"Why are you so weak, Zhou Yun-kyoudai?"
Ragu, laughing and teasing, carried Zhou Yun on his shoulder and dropped him at the door of his house.
Zhou Yun leaned against the outer wall, rubbing his temple, waiting for the dizziness and nausea to subside.
"You're looking better now, let's go have a drink."
Seeing his face regain some color, Ragu urged him again: "Tomorrow we're going to go to war with the Houshu-gumi. Have a drink with your brothers. Might not see us again."
There was a genuine sincerity in Ragu's tone, as though he might really die tomorrow.
"I've heard that at least seven or eight times already." Zhou Yun shook his head and replied once his head cleared a little.
Ragu was an old fox who somehow managed to live this long in hive gang wars where the average life expectancy didn't even hit thirty. Zhou Yun often wondered if he'd been blessed by some kami of the Warp—how else could he be so hard to kill?
"Wait. You said the Houshu-gumi is going to war with you guys?" Zhou Yun raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, while you were gone we clashed over territory."
Ragu grinned, patting the Agripinaa-3-shiki rifle hanging at his waist—clearly one of the guns he'd "borrowed" from the delivery.
Zhou Yun was speechless. This old fox… oh well, they'd already paid him for the weapons. Even if Ragu stole all three hundred, it wasn't his problem anymore.
"The Houshu-gumi is expanding so aggressively?" Zhou Yun frowned deeply.
"I heard they're building some kind of ark. Needs lots of materials and manpower." Ragu said after thinking.
"An ark… they want to fly to heaven and become Eldar or something?" Zhou Yun muttered.
The more he thought about it, the stranger the Houshu-gumi seemed. Their teachings and actions reminded him suspiciously of the Gene Stealer cults. Could they actually be part of one?
But they were far too blatant… it didn't match the Gene Stealer style.
Zhou Yun decided he'd need to investigate the Houshu-gumi more closely when he had time. If they really were a Gene Stealer cult… that would be a huge problem.
But not tonight.
Rubbing his aching temple, Zhou Yun waved Ragu off, pushed open his door and collapsed on his small bed. The boards weren't soft, but the moment he lay down his fatigue eased.
He kicked the door shut, rubbed his temples, and opened his fourth-dimensional pouch to take stock of his haul from the old eighth district.
Besides the weapons from the PDF warehouse, he'd also gotten Ignace Karkasy's notebook and the stasis-field safe it had been kept in.
That notebook… just thinking about it made his eye twitch. He'd assumed it was just a book of poems. Instead, it turned out to be Karkasy's personal diary, full of blasphemous spells—which he'd already burned.
But even so… Zhou Yun rubbed his temple. The diary held many records of the Great Crusade era: Horus, the planet Davin, Erebus, the Sons of Horus, the First Captain Abaddon… and plenty of complaints about the Astartes and speculation about the warrior lodges.
Its contents were the most forbidden of Imperial secrets. Secrets the Imperium wanted buried forever. If this fell into a noble's hands and caught the wrong institution's attention, everyone who'd seen it would be "purged for loyalty."
He decided then and there: there was no way he could give this to Old One-Eye. Some things should stay buried.
Too bad the fourth-dimensional pouch didn't pay much for written material.
Zhou Yun shook his head and shoved the book deep into the pouch, then sold off most of the weapons and the stasis safe.
One million three hundred thousand credits, in his account in an instant.
He didn't sell the fifty Katrael-shiki M36 lasguns though. Those things were simply too good—not for nothing were they called the best wife of the Imperial Guard and the standard for the Cadian Shock Troops.
Right now he could control twelve at a time with his nenriki, though it drained his stamina and there was a few seconds' delay between volleys. But in the underhive? Nobody stayed calm when a dozen focused beams of light came screaming at their face.
With training, maybe he could one day control all fifty at once.
He also kept a few of the other three kinds of weapons—just in case.
All told, one million three hundred thousand.
"Zhou Yun, zanga wa okane da." From the corner of his eye, the winged figure in the white light murmured in awe.
"Who's family with you?" Zhou Yun shot him a glance.
Though it hurt a little to spend, Zhou Yun still opened the future department store's shopping interface. He needed more tools. If the Houshu-gumi really was a Gene Stealer cult, what he had now wouldn't cut it.
The patriarch lurking beneath Asford was said to be six meters tall, with diamond-like armor and terrifying psychic powers. And thanks to its host's bloodline, it could even resist the control of the Great Devourer to some extent, enough to brawl with a Death Company Dreadnought.
He needed something with real power.
[Item: Pocket Tornado]
[Origin: 22nd-century Earth – Mirai Department Store]
[Production: 277.M2]
[Function: Shaped like a gourd. Pull the stopper to release a tornado equivalent to a typhoon. Powerful enough to destroy a small town in minutes.]
[Price: 560,000]
Seeing the description, Zhou Yun's eyes lit up. Cheap, for something that could raze a town.
Then he understood why it was so cheap. The winds didn't distinguish friend from foe. If he unleashed a typhoon, he'd get swept up too.
But if he kept it small, and used his instant-move ability from the psychic hat to escape…
Zhou Yun's eyes sparkled. Drop a storm in their faces, blink away before it hit him? He liked it.
He reached out and clicked purchase.
But before he could even take it out of his bag, shouting erupted outside:
"The bastards from the Houshu-gumi launched a sneak attack!"
"Kill them, brothers!"
Gunfire and curses mingled, echoing into the night.
(End of Chapter)
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