Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 424 Imperial Corpse Eater
More realistically, if this terrifying cycle is stopped, where will the mountains of corpses produced every day be placed?

If everyone were buried in the ground, a new mountain would be built up in less than a month, and the tombstones would spread like a forest to the horizon, leaving no place for the living.

The energy consumed by the incinerator is enough to bring warships in half a star sector to a standstill.

Even more deadly is the question of how to feed those billions of mouths that are constantly proliferating like cancer cells and are perpetually hungry.
The lower levels of the hive city are forever filled with the roar of hunger, a time bomb more terrifying than any uprising.

Hungry people will devour everything, including those who try to help them.

Every distribution of rations at the relief station turned into stampedes and fights, and the most desperate people would even turn to darker sources of food—the homeless who disappeared in the dark alleys, never appearing in any official statistics.

The surplus from orbital rings and hydroponic farms is but a drop in the ocean compared to the exponentially expanding population and the insatiable demand for flesh-and-blood fuel.

Those carefully cultivated crops were included in the rationing list before they were even harvested. What each person ultimately received was nothing more than an energy bar that had undergone countless processing steps—bland, hard, yet labeled with "standard nutritional units," as if this could conceal the harsh reality of supply and demand behind it.

"What should we do? Let's eat."

This simple solution has been repeated far too many times throughout the millennia-long history of the empire.

Every famine, every siege, every expedition when supplies are cut off, this choice will emerge like a ghost, becoming the last line of defense—no, perhaps it can no longer be called a bottom line, but rather a habitual rule of survival.

When faced with a choice between morality and survival, the empire always chooses the latter.

The logic of the empire is cold and efficient: the living are more useful than the dead, and the dead can at least feed the living.

Thus, those comrades-in-arms who once fought side by side and those coworkers who spent their days together eventually became another process on the assembly line, another piece of fuel to keep the empire running.

Eat up those fallen comrades.

The canteen menu doesn't specify the source of the ingredients, but every worker knows it perfectly well.

They lined up in silence, took their plates, and stared at the unappetizing blob of gray paste—it could be beans, fungi, synthetic protein, or something else entirely.

No one asked, nor was there any need to ask, because this was public information within the Empire, not a secret.

As they chewed on the suspicious gray paste, they couldn't help but think of their colleagues who had been standing at the next workstation just yesterday.

Where did that person go? Why didn't they come to work today?
No one mentioned it, but every time his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, it was as if he was swallowing an unspoken answer.

For ten thousand years, hasn't the empire been resolving "trouble" in this "efficient" way?

The bodies did not need to be buried, and the hunger was relieved.

This is a perfect closed loop, a cruel mechanism that has been lubricated by blood for thousands of years.

From one perspective, this is indeed a perfect closed-loop system: workers produce weapons, weapons kill the enemy, dead workers feed living workers, and living workers continue to produce weapons.

There is no waste, no excess, only perpetual efficiency.

Although most "corpse starch" may not be directly derived from the human body (at least nominally), since the Dark Ages, "cannibalism" has been like the original sin of the empire, an inescapable, sordid secret that sustains its massive body.

In official documents, it is called "organic recycling," but in the nightmares of every Nest City resident, it has a more straightforward name.

In the suffocating density of the hive, even the lowest mortality rate means the end of tens of millions of lives every day.

If these corpses were piled up, they could fill the entire galaxy in less than a year. Incineration? It would be incredibly costly and yield no results.

Every joule of energy is precious to the Empire; how could it be wasted on a cremation ceremony that has no economic value?
Bury it? Land is limited and the problem is becoming increasingly serious.

In the hive city world where every inch of land is precious, even the living have to be crammed into hive apartments like sardines, so where is there any extra space to place the dead?
Thus, the empire found its "ultimate solution": to recycle corpses and put them into a perpetual motion machine of production and consumption.

This solution is so perfect that it solves the problem of corpse disposal, alleviates the food crisis, and improves resource utilization.

From a purely logical point of view, it is simply a genius invention.

The flesh and blood of the dead are used to feed the bodies of the living, maintaining the operation of this giant corpse processing plant called "Empire".

In this terrifying ecosystem, everyone is both potential food and potential diner.

Today you eat others, tomorrow others eat you, and so on, in an eternal cycle—or until the day the empire finally collapses.

Perhaps there is a more "humane" method?

Those proposals forgotten in the corners of data boards, those improvement plans whispered in aristocratic salons, those forbidden technologies sealed in the secret chambers of the Mechanicus—theoretically, there are indeed countless more civilized ways of living.

But within the empire, a zombie colossal entity beyond imagination, this terrifying cycle based on flesh and blood has become the most "suitable" logic for survival, applicable to the entire world.

Any attempt to change will be like a stone thrown into a stagnant sea, swallowed up without even creating a ripple.

"Honestly, this is never what I wanted." Chen Xi's gaze swept over the torrent of workers below, mixed in with the more stiff machine servants, staggering towards their respective "execution grounds." His voice was filled with helplessness and bitterness as he whispered to 32 beside him.

His fingers unconsciously dug into the railing of the observation deck, the deformation of the metal silently telling of his inner struggle.

Among those hunched backs, perhaps are the people who once cheered for his triumphant return, but now they have become fuel for this meat grinder.

32 responded to his sentiments with a joking remark: "Are you going to ignite the galaxy too?"

Her mechanical voice deliberately mimicked the tone of a certain audio-visual material, but the blue light flashing in her electronic eyes revealed the same emotions she was experiencing.

Behind this joke lies their unspoken understanding of Horus's past.

"We only have one chance to save the empire, and we cannot miss it." Chen Xi responded with a heavy sigh, which, although imitating Horus's lines, was also a statement of fact.

His gaze pierced through the factory's murky air, as if he could see into the more distant future—the critical juncture of either rebirth or destruction was approaching, like the final stillness before a supernova explosion.

The predicament he faced was remarkably similar to that of Horus, who raised the banner of rebellion years ago.
The same idealism, the same imperial burden, the same dilemma.

The only difference is that Horus ultimately embraced the abyss of chaos, while he stubbornly believed that he was walking on the thorny "right path".

Every step on this path is against my moral bottom line, yet I have no choice but to keep moving forward.

“Yes, if we can’t catch them, the Empire and humanity… will be completely finished.” 32 dropped all his joking tone, his metallic face unusually solemn.

They knew perfectly well what kind of end awaited the Empire as the galaxy was torn apart by the "Great Rift".

(End of this chapter)