At the moment of the Emperor's death, all the Primarchs felt a wave of heartache.

dark.

Then came the pain.

Lion El'Jonson's consciousness slowly emerged from a long sleep, like a drowning man thrown ashore from the deep sea.

His lungs suddenly expanded and he took in the first breath of cold air in ten thousand years.

The muscle fibers trembled as they awakened, the bones groaned as if they were overwhelmed, and the nerve endings stung as if they were burned by fire.

He opened his eyes.

The familiar stone dome of the Stone Fortress came into view, and ancient Caliban runes glimmered on the walls.

But a strange feeling immediately gripped him—the air was filled with strange psychic fluctuations, as if the laws of the entire universe had been rewritten.

"Father......"

The word came out uncontrollably from his cracked lips.

An indescribable feeling of loss surged over me like a tide, as if a string deep in my soul suddenly broke.

He put his hand on his chest and felt a dull pain there, but it was not physical, but some deeper, blood-connected sensation.

"grown ups!"

The sound of hurried footsteps came from the corridor. Several Dark Angel warriors rushed into the secret room, their power armors stained with fresh blood, and their helmet visors flashed a dangerous red.

"The Chaos warband is storming the Stone!" The leading knight knelt on one knee. "They claim... they claim the Emperor is dead!"

Zhuang Sen slowly stood up.

The meter-tall body rose up like a mountain, and the tattered lion mane cloak hung to the ground.

His movements were slow, but with an unstoppable sense of power, like an awakening volcano.

"How long?" His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper.

"You have been asleep for... ten thousand years."

The lion king's pupils contracted slightly.

On the other side, the vibrations of the explosion came from the upper deck, and the ancient structure of the stone fortress groaned under the heavy burden.

The air was filled with ozone and the smell of blood, mixed with the unique sulfur smell of chaos and corruption.

"Black Legion!" A hurried call came from the communicator, "They broke through the third defense zone--"

Before he could finish his words, the door of the secret room was smashed to pieces by some huge force.

Five Chaos Terminators stepped into the room, their armour crawling with living tentacles of flesh, their shoulder pads engraved with blasphemous eight-pointed stars.

The leading warrior lifted up his twisted helmet, revealing a hideous face covered with chaos runes.

"Look who this is?" His voice was like the buzzing of countless insects. "Sleeping Lion King? Your father is dead, and the new god is about to-"

Jonson moved.

It was not a charge, nor an advance - it was as if a frame of time was taken away. He was standing next to the sarcophagus one second, and appeared in front of the Chaos Lord the next.

unarmed.

There was no lion sword, no power claws, just a pair of giant hands covered with ancient scars.

"Crack!"

With the first blow, he crushed the Chaos Lord's throat, his finger bones piercing directly through the neck armor of the power armor.

Blood gushed out like a fountain, splashing on the lion king's face which was as cold as a stone statue.

The remaining four Terminators opened fire simultaneously.

The explosive bomb roared in the confined space, but Jonson turned sideways at a speed that violated the laws of physics, and the bullet grazed his cloak and hit the wall.

He grabbed the barrel of the nearest enemy's bolter, twisted and pulled, and the entire mechanical arm was torn off the body along with half of the chest.

"For the Emperor?" the second Chaos Warrior taunted, swinging his power axe. "The corpse has been -"

Jonson's fist pierced through his breastplate, his fingers clasped around the still-beating heart, and crushed it.

The third Terminator finally realized that this was not a battle, but a massacre.

He turned around and tried to escape, but the lion king grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and twisted his head 180 degrees. The sound of his broken spine was as crisp as a dead branch breaking.

The two men ended up standing back to back, chainsaw axes and power swords swinging wildly.

Jonson stood there, letting the teeth tear open his cloak and leave shallow marks on his adamantium skin.

He reached out and grabbed the high-speed spinning chainsaw, clenched his five fingers, and the steel teeth crushed like biscuits.

“You are not worthy to mention his name.”

These were the only words the Lion King uttered during the massacre.

The next second, he inserted his hands into the chest cavities of the two Chaos Warriors and tore them apart, causing their flesh and blood to fall like rain.

As the remains of the last Chaos Warrior fell to the ground, all the alarms in the Stone Fortress suddenly stopped.

A strange wave of psychic energy swept across the entire ship. Zhuang Sen looked up suddenly. He sensed that something too huge to be understood was approaching.

Ryan said almost subconsciously: "Father?"

Then, a holographic projection unfolded in the center of the chamber, showing a scene in orbit around Caliban.

Tens of thousands of golden and silver warships leaped out of the void like a school of migrating whales. Their shapes were completely different from those of the Imperial warships, and their hulls were engraved with runes that Jonson had never seen before.

In the center of the fleet was a golden ark as big as a continent, its splendor even surpassing the legendary Queen of Glory-class battleship.

The projection suddenly switched.

A figure in golden armor appeared in the picture, and the first thing Zhuang Sen saw was the eyes burning with golden flames.

As his eyes met Jonson's through the projection, the Lion felt his gene-seed tremble.

"Lion El'Jonson." The newcomer's voice was like a thousand voices whispering at once. "I am Yanchen. Heir of Neos."

Ryan fell into deep thought as he looked at the face in front of him, which was seven points similar to the Emperor, yet completely different.

"I come from another universe." Yang Cheng continued.

His eyes swept across the chaotic debris on the ground, and the corners of his mouth rose slightly.

"Now, I will take over Neos's duties and come to end the suffering of this universe."

………………

And on the other side, the deepest part of the webway.

The light walls of the webway twisted into brilliant streams of color in Chagatai Khan's vision, like spilled paint splashed in an infinitely extending tunnel.

The engines of his hoverbike screamed, crushing the laws of physics of both the Warp and reality beneath its tires.

Five hundred meters ahead, a Dark Eldar raider was fleeing frantically.

Its streamlined hull shimmered a sickly purple light, snaking through the web like a disturbed venomous snake.

The dark matter thrusters at the rear of the ship spewed out dark green tail flames, and wherever they passed, the walls of the webway were corroded with sizzling scars.

"Run?" Khan sneered, and stepped on the accelerator with his right hand. "I'll let you run for ten seconds."

The motorcycle's engine suddenly burst into a dazzling blue light.

The ramming horn at the front of the motorcycle tore through the thin air in the webway, and the numbers on the speedometer jumped wildly, finally freezing at a value that was theoretically enough to rupture the internal organs of an ordinary Space Marine.

Khan's long black hair was pulled into a straight line behind his head, and the friction between his power armor and the air produced orange-red sparks.

He lowered his body slightly, leaning forward like a prairie trooper preparing to throw a lasso.

Then he suddenly raised the front of the car.

The motorcycle flew into the air, and the front of the car accurately inserted into the gap between the cooling fins at the rear of the plunder ship.

Amid the screams of twisted metal, Chagatai had already loosened his grip, and his slender body soared into the air like an eagle spreading its wings.