"The Corpse-Grinders are just ahead."
Durm gasped for breath, pointing toward the deep cavern.
He had not misled them.
In Cthonia's gang culture, survival training began from early childhood.
Children would be ruthlessly abandoned in the dark caverns; they either found their way back to the tribe by instinct, or perished from dehydration, starvation, and madness.
Every child who survived had to master the skills of moving swiftly through the labyrinthine underground and finding hidden paths.
Cthonia's underworld was utterly dark. Though the under-dwellers' eyes had long adapted to the gloom, their visual range in darkness was too short to detect enemies lurking dozens of meters away.
Only artificial light sources could ensure safety, preventing ambushes from the shadows.
But light sources underground were scarce, only flames and the cracked, dim lamps left by ancient miners. And these faint lights were all concentrated in the settlements of the underground tribes.
At this moment, at the end of the tunnel ahead, they could glimpse flickering light.
This indicated it was not a fixed source, but someone patrolling with a torch or lantern.
"It should be a patrol." Durn said.
He thought about volunteering to go explain things to the patrol, but feared Caelan might think he had ulterior motives.
Caelan asked, "How many people does the Corpse-Grinders have?"
Durm was startled, not expecting Caelan to ask only now, but he answered truthfully: "About a hundred, plus five hundred meat-men."
He paused. "Now maybe only half that."
A loss of 50% was crippling for any tribe.
The loss rate should have been lower, but more than half of those had died at Caelan's hands.
And those corpses had not been recovered in time, such a waste of food.
"How many children are there like you?"
Cthonia held no elderly, infirm, or disabled.
Aging meant elimination; the weak could not survive; the sick would be abandoned.
As for the disabled, one morning, they would be hung on butcher's hooks with iron chains, minced into fine bits, or tossed directly into the stew pot.
In the underworld, children were a relatively precious resource.
Gangs needed fresh blood. Children were both future enforcers and emergency rations when things got desperate.
But precious did not mean the gangs treasured them. Their lives, like those of adults, were worth less than a good knife.
Durm hesitated for a moment, then asked cautiously, "Which kind do you mean?"
"Those who have never drawn blood."
"Today was my coming-of-age ceremony. Those younger than me haven't participated yet; those older are already Corpse-Grinders."
Durm licked his chapped lips. To survive in the underworld, how could one not kill?
Unless they were cowards.
If someone had not killed, it was only because they had not yet reached the age to do so.
Caelan said, "Let's go."
Durm hurried to keep up. The light flickered in the darkness, and the patrol was about to run straight into them.
Durm was about to speak when he heard the familiar crack of necks snapping rightward from the darkness.
His face went pale instantly.
Sure enough, when they rounded the corner, two bodies lay slumped on the ground.
Their heads were twisted unnaturally; the fallen torchlight reflected their eyes, staring blankly in death.
Death had come so fast they did not even remember dying.
Caelan asked, "What do you normally do with these bodies?"
"Eat… eat them all…" Durm's teeth chattered uncontrollably as he stammered, "If we don't, they'll rot and spread disease…"
It was only then that he truly understood, Caelan had never intended to join the Corpse-Grinders.
The noble lord from the hive had come to take over!
Poof!
Durm shuddered violently, staring fixedly at the spot where two bodies had lain just moments before. Now it was completely empty.
Those two corpses had turned to ash before his very eyes!
"No more of that."
The children of Nostramo and the children of Cthonia were no different, born into worlds as foul as shit, they had no choice.
Whether killing or eating human flesh, it was all for survival.
The law did not apply retroactively, and Caelan would not condemn them for their past sins.
But the present was not the past.
Now that he was here, he would give them a choice.
If they still chose to eat human flesh, then they were innately evil Erebuses, unworthy of salvation.
But if they were willing to follow Caelan's rules and strive upward, Caelan would give them new life.
He had always done this.
Durm clearly understood; some color returned to his ashen face, and a glint of hope flickered in his eyes.
"No more of that", meant he still had a future!
He wasn't going to die!
Crack!
The sound of necks snapping rightward echoed from the darkness again, but this time Durm felt not fear, but a survivor's relief.
Thank goodness he had not formally joined the gang yet. Thank goodness he had not managed to claim a kill in the melee.
Otherwise, he too would have become a rightward-snapped neck.
"Are your parents in the Corpse-Grinders too?"
Durm answered, "My parents were just meat-men before. Not long after I was born, my father offered my mother to the chieftain. The next day, the chieftain gave her to other members. On the fifth day, she died in the gang's cellar, and her body was made into meat stew. My father and I both got a cup."
"As for my father, he died at the hands of raiders five years ago."
In the underworld, few lived past twenty.
Durm had little affection for his parents.
His mother died too early; he did not even remember her face.
Only when gang members taunted him did they occasionally bring up stories about her.
His father had started as a mere meat-person, but he was a true Cthonian at heart, which was why he survived so long.
With the first "meat" he earned by selling his mother, his father had become a minor boss among the Corpse-Grinders before his death.
On Cthonia, such things happened every day.
Caelan gently pinched the infant's cheek. "Remember this, my son. You are here to change the world, not to be changed by it."
Though he had just been born, though his growth was abnormally slow for a Primarch, though he still sucked his thumb and drooled, he was still a Primarch, and Caelan knew he understood.
Gang culture had run through Horus's adolescence, leaving a permanent mark on him.
He had failed to change the world, instead, he was assimilated by it, bringing Cthonia's savage dregs wholesale into the 16th Legion.
The future 16th Legion's ingrained Great Astartes supremacism, the popularity of warrior lodges, and the Legion's pervasive gang culture were all tied to this.
Many Primarchs chose to integrate their homeworld's culture into their Legions, Caliban's chivalry, Macragge's discipline and honor, Barbarus's people's resilience. These cultures had their unique values and charms.
But not all Primarchs did so. Sanguinius, for example, did not bring Baal's culture to his Legion, though that was largely because Baal had little cultural heritage to begin with. Fulgrim was a similar case.
The artistic cultivation of their Legions came from top-down emulation born of personal devotion to the Primarch.
Regardless of what other Primarchs did, in Caelan's eyes, gang culture was worthless, nothing but meaningless savagery and decadence.
Cthonia's underworld could not even compare to Nostramo's underhives.
This savagery had not formed overnight, nor was it Horus's doing.
But he had fully absorbed its influence, becoming a spokesman for gang culture.
He believed that powerful warriors could be forged in the crucible of gang culture.
Because that was how he himself had come to be.
But he forgot that his own crucible had been patricide, and the same crucible would repeat in his Legion like a curse.
Caelan did not want his son to become that kind of person.
Since he was here, his son should be a strong one who changed the world, not a weak one changed by it!
Crack!
The rightward snapping of necks continued, no matter where the gang members hid.
Caelan's psychic senses could find them all and snap their necks with precision.
Caelan was merciful; he almost never tortured anyone, except for the inherently evil Erebus.
Even though these gangsters had done every vile deed imaginable, he still gave them a clean death.
This was his bottom line. He had to remain constantly vigilant against the schemes of the Warp.
Tzeentch's followers loved plots and schemes; Khorne's followers loved to hack and slash; Nurgle's followers loved to bestow "blessings"; only Slaanesh's followers truly delighted in torture.
Torturing Erebus did not count.
Erebus was not human.
"Durm, who is he?"
As they followed the tunnel into the main hall, Durm heard a furious shout.
He cowered instinctively, from long-ingrained fear of the chieftain.
But the Corpse-Grinders' leader's voice soon cut off abruptly, he and his men all went rightward-snapped.
Caelan called, "Durm."
Durm flinched, snapping his back straight by reflex. "Here!"
"Are there any minor bosses left unaccounted for?"
Durm quickly ran through names and faces in his mind. After a moment, he answered cautiously: "All the minor bosses are here, but there should be a few full members not present, maybe patrolling the other side."
His voice grew softer; the corpses strewn across the floor made him gulp.
Too fast!
There had been no fierce battles along the way, just a steady stream of rightward neck snaps.
Those thugs wielding rusty blades hadn't even screamed; they had died without realizing what was happening!
If he had not turned from darkness in time, he too would have been rightward-snapped.
Durm did not believe it was coincidence.
Of all those people, only he had survived.
Not because he had been standing farther back, but because he was younger.
He just did not understand why Caelan had spared him.
At least among Cthonia's gangs, youth and being bloodless were not advantages, quite the opposite.
The smaller children cowered in the darkness. They had survived not because they were well hidden, but because Caelan had chosen to spare them.
Caelan asked, "Where are the others kept?"
Durm was startled, then realized Caelan was not referring to the Corpse-Grinders, but to the meat-men.
"I'll lead the way." Durm swallowed, leading Caelan into a darker tunnel.
Along the walls on both sides, countless cages had been carved into the rock. Behind each cage's rusted iron bars were a dozen or more disheveled mortals, most with vacant stares, their withered skin covered in bruises and scabbed wounds.
The air here was more foul than outside, reeking of an acrid stench of excrement and blood mixed together.
At the sound of footsteps, some instinctively shrank back into the darkness.
Others crawled reflexively to the bars, extending emaciated arms with faint pleas.
"…P-please… some food… my child is starving…"
Durm secretly watched Caelan's expression from the corner of his eye. When Caelan frowned, he felt as if the sky were falling.
These people were called "meat-men" in name, but they were actually the gang's slave laborers, forced to work in exchange for meager rations.
Food was scarce underground. The Corpse-Grinders were a small gang; they could not afford to raise plump meat-men specifically for slaughter.
That was why these supposed "big-bellied" meat-men were so emaciated.
Durm bowed deeply. "My lord, shall I release them?"
"Give them some food. Bring the younger children out."
"Is there an underground river nearby?"
Durm nodded. The Corpse-Grinders' stronghold was located right beside an underground river.
"Take them to wash and bring them to me."
Caelan's gaze swept over the cowering mortals. "As for the rest of you, who wants to come out and work?"
They had spent their whole lives in cages, what would freedom even mean?
The topknot on their heads could be cut, but the topknot in their hearts remained.
Only when they wanted to cut the topknot in their hearts would cutting the one on their heads mean anything.
Most cowered. Only a short, stooped man shuffled toward the iron bars, speaking with cautious hesitation: "My lord… what would you have us do?"
"Fetch some water from the underground river. Clean these cells. Wash yourselves and the others clean."
The man was visibly stunned. "J-just that? And who will watch us?"
"No one."
Caelan did not even look up, adjusting the infant's swaddling, which he had just torn from the Corpse-Grinders' camp.
If they wanted to run, let them run. At least they still yearned for freedom.
Caelan would not chase them; he had no time. He still had a child to care for.
The man put on a fawning expression: "Then shall we get a pot of water boiling for you ahead of time?"
Caelan frowned slightly: "Why would I need boiling water?"
The man cowered, lowering his head. "Eating it raw is fine too."
Caelan looked at him calmly and said evenly, "I do not eat people."
The man was even more bewildered. There were people who claimed not to eat humans? What kind of cruel joke was this?
Should he play along?
The man hesitated, then let out a dry, awkward chuckle.
Caelan ordered, "Go to work."
He did not hold high hopes for the man. Adults had fixed worldviews.
In every era, it was the young who formed the mainstay of social transformation.
Their minds had not yet been assimilated by the world; they were like uncarved jade, with the malleability to embrace change.