Chapter 174 The other side of the mountain
"In this blue valley," Morse read flatly, the pronunciation was very different from Gothic, and the strange rhythm was hidden in the gaps between syllables. In the poem, the cadence of language itself is used to fill the vacancy in tone, "The silver light of the river is hung on the tips of the hanging grass. The sun shines on the other side of the mountain, and the light in the valley is like floating foam."
"A young warrior lay quietly on his back in the sparkling blue water, with his body spread out in the water. The clouds in the sky contrasted with his pale face, and rain-like light fell into the green grass beside him. Moss. One of his feet is in the calamus. "He is quiet, smiling like a long-sick child. He is not cold in the warmth of nature." Let his nostrils tremble again, and he will fall asleep in the sunshine of tomorrow."
The psykers of Star Language Court hung their heads next to the black-robed craftsmen, Morse gold with runes. The spiritual light blends with the many quiet blue radiances that shuttle through the stars through will, covering the indoor landscape with a layer of golden and blue tones unique to deep lakes under the sun.
In this cabin of the Resolute Resolve, all the mortals were immersed in comatose consciousness. Although the reason was that Morse knocked them all unconscious to facilitate private conversations with the Iron-Blooded, Perturabo seemed to be able to feel that these mortals were talking to each other. He shared Morse's recital and was moved by poetry with equal melancholy.
The Primarch was remotely connected to the ground camera servant through electronic components, watching in silence as Angron went to tend the gladiators surrounding the body of the deceased.
The faces with deeper cracks than those on the earth during years of drought are almost indistinguishable from age and gender. Their chapped skin, injured scarlet scars, and the sadness in their empty eyes will They are connected into an indistinguishable whole. The personality that the gladiator usually displays melts into a strong collective emotional resonance in the common mourning that goes deep into the soul and flesh and blood. Even in the Iron-Blooded Ship, which is extremely far away from the scene, he can still experience it objectively. to their pain.
When the giant arrived, the gladiators spontaneously made way for him, stretched out their hands to try to hold his arm, and pushed his legs to make him arrive faster. People acted like they trusted their blood relatives, He silently asked for help from Angron.
Angron responded to them. The majestic warrior's half-kneeling movement was so natural and smooth, perhaps because it was not a surrender to any slave master, but out of deep care and protection for his companions - even though this was Angron's first time with him. The two deceased men knew each other.
He stretched out his huge palm and carefully supported the head of a deceased person to prevent his severed neck from dislocating. The silver cables from the dead warrior's skull slipped in Angron's hands, and the muscles in the giant's face twitched with rage and paralyzing pain.
The other man next to the deceased had no extra neural implants on his head. A rusty knife penetrated the ribs and stabbed into his chest with a hunter's precision, and was tightly held tightly by the dead man's dry and stiff hand. catch.
Their skin shows the same dark brown color of ocher. If suffering is the growth rings of human bodies that increase age, then the torture they have experienced has made these growth rings so dense that they are no longer easy to identify.
"Old Simon has always regarded Boy as his child." One gladiator said, his voice hoarse due to physical damage. He spoke quickly and clearly, with a loud voice, like a muffled big box instrument, tattered and just talking, but everyone was listening.
“After they nailed Boy, Boy was taken away by those beasts and locked up alone. Simon has been waiting until the day he meets his little Boy again. .”
"I advise this old man to be careful. How can a beast recognize a human face? Don't be ruthless and don't dare to poke the spear you have sharpened. If you go up and be torn in half by Boy, that would be completely ridiculous. . Simon smiled so hard that his rotten teeth were exposed, and he couldn't even bite a piece of animal meat. He was not in a hurry. "
"Of course, they are crazy. What high-level riders like to watch is that Boyi must fight with his father, right, he must fight. Old Simon must have expected that day, so he is not in a hurry. He knows that the two of them will still be able to fight. We have to meet. I was there that day, and the sun in the sky was going to burn me to death."
"I saw Boyi, with blood on his face and an iron bar on his shoulder, and a human skin hanging from the iron bar. , I thought Simon was dead. Who knew that Boyi suddenly became quiet when he saw old Simon, and he suddenly stopped moving. I saw him now. It was because the nail was too strong at the time, but the high-level rider was angry. The announcer shouted that he would be punished, and he was never seen again..."
Angron's chest shook violently. Ups and downs, air surged into his nasal cavity and was immediately transformed into hot blood.
His eyes swept over the layers of scars all over Boyi's body. Compared with the scars suffered in the gladiatorial fight, the bloody mouth on top of the skin came more from the iron whip and pig iron of the slave owner.
The joy of defeating Hozan City left him, and the shadow hovering above his head gradually returned. The bitterness of failure and nightmares came to him, giving Angron a shiver.
Onomamos walked out from among the gladiators and gently patted the back of the several-meter-tall giant. After the Iron Warrior's tireless treatment, he miraculously recovered most of his body functions. The parts that could not be restored were also modified with mechanical technology, such as his semi-mechanical Achilles tendon, which supported the veteran warrior's activities.
The old warrior said not a word, but Perturabo could read the meaning of his movements. Onomamos is trying to tell Angron that they are both still alive.
"Thank you," Angron said slowly, buoyed by his shared sorrow, "thank you. Did they... leave any words?"
"No. " Another gladiator said, "After they reunited, Boy probably asked Simon to kill him. After the slave owner died, we no longer need to live for others. "
Perturabo could detect a startlingly genuine admiration in the gladiator's voice, and this was especially evident in Angron's ability to connect emotionally with others.
The giant's expression was particularly sad when he closed his eyes for a moment.
“Have they mentioned what they want to do in the future?” Angron asked, although he wanted to ask more about where the gladiators present wanted to go in the future.
“Oh,” the gladiator who envied the deceased laughed, “who hasn’t thought about it? We talk every night and we will kill all the high-level riders in the future. We will also live in a tall building. In the palace, you can enjoy eating and drinking without fighting, and eat the most delicious horned beef in the world five times a day."
"But we can't enter those palaces." A woman from Huozan. The gladiator said gloomily, his teeth grinding with each word he spoke. "Just looking at this gold makes my broken fingers ache. Simon is gone, and he has found a place where he can sleep."
"Life will get better, life will get better. Simon says this back and forth every day, but we are just ruining life when we live." Someone sneered.
"Yes." Another gladiator sighed. This simplest sigh made Angron look over suddenly, because the one he was sighing was not the one he had just rescued from Hozan City, and he was not familiar with him. Instead, he was a fighter who had slept side by side with him in Desia, fought back to back, and was very active in the entire battle against Hozan.
Angron is often proud to think that his brothers and sisters all have the flame of struggle and freedom burning in their chests. They join him in killing slave owners and fighting for the liberation of more people. However, at this moment, he suddenly saw several souls who were actually extremely tired. They had been forced to become warriors, but they had never been proud of it. Now, the fact that the gladiators are willing to follow him in battle may not be a sign of support for his ideals - they just have nowhere else to go.
"Boy said he wanted to become a little lizard." Another little warrior from Hozan said, he was as tall as Yochuka, "crawl through the gap, forever Don't come back. Look at Boy's neck. Maybe the little lizard he turned into escaped from there. Simon is the best, taking the little lizard he turned into. They got into the sand and ran away together.”
Perturabo didn't know if this was a joke on the little warrior, or if he really believed in the existence of this fairy tale. He took a deep breath.
The psychic shadow of Morse sat beside him. "I like this story," said the craftsman.
"This would not be the first such incident," said Perturabo, "if Angron had not found a way to prevent it. Throughout my conquests, although the nature and cause were different, But it is undeniable that there are many people who commit suicide. "
"If a person cannot see the path he can take, it is better to find a pure land that can always accept him in a valley with abundant water and grass." Morse said. , "I usually think that sleeping without regrets is the happiest thing in this universe, but unfortunately not many people recognize me."
Perturabo wanted to say that Morse must be alive It took too long, and then he thought that the place where Morse had lived in seclusion for thousands of years seemed to be somewhat consistent with his words, so he did not ask questions.
This attracted the attention of the craftsmen. Of course, Perturabo knew that even Morse could not always understand his sentimental thoughts, but it was a comforting thing for him to be able to care about each other.
Morse raised his hands in surrender: "Yes, I have lived too long, and I know that what I said conflicts with human morality. In short, the current predicament can only be solved by Angron himself. , I agree with your decision to watch from the sidelines."
Perturabo nodded, waiting for Angron's next move.
He had just told Morse that his brother seemed to have an extraordinary talent for soothing emotions, which also made Perturabo think that Angron had the ability to solve the current problem on his own.
Angron put down his hand holding the deceased. If these abominable steel cables had not been tightly connected to the deceased's brain, he would have torn off these bonds of slavery and pain for the fighter named Boy. roots, allowing his remains to gain some degree of freedom and cleanliness.
He held back the raging pain in his heart and controlled the superimposed despair and grief that radiated towards him from every fighter present. He reached out to the left and right sides.
"Hold my hand, brothers and sisters." Angron said lowly, "One by one, let us become one."
His voice was in the air The reverberation was like a ray of light, far softer and more solid than the crystal lamp in the high-ranking lord's golden palace. His brass-like eyes seemed to be moistened by mist, and the twinkling water light fell on the stars. Since he shed tears among the skeleton graves in the wilderness of the mountains when he was born, this may be the second time that the tears in his heart overflowed from the lake of his heart and came to reality.
His hand stretched out tremblingly, like an anchor chain, waiting for the wandering soul to fall to him and find an anchor point in the sea of red sand.
The gladiators looked at each other, and then one after another they shook each other's hands, Onomamos took his left hand, and the child who told the lizard story took the fingers of his right hand. They approached him one after another, heard each other's breathing and heartbeats, and tasted each other's sadness and suffering in their breaths.
Angron could feel his power passing through this long arc. They have become one.
“My memory begins in the mountains.” Angron said, the pain that lasted longer than anyone’s life made him frown slightly, “right there, among the bones and blood of those who fled to freedom, I was taken to the arena."
"From that moment on, I tend to think that avenging these dead people who will never have peace, let their remains be eroded and disappeared in the cold wind, maybe it is us. Everyone's wish."
He paused, feeling the heat of several strong thoughts of revenge coming from the souls of the warriors. He remembers the names of these warriors and waits for the rest of his companions to draw strength from the held hands.
“But I forgot that all of us just want to be free from this painful life. In fighting for freedom for our kind, I found my way to freedom. I was The future I imagined confuses my eyes, and I forget that this bloody road of battles and struggles is not the destination for each of us. Some of us may just want to find a place where we can live the rest of our lives without restraint in the strife. ”
Some tired souls shed tears in Angron's will, proving the correctness of what Angron said. This directly caused tears to flow from the Primarch's eyes.
Perturabo became attentive during Angron's speech. In his brother's philosophy, he was acquiring ideas that could be generalized. He was used to assigning everyone's tasks in an orderly manner. At this time, he suddenly realized that maybe he still lacked some deep soul communication, especially with his Iron Warriors.
"I should take you into consideration," Angron said, without using his usual "warrior" title. "I should take into account your wishes. From now on, I will make amends, I hope. It's not too late."
"My brother has said that he wants to build a building for me. We haven't talked about what kind of building we need to build yet."
It was suddenly mentioned. Perturabo was slightly startled, especially when Angron directly used the word brother to refer to him.
"I think I have made a decision now." Angron said, "I want a hospital. Since the half of the mountain behind Desia City that is exposed to direct sunlight is the training ground for warriors, then the hospital should be built where the sunlight needs to cross the mountain to reach it. See the other side. From physical scars to mental scars, this hospital will heal our bodies and souls at the same time."
"It is said that there are actually spiritual healers in this galaxy. position, but we don’t have such a doctor yet." Angron added a smile to his tearful face. He was happy that his talent would be put into greater use. "Then, maybe I can become Nukairi. Asia’s first psychiatrist”
(End of this chapter)