The Creators: From Night City

Page 493

The host he was visiting was squatting on the mountaintop, fiddling with a small stove.

"After eating pickled vegetables and tofu, even emperors are no match for you!"

The offbeat tune was full of mockery, but for the emperor, it was less damaging than having boiling water from that small iron pot poured directly onto his face.

"A truly beautiful place, as beautiful as honey." The emperor walked closer without any pretense and sat down on the ground opposite him, showing no decorum befitting a ruler of mankind.

"Hey, isn't this Old Huang? Look at you now, you've gotten so sluggish in just a short while!" Jiang Bing chopped tofu with a knife, and used the tip of the knife to chop at the customer.

It's no wonder he made that joke. Compared to the undead he saw on the Golden Throne, what does the current emperor look like?

First of all, he had a medium build, neither burly nor thin, with a well-proportioned physique and a healthy appearance, but he certainly did not meet the muscular standard of the Astartes; he was an average-looking person in the crowd.

An ordinary body with a generic face, a face that is hard to describe and remember. The square face has no prominent scars, no captivating eyes or any other unique features; it is only common and ordinary.

The only thing that was truly impressive was the deep, lingering weariness emanating from him.

"Image is merely an outward appearance and is not important to you or me," the emperor said calmly and steadily.

He smiled and waved his hand, then transformed into a golden giant clad in simple yet majestic golden power armor, with a resolute face and piercing eyes.

Then he spread his hands, transforming into a wise man dressed in an ancient white robe, with a weathered face and wise eyes.

Finally, this 'God Emperor' waved his hand again, transforming into a divine being shrouded in pure psychic radiance that was impossible to look directly at.

Finally, he reverted to being that exhausted middle-aged man, slumped on the ground, much like a middle-aged corporate slave who leaves home at six in the morning, squeezes onto the subway line 3, transfers to the line 3, travels more than twenty stops across the city, gets off, walks for more than ten minutes, squeezes into a crowded elevator to get to the company, works hard all day, and then goes through the same process to squeeze home to face a mess of trivial matters, stubborn parents, unfilial children, and a complaining wife.

"How much humanity do you have left?" Jiang Bing stopped what he was doing and suddenly asked.

When facing different people, the emperor always wears a corresponding mask. When facing soldiers, he can be a leader and general; when facing technical sages or scholars, he can be a wise man; when facing believers of the state religion, he can be the corresponding figure worshipped by the state religion. He can be anyone, as long as doing so is conducive to achieving his goals.

But this is not his true self.

"That's enough," the emperor said with a smile.

The Golden Throne is a cruel instrument of torture, and the person sitting on it suffers immense pain at all times. The emperor, who has struggled in eternal torment for thousands of years, has already begun to shatter his consciousness.

Coupled with the corrupting influence of his immense faith, it's quite normal for his humanity to be eroded.

"You'd better tell the truth," Jiang Bing said, ladling a bowl of pickled vegetables and tofu stew for the other person.

Jiang Bing didn't press the matter, after all, he was facing one of the three toughest mouths in the Warhammer universe, and as long as the other party didn't want to talk, no one could get the real answer out of him.

"Did you know that the Golden Throne is being damaged?" The Emperor abruptly changed the subject, steer the conversation to another topic.

"It's normal," Jiang Bing said, unsurprised, as he continued eating the tofu in his bowl.

"The thing under your butt looks like a sophisticated gadget. It's no wonder it's broken after being handled so roughly by those geeks."

The emperor looked down at the earthenware bowl, his shattered soul reflected in the soup.

"So I need you to pretend you can maintain it."

Jiang Bing stretched out his spoon and stirred the contents of the pot.

"No maintenance needed, I can fix it for you right now."

"No!"

The emperor flatly refused, then picked up a piece of tofu and put it in his mouth. After chewing it a couple of times, he relaxed his furrowed brows and quickened his chewing speed.

"It cannot be fixed."

These words really piqued Jiang Bing's curiosity.

The emperor also began to skillfully stir the iron pot with chopsticks, explaining, "The Golden Throne cannot be repaired, at least not now, otherwise, the hard-won balance will be broken."

"Oh?" Jiang Bing immediately became interested.

"Subspace, the highest heaven, is the place where the emotions and powers of all living beings converge." The emperor held a bowl in one hand and two bamboo chopsticks in the other, gesturing and pointing out the landscape.

“I think you have already dealt with the four Chaos Gods, and I believe you should have some understanding of the nature of their existence.”

"As long as there are intelligent beings in this universe who can love, hate, wage war, deceive, despair, and indulge in lust, their collective unconscious will inevitably create 'gods' to represent these extreme emotions. This is an inevitable result, sooner or later."

The emperor calmly revealed the cruel truth.

"So what do you represent?" Jiang Bing added some firewood to the bottom of the pot to make the golden flames burn brighter.

"Sacrifice? Order? Despair? Pain? Death or revenge?" the 'craftsman' asked repeatedly.

"That's not important," the emperor said, avoiding the question.

"The important thing is that if humanity wants to survive in this universe, it must have its own 'gods' in the subspace."

"I thought you were a staunch atheist," Jiang Bing laughed.

“All living beings originated from the Warp and are also reflected in the Warp. Since the failure of the Web Path Project, over the past ten thousand years, the connection between humanity and the Warp has become increasingly close, and the number of newly born psionicists within the Empire has been increasing.”

"Humanity is gradually becoming a psionic race," the Emperor revealed a secret of the empire.

"The subspace is both a source of power and a shackle."

"Man cannot defeat himself, just as a chess piece can never leave the board." The weary man revealed the cruel truth.

"So you're prepared to flip the table at any moment?" Jiang Bing asked curiously.

The emperor, holding his bowl, earnestly replied to Jiang Bing: "Human beings need to survive, no matter the cost, no matter whether they are thrown into the 'darkness'."

The emperor scooped up the last piece of tofu and placed it in his bowl, but instead of eating it, he looked up at Jiang Bing.

"Of course, this was the path I originally planned."

Jiang Bing rubbed his fingers, and in the golden light, a plate of authentic old tofu immediately materialized.

"Looks like you've changed your mind?" he asked without looking up as he continued slicing the snow-white tofu.

"You have brought about new changes, human gods from another world." The emperor put down his chopsticks and gently probed his fingers under the iron pot. Golden flames licked his fingers, and the sharp pain made him involuntarily pull his arm back.

"You are the variable outside the chessboard, the variable that doesn't exist."

"What do you want to do?" Jiang Bing stopped what he was doing and asked seriously.

With the crackling of the flames, the emperor sat up straight and said, "I would like to borrow a light from you."

Chapter 1001 The Emperor is Summoning

A piece of tofu fell outside the iron pot.

Jiang Bing's astonishment was palpable.

He considered himself a ruthless person, but compared to the emperor who had just said those words, he was like the difference between Odebiao and Fan Debiao.

The emperor's meaning was clear: he didn't borrow the 'fire' to light a cigarette, so there was only one truth.

He wanted to set himself on fire.

Ten thousand years of torment, the accumulation of faith among all believers in the human empire over those ten thousand years, and the convergence of extreme emotions generated by all humanity have inevitably led the Emperor to slide towards becoming a warp god.

In reality, at this moment, the emperor's divinity had already surpassed his humanity. If it weren't for the golden throne keeping his life in a 'Schrödinger's quantum superposition state,' he would have already ascended to godhood.

It's just that he's unwilling.

After all, the last one to ascend to godhood in this way was Slaanesh. The Eldar's endless indulgence in desires in the Warp gave birth to this youngest lady, at the cost of the violent deaths of the vast majority of Eldar and the inevitable slow death of the remaining Eldar.

If an emperor were to ascend to godhood, the outcome would only be worse.

The Golden Throne is an instrument of torture. The pain it inflicts is so intense that even the Eldar Bloodbringers, the most knowledgeable about torment in the galaxy, would have to kneel before it, kowtow, and call it "Ancestor Above."

But the reason why Jiang Bingcheng called the emperor a ruthless person is that during the ten thousand years that the emperor was subjected to slow slicing at all times, he could actually stand up at any time.

If he wants to!

But he didn't want to, so he simply kept himself on the golden throne for ten thousand years.

He endured it all, watching the empire gradually decline, the ignorance of the state religion permeate the entire empire, countless humans die, and war rage across the human empire. He himself was gradually twisted into the 'King of Darkness' by the collective extreme emotions of humanity, and he silently endured it for ten thousand years.

And so, he actually planned to use Jiang Bing's 'etheric fire' to burn away the useless, bloated attachments and ignorant religious poison on his body, and purify all the negative emotions imposed on him by the pan-consciousness of subspace humans over the past ten thousand years.

Even the phrase "to play with fire" is insufficient to describe the other party's plan.

The pain caused by burning away one's 'divinity' cannot be described as mere pain. One must understand that the 'Dark Lord' has become another side of the Emperor, the very essence of his existence. Such a purification act is tantamount to burning away the very foundation of one's existence in this world, one's very soul.

No living being can calmly bear the feeling of gradually entering nothingness; the pain caused by the gradual erosion of one's essence has long exceeded the concept that 'pain' can be defined by.

Jiang Bing dared to guarantee that even if Seraphim came, he would cry like a bastard whose toe had been stepped on.

But the emperor made his decision without even blinking.

To be honest, this proposal was a sure win for Jiang Bing, since the ether produced by the spiritual energy of the four Chaos Gods was ether, and the spiritual energy produced by the Emperor was also ether.

However, he still had a question about the other party's proposal.

Therefore, Jiang Bing spoke frankly.

"Balance, you said it yourself."

The small iron pot was bubbling and steaming, blurring the emperor's face slightly.

"Therefore, this plan needs to be burned in a planned way, continuously, reasonably, following the guidelines, and gradually." The Emperor started by making a joke that sounded familiar to Jiang Bing, subtly observing his reaction.

Clearly, he had already guessed something during that brief meeting.

"And the compensation?"

"What do you want?" the emperor asked bluntly.

"Psychic power," Jiang Bing answered frankly.

The emperor remained silent for a moment, then suddenly stuck his fingers directly into the fire.

The golden flames quickly ignited his fingers.

The emperor watched as if nothing was wrong as his index finger sizzled and oozed oil from being burned until the bone was exposed. It was about the right consistency to sprinkle some cumin on it and start eating. Finally, a hint of understanding appeared on his tired face.

"It's not picky about food, is it?" The repeat fire thief asked a strange question as he extinguished the flame on his finger.

Jiang Bing, who was chopping tofu with his head bobbing, replied casually, "I'm not picky about food, I eat everything."

"Great!" The overworked office worker, exhausted for thousands of years, finally cheered, as if he had seen the hope of getting off work.

"Now that the flames of war have been burning across the galaxy for ten thousand years, it is time for them to ignite in the warp."

"So you're not planning to let the outcasts live, Your Majesty?" Jiang Bing frowned deeply at the other's words.

Although the old man from Terra didn't spell it out very clearly, his meaning was quite evident.

He's probably planning to pour 'gasoline' on himself, set himself on fire, and then rush into the subspace to wreak havoc, while also sending his best buddies, with whom he's had a love-hate relationship for tens of thousands of years, on their way to their deaths.

To put it bluntly, the other side is most likely planning to burn all subspace beings except for humans.

Without the supply of extreme emotions from living beings, the four evil gods would either be burned to death or starve to death.

The Emperor, having risen through the ranks of bloodshed, is known for his decisive and efficient approach to things.

"Aren't you afraid of 'playing with fire and getting burned'?" Jiang Bing put down what he was holding, stood up, and asked condescendingly.

"Or rather, you trust me that much? You should know that once this fire is lit, it's not easy to extinguish. Water and fire are merciless, and it might just burn you to ashes along with it."

"You won't," the emperor said with a confident smile.

"I don't know how?" Jiang Bing asked, puzzled.

"I'm always good at judging people," the emperor said, then started scooping tofu from the pot.

The sun was blazing, and its rays shone on the mountaintop, making it dazzling for a moment.

Jiang Bing turned to face the sky, and with a wave of his hand, pulled a cloud, constantly adjusting its position to create a shadow for the two of them to hide in.

"Besides, emperors may die, but humanity will live on forever."

The words, neither too loud nor too soft, came from behind Jiang Bing, causing the cumulus clouds in the sky to tremble slightly for a few moments.

You can say Emperor is bad, but you can't say he's bad. "Ruthless" isn't enough to describe him. This guy really dares to gamble and really dares to place bets.

"The fire is almost out, lend a hand, there's firewood over there," the owner finally replied without turning his head, continuing to fiddle with the clouds in the sky.

"Also, I have a plan, a big plan, that might be of interest to you..."

........................

Although the Mechanicus is autonomous, it is still legally a department of the Empire.

Therefore, the supreme leader of the Mechanicus is called the "Forging General".

He is the supreme leader of the entire Mechanicus (including Mars and all other Forging Worlds) and a member of the High Lord Council of the Empire.