With a sharp click, Li Qinwu cocked the gun slung across his back, seized it in both hands, and shouted toward the men repairing the tracks ahead.
"Fall back! Something's coming!"
The workers froze for only a moment before scrambling toward the small train.
Hearing the warning, the others immediately grabbed their weapons and jumped off the carriage, forming a defensive line. Xiao Dao raised his automatic rifle beside Li Qinwu, aiming into the darkness ahead.
No one else had seen or heard anything.
But the severity in Boss Li's face silenced every question.
The train's headlights could illuminate only about three hundred meters of tunnel. Beyond that was absolute blackness.
Everyone stared into that void.
Li Qinwu, however, noticed movement.
With his enhanced twenty-point physique, his senses far exceeded those of ordinary men. In the darkness beyond the lights, more than a hundred figures were swaying forward in an uneven mass.
At first glance, they looked human.
At second glance, they were anything but.
As they drew nearer, even Xiao Dao and the others could finally make out shapes. Hands tightened around gunstocks and blades.
Li Qinwu narrowed his eyes.
Mutants.
And heavily deformed ones.
Some had horns jutting from their skulls. Others bore extra limbs hanging uselessly from their torsos. Several had fleshy tendrils writhing from their necks. They looked like humanity twisted by Warp corruption and industrial poison into grotesque mockeries of life.
In the Imperium of Man, mankind broadly recognized several categories.
First, baseline humans—ordinary, unmutated people.
Second, augmented humans—cyborgs, vat-grown warriors, Mechanicus adepts, and gene-forged soldiers such as the Adeptus Astartes.
Third, sanctioned abhumans—stable offshoots of humanity shaped over thousands of generations by hostile environments. Night-adapted tunnel dwellers, high-gravity brutes such as ogryn-like strains, and other recognized variants belonged to this category.
Though altered, abhumans bred true. Their mutations were stable, predictable, and thus tolerated by Imperial bureaucracy.
The last category received only flame and execution.
Mutants.
Unstable, unnatural deviations born from radiation, toxins, failed genetics, Warp taint, xenos interference, or industrial contamination. Their forms were erratic, their bloodlines impure, and their existence often heralded deeper corruption.
The Imperium showed them no mercy.
Now nearly a hundred of them approached Li Qinwu's group.
They wore armor hammered from scrap metal and carried crude weapons forged from junk.
And they looked hostile.
Even Li Qinwu's hardened subordinates breathed more heavily at the sight. The creatures were so hideous that staring too long felt like an assault on the mind.
Yet no one retreated.
Li Qinwu had given them food, money, and purpose. Compared to the miserable dog-life of the underhive, facing monsters beside him almost felt exciting.
The mutants stopped fifty meters away, shielding their eyes from the train's glaring lamps.
Used to darkness, they could barely endure the brightness.
One of them stepped forward.
Its body was badly twisted, and two mouths split across its face.
"Damn vermin!" the front mouth roared. "Turn off that light now, or I'll cut off your heads and shove them up your asses!"
"Hehehe... cut off heads... shove them in... hehehe..."
The second mouth giggled independently.
Two mouths. Two voices. Perhaps two minds trapped in one body.
The sight was deeply unsettling.
Li Qinwu slowly raised his gun and pointed it at them.
Then he exploded.
"Did any of you look in a mirror before crawling out here? Standing there is a crime against human dignity!"
He took a step forward.
"When your mothers gave birth to you, were they tumbling down stairs inside a chemical reactor? Were you mixed in the womb with scrap metal and sewage?"
His men stared.
The mutants stared.
"You should be hiding in the deepest hole you can find, yet you block the main road? What, are you trying to prove this world's standards can sink even lower?"
He jabbed the barrel toward them.
"For morality! For public safety! For the mental health of future generations!"
Li Qinwu roared at full volume.
"Stop showing yourselves in public, you bastards!"
The tunnel fell silent.
His own men looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.
The mutants stood frozen, as though their souls had been struck.
Then, with a clang, one mutant dropped his machete, covered his face, and burst into tears.
Wailing miserably, it turned and fled into the darkness on four mismatched legs.
Everyone watched it disappear.
Li Qinwu snorted.
"At least one of you knows shame. What about the rest? State your business."
The two-mouthed leader trembled with rage.
"This road belongs to the Blackwater Tribe. None may pass!"
Li Qinwu had never heard of them.
But in the underhive, every sewer cult, mutant gang, and chemical-worshipping tribe loved dramatic names.
He didn't care.
All he wanted was a transport route to the surface.
"Move aside," Li Qinwu said coldly. "I only want passage. No bloodshed, no trouble."
He spread one hand.
"I'm leaving after my business. Whatever filth you people do here is none of mine."
The mutants hesitated.
Food was scarce in the lower hive. Cannibalism was common. They had lingered so long mainly because the train's headlights blinded them. Their night-adapted eyes could barely see Li Qinwu's numbers or weapons.
They could only smell that many humans stood opposite them.
After a long pause, the leader chose caution.
"Ahead lies the sacred realm of Blackwater. Disturb it, and its wrath will fall upon you."
Then he turned, leading the horde back into darkness.
Li Qinwu exhaled.
He was not afraid of them.
Between the automatic guns on his side, he could have cut them down quickly.
What he feared was wasting ammunition on creatures worth less than the bullets used to kill them.
"Back to work," he ordered.
Within minutes, the tracks were repaired, and the train rolled onward.
This time everyone remained alert.
Xiao Dao controlled the locomotive, ready to surge forward or reverse at any moment.
After more than ten minutes of climbing, they reached a stretch where numerous side tunnels branched from the main rail line. Signs of habitation could be seen within them.
Li Qinwu raised a powerful flashlight and swept the beam inside.
The scenes revealed were horrific.
This was the mutants' settlement.
Hundreds lived in total darkness.
Those who had confronted them earlier were almost handsome by comparison.
Here, some had swollen into giant masses of flesh with no recognizable limbs. Others had fused into the walls themselves, half-living growths embedded in rusted metal and stone.
Some resembled flesh amalgamations—multiple bodies merged into one shrieking organism.
Bones littered the ground.
Tents made from stitched human skin stood between heaps of refuse.
These things were scarcely human anymore.
They were simply another tragedy of the forty-first millennium.
The flashlight startled them, but rather than attack, many screamed in terror and crawled deeper into the dark.
Li Qinwu understood why.
Creatures in such conditions were not apex predators.
They were victims barely surviving in poisoned tunnels.
As the train advanced, his beam continued scanning the dens.
Then Xiao Dao suddenly pointed.
"Boss—look there."
Li Qinwu turned.
Inside a cavernous chamber, a massive pipe jutted from the wall, spewing thick black liquid like tar.
Around it knelt several monstrously deformed mutants wrapped in ceremonial robes. They carried staffs made from scavenged junk and bowed repeatedly toward the flowing sludge.
More mutants knelt behind them in worship.
When the ritual ended, the priests scooped the black fluid into containers and distributed it as food.
Li Qinwu felt disgust crawl across his skin.
Xiao Dao leaned close and whispered.
"Boss... I know what that is."
He pointed at the liquid.
"That's processed industrial waste. Sewage from our chemical plant, the Chemical Gang, and others. All pollutants get dumped together, treated, then piped underground for disposal."
He swallowed.
"They're eating it."
Li Qinwu clicked his tongue, lowered the flashlight, and let darkness hide the scene once more.
His thoughts had already shifted elsewhere.
Mutants on this route meant danger.
If he wanted to keep trade moving between the underhive and the surface, he would need a reliable armed escort.
After that, the train encountered no further trouble.
Climbing steadily, it finally reached a ventilation shaft leading to the surface.
The lower hive possessed countless such shafts, built for ancient logistics and airflow. Thick steel bars sealed them to keep people from escaping—or invading.
Now the two experienced workers proved their worth.
They lit cutting torches and swiftly burned an opening large enough for the train to pass.
When the small train emerged, everyone instinctively drew a deep breath.
Fresh air.
Birdsong.
The scent of wild grass.
After endless darkness below, the open sky felt unreal.
Li Qinwu had succeeded.
The transport route was open.
Jumping down from the carriage, he addressed the men.
"Wait here. Don't wander off. I'll bring the cargo, then we all head back together."
He glanced at Xiao Dao.
"You're with me."
Xiao Dao sighed and slung his gun over one shoulder.
Li Qinwu first headed toward the nearby underground maintenance station to find the Silent One.
"I've opened a route from the bottom nest to the surface," Li Qinwu said. "Want to stay here, or come back with me? My place is spacious enough."
The Silent One's eyes lit up immediately.
The man who provided sacred food was inviting him home?
He nodded rapidly.
"Yes. I'll go!"
"Good. Get ready. When I return, we head down together."
Li Qinwu's tone turned firm.
"The people in the ventilation shaft are mine."
"Do not kill them."
With that, Li Qinwu led Xiao Dao toward the PDF camp.