Using his nenriki (psychokinesis), Zhou Yun moved the two fainted gang members who'd smashed heads with each other into a corner of the pipes.
He hadn't expected to run straight into two patrolling gang members right after dropping down here.
Thinking back to his luck ever since stepping into that abandoned district, he couldn't help but feel cursed. First he ran into the cultists of the Gene Stealer Cult, then got drunk to the point of headache, then suffered the rickety ride on the train, then crossed paths with two suspicious hooded men… and now this.
"Maybe I should find someone to divine my fate with the Emperor's Tarot…" he muttered.
"I could divine it for you," the winged figure in white light said softly.
"No thanks. I don't trust you."
But the winged figure shook his feathers, and pure white light shimmered before Zhou Yun, forming a deck of thin cards, each painted with strange, symbolic figures.
"Draw one."
"This is still the Emperor's Tarot, isn't it?" Zhou Yun muttered.
The Emperor's Tarot was said to have been designed by the Emperor himself to predict the future. Even if he couldn't understand why the Emperor made something that felt so much like street magic, the Tarot was still one of the rare few divination methods in the galaxy that worked and didn't carry great risk.
Even the Space Marines, Inquisition, and Ecclesiarchy used it—albeit in much more sophisticated ways than the crude paper draws of hive workers.
"Go ahead. Just one," the winged figure said.
Zhou Yun shook his head firmly. Even if it was the Emperor's Tarot, he didn't want this warp-tinged presence reading it for him.
"No matter. I'll draw it then." The winged figure wasn't angry.
He drew a card and held it out for Zhou Yun.
"…?"
It was a major arcana, numbered XIV, depicting an angel holding two small cauldrons, pouring liquid from the left into the right. But what made Zhou Yun frown was that this angel bore not pure white wings, but rotting, scaled ones.
"This card upright means patience. Reversed, it means communication… a cooperation requiring patience and communication will lead you to success," the figure murmured.
"And it hints that your partner is guided by something of a higher level."
"Fourteen… two sevens," Zhou Yun muttered.
Seven—the sacred number of Nurgle. Together with the cauldrons and scaled wings… not subtle. Very much a warning.
Zhou Yun's scalp prickled. He felt even more certain that he was headed for bad luck.
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps came to his ears. He instinctively turned his head toward the source.
Around the corner of the pipe district walked two hooded figures.
Mong was frustrated. To prevent the future shown by the "Angel" from coming to pass, he and his brother had risked climbing up from the hive bottom and sneaking into this buried eighth district to find the relic's location.
But now it seemed the PDF garrison holding that relic was completely buried in rubble.
That made him restless.
His brother, Markit, on the other hand, maintained the patience the "Angel" taught, which was probably why he was more blessed.
Markit had decided to bypass the gang patrols and use the corrosive digestive fluid the "Angel" had given him to slowly eat open a tunnel from above the PDF garrison. But that could take several days. Mong couldn't accept that.
Even here, in the depths of the hive, they were unwelcome. Waiting too long would bring trouble.
"You don't get it? Our time is precious. Maybe at the next corner someone will find us and…"
But he froze as he turned the corner and saw a man standing by the pipes, watching them.
A man wearing a comical hat. But Mong couldn't laugh when he saw the man's face.
Under the silly hat was a face like a lion's—dark golden mane and beard, cold as ice.
Fear struck Mong instantly. The moment those deep-set eyes locked onto him, the mutated heart in his chest nearly stopped. He thought he saw, behind those eyes, a dark, freezing forest full of forbidden, crawling beasts.
And the man before him seemed to have been born in that forest, a hunter stalking those blasphemous beasts.
The man frowned slightly.
In that instant, Mong thought he saw a lion crouched in the darkness, ready to pounce.
In his mind, the "Angel" heeded their prayers let out a terrified wail. He couldn't hear the "Angel" clearly like his brother could, but he could still feel the panic and disbelief in that broken cry:
"Lion!"
"The first one!"
"Impossible!"
"So alike! So alike!"
"Not him!! Wrong size!"
The "Angel" was terrified by just that face.
Mong glanced at his brother and saw him frozen stiff by the "Angel's" cries.
Danger.
Mong's instincts screamed. He drew his rusty crimson dagger, slashed his own wrist, and let corrosive, poisonous blood coat the blade. Without hesitation, he lunged at the man with the stern lion's face and comical hat.
"Mong! Stop!" his brother called behind him.
But Mong's eyes were only for that man—whose hat's little white glove now pointed straight at him.
(End of Chapter)
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