Chapter 356: Nurgle's Bait |
A blank soul template?
The pale light of the holographic screen illuminated the astonishment on Lino's face.
This was the first time he had seen a soul template so completely clean.
Was it an error with the template import, or was it naturally blank from the start?
Lino tapped into the template's basic data to inspect the details.
'Oh, so it's the soul template of a Sister of Silence.'
The basic profile read as follows:
'Year 3 of the Palu Empire: I extracted a soul template from a Sister of Silence in the age of rebellion sub-universe. By Brother Li above, no one could have guessed this template would actually be blank. i fink Sisters of Silence are definitely an alternate kind of existence. Their mindset, personality traits, physical habits, and all those settings aren't decided by a soul at all, but stem from the neural signals and hormones of their physical flesh. Now dat's amazing. It's hard to imagine that creatures can actually exist in this world with personalities, emotions, habits, and settings driven purely by physical chemical reactions.
'—Palu Academy, Soul Technology Researcher, Silver Coin.
After Lino replaced the Emperor in the age of rebellion sub-universe, the Adeptus Custodes and Sisters of Silence within the Imperial Palace of Terra had all been implanted with Palu gene fragments.
Along the way, Palu Academy conducted some research on their soul templates.
It made sense that this Sister of Silence gene template had been loaded into the Soul Code Reader during that research process.
Even after being implanted with Palu gene fragments, the Sisters of Silence had retained their peculiar abilities, not losing them to the gene-editing surgery.
The reason behind this was simple.
When performing the gene-editing surgery, the Gretchin scholars had deliberately preserved the original gene template of the Sisters of Silence, merely adopting an expansion method to tack on the Palu genes.
Once the sequence count of the Palu genes reached over 30% of the combined sequence count of the Palu genes and the Sister of Silence genes, the Palu Genetic Purity of the Sister of Silence would hit 30% in tandem, allowing Lino to possess her.
Lino had initially assumed that the peculiar abilities of the Sisters of Silence were tied to their souls. Looking at it now, he had been wildly mistaken.
A Sister of Silence's power relied entirely on genetics.
Then the question arose.
If a Sister of Silence fused with Warp essence to become a First-degree Soul, could she deploy avatars across different eras and shift between them?
Staring at the glowing white holographic screen, Lino drew a deep breath, feeling as though he had touched upon a crucial factor.
He rose, walked out of the lab, and summoned Pader:
"Bring me the research reports on the Sisters of Silence."
"Yes, Boss."
Pader hurried off, returning shortly with a stack of crystals and a Dataslate in hand.
Soul encodings were rather unique and could not be stored on conventional media; only Eldar spirit stones could preserve them long-term.
Lino brought the crystals and the Dataslate into the lab, leafing through them in solitude.
Several hours later, delight gleamed in his eyes, as if he had made a momentous discovery.
"Pader!"
"Boss, you called?"
Pader pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Lino remained hunched over his reading, speaking without raising his head:
"I'll talk, you write. One clone specimen of Sister of Silence Number 19, one clone specimen of Sister of Silence Number 22, one clone specimen of Sister of Silence Number 35, three fully matured Almighty Boys, fifteen leading rubbish things—alive, species irrelevant—and finally, nine Nurgle rubbish things, alive as well. Got it all written down?"
"Yes, Boss."
"Go bring them over. Start with Clone Number 19 and the three Almighty Boys."
"Yes, Boss."
Pader departed.
Lino waited in the lab for a while.
A cryogenic tank was wheeled into the chamber and placed before him, flanked by three Almighty Boys in a comatose state.
The subject sealed inside the cryogenic tank was none other than the clone of Sister of Silence Number 19.
The serial numbers of the clones ranged from 1 to 35; the higher the number, the greater the combat prowess and status of the original template.
Lino stood facing the clone and the Almighty Boys, keeping all four entities within his field of vision.
Genetic Simulation initiated.
Previously, when the Gretchin scholars converted the Sisters of Silence into Palu, they had only used the method of expanding the gene samples.
This time, Lino intended to use an insertion approach, embedding the gene fragments corresponding to the Sister of Silence's peculiar ability directly into the Almighty Boys' gene samples.
He stood motionless for roughly half an hour before the Genetic Simulation succeeded.
The four experimental subjects dissolved into streaks of light that converged in Lino's hand, erupting into intense brilliance amid a surge of psionic energy. When the glow gradually dissipated, a sesame-sized Gene Gland lay quietly in his palm.
Lino retrieved an injector gun, loaded the Gene Gland into the chamber, pressed the muzzle against his left chest, and pulled the trigger.
Pshhh! Gurgle...
Sterile gas drove the needle deep into Lino's chest, while nutrient fluid propelled the Gene Gland through the needle, stopping a few centimeters from his heart.
Looking down at his torso, Lino activated Genetic Simulation to accelerate the growth and development of the Gene Gland.
Three minutes later, the Genetic Simulation ended and entered its calculation phase.
Alpha-Plus Class psionic energy rippled outward. In a flurry of shifting light and shadow, his body undulated like melting cream before rapidly reforming into a new humanoid figure.
His skin remained green, and his skeletal structure and limb proportions were roughly the same as before, with only minor feminine traits surfacing on specific parts of his body.
Lino affixed the electrodes of a psionic energy cable to his head, reading his soul encoding.
A holographic screen popped up; the soul template was completely blank.
"Excellent. The genetic modification is complete. My soul template has been wiped, and my current mental activity is driven entirely by neural signals."
Lino attempted to open the system interface.
A horrifying scene unfolded: the system gave no response. There wasn't a single flicker of reaction. No matter how Lino called out, the illusory interface refused to appear.
There was no need to panic.
This was normal.
With a blank soul template, there was no soul encoding tied to the system, so naturally, the system would not manifest.
Correspondingly, special abilities like Genetic Simulation, Waagh Simulation, and his portable inventory had also fallen dead quiet.
Having lost the ability to transfer his consciousness, Lino felt both joy and dread.
Suppressing his restless heart, he grabbed the Gene Gland injector, pressed it against his chest, and pulled the trigger once more.
Pshhh! Gurgle...
Cough, cough...
As the Gene Gland was forcibly ripped out, agonizing pain invaded his brain, causing Lino to cough up a mouthful of bloody froth.
Tossing the blood-drenched gland and injector aside, he grabbed some gene repair fluid and injected it into his body.
Pshhh...
An icy chill spread from his neck down to his limbs, allowing Lino to exhale a heavy breath of stale air.
After waiting half an hour, Lino tried calling out silently in his mind:
'System.'
Ping!
The system interface popped up. Never before had Lino felt the system's chime sound so melodious!
He once again possessed the ability to shift his consciousness across different Orks—and the catalyst for this transformation had simply been repairing his genes and purging the Sister of Silence gene fragments!
This proved that the soul was the bridge connecting an individual living being to Warp essence.
A blank soul meant the individual organism was severed from Warp essence, making it impossible to wield the strange powers granted by it.
If the soul remained intact, everything operated normally.
Whether a soul was blank or not could be adjusted via soul-editing tools, or tampered with using Sister of Silence gene fragments.
Was editing Nurgle's soul difficult?
Without a doubt, the difficulty would be outrageously high.
What about editing His genes?
Would gene editing necessarily be easier than editing His soul?
At this thought, Lino fell silent.
Hiss...
The lab doors slid open, and Pader brought in the remaining batch of experimental specimens.
Lino gestured for him to come over and inspect the fresh research results.
Pader read rapidly, the expressions on his face shifting even faster as he was seized by absolute shock.
"Boss, dat... dat research result is incredible! You made a huge sacrifice for dis, taking on unimaginable risks!"
Suppressing his churning emotions, Pader felt heartfelt admiration for his boss's actions.
"I only did dat to wipe out chaos and win a brighter, more glorious future for the Palu Empire."
Lino summarized his actions with a casual remark before adding:
"Injecting the Gene Gland takes at least five days to take effect. Nurgle won't just sit there obediently waiting, and my powers probably can't speed up time on His body either. From where you're sitting, do you got any way to speed up gene editing?"
Staring intently at the research report in his hands, Pader said:
"Boss, i fink we can tackle dis from three angles.
"The expression effect and speed of the Gene Gland are tied to its expression vector. If we can find a vector more stable dan our current ones, we can use gene super-pulse counting to boost the expression speed.
"Second, restrict Nurgle's mobility to buy time for the Gene Gland's expression process.
"Third, figure out a way to make Nurgle actively swallow the Gene Gland. By the time He realizes something ain't right with dat gland, it'll be too late."
Pader's first idea reminded Lino of the toxin-resistant Sealing Yeast he had extracted from the Death Guard.
The bad news was that the toxin-resistant Sealing Yeast had been permanently lost when Elina forcibly deleted the Mushroom Farm functions from his system.
The good news was that down beneath the Imperial Palace of Terra in the age of rebellion sub-universe, inside the gene lab where the Emperor originally forged the primarchs, there should still be samples of that toxin-resistant Sealing Yeast.
If worst came to worst, catching a few Death Guard to harvest yeast samples on the spot wasn't impossible either.
Pader's second idea was exceedingly difficult.
If they could restrict Nurgle's mobility, they could execute both gene editing and soul editing simultaneously. Perhaps both methods would succeed, sparing them from relying solely on gene editing.
Pader's third idea, however, held considerable merit.
Use bait to hook Nurgle and lure Him into willingly swallowing it down.
The Gene Gland would be hidden inside the bait.
As Nurgle digested the bait, the Gene Gland would alter His gene fragments, implanting the genetics of a Sister of Silence.
By the time Nurgle realized something was wrong, there would only be two possible outcomes.
Either Nurgle bit the bullet, abandoned the bait, and decisively cut His losses.
Or Nurgle tried to have it both ways—swallowing the bait while simultaneously attempting to halt the Gene Gland's modifications. Whether He could stop the Sister of Silence genes from severing His connection to Warp essence would depend entirely on luck.
"Pader, for the gene expression vector, we can use the toxin-resistant Sealing Yeast from the Death Guard. We might be able to find that stuff inside the yellow weasel's gene lab."
Lino paused:
"As for bait attractive enough to hook Nurgle, dat's a bit tricky. As a Chaos God, the things He can't bear to part with are few and far between, and the things we can actually get our hands on are even scarcer. I thought about it carefully, and Sanguinius's Warp essence might be the only bait we can reach at our current stage."
"Sanguinius? Boss, you mean dat primarch from the Shrimp Empire?"
"Exactly. I don't know what Sanguinius's Warp essence actually is right now, but I'm certain all the Chaos Gods want it. We gotta find a chance to make contact with Sanguinius..."
Lino suddenly froze, clapping his hands together:
"Damn it. The Sanguinius from the age of rebellion is already dead. He charged into our second ascension site and got blown to dust by that supernova explosion. There ain't no Sanguinius in the age of apostasy or the end times. Dis is a real mess."
Reminded by his boss, Pader recalled that incident as well.
That supernova explosion back then had been a stroke of absolute genius, instantly incinerating four primarchs of the Imperium of Man and burying over five hundred thousand Space Marines.
Had they known Sanguinius might serve as bait to hook Nurgle, they would have made contact with him no matter what.
"Boss, i fink there might be gene samples of Sanguinius stored inside the yellow weasel's gene lab. We could brew up a clone and see if he can connect with his own Warp essence."
Pader suggested.
After mulling it over, Lino saw no reason why it wouldn't work:
"Den go get to it. Remember to look for dat Death Guard Sealing Yeast first."
"Yes, Boss."
Pader turned and walked away.
Lino used the Sister of Silence clone to run a Genetic Simulation with the rubbish thing specimens.
Half an hour later, the lab results came out.
The Sister of Silence gene fragments worked on the rubbish things as well.
They could render a rubbish thing's soul blank, severing its connection to both its original body and the Chaos Gods.
Once the experiment wrapped up, Pader sent word that he had located samples of the toxin-resistant Sealing Yeast, though he found no trace of Sanguinius's samples.
While running a fresh Genetic Simulation, Lino wondered where else he might find Sanguinius.
He could activate the reverse the meter function in the Universal Hall, resetting the timeline of the age of rebellion to return to the third day after the destruction of the City of Perfection.
That was one option.
But the cost could be steep.
Resetting the timeline like that would definitely impact the Palu Homeland situated inside the Webway, and Lino himself might even be booted back to the hive world Epimet, forced to rebuild his empire from scratch as a petty grunt scraping by in the Lower Hive.
Therefore, unless pushed to the absolute brink, Lino had no intention of using reverse the meter.
Were there any other avenues?
Lino thought for a long while before suddenly recalling someone.
Back when he helped seal the Warp essence of the World Eaters' primarch, Angron, the man had transformed from a hulking brute into a simple, unadorned youth.
His name had shifted as well, changing from Angron to Angra.
Angra had claimed to owe Lino a favor; as long as Lino summoned him using the soul transmitter, he would return to repay the debt.
Perhaps Angra might know where Sanguinius's Warp essence was.
"Let me see, where did I put dat soul transmission code Angra gave me back den..."
