Chapter 390: Expedition Road: The Promised Land
Dark green fog lingers in every corner of this world, turbid and heavy, just like the ocean world of the empire, the whole planet is an endless vast ocean, but here it is a foggy sea composed of fog.
The shadows of the towering lonely mountains stand behind the turbid fog, like silent giants standing on the earth. They are scattered on this planet, looking up at the starless night sky blocked by the thick atmosphere.
Endless forests and barren fields exist at the foot of the mountains. The dense tree crowns are intertwined with the barren dark green desert. In this world without the sun, the mountains and the earth have become a morbid picture. The whole world seems to be terminally ill. It is sick all over and has long been on the verge of dying.
In the eyes of the Empire, such a world is a complete death world, a place where only madmen would venture to eat people without leaving any bones. There are many such death worlds in the Milky Way, with poisonous fog, active volcanoes, or death lands that are always shrouded by deadly radiation and celestial operations.
Such worlds are not uncommon in the Empire. Most of them are uninhabited no-man's land, or there are only one or two lonely observation posts, guarded by dozens or hundreds of star soldiers. They are far away from the edge of civilization, watching alone at the border of the dark stars.
However, such worlds are common in the Empire, but they are not normal in the Webway, because there are no naturally formed celestial bodies in the Webway. All the planets here are artificial, created by those powerful ancient saints who have disappeared in ancient times, and they are often covered with a large number of life.
The Eldar and human scholars of later generations believed that those planets were reservations created by the Old Saints to preserve the seeds of life that were hated and destroyed by the Necrons and their masters, the Star Gods, in the tragic battle of heaven, and to preserve them in the webway that the Star Gods and the Necrons could not reach. When the war was extinguished and the universe returned to peace, the Old Saints would spread the seeds of life preserved here back to the Milky Way.
So most of the planets in these webways are vibrant garden worlds, on which the Old Saints carefully cultivated and created their own unique shelters for each civilization, but obviously, this planet is completely the opposite of this.
This is a pure land of death, which has nothing to do with the word life. Even if there is, then the vitality here has died, leaving only a terminally ill body and a sick corpse.
During the Great Fall, the power of the Four Gods poured into these worlds in the cracks of the Webway torn by Slaanesh. They transformed and corrupted these former life shelters according to their own will, turning them into projections of the will of the evil god himself. No matter how beautiful these worlds were in the past, it is only a distant story. Now, only lamentation and sorrow remain here, just like their former masters, the Eldar who inherited the mantle of the Old Saints and went to extinction.
It is hard to believe that there will be anyone returning to this dead planet and coming to this dying star without the sun, but there are always exceptions, and this is also the case here.
A beating light flashed in the turbid atmosphere, and the flash emerged from the depths of the fog, just like a fish swimming to the surface from the deep sea. The light quickly reached the edge of the heavy fog that permeated the sky, and after the light instantly strengthened, it suddenly emerged from it.
It was a black shuttle, a slender, obsidian-like smooth spaceship. The biggest difference between it and common shuttles was that it was not propelled by flames, but by the flashing spheres suspended in the circular rings on the inside of the wings on both sides of the fuselage.
The spheres rotated rapidly on the inside of the wings, releasing dazzling white light, which shone in the air like a fragment of the extinguished sun outside the dying planet.
The shuttle flew down from the clouds quickly, circling a towering bare mountain peak swiftly, sliding to one side and sliding down, the whole fuselage stably and smoothly lifted the fog on both sides and flew towards the forest at the foot of the mountain.
In this strange world composed of strange plants, the plants that bent like tentacles attached to the trees that looked like cuticle structures, bending and moving their slender bodies, as if they were trying to grab something in the fog.
Suddenly, the calm tentacles began to twitch, and they tilted to one side with a gust of wind. The smoke around them also began to rapidly disturb, spreading rapidly around to make room for the slender black spaceship that fell from the sky.
The flat shuttle, which was as smooth as a black diamond, roared down from the sky to the ground. The anti-gravity generating spheres on both sides of it suspended in the center of the ring created a strong recoil force under it, causing it to slowly land. In the diffuse smoke, it fell to the ground like a drop of water that smoothly merged into the sea.
The landing gear of the shuttle was placed on the ground full of strange plants. As the landing gear made a crisp echo, the non-reflective single-sided spherical cockpit glass slowly lifted up. In the dim cockpit below, a figure stood up from it and then jumped out of the cockpit.
The spaceship behind him emitted a hazy light, shining on him. The flashing white light in the rings on both sides of the high-speed rotating anti-gravity sphere beside him illuminated Victor's face. He stood in the light and looked around at the quiet woodland.
He reached out and pressed lightly on the side of the shuttle's hull. With his fingers, the entire shuttle quickly stopped, the rotating anti-gravity sphere began to fall into silence, and the flashing light gradually dimmed. In the mist that permeated again, it was gradually swallowed up below.
Victor didn't care about the strange smoke. He stood up and walked forward. There was no hesitation or ignorance in his eyes. He knew where he was going. He came here for a purpose.
The quiet woodlands on both sides passed by Victor's side. Thick smoke filled the air, covering everything a few steps away. Everything there was completely covered by the smoke that looked like a veil. Only swaying shadows could be seen around it, swaying shadows that looked like people but not people.
They swayed around, and it looked as if there were indeed some people hiding around. They hid behind the clouds and mist, following you and staring at your back with a pair of empty eyes, making people feel a chill on their backs.
Ethereal and strange voices came from far away, sometimes far away in the sky, and sometimes they seemed to be right next to your ears. You would feel as if something was following you behind you, and there were waves of disturbing footsteps coming from the woods.
It was the sound of branches breaking and objects passing through the bushes. Victor looked at the source of the sound with his peripheral vision. His feet did indeed crush the dead leaves and branches. The sound echoed in the smoke and seemed to be transmitted back, but Victor knew that the sound was not caused by himself.
He saw a shadow in the smoke, a shadow moving on the ground, and more than one, they surrounded the surrounding trees, and there was a disturbing commotion behind the shadow.
That was the sound of claws and teeth, that was the low roar disguised as a distant ethereal echo. Those creatures moved along with him, observing him, and looking for the opportunity to attack.
Victor walked calmly, as if they were completely insignificant and meaningless. He walked through the woods, stepped through the thick vines between the trees, passed through the visible ditches between the woods, and crossed the strange rocky beaches full of holes. He walked for a long time, as if time was meaningless here. In this dim world, everything seemed eternal.
This might be a good thing. It made it easy for Victor to find this place. He walked out of the edge of the smoky forest, stepped through the smoke and walked onto this rocky clearing in the forest. He looked around at the tall boulders around him. They leaned together, as if forming a strange association position.
Victor listened to Sasha's commotion behind him. Those things were still following him. They were moving around the edge of the boulder, circling and approaching little by little. The scratching sound of the claws rubbing against the rocky ground of Stonehenge was getting closer and closer to Victor's back. He could almost feel the cold breath.
Amid the scratching sound of the claws, Victor slowly raised his hand and pressed the holster on his waist little by little. He turned his back to the approaching shadow, and his palm was ready.
The tearing gun was slowly pulled out of the holster, and the scratching sound behind him gradually got closer and closer, almost blending together. Victor frowned slightly, and his finger was on the trigger, ready to turn the light background sound into a manic singing.
But just as the music was about to start, a burst of thunder shattered the thin curtain of the movement, accompanied by a golden lightning that hit the stage. Victor's face was illuminated by the golden light. He raised his head and looked at the countless lightning that suddenly lit up above his head. The golden flash penetrated the thick fog and shot to the earth from under the sky.
One of the lightning struck behind Victor, and the burst of electric light instantly illuminated the surrounding forests, as well as the faces of the ferocious beasts hiding behind the thick fog. They raised their heavy heads and looked up at the lightning that illuminated the night sky with their eyebrows, pupils and eyes.
The thunder sounded again, and the sound was like a warning, the warning sound of hunters knocking on steel in the forest. The ferocious beasts turned and fled, quickly jumping into the deepest part of the forest in the lightning that kept lighting up behind them, escaping from the range of the light.
Victor turned his head and glanced at the frightened beast behind him. It arched its body and slowly retreated, with fear in its big mouth. After the lightning flashed again, it completely collapsed and turned around and fled to the end of the forest.
The lightning instantly illuminated Victor's side. He slowly turned his head to look at the huge stone tablet standing in the center of the stone formation, looking up at the person standing on it, with lightning constantly sliding behind him, and his body outline and face illuminated in the thunder.
"We should really meet somewhere else next time, for example, the nightclub in Gomo?"