Chapter 432 Coiled Serpent Temple
In the picture returned by the camera instrument, the entire Devin is slowly being woven and reshaped, and each broken continent is floating in the void along the invisible ocean current. It moves until it returns to a certain position that seems to be designed by a higher being - like some kind of self-contained celestial sphere system, revolving around the core of the center according to their own orbits and speeds, casting interlaced shadows on each other's surfaces. shadow.
The shadows are sometimes chaotic, and sometimes they form a set of fixed patterns: three parallel brutal slashes, two or more groups coexisting, like the deep carvings scratched by an eagle's claws.
Dantioch stood behind Perturabo, monitoring the ground conditions of the Davin 63-8 satellite with his Primarch. Everything happening here was difficult for him to understand, and the other A word that his colleagues had recently quietly emphasized in the Cheorwon Masons Club suddenly came to his mind.
“Chaos,” said Kyle Valen, “a threat to be wary of, and if there is evil sorcery, report it to our father first. I believe you understand what this means, brothers. ”
He turned his head, and his unhelmeted face met the wrinkled face of the preacher, Keryl Hindman. They once joked to each other that there were two old men walking together on the front line of the Great Expedition, and from another aspect In other words, Hindman's existence has indeed become evidence of the ancient law of Terra, that is, the elderly tend to have extensive knowledge.
Just a few minutes ago, Hindman analyzed the meaning of the coiled snake pattern for them.
“Ulaeus decorated the pharaonic headdress of ancient Terra, representing power and protection,” the speaker said, while recording the conversation as material for war records, “In Greece tens of thousands of years ago , the coiled serpent of Asclepius symbolized healing, and Europolus was associated with endless reincarnation and immortality..."
He went on to describe Kundalini and Quetzalcoatl Er's historical origins, as well as the entangled serpent of Erinyes, trying to explore the origin of this totem appearing in Davin.
Their learned genetic principles put forward a conjecture, that is, the snake of Eden symbolizes knowledge and awakening, as well as the consequent deception and corruption.
Every explanation is possible, but the truth has long been reduced to black ash by the Word Bearers' flamethrowers.
When more and more visions were reported to the Cheorwon by each company, a layer of serious haze also covered the face of the Lord of Iron. He no longer participated in the discussion, but concentrated on dealing with it. That information, a slight movement of his lips, assessing the situation with his own calculations. Hindman and Dantioch wisely remained relatively quiet.
Suddenly, Perturabo spoke, frowning and murmuring in a low voice: "My dereliction of duty."
"My lord?"
"All retreat," Perturabo Turabo did not answer him, and did not even need the Iron Lord to speak. A data cable had already sent the command into the communication channel at the fastest speed, "Return to orbit, terminate the counter-insurgency exploration..."
Dantioch began to contact the transport boat to ensure that the subsequent return work was proceeding normally. However, in the sound array, apart from the mechanical narration of the iron ring, there was only a subtle buzzing sound of electricity, like the limbs of a beetle crawling through a pipe. His command received no response.
A slight cold wind blew through Dantioch's arms.
Just as he was about to double check whether it was a problem with the communicator or whether something had happened to the ground combatants, one of the lights above his head suddenly went out, and then the second one.
Then, darkness fell.
Within a few seconds, the light in the room was hungrily swallowed up by the darkness, and everything within reach was as dark as ink, as if they were in an inescapable black hole.
The temperature quickly drained away, and the air Dantioch breathed formed dry ice crystals on the stubble around his mouth. The energy that maintained the operation of the battle fortress was drained out in an instant, and the war blacksmith could almost hear the whine of countless mechanical valves and the piercing scream of the uncontrolled axle.
"My lord!" Dantioch shouted loudly, trying to walk towards Perturabo's position in the darkness, but was trapped by the power armor that had lost its energy.
The pain caused by the loss of years sticks to his skin and pierces the pain nerves. The power armor is no longer a life-sustaining protective device, but a ruthless iron cage.
He gasped, suddenly realizing that he was so weak.
The war blacksmith's two old hearts accelerated at the same time, relying on his muscles to drive the movement of the armor, and he moved slowly towards the Iron Lord's desk.
"My lord?" It was Hindman's voice. He stood up holding on to the armrest of the seat and called uneasily, trembling from the cold. "My lord Perturabo?"
A faint beam of light The ground lit up - not a colored light of reality, but a dark, metaphysical light, streaming in through the porthole in the Primarch's office, calling Dantioch to look out, to observe, to go Feel the vast shadows coming from behind the curtain.
“Don’t look, Hindman.” Dantioch immediately warned Hindman.
The War Blacksmith turned his back to the porthole, carefully controlling his perceptions. His gauntlet was blocked by a heavy iron object. Dantioch carefully followed the edge of the table, tentatively searching for the Iron Lord's arm. The chill gradually penetrated into his aged bones, making them ache faintly within the flesh.
"Father..." he said hoarsely.
This call was eaten away by the black sun, becoming broken and hollow, as if echoing in the distant place. Time was stretched for an extremely long time, a moment-like point stretched and contracted into an eternal line, and then rebounded suddenly, hitting Dantioch in the chest with a blow.
He lost strength in an instant, his legs went limp, and he fell beside Perturabo's table, his armor clanging against the ground.
Then, light and time return together.
The light was turned on again, and after several flickering flickers, it once again emitted steady cold light.
Fuel resumes flowing and burning again, and electricity supports the operation of thousands of ship components. A steady and reassuring flow of energy runs through the lines buried in the wall, like mechanical blood vessels. Provide this huge fortress with the energy it needs to survive.
Thousands of automatic alarms turned the short warning bells into a continuous scream. Resources were destroyed, the freezing chamber leaked, the sealed pipelines ruptured, the pharmacist's experiment was ruined... one after another, damage or destruction warnings were displayed on the holographic screen. Scroll like crazy, reporting the countless consequences of this brief lack of energy.
It is conceivable that in the next month, the Iron Warriors will be fully focused on recovering the losses caused by this accident.
But above all this, there is one thing that is more urgent.
The specially made power armor fit Dantioch's skin again, giving him the strength to stand up again. The War Blacksmith got up from the ground anxiously and even embarrassedly, restraining himself from jumping directly on the Gene Father.
Perturabo leaned back on the iron chair, his right hand hanging down on the edge of the iron chair, and his left hand resting on the edge of the table, as still as an Olympian stone sculpture. The nerve cables extending from the back of his head were like a black net, holding his head hanging forward like a sling holding a falling stone.
"My lord?" Dantioch said softly, raising his hand to gently touch the Iron Lord's left hand.
Such a slight force was enough to make Perturabo's uncontrolled hand slip away, bump on the armrest, and then dangle on the outside of the seat. The internal communications of the Cheorwon were reconnected, and each war blacksmith urgently sent in inquiries, wanting to know the cause of the temporary abnormality just now, and whether the Primarch had made any relevant requirements that they needed to implement.
Dantioch was distraught. While observing the Devin satellite outside the window - it still looked broken, as if nothing had changed, he methodically gave answers to the questions one by one, and called the ship he was on to approach the Cheorwon, or he was on the Steel All the fellow war blacksmiths of the Warrior Flagship rushed to the office to meet and discuss the next situation.
His heart had never been so filled with panic. Every time he spoke a word, his lips and tongue felt extremely numb. The companion's voice seemed to be blocked by the electronic system, and the clear words were as vague and distant as sinking in deep water.
Keryl Hindman seemed to be nailed to the spot and even gave up his duties of recording and preaching. He stared closely at the motionless Primarch, coughed tremblingly, and then asked: "Lord Perturabo...?"
Dantioch turned back: "It's okay, the Lord of Iron is just Coma; otherwise, as his descendants, we must have felt something."
He opened the drawer at the bottom of the iron table in front of Perturabo, found the set of small iron tools, and began to work one by one. Untether the nerve cables from the back of the Primarch's head. They had been personally trained by Perturabo and knew how to deal with the unique cables modified by the Iron Lord himself under special circumstances.
It is best to keep the interval between unlocking the two nerve cables at least five minutes, otherwise the mutated thought link will cause damage to the original body's nerves. Every war blacksmith will keep these details in mind...
"Ask the pharmacist to come, prepare the infirmary, bring the sliding stretcher, and contact Terra. No," he whispered to help organize his thoughts, "First...contact Craftsman Morse's Cliff No...."
Within thirty minutes, three other warsmiths arrived at the Primarch's office. After a brief moment of shock, they began to surround Perturabo, trying to wake him up.
Dantioch pulled away his worried colleagues to make way for Titus, who was hurrying over. The medical symbol on the Chief Apothecary's armor stung his eyes, and the faint breathing of the Primarch echoed faintly in his ears.
"The condition of the original master is stable," Titus said quickly, "This is a coma, he will be fine."
The senior officers nodded.
"The situation of the original body is kept secret for the time being." Dantioch said. "What's going on over there with the Astropath?"
"No response yet - no," War Blacksmith Haco frowned deeply, "Astral language transmission was interfered with and the message could not be sent."
——
Since the launch of Perturabo Ever since he could see his eyes, he had to overcome the sensory warnings erupting in his brain in order to convince himself that he was not really standing in the high sky of nothingness, but was instead stepping on some invisible plane that was strong enough to support his body.
He lowered his head and looked past his feet in Olympia sandals - these did not seem to be the shoes he should be wearing at the moment. But where did he come from? He vaguely remembered a black shadow, that dark, nightmarish vision of destruction...
Yes, he is Perturabo, where is he now...?
At his feet, the world was divided into two parts by an unclear boundary.
The world on the right is shrouded in gloomy black fog. Broken streets connect buildings with huge cracks. Thick fog gushes out from the depths of the cracks, intertwining into afterimages of human behavior during life. The image stays at the last moment before destruction, with the distorted faces and limbs close to each other in the haze, and then fleeting when they are actually in contact and finalized. The dark sunlight shone through the gaps in the clouds to the earth, like strips of light coming from between the ribs.
The world on the left is colorful. The shadows of snakes and flying insects make the shadows active. The songs of dancing girls float gently, flowing along the winding river of blood until they reach the edge of the dark world. The colorful gas hissed and made a harsh sound, and the excess of colors made everything muddy. It was vaguely visible that there was a twisted shadow of some kind of intertwined, multi-headed thing on the ground.
The world on both sides is ready to move. Colorful fog and black shadow compete for that boundary, launching an invisible war.
Perturabo squinted his eyes, and he noticed that in the colorful world, there seemed to be a person with a blurry face standing at the top of the projection of the twisted hydra, guiding the giant snake's progress.
Before he could see the person clearly, the unknown plane beneath his feet suddenly began to surge, turning into soft mist-like quicksand, causing him to fall downward. In an instant, his mind was filled with giggling whispers and a silent void at the same time. He could barely breathe, waving his arms that couldn't find a point of strength, and fell painfully.
"No..." He squeezed out a word through his teeth, and blurry images rolled through his mind one after another. No face was clear enough that he could not remember their identity. An empty confusion threw him to the ground, and then a heavy blow hit the back of his head, knocking his consciousness out of this soul-like body.
After an unknown amount of time, Perturabo opened his eyes again and found that he was leaning on the surface of a cold door with an unknown pattern carved on it.
His head hurt. It was so powerful that it made his thinking intermittent. The worlds on both sides are still fighting, but the black sun seems to be receding, and the crazy colors are even more rampant.
Light colored dust swirled on the streets, and the discolored skeletons were dyed into a conspicuous color of dark green or dark copper the moment they entered the colorful world. Blazing blue-purple flames began to burn from the top of the building where he was, piercing the sky like reverse lightning. The darkness was burned away layer by layer, turning into broken and terrifying black clouds, gradually dissolving into multi-colored energy.
However, there is still a dark force fighting back. The malicious and poisonous force extends its needle-like tentacles. Wherever it touches, the grass turns into iron filings, the beast instantly turns into a blackened skeleton, and the emotions of despair and fear almost turn into reality. , just by looking at it from a distance, Perturabo felt himself being burned through by a sharp burning pain again.
Perturabo ignored his physical discomfort and stood up holding on to the pillar next to the door. The carved scales on the pillar stung his hands.
He looked around and saw that he was standing at the door of a temple. In front of the temple, a pool of pure water rippled slightly, reflecting the shadows of the surrounding trees. The sculpture of a coiled snake forms a fantastic optical illusion geometric pattern, which is decorated in the center of the pool. The mouth of the three-headed snake spits out flowing water that reflects clear colored light, forming an exquisitely conceived fountain.
He turned around and saw a huge tree of life carved on the bronze door of the temple, with lush branches and leaves and abundant fruits. The roots of the tree extended outward towards the pool outside the door. The giant snakes are vividly entwined on the tree of life, two of them are hidden in the green leaves, and the third snake head is facing a plump fruit on the tree, deliberately guiding Perturabo to reach out and pick it.
He noticed that the fruit was the delicate and unique door knocker of the bronze door.
When he looked directly at the fruit, the pain in his body quietly left. The cool breeze carried a sweet smell and caressed his forehead, then went down the soft white gold robe on his body, bypassing the carved Wearing a gold wristband in Ur-Phoenician language, she held his finger and guided him to knock on the door knocker, enter the temple, and receive selfless protection.
Perturabo stood silently.
The aura of destruction behind him is returning, and the shadow of death is once again gaining the upper hand. The dangerous fear sweeps across the edge of his soul, tearing at his shadow with insatiable greed. The colorful half of the world is shrinking, as if the guiding force supporting this complex and powerful coming into the world has been burned out.
It won’t take long before he will be completely swallowed by the black shadow behind him.
Unless he pushes the door open and enters.
(End of this chapter)