It had been roughly a year on Trailblaze since Guilliman's departure.
During this time, Zhou Ye had initiated a massive troop surge for the Chapters under his command. The number of Astartes had reached around one hundred and thirty thousand. The auxiliary forces that supported them had also swelled to over fifteen million.
It was worth noting that these were well-equipped troops, the kind that would be considered the most elite even within the Astra Militarum. Their combat effectiveness was high, and their gear was top-tier.
As for standard Astra Militarum-level soldiers, in Zhou Ye's domain, they were generally relegated to serving as Planetary Defense Forces.
The same principle applied to his Astartes. If he focused solely on mass-producing marines, Zhou Ye could easily double their numbers, but without the accompanying wargear, it would be pointless.
The student populations in his various academies had also exploded, with each institution now enrolling over three hundred thousand students.
After all, with the passage of time, a baby boom had rapidly intensified. A vast number of newborns had reached the appropriate school age, so Zhou Ye had directly expanded the scope of enrollment.
Furthermore, many nobles from worlds not directly under Zhou Ye's rule expressed a strong desire to have their children study abroad in his domain.
Zhou Ye welcomed this, though he charged extra for it.
Even so, the great noble houses from thousands of worlds across the star sector fought tooth and nail for a single enrollment slot, spilling blood over the opportunity despite the exorbitant tuition fees Zhou Ye demanded.
He didn't offer many slots, either, setting the quota at one ten-millionth of a planet's total population. For example, a planet with ten billion people would get one hundred slots per year, with students assigned to different academies based on their homeworld's conditions.
Worlds with populations under one hundred million were counted as if they had one hundred million, and then charged the steep tuition.
What followed was a truly spectacular sight for Zhou Ye. The tuition fees were a negligible amount that the planetary nobles didn't even blink at. The real show was the terrifyingly intense internal competition that ensued—a competition that wasn't just confined to the "chessboard" but spilled out into the real world.
On some planets, assassinations and poisonings became frequent occurrences. This was something that had completely exceeded Zhou Ye's expectations, but he currently lacked the time to manage it. In any case, only the children of the great noble houses could even qualify for this rat race; the mid-tier nobles didn't stand a chance.
In the end, the process was simple: take the top performers from the examinations and conduct soul and gene-level screenings. Of course, since both were standard procedures within the Imperium, no one raised any objections.
With such an abundant population, Zhou Ye's capacity for a troop surge was immense. Unfortunately, soldiers alone were not enough; they required a full complement of equipment.
The second forge world was now fundamentally complete, and the ever-cunning tech-priests had already moved on to begin construction on the third. The second forge world, meanwhile, was being taken over by regular workers.
This progress had, in a short time, given Zhou Ye another opportunity to complete a troop surge. Thanks to his Star Rails, his ability to mass-produce and deploy forces now far surpassed Guilliman's.
And yet…
"How is the training of the various units progressing? I still haven't had a direct confrontation with the Tyranids."
What concerned Zhou Ye more was a different issue: his forces genuinely lacked experience fighting Tyranids. This was a problem, and since Zhou Ye had never faced them head-on himself, he couldn't offer much help.
Although he had fought plenty of Tyranids in Space Marine 2, that couldn't be considered real-world experience. No matter how realistic a game is, it is still constrained by one crucial factor.
It's designed to be played. In a real situation, if you increased the speed of all the enemies in the game by a factor of five, it would be completely unplayable.
But while Zhou Ye didn't know, others did—namely, the Ultramarines. A company of them was currently rotating between his various units, imparting their experience in combating the Tyranid threat and conducting simulated battles.
Now, the time was right. It was time to make a move.
---o---
With a single order from Zhou Ye, the entire planet of Trailblaze stirred to action once more. Streaks of light cut across the sky as a colossal fleet began to assemble.
This time, Zhou Ye was bringing a force of one hundred thousand Space Marines, eight million auxiliaries, and an additional two hundred million Planetary Defense Forces mobilized from various worlds.
The number of battleships was immense; Zhou Ye had mobilized over eighty percent of his entire military. Without the logistical support of the Star Rails, he would have been lucky to deploy a third of this force.
And this was only because his domain was still relatively small. If he were operating on a galactic scale, Zhou Ye knew he'd be fortunate to mobilize even one percent of his total strength, as he could never be sure that the rear, left without sufficient garrisons, wouldn't suddenly become the new frontline.
But with the Star Rails and partial support from Ultramar, Zhou Ye could launch a truly magnificent expedition.
Of course, even with these advantages, he still needed to leave a substantial force behind to defend his territory. He would once again be taking his three Emperor Titan battle groups, leaving two of his five behind.
This was mainly because five was already more than sufficient for his current needs, and building more was temporarily unnecessary. The rest of his industrial capacity was dedicated to constructing naval warships for his very own fleet.
Fighting the Tyranids couldn't be done on the ground alone. Space superiority was essential, which was why Zhou Ye had prepared such an overwhelming force.
This was going to be a legitimate, multi-system, chaotic free-for-all. A small force would be useless. As for himself…
He couldn't just shatter Baal with a single blow. If the Tyranid swarms scattered, it would feel as frustrating as trying to shoot a mosquito with a cannon. Most importantly, these creatures were different from Chaos.
They offered no "replenishment." If not for the growing power of his Star Rails, he would be genuinely reluctant to clash with them. But hiding forever wasn't a solution, so…
"My Lord, are you serious? The Lord of Change is unknowable."
Standing beside him was Tzeentch's Chosen, Ahriman. Although he had purged a great deal of the Warp's influence from himself, the connection ran too deep to be completely severed.
This was why Zhou Ye often found himself watching Ahriman and pondering. As the most powerful of the four Chaos Champions, Ahriman's psychic might was nearly on par with Malcador the Sigillite's. The whispers of the Warp could barely affect him.
Even Tzeentch himself seemed unconcerned with his champion, but the more Tzeentch acted this way, the more it made Zhou Ye speculate. He even considered sticking Ahriman in a Dreadnought to sleep, just like the Raven Guard ones.
Now, Zhou Ye had a new plan. A massive clusterfuck, was it? Since even Ka'Bandha was making an appearance, it wouldn't be impossible for him to drag a few of Tzeentch's Greater Daemons into the fray.
Ahriman, however, was baffled by this. How could he dare to use the power of Tzeentch? The Changer of Ways was fickle. If he truly wanted the Tyranids and Chaos to tear each other apart, Khorne was the far better choice.
After all, if you brought Nurgle into it, the battle would likely devolve into both sides just flinging poison at each other. Nurgle's forces lacked direct combat prowess but were disgustingly resilient.
Even Zhou Ye had never considered borrowing their power. As for Tzeentch, his capricious nature was self-evident.
Often, even his own followers didn't know what would happen. Ahriman himself had been screwed over by Tzeentch on numerous occasions.
Of course, Ahriman had also screwed over his fair share of people, but this time, he had no intention of betraying Zhou Ye. After all, this man had solved the problem that had tormented him for ten thousand years. If Zhou Ye ordered him to go fight Magnus right now, he would do it.
Even so, in his eyes, wielding the power of Tzeentch was a dangerous gambit.
"It's not a big deal. I don't think the Lord of Change will refuse. I could probably even visit the Crystal Labyrinth right now. After all, so many Chaos Gods have been prancing around in front of me, yet he's the only one who remains completely silent, so quiet…"
Honestly, Zhou Ye truly dared to go and meet Tzeentch, because there was one question he desperately wanted to ask him.
What is GW? He was very curious if the Lord of Change would simply explode. If you told Aha he was a game character, he would find it amusing.
But if you told Tzeentch the same thing, his reaction would not be nearly as pleasant.
Besides, look at Khorne, Slaanesh, and Nurgle—they had appeared before him countless times.
Tzeentch's inaction, by contrast, was far more unsettling.
"That is a last resort, not the primary plan," Zhou Ye clarified. He didn't actually want to rely on the power of the Chaos Gods. But if he was pushed into a corner, all bets were off.
Moreover, the Tyranids and the Chaos Gods held a mutual animosity for one another. One had no biomass and contaminated potential food sources, while the other had no souls and devoured every place it went, leaving nothing behind.
On many occasions when the two forces clashed, they ignored humanity completely and immediately turned on each other.
This time, Zhou Ye had altered his plan. Every plan he made devolved into a massive clusterfuck anyway. So this time, he was changing his plan by aiming for a massive clusterfuck from the start.
He knew that in the original timeline, this Tyranid fleet was worn down to almost nothing by the Blood Angels before Guilliman returned to finish the job.
The force he was bringing now was powerful enough to scour the Blood Angels' homeworld several times over. In theory, there shouldn't be a problem. But that was only in theory.
Therefore, to face these beggars from beyond the galaxy, Zhou Ye had prepared multiple contingencies. He even had a super-sized surprise ready for the Tyranid swarm. After all, those Genestealers were far too useful, and he had developed a certain interest in them.
Drawing Tzeentch into the conflict was just one of his backup plans, and it wasn't the only one.
"Father, we have collected a large number of corrupted psykers. They will all be fed into the reactor as fuel. We estimate the total this time to be one hundred thousand, including several Gamma-level psykers. It is a pity we arrived too late; otherwise, they might have become our brothers."
"..."
Zhou Ye said nothing. With the Astronomican extinguished, the Black Ships could no longer make their rounds. Compounded by the now-constant whispers from the Warp, many new psykers were emerging, and many existing ones were being driven insane.
Under these circumstances, individual planets were completely unable to cope. If you simply killed the psykers, one or two was fine. But killing too many would weaken the barrier between your world and the Warp. And that wasn't even counting the particularly high-level ones. Although Zhou Ye had yet to see a psyker above Gamma-level, he had encountered a few at that level.
On his worlds, it was manageable. The moment a psyker awakening was detected, they could be contained and sent to him. But on other Imperial worlds, it was a different story.
So now, aside from regular trade, Zhou Ye also helped various planets by collecting and processing the psykers they couldn't handle. Over ninety-nine percent of them were insane, and they now served perfectly as batteries. Forcibly punching through the Great Rift this time would require a far greater expenditure of energy than the journey to Macragge.
"This isn't Vigilus, and Vigilus is too far from my territory. Calgar has already taken a force to garrison it. Now, I too must act."
He hadn't known about Vigilus before, but this time Zhou Ye had made its importance clear. So, after Guilliman left, Calgar had organized a force to travel to Vigilus and fortify it. That world was the most critical nexus connecting to the Imperium Nihilus, a strategic chokepoint of immense value.
With Calgar there, it was bound to attract all sorts of troublesome characters, which would take some of the pressure off him.
At that moment, Zhou Ye took a deep breath. After dismissing everyone, he was left with only Ai-yi by his side.
"Are you ready?" Zhou Ye asked, looking at her. It wasn't their first time, but since coming to this world, there were few things that could make his head spin. He had no concerns about the Hyperion's durability; the thing was basically a train disguised as a battleship.
It could genuinely be used as a weapon. But no matter how tough it was, the people inside were unlikely to have a pleasant experience, not even himself.
"Preparations complete. Let us, once again, Trailblaze!!!"
Hearing Zhou Ye's words, Ai-yi nodded. The entire Hyperion began to tremble violently. A golden brilliance flowed across its hull once more. Fueled by the energy converted from the sacrificed psykers, the ship was now saturated with the light of the Imaginary Tree.
In the next instant, the entire Hyperion transformed into a streak of light and charged straight into the Great Rift that tore across the galaxy.
BOOM!!!
Almost immediately, Zhou Ye felt the world shake as if heaven and earth were collapsing.
---o---
Meanwhile, in the Underworld System of the Shield of Baal.
This was the vanguard position, directly facing the tendrils of Hive Fleet Leviathan. Not long ago, the Administratum and the Departmento Munitorum had, to the best of their abilities, dispatched as many reinforcements as possible.
Unfortunately, due to their lack of understanding of the Tyranids, compounded by certain "Imperial characteristics," they had successfully managed to get the entire naval contingent annihilated.
Having lost the protection of the fleet, the ground forces across the Underworld System could only face the Tyranids in a desperate, hopeless battle.
---o---