The Creators: From Night City

Page 543

Numerous demonic faces emerged from the lakebed, struggling desperately to rise to the surface, trying to break through the veil and wreak havoc in the real world.

Unfortunately, they didn't have that chance.

However, Cassius's exorcism was suddenly stopped by three old hunters.

The Grey Knights immediately drew their swords.

Chapter 1101 The Battle Continues to Advance

The reason the Hunter trio, Yuri, and a group of Black Templars who were just there for show came here was because of this vortex leading to the Warp.

Therefore, they naturally couldn't just stand by and watch the Grey Knights destroy it.

The demons' vision is proportional to their difficulty; the three locations chosen by Kadia are the weakest points in the veil between reality and the warp.

These places are not only suitable for establishing blood sacrifice rituals, but also for building new-style star-torch towers.

The same applies to the equatorial desert belt and the two locations in the Antarctic mountains.

The relevant intelligence was highly classified, and the mission was issued directly from Robert Guilliman. Further back, the Terra Palace and the Cult of Asclepius were also behind it, making it a very powerful entity.

Despite their resentment, the Grey Knights had no choice but to temporarily comply with the arrangements after contacting the High Lord.

Then, a tall silver tower rose rapidly.

The situation was much the same in the equatorial desert and the Antarctic mountains, except that the Inquisition and the Mechanicus were much easier to deal with than the Grey Knights.

The most important nodes in this plan are located elsewhere, outside of the three key locations.

Blackrock Void Shield Station

Here stands a massive and mysterious array of black stone obelisks, and also houses the largest Void Shield power station in Cardia, making it undoubtedly the core of the entire Cardia defense line.

Faced with the unexpected arrival of reinforcements, the Chaos army no longer pursued the complete occupation of Kadia. Instead, it concentrated its elite forces to attack the key node fortress connecting the global Void Shield network, destroy it, and dismantle the entire region's defenses.

Of course, his most important goal was to systematically destroy the array of black obelisks above Kadia, in order to reverse its polarity and turn it from a "stable reality" to a "torn reality," thus completely freeing the Eye of Terror from its expansion and allowing the storm of the warp to sweep across the entire galaxy.

To this end, he took advantage of the breach in the space orbit and deployed almost all available forces to the ground, attempting to break through Cardia's planetary surface defense system and take control of Cardia in a short period of time.

Faced with a global airborne offensive, Lord Creed of High Fortress adopted the "flexible noose" tactic, resisting step by step in major secondary strategic areas and luring the enemy deep into their territory. However, he did not hold out to the death, but instead chose to preserve his men while losing territory, and carried out continuous guerrilla warfare.

In key locations or core fortresses, he deployed vital elite forces, including the Khadi Armored Division and the few remaining Space Marine companies, to hold their ground to the death and launch counterattacks relying on strong walls and shields, thereby depleting the strength of the Chaos elite.

The battle was exceptionally fierce, with every inch of land stained with blood. Every fortress, every position, every bridge, and every inch of soil was soaked in the blood of the Empire's loyal soldiers.

Led by the Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Imperial Fists, the Space Marine advance force and the Guards of the neighboring sector arrived at the battlefield shortly after Guilliman's Ultramarines fleet. Under Guilliman's command, they tentatively assembled an elite force that, despite heavy enemy fire, broke through the enemy's blockade at the cost of heavy casualties, and carried out "needle-like" airborne support in different combat zones on the planet Cardia.

While this move greatly boosted the morale of the defending troops, it could not reverse the overall situation. Continuing to use this method to deploy support to the surface would result in a casualty ratio that the Combined Fleet could not afford.

The battle remains a brutal war of attrition.

The Void Shield's main control fortress, "Black Rock".

In the command center, High Fortress Lord Usakar E. Creed is holding a strategic meeting that will determine the life or death of Cardia.

"That heretic who calls himself the Chaos Warmaster is brazenly and frequently appearing on the battlefields where the fighting is fiercest, spreading his rumors that 'the Empire has abandoned Kadia.' We need to find a way to stop these rumors and prevent the morale of the army from wavering."

“We sent out all the Vendica and Churisas assassins, but they all failed,” said a representative of the inquisitors whose face was obscured.

“We need a more effective assassination method. Perhaps we could gather all the elite Astartes and, led by the Inquisitor squad, launch another decapitation strike,” the Black Templar representative said.

"Forgive my bluntness, but this is pointless. Abaddon himself takes his Champion Guard with him wherever he goes. He may seem reckless, but he is actually very meticulous in his planning." The Highlord of the Fortress took a deep drag on his cigarette and finally gave his judgment.

"The assassination plan is not feasible."

“Moreover, compared to these, strategic considerations are what we really need to focus on,” Usakar E. Creed steered the discussion back on track.

“I agree with the High Lord’s statement,” Guilliman’s voice officially sealed the deal.

"The main fleet of Space Marines, led by the Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Imperial Fists, along with a large number of Imperial Guard and Titan Legion reinforcements, will arrive on the outskirts of the battlefield soon. However, the outer defenses set up by Abaddon are very tough. Even if we join forces and concentrate all our strength, we still cannot destroy them in a short time."

Even through a layer of violently fluctuating holographic projection, Guilliman's words and face still exuded unparalleled persuasiveness, making the participants want to agree with his views.

"But what we lack most right now is time."

"I will quickly integrate reinforcements and organize a decisive orbital battle against the Chaos Fleet to force Abaddon to change his strategic deployment, thereby relieving the pressure on the surface defenses of Cardia."

"What you need to do, and what you must do, is to hold your ground until our fleet breaks through Abaddon's outer blockade!"

Guilliman slowly revealed his strategic plan, which is also the most effective solution at present.

In such a massive war, any conspiracy, trickery, or ingenious scheme will inevitably turn into a real, deadly battle.

On such a battlefield, individual bravery is often no longer important.

Of course, the term "individual" here needs to be defined within a framework. After all, if individuals of Jiang Binghe's caliber, like the Emperor, were to intervene and take sides, Abaddon's Chaos Fleet wouldn't be enough for them to crush.

However, both of them were unusually silent in the real world, just like the four chaotic gods who were also unusually silent.

This is naturally abnormal, and of course, there are reasons for it.

The vast ocean, the highest heavens, and the deep subspace.

The emperor, holding a torch and raising his blade, stood at the rear of the battle line, watching thousands of cursed warriors and royal guards use their weapons, guns, and starlight flames to drive away the beasts that kept pouring out of the dark forest.

In the far distance, where the shadows of the trees swayed, four pairs of eyes, filled with malice, were vaguely watching him. They were watching the countless cursed warriors behind him, and also watching Jiang Bing, who was concentrating on his digging work in the center of the defensive perimeter.

He is laying 'pipes', pipes belonging to humankind.

Chapter 1102 The Last Piece of the Puzzle

While the ancient sages' net-path was powerful, it wasn't specifically designed for humans.

It was originally created to allow the ancient sages to use it for instantaneous interstellar travel, thereby gaining control of the entire galaxy and laying the foundation for the early ecology and civilization of the galaxy.

However, in the later War of Heaven, as the strategic core, the Ancient Ones chose to rely on the super mobility of the Web to fight against the Star Gods and the Fearless Alliance. But that earth-shattering war directly led to the decline of the Ancient Ones and the initial damage to the Web.

The Eldar, who once served as servants of the Ancients, later inherited the technology of the Web and used it as the foundation to establish the prosperous Eldar Empire.

Unfortunately, these pointy-eared creatures went too far. The warp storm triggered by the birth of the Slaanesh directly tore apart the real universe, causing a large-scale collapse of the Web of the Universe.

After the Eldar's demise, the Webway system was shattered, with few intact Webway paths remaining. Most were broken channels and isolated nodes. The Eldar, having suffered heavy losses, also lost the ability to build new Webways or even maintain existing ones. Every intact Webway gate that remains has become a crucial strategic asset, and countless wars have been fought around them.

In these ruins of the Webway, the Dark Eldar and the Jesters of Comoros still hold sway, while at the broken points, warp energy and demons seep in and take hold, making some areas even more dangerous than warp itself.

Even so, the Internet is still an important creation related to the ecology of the Milky Way.

Transportation capacity, or rather, modes of transport, connect people in terms of distance. The vast Milky Way is too immense for humans, whose flight speed cannot exceed the speed of light.

Because of the existence and influence of the warp in the Warhammer world, humanity's technological path went astray from the very beginning. Instead of researching faster-than-light travel, the humans of the Golden Age directly chose the time-saving and labor-saving warp traversal technology, which set the tone for subsequent technological development and also led humanity's technological tree astray.

Of course, this is mainly because subspace travel technology is indeed convenient and efficient.

According to forbidden records in Terra Palace, the advanced warp engine technology used by humans in the Golden Age did not rely on navigators or starlight. Moreover, by taking advantage of the chaotic nature of time and space in the warp itself, as long as the timing of entering and exiting the warp was precisely controlled, an effect similar to 'instantaneous teleportation' could be achieved.

In other words, the subspace travel technology mastered by humanity in the Golden Age allowed fleets to travel directly from one end of the galaxy to the other without taking even a second in between.

Of course, this is just hearsay, and Jiang Bingli suspects that this effect can only be achieved without the interference of the four Chaos Gods, those four troublemakers.

The Iron Man Rebellion later resulted in the loss of all related technologies, leaving only the incomplete warp travel technology currently used by the Empire.

Jiang Bingli suspected that this was also a deliberate plan by the Four Gods or Tzeentch, with the aim of keeping the empire in a limbo, preventing it from developing new navigation technologies while also preventing the human empire's transportation methods from becoming too efficient.

Later, the Emperor's Great Expeditions conquered vast territories, but if the Empire's transportation efficiency could not be improved, the connections between people, planets, and galaxies would be nonexistent, and the concept of the human race as a whole would be out of the question.

So the emperor risked his life to launch the "Netway Project".

This plan has three considerations.

Firstly, it establishes a faster, safer, and more reliable interstellar transportation backbone network than space travel, greatly enhancing the Empire's control over its territory and strengthening the concept of the human race as a whole.

Secondly, gradually reduce and eventually get rid of dependence on navigators and psionicists, cutting off the channels through which chaos massively erodes humanity from the root.

Thirdly, with the protective barrier, a mental lock about the warp can be established, providing humanity with a protected environment for growth, so that he can safely guide humanity to complete psionic evolution, ultimately allowing the human race to control its own destiny, rather than becoming sacrifices to be devoured by the warp.

However, the Emperor, being a science and engineering guy, was really bad at technology, and the four Chaos Gods, those four troublemakers, certainly wouldn't allow an ascended race that they couldn't control to appear in the galaxy.

So while the Emperor was engrossed in his work, these four old bastards kicked the lame man's good leg and slapped the stutterer's good mouth, successfully causing the Emperor to be blown up by Magnus's psionic phone, leaving him covered in filth, unable to take care of himself, and confined to a golden wheelchair, thus gaining the title of "Super Six Plus Seven".

Jiang Bing's assessment was that the main problem was that Old Huang had done the job too sloppily.

His modifications to the network nodes below Holy Terra were no less haphazard than the Greenskins' "I think" approach; it was as if he were using a welding machine to fix whatever was wrong.

The original Webpaths of the Ancients were a perfect fusion of psychic energy and biotechnology. Simply put, the Webpaths of the Ancients were not "built" but "grown" from a material called spiritual bone, like living organs. They were a biopolymer that existed between dimensions.

The Emperor, on the other hand, directly adopted a crude method of grafting mechanical and psionic energy, attempting to build a smooth pathway, an act no less than welding a steam engine onto a normally beating heart.

This caused the network nodes of Holy Terra to lose the property of the network barrier itself to resist warp erosion, and could only rely on the Emperor's own powerful psionic energy as a "firewall" and "purifier" to continuously dispel warp energy within the channels and ensure the continued operation of the network.

Jiang Bing couldn't even bear to look at how shoddy the work was.

Even though Jiang Bing, this 'craftsman,' had an almost perfect grasp of these shortcomings, it still took him so long to restart the human network construction project. This was not because of his laziness, but purely because he and the Emperor had only recently filled the last gap in restarting the 'network project'—namely, the network-related knowledge that the Spirit Race inherited from the Ancient Saints.

Jiang Bing actually has multiple channels for acquiring knowledge related to the internet.

The simplest and most direct approach is to reverse engineer the network engineering left behind by the ancient saints, but this approach is too time-consuming and cumbersome.

Secondly, they sought out and captured the Ark Eldar, searching for relevant knowledge from their living database of the core spirits of their Ark world.

However, none of the existing Eldar Ark worlds have a complete storage of knowledge about the Net Dao, and the knowledge contained within each Ark is completely random. Compiling a complete set of knowledge is a massive and hopeless undertaking.

The fastest, safest, and most effective way to obtain all the relevant knowledge is through the Black Library controlled by the only surviving deity of the Eldar – the Laughing God, Xilego.

This place contains the psionic knowledge of the Eldar and countless others that the Eldar plundered from other races.

Born from the Eldar's most profound and desperate attempt at self-salvation after the "Fall of Eldar," the Black Library is itself a living, breathing, and extremely dangerous dimensional wonder. It is the Eldar's ultimate weapon and fortress created to fight against their ultimate destroyer, the Slaanesh.

It is a protective temple transformed from the god of laughter itself.

It is hidden deep within the most intricate and easily defended parts of the network system. Its exact coordinates are one of the galaxy's top secrets, and only the core members of the Jester's Troupe know the safe path to it.

However, there are few problems in the Milky Way that can stump the Emperor. If there are, then Jiang Bing, that troublemaker, will be added to the mix.

Chapter 1103 The Laughing God, Sherlock

west Lego was not very happy; as the God of Laughter of the Spirit Race, He couldn't quite manage a smile at the moment.

It all started at the previous crucial point in timeline history.

In fact, locating the Dark Library is an extremely difficult task.

As the place of hope that preserves all the knowledge accumulated by the Eldar in their fight against Chaos, as the ultimate arsenal and fortress of knowledge against Chaos, and as the spark of reason that West Lego preserved for the race, the Dark Library has always been a thorn in the side of the five evil gods.

Yes, including emperors.

Unlike Tzeentch's malice, the Emperor's main motive was lust for the other's body.

Dozens of days ago, in the Holy Terra, on the Golden Throne.

The enormous golden throne was now empty; the old emperor had long since ascended to a subspace planet to enjoy himself. This dilapidated chair had become a symbol, awaiting the arrival of the next destined person.

But beneath the throne, within the shattered web portal pierced by Magnus's psionic telephone, the situation was quite lively.

This place was once a fierce battlefield where countless Imperial Guards and Soulless Ones fought to the death for thousands of years, desperately resisting the onslaught of the Warp Demons.

But now, it has been repaired by a certain 'craftsman'.

The netting made of spirit bone material had already suffered large-scale damage ten thousand years ago, but fortunately, as a craftsman who could saw light bulbs, weld detonators, and repair satellite steering wheels, Jiang Bing's pasting skills were still superb.

The gruesome wounds, the broken pipes, and the gaps connecting to subspace have all been sealed tightly by Boss Jiang using a mixed alloy.

Although it is still unavoidable that small groups of warp demons will slip in through certain gaps, it is no longer a major problem for the Empire.

"I hate this place. It feels like walking through the sewers of the Warp." The Emperor, holding a torch, walked ahead.

"You seem to have become more humane lately," Jiang Bingdong, who was following behind him, asked casually, seemingly probing.

"They have always been there, but they have been poisoned by the lingering effects of faith over millennia. Now, under the purification of your flames, they are gradually being revealed."

The Emperor's humanity was once suppressed by his divinity; this was the inevitable price of drawing power from faith and a characteristic of the Warhammer world.

The same applies to the Four Chaos Gods.

As a collection of concepts that have come to life, they cannot go against their own nature.

Even knowing he was doomed, Khorne couldn't refuse a glorious and heroic death match; if anyone could make Selene die of pleasure, he would gladly attend; Nurgle couldn't refuse the birth of life, even knowing that the day that life was born would be the day he died, he would only try to distort life rather than stop it; Tzeentch is even more representative, he wants to control everything, but he has an uncontrollable desire for new changes, even if it means everything will deviate from his plan.

This is their innate nature, deeply rooted in their concept of existence; it is an instinct they cannot avoid; it is the inevitable consequence of their birth from the great emotional vortex of the subspace.

One of the main reasons why emperors did not want to become gods was these things; once they became gods, they would be powerless to control their own destiny, and this was not just a saying.

"I do believe that, but it's truly astonishing that you can still have such a human side."