Chapter Sixty-Six: The Cleansing Plan

In recent days, the lower hive of Thanatos Hive City had become a war zone under the leadership of Hu Jin and his greenskins, clashing fiercely with the Genestealer Cultists. The entire lower hive was like a festival of firecrackers, filled with the relentless sounds of gunfire, explosions, and the guttural war cries of the greenskins—“Waaagh!”—echoing through its every corner.

“Boys! Keep moving forward! Use your choppas to hack these bugs to pieces! WAAAGH!!”

Standing atop a mound of corpses—both Genestealers and greenskin lads—Hu Jin brandished the headless body of a Genestealer, roaring at the greenskins still locked in battle around him.

Over these brutal days, nearly a hundred thousand greenskins had fallen. Their bodies, mingled with those of Genestealers and cultists, covered nearly every street of the lower hive.

Hu Jin himself was in dire straits. His left arm had been torn apart by a Genestealer; his power armor hung in tatters, barely functional. Even the Belisarius Furnace in his body had been forced into overdrive several times. He continued fighting now by sheer force of will alone. If he were to die, he would only revive at Wang Ming’s side, but the greenskins, left leaderless, would fall into chaos, unable to continue fighting the Genestealer Cult with any effectiveness.

In these days of conflict, Hu Jin and the other members of the Second Company found themselves awed by the strength of their own willpower. None had ever imagined they possessed such resolve, and this inevitably led their thoughts back to the recruitment function of the system that Wang Ming had once described to them.

The recruitment feature, in the bleak universe of 40K, only selected trustworthy “compatriots” from Earth. This function would choose suitable candidates to join your legion and fight for humanity.

This was how Wang Ming had introduced the system’s recruitment function. Back then, the traversers had speculated on its nature, for it was this very feature that had brought them here. There were two prevailing theories: one, that it was an original function of the system—but this had a glaring flaw. If it were a standard feature, why the need for criteria-based selection? The system’s AI had already been destroyed by Tzeentch, after all.

The other, more plausible explanation was that the Emperor himself had added this function, which would account for the selective process.

This also explained the extraordinary strength of will shown by Hu Jin and the other traversers. When the Emperor chose these individuals, he selected those with an unparalleled sense of identity with the human race, a deep-seated sense of responsibility, and indomitable willpower.

Such strength was something they had never noticed before crossing over, existing only in the depths of their subconscious—yet the Emperor could perceive it.

Their willpower stemmed from an unconscious identification with their species and a responsibility they themselves did not fully comprehend. They did not view themselves as mere “players” from a game novel, but as warriors transported to this desperate universe to serve the Emperor and protect humanity.

Perhaps at first, upon arriving, they had felt like those players from other worlds; but after witnessing the plight of ordinary humans in this bleak universe, they abandoned such notions completely.

This was especially true for the traversers of the First Company and the First Engineer Company. When fighting against the Plague of Sorrow on Ultramar, they saw firsthand how mortals suffered torments at the hands of the foul Warp gods.

Facing the power of the Warp, they felt utterly helpless. When they first arrived, they had dreamed of using their supposed power of endless resurrection to duel with the Chaos Gods themselves. But when truly confronted by the might of the Ruinous Powers, they realized how childish and laughable such thoughts had been—they could not hope to face the gods head-on.

Even if the Chaos Gods could not kill them, the torture and mockery inflicted upon humanity by these entities was a constant torment, endlessly pricking at a sense of responsibility they themselves had not known existed.

Watching the masses of the Imperium suffer under the yoke of the Chaos Gods, unable to truly help them, filled them with burning hatred for the entities of the Immaterium.

On the pile of corpses, Hu Jin hurled the Genestealer’s body aside and, with his remaining right hand, pulled a power sword from the corpse next to him.

“For the Emperor. For humanity.”

Hu Jin murmured these words to himself, though they seemed directed as much to the Master of Mankind upon the Golden Throne as to his own heart.

He raised the power sword toward the seemingly endless tide of Genestealers, the crackling energy field hissing and snapping in the air.

“For the Emperor!” Hu Jin roared, leading the Second Company’s traversers and the remaining two hundred thousand greenskins into a charge against the Tyranid Genestealers threatening mankind.

Hu Jin was not simply leading the greenskins in a mindless brawl with the Genestealer Cultists in the lower hive. Their operational plan was nearly complete—they had sabotaged most of the lower hive’s air circulation systems over the past several days.

Soon, the traversers would release viral and biochemical weapons into the lower hive through the various passages connecting it to the middle hive, purging all Genestealer Cultists from below.

Perhaps the purestrain Genestealers would survive, but the cultists—hybrids or otherwise—would surely perish. Only the patriarchs and the most resilient Genestealer organisms could withstand the onslaught of these weapons.

Once the viral and biochemical barrage had run its course, the traversers, alongside mortal auxiliary forces, would sweep the lower hive for any surviving Genestealers.

Even the greenskins who had followed Hu Jin as their boss would be eliminated. Every heretic and xenos in Mors would be purged; nothing that threatened humanity would be allowed to remain.

When Hu Jin and the Second Company fell beneath the claws of the Genestealers, they revived at Wang Ming’s side, who was already stationed at the front lines of the middle hive.

Wang Ming, seeing the resurrected traversers at his side, issued orders to the forces assembled at the entrances to the lower hive: commence deployment of the viral and biochemical weapons.

In vast quantities, the weapons were unleashed into the lower hive. Over several days, they would saturate the air, transforming the lower hive—now stripped of independent air circulation—into a biological dead zone.

These weapons would eradicate the Genestealer Cultists and the remaining greenskins still fighting in the lower hive. Afterward, with the effect of neutralizing agents added in advance, the contamination would become harmless within a week.