it's just a matter of shouting from the outside and putting more pieces back in.

And the enemy will be completely exposed to them.

Unless the enemy kills them by creating an accident, leaving them completely unaware.

But this is still somewhat difficult.

After all, this group included a sage of the Mechanicus, a master forger of Astartes, a wandering merchant and a naval captain, as well as a lord of Kriegburg.

Hoping to kill them silently is a bit of wishful thinking.

Even though they were divided into five groups, each leading a killing squad, they still appeared to be "numerous and powerful".

32 only had one AI Craftsman and two Caslan AI Soldier units by his side. Although the number seemed small, if the two AI Soldier units were allowed to dismantle freely, these two AI Soldier units alone could destroy the entire lower level of the hive city.

The target of her investigation was the Corpse Guild located in the lower levels of the hive.

Although corpse starch is not actually made from corpses, but is a synthetic food produced by the Cult of Mechanics using promethium extract, this does not mean that the corpse starch you eat does not contain corpses.

The reason is simple: the empire has too many corpses to deal with.

Take, for example, the capital of the Mariupol star region, which they are investigating. Within this massive man-made mountain range, there are approximately 32 billion inhabitants.

While it may not be comparable to some mega-cities with hundreds of billions of residents, the population is still quite dense.

With such a dense population, even if the mortality rate is only one in a thousand, the resulting corpses could physically form a mountain.

After all, even if only one in a thousand of 100 million people die, that's still 100,000 people, while one in a thousand of 80 billion is 80 million.

With so many deaths, it was clearly impossible to bury them all intact.

Even if the Empire had a burial world, using an entire planet as a cemetery would still be far from sufficient.

Moreover, no one in the Empire would waste resources like that.

Not to mention that ordinary people don't even have the right to be buried.

But so many corpses needed to be dealt with, so the Corpse Guild came into being.

They processed the collected corpses into corpse starch, which was then made into a synthetic nutritional paste to feed the residents of Nest City. This way, they disposed of the corpses and fed the huge population at the same time, thus resolving their dilemma.

This is certainly a good thing, but the problem is that corpse guilds are prone to becoming cults.

(End of this chapter)