Warhammer Cultivation: Cultivating the Tao Te Ching in the 40K Universe

Do you think that becoming a specimen or garbage is the worst possible outcome?

Horus shook his head, his voice low and somber.

"Actually... that could be considered a kind of kindness."

“If I told you that my father’s real plan was worse and more desperate than that.”

"In that endgame chessboard."

"It doesn't exist at all."

Horus pointed to the sky, and then to the elusive concept of fate.

"Perhaps in Father’s original plan, when we helped him unify the galaxy and helped him build the Internet."

"We should all die in the final battle."

"Like the Thunder Warriors of yesteryear."

"Let us use our blood to pave the last red carpet for the golden age of mortals."

"us……"

"Leave no one behind."

Chapter 533 One Possible

Horus did not press the issue of "survival" further.

He knew that sometimes, what was needed was not to rush to give an answer, but to wait for it to spread in the other person's heart.

Zhan Shuai turned around, his back to the archangel, and looked at the dark sky.

“Sanguielles, Hector talked a lot about the relationship between spiritual energy and the physical body in that Daoist canon, right?”

Horus's voice became erratic, as if he were talking to the wind or talking to himself.

“All things have a spirit. The reason why we Primal Bodies are so powerful is because our physical bodies have been modified to the extreme, enabling them to accommodate even stronger spirits.”

Horus turned around abruptly, his eyes flashing with a morbid fervor intertwined with reason.

"Did he ever tell you why we twenty-one brothers possess such a powerful warp essence?"

"Why are we born to command legions? Why is it that just by standing here, we can make mortals and even Astartes tremble on a spiritual level?"

Saint Gilles frowned and said in a deep voice:

"Because we are a miracle of genetic engineering. My father used his wisdom to combine it with the oldest alchemy in Terra..."

Horus abruptly interrupted him, his massive power claw slashing through the air with a tearing shriek.

"Stop fooling yourself with those childish platitudes!"

"Genes? If you really understood biology, you should know that simply piling up flesh and blood, even with the most perfect gene sequence, cannot create a psionicist like Magnus! Nor can it create an angel like you with wings who once could foresee the future! And it certainly cannot create a living nightmare like Koz!"

Horus took a step closer.

Do you know what the truth is?

"The truth is—Hector was right, but he was only half right."

"The essence of the soul of all conscious life originates from the subspace. The body is merely a container, a 'cup.' We scoop a spoonful of water from that ocean and pour it into this cup, and that becomes 'human.'"

"The cups of ordinary people are too small, and the water is murky. So their souls in the warp are just faint candlelight."

At this point, Horus suddenly laughed, with a smug look on his face.

"That's the most ironic part of Hector's so-called 'Golden Elixir Path.' Do you know what kind of person is closest to the essence of the 'Golden Elixir' in his theory?"

Saint Gilles did not answer, but he tightened his grip on his sword.

"She is a soulless one. She is the Silent Sister."

Horus asked and answered himself, his tone full of mockery.

"Why don't they have soul projections? Why can they isolate themselves from the subspace? If we follow Hector's theory, it's because they are 'perfect vessels' by nature!"

"Their bodies are like a seamless lock, tightly locking their tiny bit of subspace essence inside, not letting a single bit leak out."

"Isn't this the 'unity of essence, energy, and spirit' that Hector pursued? Isn't this the so-called 'golden elixir without leakage'?"

"Heh, a natural Golden Core cultivator, yet she's a nun named Silent Cultivator? How laughable."

Horus shook his head.

"But we are different."

He pointed to Saint Gilles's radiant body, then to himself.

“We are not ‘leak-free’. On the contrary, we are ‘overflowing’.”

“Our ‘cup’ is indeed a masterpiece of genetic engineering, incredibly sturdy. But the ‘water’ inside…”

A complex emotion flickered in Horus's eyes.

"That wasn't just a spoonful of water. That was... that someone forced the entire river in!"

"This is the source of our power. Not genes, not flesh and blood. It's the vast amount of warp essence contained within this body, enough to instantly turn a mortal into fireworks!"

Saint Gilles felt a chill.

He wanted to refute it, but Hector's Taoist theories echoed in his mind, and surprisingly, they seemed to corroborate Horus's crazy deductions.

"So here's the question, my brother."

Horus once again posed that fatal question.

"Where did such a vast, pure, even 'divine' power come from?"

"My father was a scientist, but he was not a god; he could not create a soul."

"After all, even the most powerful psionicists can only utilize the warp, not 'create' the essence of the warp."

“So, there is only one answer.”

Horus looked at Saint Gilles and said, word by word.

"Stolen."

Before the archangel could react, Horus raised his hand again.

This time, the illusion he projected was no longer the despair of the future, but a long-forgotten secret of the past.

It was a dark world filled with the remnants of ancient technology.

Deep beneath the earth lies a stone gate, even older than human history itself.

In the scene, a man wearing golden armor, but not as radiant as he is now, is standing in front of the door.

That was the emperor in his youth.

But not by one person.

Behind him, there were no Imperial Guards, no Primarchs, only a few blurry figures and ancient-looking men and women—the Immortals.

The emperor walked through that door alone.

We entered the deepest part of the subspace.

Time loses its meaning inside the door.

It might be a second, or it might be ten thousand years.

When the emperor walked out of that door again.

Before he went in, he was a powerful human psychic, a leader with lofty ideals.

When he emerged, he had something extra about him.

A kind of... divinity.

Golden flames burned in his eyes, and his body seemed to contain the radiance of four suns.

Behind him, the door leading to the realm of chaos was trembling violently, as if something was roaring.

The emperor succeeded.

He "borrowed" an unimaginable sum of money from some version of himself in the chaos and the future.

Horus looked at the pale-faced Saint Gilles and said coldly.

"This is the 'Thief of Moro'."

“My father made a deal in the stargate of Moro. Or rather, he tricked them. He stole a vast amount of power from the source of the warp, enough to shape the souls of twenty-one demigods.”

"He brought this power back to Terra and into the genetic labs at the foot of the Himalayas."

"Then, he cut, split, and injected this power into twenty-one carefully cultivated genetic shells."

"This is us, Saint Gilles."

"We are not born children of God. We are either purified versions of the power of chaos, or..."

Horus pointed to his heart.

"...Or perhaps, we are fragments of our father's soul."

"Have you ever thought about why, no matter how different our personalities are, no matter how we view our fathers, we all have a natural, irresistible closeness to him deep down? Or perhaps a kind of instinctive awe?"

"Why is it that in all the records, every Primarch, upon first seeing the Emperor, subconsciously believes that he is the destiny we have been searching for all our lives?"

"Because they share the same origin."

"Because we were originally a part of him. Like a severed finger seeing the body; like a wandering spark seeing the flames."

“We are ‘splitters’ that split off from his ‘main soul’.”

Chapter 534 The Role That Should Be Played

"If that's all there is to it, then it's nothing."

Saint Gilles gritted his teeth, bracing himself for the worst.

"Since our powers originate from the same source, and since we are part of our father, then we should be even more loyal to him! This only proves that our bond is unbreakable!"

Horus laughed, a laugh filled with utter desolation.

Do you really think that's a bond?

"Saint Gilles, have you ever killed a demon?"

"Have you ever thought about why demon princes can't be killed by ordinary means? Why do their consciousnesses return to the warp after the material universe is destroyed, return to their evil gods, and then be resurrected someday in the future?"

The question of Horus is like a knife, cutting open a truth.

"Because demons are fragments of the power of evil gods."

"To an evil god, demons are not children, not subordinates. They are... limbs. They are outward-directed energy. When the mission is over, or the vessel is destroyed, the energy naturally returns to the body."

"This is called recycling."

These two words were like a bucket of ice water poured over Saint Gilles' head and down to his feet.

Horus watched the archangel's trembling wings and pressed closer.

"If that's the case with demons, then what about us, who are essentially 'fragments of the Emperor'?"

"When the Great Crusade ends. When the galaxy is unified. When that network is built. When humanity no longer needs wars in the real universe, no longer needs these weapons that are too sharp and too dangerous."

What would your father do?

"Let his 'sons' with godlike powers become farmers? Governors? Creating instability in this fragile mortal empire?"

"He will not allow this power to remain outside."

"In order to become the true and complete ruler of mankind, to have enough power to fight against the counterattack of Chaos, to completely isolate mankind from the influence of the Warp, and to complete the final step of the Golden Age of mankind."

"He must make himself... whole."

Horus reached out and made a grabbing motion, as if to crush the void before him.

"He will take us back."

"Just like an evil god devouring a returning demon."