Chapter 454: The Strong Father, the Weak Son; The Strong Son, the Weak Father—The Conservation of Power!
[Regent Horus, don't be in such a rush. I'm an old man, my memory isn't what it used to be. I need to think things through slowly. The more you press me, the less I can recall.]
Malcador deliberately provoked Horus, pulling that infuriating look on his face. Seeing Horus and the Space Wolves of the Luna Wolves behind him looking like they had just eaten dung, Malcador felt unspeakably pleased.
In the past, Malcador might have swallowed his anger for the sake of the greater good, avoiding conflict with Horus. But now he no longer needed to play the grandson. Opportunities to disgust Horus weren't many, and he intended to seize every single one.
"Malcador! I'm warning you, don't get too smug. Soon I'll stand before Father and expose all your High Lords, those parliamentarians colluding with mortal bureaucrats, indulging in factionalism, corruption, and embezzlement!"
"You really think I've just been wasting my time these past months? Let me tell you the truth: I've already dug up every detail of what you've been doing."
"If anything happens to me, don't think you'll come out of it unscathed!"
Horus's veins bulged with fury. No one understood better than Malcador the cesspit Horus had been handed, and then had the gall to dump such filth into his lap. What sane man wouldn't want to flee?
Yet Malcador showed not a shred of guilt or panic before Horus's roar. He looked at him calmly and said, "The Emperor knows all of this. In fact, many of these things were done with His tacit approval."
"For example, that High Lords' Council you despise so much—that was created by the Emperor Himself."
Malcador smiled faintly. This youth was still too inexperienced, seeing everything in black and white. Governing the Imperium, a machinery so vast, was never so simple.
[Regent Horus, when you stand before the Emperor, you had better confess earnestly. Otherwise, you may find yourself thrown into a cell to keep Magnus company.]
Having said his piece, Malcador cut the comm link without waiting for Horus's reaction. He had delivered the message that needed delivering; the rest was for Horus to deal with himself.
"That old bastard…!"
Horus clenched his fists. He refused to believe the Emperor would throw him in a cell. Magnus had consorted with the powers of the Warp—that was an unforgivable sin. At worst, Horus had shirked his duties.
If that even counted as shirking!
It wasn't as if he hadn't delegated affairs to the Cabinet and Guilliman. Why was it acceptable for Malcador to outsource governance to the High Lords, but when he did the same, it became a crime?
With that thought, Horus regained his sense of justification. With feigned composure overlaying his inner unease, he returned toward the Imperial Palace on Terra.
Yet on the way, countless scenarios flashed unbidden through his mind.
To say he felt no fear would be a lie.
On the surface, the Emperor indulged His sons. But once Horus had learned the truth of the missing Primarchs, he realized just how harsh—how merciless—the Emperor truly was.
Some Primarchs had butchered innocents and bled planets dry. The Emperor would sometimes turn a blind eye. Even when memorials reached His desk, He would dole out a token punishment, and when the offense repeated, He'd simply punish again. The Primarchs emerged largely unscathed.
But for others—those who had tried only to ease their father's burdens, who had glimpsed truths they were never meant to see—death was the only outcome.
Even Magnus, foolish as he seemed, had originally only wanted to complete the Imperium's knowledge of psychic lore. Yet in the end, the Thousand Sons were slaughtered, and Prospero burned.
It was obvious: when it came to core interests and fundamental truths, even the most benevolent of fathers could become a blood-soaked executioner in an instant.
The tragedy was that few Primarchs even knew where the Emperor's bottom line lay. Many never realized they had already strayed onto the edge of death.
So then… was handing off the Imperium's governance, abandoning his post, crossing that line?
What if the Emperor had made him Regent for some grand design, and his negligence had ruined everything? What then?
Once suspicion took root, it became a tangle of threads Horus could not unravel, his dread growing heavier with each thought.
With unease gnawing at his chest, Horus entered the Emperor's hall like a walking corpse.
After days apart, the Emperor was unchanged—majestic, commanding. One glance was enough to make Horus avert his eyes, shame and guilt forcing his head down.
He had rehearsed countless excuses to absolve himself, but when he met the Emperor's gaze, every word fled his mind.
The Emperor said nothing, merely stared in silence. The vast hall grew suffocating, its atmosphere like a mountain pressing upon Horus's chest.
The silence was unbearable. The longer it dragged on, the more Horus's nerves frayed. The Emperor's cold, wordless scrutiny tortured him far worse than any scolding.
At last, unable to bear it, Horus spoke: "I'm sorry, Father. I failed your expectations."
"I am willing to accept punishment."
He had imagined that by admitting fault, the punishment would be carried out, the debt cleared.
But the Emperor seemed not to hear him, standing still, as if waiting for Horus to elaborate on his sins.
Swallowing hard, Horus continued: "It is my own incompetence. I could not fulfill the role of Regent. I even concealed from you that I passed the regency to Guilliman."
"I am neither a worthy brother nor a qualified Regent. I am ready to accept whatever punishment you decree."
He did not shift the blame onto Malcador. Malcador had already warned him: admit fault, and perhaps there would be room for compromise—he might even keep his title of Warmaster. But if he refused to confess, or tried to scapegoat others, he would only earn the Emperor's wrath.
Having confessed, Horus lifted his eyes hopefully. But the Emperor's silence continued, leaving Horus dumbfounded.
Was the old man really going to repeat the last performance, forcing him to collapse under his own guilt? Hmph! Not this time. He wouldn't fall for it again.
As long as he admitted fault and accepted punishment, the matter would be over!
So Horus chose silence too, standing unmoving. If he didn't feel awkward, then the awkwardness belonged to the other side.
Minutes crawled by. Then hours. At last, Horus even slipped into meditation, determined to outlast the old man.
But then, the Emperor moved.
Horus braced himself for a long lecture as the Emperor descended the throne. Instead, he heard the crack of a resounding slap. His cheek stung, burning.
Without a word, the Emperor backhanded him again, sending him sprawling like a top across the floor.
From the shadows, Malcador watched coldly, showing no emotion.
Scenes like this could never be witnessed by the Custodian Guard. The Emperor Himself enforcing discipline—any witness would be executed.
"Father, you—!"
Horus staggered to his feet, clutching his blazing cheek in shock. Never in his life had the Emperor struck him. Always had He guided with infinite patience, Infinity words of reason. But today—why this? Why did the Emperor deem it worthy to raise His hand?
Something was terribly wrong.
Boom—!
Just as Horus thought a beating might at least spare his Luna Wolves from punishment, the Emperor's towering form blurred forward. With a single punch, He sent Horus crashing into a pillar. Looking down, Horus saw his power armor dented deep.
This old tyrant wasn't here to lecture. He meant to execute him with His fists.
To be beaten to death—more agonizing than any beheading.
"Horus, if you don't want to die a pitiful death at my hand, you'd best show me your true strength."
The Emperor's icy, indifferent words plunged Horus into a frozen abyss. He had thought, as before, that forgiveness would come. Instead, the judgment awaiting him… was death.
Death at the Emperor's own hands.
He was just skipping work—was it really necessary to be beaten to death on the spot?
Horus had no time to dwell on it, because the Emperor's iron fist was already crashing toward his face.
If he took that punch head-on, his brain would instantly short-circuit and he'd black out.
In the blink of an eye, Horus shifted aside to dodge.
Realizing the Emperor was serious about fighting him, the pain still burning in his cheek mixed with the humiliation in his heart, and Horus exploded with rage. He was the Warmaster of the Imperium of Man.
No one could humiliate him—not even the Emperor himself.
"Father, you brought this on yourself!"
Horus tensed every muscle in his body, channeling all his strength into his fists. He refused to believe that the physique he had honed over two centuries of the Great Crusade could be inferior to the Emperor who stayed cooped up on Terra.
Once, the Emperor had indeed wielded unfathomable might. But Horus didn't believe that his father, who was ultimately still human, hadn't aged. He didn't believe that he, the most gifted of the Primarchs, could be weaker than an old man.
The next moment, their iron fists collided, filling the grand hall with the deep, thunderous impact of flesh against flesh.
But the outcome was no surprise. Even though Horus fought with everything he had, he still couldn't withstand the Emperor's blows.
The Emperor seized him by the power armor and swung him around like a ragdoll, smashing Horus into the palace again and again. The grand hall splintered beneath the impacts, and Horus couldn't muster the slightest resistance.
From the rhythm of the Emperor's assault, Horus—well-versed in combat—could tell his father wasn't truly trying to kill him. He was simply beating him senseless, holding back from lethal force.
Under the barrage of the Emperor's paternal "lesson," fists raining down ten strikes a second, Horus's arrogance was utterly shattered. In the end, he simply gave up resisting, slumping into a defeated heap with a defiant glare that said, If you've got the guts, kill me.
Worn and battered, but unbowed.
Watching from the side, Malcador felt a surge of satisfaction mixed with a trace of pity. Poor boy—after such a thrashing, he would carry psychological scars for life.
Still, Horus wasn't a fool. He had realized the Emperor wasn't trying to kill him, and so he submitted in his own way.
Had he tried to fight to the bitter end, the only outcome would have been being beaten into paste.
After all, the Emperor was the man who had single-handedly fought and sealed away the Void Dragon. For Horus to challenge him barehanded would have required being chosen and empowered by all four Chaos Gods—and even then, he still wouldn't have been the Emperor's equal.
Faced with such absolute power, the wisest choice was to yield.
When the Emperor finally decided Horus had had enough, he dusted off his hands, looking down at his son slumped on the floor.
"Horus, have I or have I not told you of the importance of the High Lords to Imperial governance?"
"Have I or have I not told you that the contributions of mere mortals are no less than those of the Primarchs? And yet you treated my words as if they were nothing."
"Don't think I don't know what you've been doing these past months—targeting the High Lords, shielding Luthar's corruption, neglecting your duties, and shirking all responsibility."
The Emperor recited Horus's failings one by one. And when his anger flared, he punctuated his words with a sharp kick that left Horus gasping in pain.
"Since you won't listen when I speak kindly, I can only make sure you remember this another way."
Glancing at Horus's battered, half-wrecked power armor, the Emperor snorted. "After all these years, you're still the same street thug from Cthonia."
"With these pitiful tricks, you dare call yourself Regent of the Imperium? You're not even fit to be Warmaster."
The Emperor wasn't satisfied with breaking Horus physically; he meant to crush him psychologically as well, forcing this over-proud son to recognize reality.
In that moment, Horus's heart twisted in agony. He wanted to retort, to fight back—but he had no idea how.
He couldn't win with fists. He couldn't win with words.
Every step that had led him here was his own doing. The Emperor had warned him time and again, but he hadn't listened.
Now, beaten into this state, he had no one to blame but himself.
"Hmph."
The Emperor shook out his robes and returned to the throne. Now that the child had been disciplined, it was time for the "talking cure."
During his visits to the vast corporate empires of the galaxy, the Emperor had studied their systems, their social structures, and their management philosophies.
The executives of those mega-Megacorps were shrewd indeed. From conversations with people like Xu Shiming, Lucy, and Song Zhaomei, the Emperor had come to understand the essence of the father-son relationship: it was fundamentally a contest of power.
In the past, he had been far too lenient with his sons.
Between father and son, there had to be not only love, but also an invisible pressure. That pressure came from authority itself.
In ordinary families, a father's authority came from his ability to command resources—his ability to earn. A father who made more money could easily dominate the household, holding absolute say. The mother and children deferred to him completely.
But time moved on. The strong father aged, and the young child grew. In that process, power inevitably shifted toward the child.
A son eager to prove himself would crave authority, snatching it from his father by earning, by seizing resources.
Once the son succeeded, the mantle of "head of the household" would pass to him, and the father's prestige would collapse. His words would no longer carry weight.
When the father is strong, the son is weak. When the son is strong, the father is weak. Power is conserved.
In the Imperium of Man, strength alone was the true foundation of power. But because the Emperor had stayed on Terra for so long without showing his might, many of the Primarchs had forgotten just how powerful he was.
Horus, for one.
Dissatisfied with the High Lords, dismissing the Emperor's words, irresponsibly dumping the title of Regent onto Guilliman—all of this, at its root, was an unconscious challenge to paternal authority.
The Emperor realized that if he didn't unleash his wrath and beat Horus down himself, the boy might actually believe he was growing weak.
"Horus, I'll ask you again: do you understand your mistake?"
Seated upon the throne, the Emperor's voice was suffused with majesty, his body blazing with holy light. This time, Horus took the words to heart.
He had seen with his own eyes the gulf between them.
"Yes, I was wrong."
Swallowing the pain wracking his body, Horus bowed his head in submission.
This fight had broken him of his arrogance. He had believed that after countless victories across the galaxy, his strength must have reached eighty percent of the Emperor's.
But in truth? He hadn't even reached ten.
"Good. Then tell me—what were your mistakes?" the Emperor pressed, refusing to let him off so easily.
Horus fell silent for a moment before answering:
"I should not have ignored the contributions of mortals to the Imperium, nor should I have overestimated my ability to govern."
"I should not have shirked responsibility by throwing the Regency onto Guilliman and making him shoulder the burden for me."
"Most of all, I should never have been disrespectful to my father, deaf to your teachings, and repeated my offenses again and again."
Hearing this, Malcador nodded in satisfaction. The matter was settled.
The boy wasn't stupid—he knew where the true mistake lay.
Scorning mortals, skipping work, turning a blind eye to his brothers' corruption—those things didn't really matter. The only thing that mattered was whether he obeyed.
As long as Horus promised to listen, this "death sentence" became a perfect score. And not only would he walk away unscathed—he might even gain from it.
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