How can a retired savior be considered retired if he drops to 40,000?

"In any case, I ask you to at least give up this idea now." The Black Knight advised, "It's too early for whatever you want to do. We haven't even started working on our most specific goal."

"I also ask you to turn your attention back to Dragon Forest." Lan Malok chimed in, complaining inconspicuously, "There are some more important things that you should probably say directly to the Primarch."

"Only if I can meet him. Besides, Mr. Leon will know these things sooner or later." Fujimaru Ritsuka sighed, "But you are right. I still have to focus on more specific aspects. I'd better take the data back to Storm Boundary and calculate it carefully."

Lanmalok breathed a sigh of relief without leaving a trace, and sent a "restart" pulse signal to the Siluji monks who were on standby.

-

From a distance, "Prototype No. 1" looks like a square cardboard box upside down on the ground, but now, it is obvious that the cardboard box has legs underneath, and is crawling forward rapidly on a barren plain Gobi.

There is no doubt that Gabriel Santo's last effort to make it perform imaginary submergence again also failed. Bad news: Under the premise of including but not limited to the reason that "the vehicle is broken", they can't just return to the Star Torch, and must survive in the wilderness for a period of time in this subspace desert where the specific coordinates are unknown; Good news: The failure of the part of "Prototype No. 1" is limited to the imaginary submergence mechanism, and the other functions of this experimental vehicle are still intact.

Even so, in order to save fuel, Santo, the driver, did not activate the anti-gravity module on this section of the journey. "Prototype No. 1" was running quickly on the flat wilderness with its seven pairs of wheels, raising a lot of yellow sand and dust along the way.

"There's nothing." Akuldona complained boredly while lying by the observation window. "There are only stones and soil in this wasteland. The scenery remains unchanged and there is no sign of life. Because of the heavy dust, I'm not sure if there are any small creatures hiding in the sand we passed through in the past few hours, but I tend to think there are none. The term 'dead land' may be prepared for this place. It has no life from the beginning."

"Only a few hours?" asked Fulgrim's clone, who managed to maintain his composure but still looked listless. "I thought it must have been four or five days."

"Your sense of time may be wrong. This is the subspace, and anything is possible." Santo said from the driver's seat. There may be some maliciousness in his tone, but given the loud rumbling noise of the machinery, it was difficult for others to accurately distinguish what words he said without connecting to the intercom, so the subtle emotional color in it was naturally ignored. "Our energy source does not support us running on the plains at this speed for 'four or five days', so I think Akuldona's sense of time is relatively accurate, but it is only a vague concept. In addition, I have worse news than this."

"What?" The one who was most nervous about this question was Akuldona, the only one present who theoretically had the concept of "physiological needs". Instead, he showed a subtle indifference to the warning of the Iron Hands Captain.

"Not only can we not accurately determine the time we are passing through now," Santo said calmly, "we can't determine the space we are in in any sense. We have been 'moving forward' all this time, but in fact, given the monotonous scenery around us and the sparse and boring readings sent back by the auspex, we can't actually be sure whether we are 'moving forward' in the true sense."

"...Don't be ridiculous," Akuldona complained. "You could have stopped the car and got out to take a look. Then you would have seen the long tracks left by the vehicle in the sand."

"I'm not kidding." Santo raised his voice, sounding a little annoyed. "I'm not even sure if we're on a planet - if my sense of time is correct, with the stable power of 'Prototype No. 1', we've advanced more than 300 kilometers, but the auspex and detectors haven't found anything other than rocks and sand within 200 meters around us, nor have they detected any ground curvature."

Performing a repetitive task with no end in sight in a monotonous landscape that repeats itself forever, this behavior brings terrible mental stress to people. The extremely uncertain time and space in the warp environment has seriously magnified this point. If the driver was not Gabriel Santo, the captain of the Iron Hands during the Great Crusade, an Astartes who had undergone special transformation through bio-alchemy and had died, he might have gone crazy. And now, he chose to share this bad news with his travel companions, perhaps it was also a dangerous signal that he was trying to ask others for help in his subconscious.

It was hard to say whether Akuldona had understood this, but he at least realized that the situation they were facing was worse than they had originally expected. They had expected to get some supplies on this plain, but now, let alone basic food and water, there were no dry branches or similar things that could be used as fuel. The main components of stones and sand were mostly the most common silicon dioxide, accompanied by a small amount of calcium, magnesium and iron compounds. Not to mention that this was completely useless to them, even if useful carbon and hydrogen could be separated from these sands, "Prototype No. 1" did not have the ability to carry out the corresponding fine processing.

It was just a poor imaginary submarine vehicle, and it was an experimental prototype with not very complete functions. It really didn't have that kind of power.

"Stop the car," Fulgrim's clone said suddenly. "There is no point in going any further if the surroundings remain the same."

This suggestion was correct, but it gave Akurdona an inexplicable sense of crisis, which drove him to instinctively raise an untenable objection: "Maybe the direction is just wrong. We can turn the car around and try again."

Unfortunately, he was the only one who wanted to make such a pointless struggle. Before Akurdona finished speaking, the speed of "Prototype No. 1" slowed down significantly. When everyone was naturally tilted in their seats due to inertia, Santo's voice rang out: "You know, he is right. We have to keep some promethium just in case."

"This thing is a hybrid! I saw the generator!" Akuldona protested in dissatisfaction, but the protest was ineffective. "Prototype No. 1" finally stopped in the vast desert. The trail of rolling yellow sand that was dragged here quickly fell after losing the disturbance, but the dust refused to fall to the ground, forming a yellow smoke behind the vehicle. At the moment when the engine completely stopped, Fulgrim's clone, who had already unbuckled his seat belt, opened the rear hatch from inside the vehicle with all his strength, as if he had a clear goal, and jumped down from his seat almost without stopping.

"Wait a minute - where are you going?!" Akurdona hurriedly freed himself from the restraints on the seat, and stumbled out of the cabin amid Santo's deliberately loud sigh. The latter's neural connection was not so easy to be safely disconnected in a short time, so he barely stuck his head out of the cockpit and shouted at the two purple-gold backs: "Akuldona! I installed a receiver on your power armor! Your auspicious instrument can mark the location of 'Prototype No. 1'!"

Akurdona's voice was swallowed up by the dust that flew up and didn't fall to the ground. Santo could only see that he seemed to turn his head while moving forward, waved his arms and gestured to him, and then turned around and hurried forward. Santo wanted to complain, but he finally sighed, retracted his head, and began to untie himself from the driver's seat.

The Captain of the Iron Hands Company was not too worried about the two men who left the vehicle without saying a word, nor was he too worried about himself being left alone with the vehicle. There was probably nothing but stones and sand within a radius of 300 kilometers, let alone any living creatures that could threaten the Astartes. Therefore, he did not try too hard to stop his cousin of the Emperor's Children from chasing a clone of the Primarch around, and Akuldona soon caught up with his target after a short trot:

"We shouldn't stray too far from our vehicle!" He followed the man who looked almost identical to the Primarch in his memory, like a puppy chasing after an angry master. "Besides, we came from this direction. The auspicious instrument has already scanned this direction. There is nothing here!"

The clone suddenly stopped in the dust, and Akurdona had to quickly stop his pace.

Visibility was low due to the dust, and the wheel tracks left by "Prototype No. 1" were right at their feet. The sky was dark, and the evil energy of the subspace was spread above, spreading colorful light downwards, like a disgusting oil film floating on the surface of the netherworld. The clone turned in the direction of Akurdona, and the dirty light fell on his long silver-white hair and the golden eagle wings standing high on his shoulders, as if it was a stain so hidden that even the person involved could not detect it. Akurdona panicked for a moment because of this association, but then he realized that he might be the same in the eyes of the other party, as he was under the same sky.

"I am very grateful to you, Akuldona," the clone said. "The memory in my mind tells me that I have known you for a long time, but my reason can also recognize that we first met in the area controlled by the alien."

Akurdona didn't understand why the other party suddenly brought up this matter, nor did he know how to react. In the end, he just stood there stupidly. Because he saw nothing to refute, he simply accepted all of the above and finally looked up and waited for the other party to say the next sentence.

A wry smile crossed the clone's elegant face, which was almost indistinguishable from Fulgrim's, but it disappeared before Akultuna could confirm that it was real. He continued his speech: "I am grateful for your trust in me when we first met. I may be just a clone imprisoned in a booth, but I am not unaware of the story of the 'Fulgrim' from whom I derived my genes. That 'Fulgrim' tainted and betrayed the entire Legion with his imperfections. I am grateful that you still have such trust in me after all this."

"I don't really care. You may know that I died before that." Akurdona said cruelly with his usual inappropriate honesty, and he didn't even realize how cruel these words were to himself. "I died in the most glorious era and didn't really see the end of the Legion's corruption. Although I also know what happened after that, I only have indirect experience from hearsay and cold-eyed observation. Unlike those brothers who died in the betrayal of corruption and angry hatred, I can indeed look at everything related to the Primarch more rationally. Maybe this is why Vespasian chose to let me deal with this matter that 'may be related to the Primarch' - hey, what am I talking about..."

The clone's mouth curved up gracefully for these messy statements, but even he himself was not sure whether this smile was just out of courtesy or from the heart: "No matter what, I thank you, Akurdona. But I think I have to walk the rest of the way alone."

"What? No!" Akurdona came to his senses immediately. "Like I've always emphasized, you don't even have a suitable weapon with you now! Besides, what about the problem of movement? This almost empty wasteland is so large, at least on 'Prototype No. 1'--"

"--This is my trial." The clone interrupted the other party firmly, "I have understood that if I don't go forward alone, the trial will not start."

"No one has mentioned such a rule!" Akurdona retorted, but he had a vague feeling that these pale and powerless words could no longer stop the other party's will. "Let's get back to the car. With some time, Santo will definitely find a way to make it run its most important functions again. I don't think you can't handle any possible 'trials', I just think you shouldn't go empty-handed!"

This time, the clone smiled from the bottom of his heart. He leaned forward slightly, patted Akurdona on the shoulder, and said, "I appreciate your concern for me. But believe me, I know what I should do."

"How did you know that?" Akultona asked hastily. "Is there a voice in your head speaking? You shouldn't trust a voice that appears inexplicably in your ears - it must be a trick of the Unliving One! Eleven out of ten of its sentences are false!"

The clone nodded, then shook his head. He briefly mentioned to the two people he was traveling with that he had auditory hallucinations when he just got out of the stasis field, but that was not important at the moment. He just emphasized to Akurdona again: "I know exactly what I'm doing. I have to go alone on the rest of the way, Akurdona, you go back to the car."

"But--"

"Get back in the car," the clone said. His hand naturally slid down from Akuldona's shoulder, and as he turned gracefully, he quickly distanced himself from the Emperor's Children's champion swordsman.

Akuldona stood still, knowing full well that he should pursue further, but there was some instinctive force that made him resist doing so. His reason told him that he should pursue, draw his sword, and even use force to catch the other party back, but his sensibility made him want to obey the other party's orders - that was not some evil magic of the warp that affected the mind, but a natural reaction, just like... just like what he would feel when he received orders from his real Primarch ten thousand years ago.

He stood there in the chaos, neither moving forward nor turning back. Akuldona stood in the dusty wilderness, watching the figure that looked almost identical to his genetic father slowly shrink over the course of several minutes. Then an evil wind blew from nowhere, raising the dust on the ground again, blurring the clone's figure into a small black mark in the dust, and finally completely disappearing from his sight.

The wind soon died down, but by then, the wheel tracks at his feet had disappeared. Recovering from his slumber, Akurdona immediately tried to search for the footprints of his genetic father's clone in the Gobi Desert, but found nothing.

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 303 The conclusion we came to is that we did not come to any conclusion

"That's not the question." Sigismund retorted bluntly, "In the warp, you must understand the principles of 'disaster comes from the mouth' and 'self-fulfilling prophecy' better than me. Even if this sentence seems false now, once it is really transmitted to the warp, it will be beyond our control."

"You have a point," Fujimaru Ritsuka responded, "but the Emperor (the fifth god) has already occupied the corresponding seat ten thousand years ago. Whether I decide to spread this rumor at this moment or not, this is a problem I will have to face sooner or later."

Lanmarok began to realize that something was wrong. He quickly waved his hand and instructed the Siluji monks present to turn off their sensory units that received external intelligence and enter standby mode. However, Sigismund still refuted without realizing it: "The only thing you need to consider now is how to build the Chaldean Lighthouse."

"That makes sense. If we really need a 'Fifth God' to take over, Dioscuri might be a good choice." Fujimaru Ritsuka's mind had obviously jumped to a direction that others could not catch up with. Fortunately, she quickly jumped back. "In short, we can't let the Emperor truly 'ascend to the throne'. Although the Chaldea Lighthouse is our current construction goal, it is ultimately just a transitional means, a preparation for a larger-scale plan. My task may be just to build it and ensure that it can be put into operation in a perfect state, but I must also consider what will happen after that at the level of the overall plan."

"I don't see how this has anything to do with our previous topic," said Sigismund.

"Because too many things are covered by the confidentiality agreement." Fujimaru Ritsuka covered his mouth and thought for a few seconds, then said, "I can't tell you our ultimate goal. At least at this stage, the Emperor forbids me to talk about this issue under any circumstances. However, in order to achieve this ultimate goal, I must first find a way to cut off the connection between the Emperor and the throne of the Fifth God. The current progress is initially effective, but it is far from enough."

Sigismund didn't know what the meaning behind her words was, but he realized one thing: at the beginning, Fujimaru Ritsuka just made a casual suggestion and didn't expect it to be actually implemented; but now, she has obviously begun to think deeply about this issue.

"In any case, I ask you to at least give up this idea now." The Black Knight advised, "It's too early for whatever you want to do. We haven't even started working on our most specific goal."

"I also ask you to turn your attention back to Dragon Forest." Lan Malok chimed in, complaining inconspicuously, "There are some more important things that you should probably say directly to the Primarch."

"Only if I can meet him. Besides, Mr. Leon will know these things sooner or later." Fujimaru Ritsuka sighed, "But you are right. I still have to focus on more specific aspects. I'd better take the data back to Storm Boundary and calculate it carefully."

Lanmalok breathed a sigh of relief without leaving a trace, and sent a "restart" pulse signal to the Siluji monks who were on standby.

-

From a distance, "Prototype No. 1" looks like a square cardboard box upside down on the ground, but now, it is obvious that the cardboard box has legs underneath, and is crawling forward rapidly on a barren plain Gobi.

There is no doubt that Gabriel Santo's last effort to make it perform imaginary submergence again also failed. Bad news: Under the premise of including but not limited to the reason that "the vehicle is broken", they can't just return to the Star Torch, and must survive in the wilderness for a period of time in this subspace desert where the specific coordinates are unknown; Good news: The failure of the part of "Prototype No. 1" is limited to the imaginary submergence mechanism, and the other functions of this experimental vehicle are still intact.

Even so, in order to save fuel, Santo, the driver, did not activate the anti-gravity module on this section of the journey. "Prototype No. 1" was running quickly on the flat wilderness with its seven pairs of wheels, raising a lot of yellow sand and dust along the way.

"There's nothing." Akuldona complained boredly while lying by the observation window. "There are only stones and soil in this wasteland. The scenery remains unchanged and there is no sign of life. Because of the heavy dust, I'm not sure if there are any small creatures hiding in the sand we passed through in the past few hours, but I tend to think there are none. The term 'dead land' may be prepared for this place. It has no life from the beginning."

"Only a few hours?" asked Fulgrim's clone, who managed to maintain his composure but still looked listless. "I thought it must have been four or five days."

"Your sense of time may be wrong. This is the subspace, and anything is possible." Santo said from the driver's seat. There may be some maliciousness in his tone, but given the loud rumbling noise of the machinery, it was difficult for others to accurately distinguish what words he said without connecting to the intercom, so the subtle emotional color in it was naturally ignored. "Our energy source does not support us running on the plains at this speed for 'four or five days', so I think Akuldona's sense of time is relatively accurate, but it is only a vague concept. In addition, I have worse news than this."

"What?" The one who was most nervous about this question was Akuldona, the only one present who theoretically had the concept of "physiological needs". Instead, he showed a subtle indifference to the warning of the Iron Hands Captain.

"Not only can we not accurately determine the time we are passing through now," Santo said calmly, "we can't determine the space we are in in any sense. We have been 'moving forward' all this time, but in fact, given the monotonous scenery around us and the sparse and boring readings sent back by the auspex, we can't actually be sure whether we are 'moving forward' in the true sense."

"...Don't be ridiculous," Akuldona complained. "You could have stopped the car and got out to take a look. Then you would have seen the long tracks left by the vehicle in the sand."

"I'm not kidding." Santo raised his voice, sounding a little annoyed. "I'm not even sure if we're on a planet - if my sense of time is correct, with the stable power of 'Prototype No. 1', we've advanced more than 300 kilometers, but the auspex and detectors haven't found anything other than rocks and sand within 200 meters around us, nor have they detected any ground curvature."

Performing a repetitive task with no end in sight in a monotonous landscape that repeats itself forever, this behavior brings terrible mental stress to people. The extremely uncertain time and space in the warp environment has seriously magnified this point. If the driver was not Gabriel Santo, the captain of the Iron Hands during the Great Crusade, an Astartes who had undergone special transformation through bio-alchemy and had died, he might have gone crazy. And now, he chose to share this bad news with his travel companions, perhaps it was also a dangerous signal that he was trying to ask others for help in his subconscious.

It was hard to say whether Akuldona had understood this, but he at least realized that the situation they were facing was worse than they had originally expected. They had expected to get some supplies on this plain, but now, let alone basic food and water, there were no dry branches or similar things that could be used as fuel. The main components of stones and sand were mostly the most common silicon dioxide, accompanied by a small amount of calcium, magnesium and iron compounds. Not to mention that this was completely useless to them, even if useful carbon and hydrogen could be separated from these sands, "Prototype No. 1" did not have the ability to carry out the corresponding fine processing.

It was just a poor imaginary submarine vehicle, and it was an experimental prototype with not very complete functions. It really didn't have that kind of power.

"Stop the car," Fulgrim's clone said suddenly. "There is no point in going any further if the surroundings remain the same."

This suggestion was correct, but it gave Akurdona an inexplicable sense of crisis, which drove him to instinctively raise an untenable objection: "Maybe the direction is just wrong. We can turn the car around and try again."

Unfortunately, he was the only one who wanted to make such a pointless struggle. Before Akurdona finished speaking, the speed of "Prototype No. 1" slowed down significantly. When everyone was naturally tilted in their seats due to inertia, Santo's voice rang out: "You know, he is right. We have to keep some promethium just in case."

"This thing is a hybrid! I saw the generator!" Akuldona protested in dissatisfaction, but the protest was ineffective. "Prototype No. 1" finally stopped in the vast desert. The trail of rolling yellow sand that was dragged here quickly fell after losing the disturbance, but the dust refused to fall to the ground, forming a yellow smoke behind the vehicle. At the moment when the engine completely stopped, Fulgrim's clone, who had already unbuckled his seat belt, opened the rear hatch from inside the vehicle with all his strength, as if he had a clear goal, and jumped down from his seat almost without stopping.

"Wait a minute - where are you going?!" Akurdona hurriedly freed himself from the restraints on the seat, and stumbled out of the cabin amid Santo's deliberately loud sigh. The latter's neural connection was not so easy to be safely disconnected in a short time, so he barely stuck his head out of the cockpit and shouted at the two purple-gold backs: "Akuldona! I installed a receiver on your power armor! Your auspicious instrument can mark the location of 'Prototype No. 1'!"

Akurdona's voice was swallowed up by the dust that flew up and didn't fall to the ground. Santo could only see that he seemed to turn his head while moving forward, waved his arms and gestured to him, and then turned around and hurried forward. Santo wanted to complain, but he finally sighed, retracted his head, and began to untie himself from the driver's seat.

The Captain of the Iron Hands Company was not too worried about the two men who left the vehicle without saying a word, nor was he too worried about himself being left alone with the vehicle. There was probably nothing but stones and sand within a radius of 300 kilometers, let alone any living creatures that could threaten the Astartes. Therefore, he did not try too hard to stop his cousin of the Emperor's Children from chasing a clone of the Primarch around, and Akuldona soon caught up with his target after a short trot:

"We shouldn't stray too far from our vehicle!" He followed the man who looked almost identical to the Primarch in his memory, like a puppy chasing after an angry master. "Besides, we came from this direction. The auspicious instrument has already scanned this direction. There is nothing here!"

The clone suddenly stopped in the dust, and Akurdona had to quickly stop his pace.

Visibility was low due to the dust, and the wheel tracks left by "Prototype No. 1" were right at their feet. The sky was dark, and the evil energy of the subspace was spread above, spreading colorful light downwards, like a disgusting oil film floating on the surface of the netherworld. The clone turned in the direction of Akurdona, and the dirty light fell on his long silver-white hair and the golden eagle wings standing high on his shoulders, as if it was a stain so hidden that even the person involved could not detect it. Akurdona panicked for a moment because of this association, but then he realized that he might be the same in the eyes of the other party, as he was under the same sky.

"I am very grateful to you, Akuldona," the clone said. "The memory in my mind tells me that I have known you for a long time, but my reason can also recognize that we first met in the area controlled by the alien."

Akurdona didn't understand why the other party suddenly brought up this matter, nor did he know how to react. In the end, he just stood there stupidly. Because he saw nothing to refute, he simply accepted all of the above and finally looked up and waited for the other party to say the next sentence.

A wry smile crossed the clone's elegant face, which was almost indistinguishable from Fulgrim's, but it disappeared before Akultuna could confirm that it was real. He continued his speech: "I am grateful for your trust in me when we first met. I may be just a clone imprisoned in a booth, but I am not unaware of the story of the 'Fulgrim' from whom I derived my genes. That 'Fulgrim' tainted and betrayed the entire Legion with his imperfections. I am grateful that you still have such trust in me after all this."

"I don't really care. You may know that I died before that." Akurdona said cruelly with his usual inappropriate honesty, and he didn't even realize how cruel these words were to himself. "I died in the most glorious era and didn't really see the end of the Legion's corruption. Although I also know what happened after that, I only have indirect experience from hearsay and cold-eyed observation. Unlike those brothers who died in the betrayal of corruption and angry hatred, I can indeed look at everything related to the Primarch more rationally. Maybe this is why Vespasian chose to let me deal with this matter that 'may be related to the Primarch' - hey, what am I talking about..."

The clone's mouth curved up gracefully for these messy statements, but even he himself was not sure whether this smile was just out of courtesy or from the heart: "No matter what, I thank you, Akurdona. But I think I have to walk the rest of the way alone."

"What? No!" Akurdona came to his senses immediately. "Like I've always emphasized, you don't even have a suitable weapon with you now! Besides, what about the problem of movement? This almost empty wasteland is so large, at least on 'Prototype No. 1'--"

"--This is my trial." The clone interrupted the other party firmly, "I have understood that if I don't go forward alone, the trial will not start."

"No one has mentioned such a rule!" Akurdona retorted, but he had a vague feeling that these pale and powerless words could no longer stop the other party's will. "Let's get back to the car. With some time, Santo will definitely find a way to make it run its most important functions again. I don't think you can't handle any possible 'trials', I just think you shouldn't go empty-handed!"

This time, the clone smiled from the bottom of his heart. He leaned forward slightly, patted Akurdona on the shoulder, and said, "I appreciate your concern for me. But believe me, I know what I should do."

"How did you know that?" Akultona asked hastily. "Is there a voice in your head speaking? You shouldn't trust a voice that appears inexplicably in your ears - it must be a trick of the Unliving One! Eleven out of ten of its sentences are false!"

The clone nodded, then shook his head. He briefly mentioned to the two people he was traveling with that he had auditory hallucinations when he just got out of the stasis field, but that was not important at the moment. He just emphasized to Akurdona again: "I know exactly what I'm doing. I have to go alone on the rest of the way, Akurdona, you go back to the car."

"But--"

"Get back in the car," the clone said. His hand naturally slid down from Akuldona's shoulder, and as he turned gracefully, he quickly distanced himself from the Emperor's Children's champion swordsman.

Akuldona stood still, knowing full well that he should pursue further, but there was some instinctive force that made him resist doing so. His reason told him that he should pursue, draw his sword, and even use force to catch the other party back, but his sensibility made him want to obey the other party's orders - that was not some evil magic of the warp that affected the mind, but a natural reaction, just like... just like what he would feel when he received orders from his real Primarch ten thousand years ago.

He stood there in the chaos, neither moving forward nor turning back. Akuldona stood in the dusty wilderness, watching the figure that looked almost identical to his genetic father slowly shrink over the course of several minutes. Then an evil wind blew from nowhere, raising the dust on the ground again, blurring the clone's figure into a small black mark in the dust, and finally completely disappearing from his sight.

The wind soon died down, but by then, the wheel tracks at his feet had disappeared. Recovering from his slumber, Akurdona immediately tried to search for the footprints of his genetic father's clone in the Gobi Desert, but found nothing.

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 304 Who are you?

The dead whispered to him: You are but a poor imitation of me, made by Fabius.

The clones turned a deaf ear to this.

This voice might have come from his own imagination, or it might have been implanted in his mind by some strange force. The clone could not accurately distinguish between the two, and even if he could find out, the answer would not help him in the current situation. So he simply ignored it and just followed the wheel tracks, step by step, back to the way he came.

This voice that had been following him since he broke free from the stasis field was not only negative. At least, when "Prototype No. 1" was moving aimlessly and endlessly in the Gobi Desert, it was this voice that told him why:

Unlike the material world, the High Heaven is idealistic. Time, distance and direction have no meaning here. Only firm determination can lead travelers to their final goal - that is to say, as long as anyone on this car has doubts about your so-called "trial", you will always have to waste time on this infinitely extending plain.

Perhaps in the warp, time is indeed meaningless. The clone did not take action immediately after hearing this argument. In his subjective experience, he had spent several days trying to determine this through calculations. He sat in the two seats at the end of the cabin, which did not prevent him from looking across the entire cabin and reading the readings on the instrument panel without any obstacles. The complex and unfamiliar units and symbols did confuse him for a while, but as the Primarch, he quickly understood their meaning through some clues in the operation of the vehicle, and after a few hours, he was convinced that the physical parameters on the plain where they were were changing all the time.

After realizing this, he immediately discovered that Gabriel Santo was trying to find a pattern from these changes, but he was not optimistic about this because he had tried to do the same thing and failed. Regardless of whether Fabius's cloning technology could match the Emperor's greatest and most sophisticated creations, his brain was still more sophisticated and faster than the Cogitator array installed on "Prototype No. 1". For a few minutes, he even tried to predict what readings would appear on the dashboard next based on the vibration of the cabin. After discovering that his predictions were all accurate, he quickly lost interest in it.

The clone repeatedly checked the calculations under the stare of the empty eye sockets of the Thinker Array, and finally convinced himself that there was no point in continuing to move forward. In essence, it was just a way of creating an illusion that "we are still trying to solve the problem". Therefore, after a few days, he stopped the wheel track of the vehicle and left the two Astartes who followed him for different reasons, and embarked on this journey that belonged only to him alone.

And in this journey that should have belonged to him alone, he still had an annoying travel companion.

You should at least bring Akuldona. The voice of the dead man haunted his mind through some medium other than air. Thinking back to the past, I liked him so much. This was a major event in life, and he was certainly qualified to participate.

The clone still said nothing, but his mind was indeed disturbed by these words that appeared out of thin air, just like he finally decided after he had no other choice that he could follow the suggestion that appeared in his mind and leave the vehicle. Time, distance and direction are not important, and there is no essential difference whether he moves forward by vehicle or by legs. According to this theory of "the Supreme God is idealistic", as long as his will is strong enough and he is sure that he wants to face this trial, then he will find his goal.

He could see that the two Astartes traveling with him did not want this so-called "trial" to come true - Gabriel Santo did not trust the outsider who suddenly appeared and proposed this inexplicably, and he did not care about "what will happen to the clone in the future", and even hoped that he would die in a place where no one knew; while Akurdona, Akurdona was seriously worried about him, and did not want him to get hurt or encounter an accident, and even more did not want him to fall into some disturbing conspiracy of some subspace entity.

This is where things become absurd: the Iron Hands, who were indifferent to him, were essentially indifferent to their own future, and Akurdona's sincere concern blocked the only way out of this invisible infinite loop. The voices of the dead laughed and praised this farce in the clone's mind, but the clone still said nothing.

He didn't say anything, but he was thinking. Not only was he thinking about every word the dead man said to him, but he was also thinking about every word Akuldona said and every word Gabriel Santo said. He didn't want to think like this, but he couldn't stop - it seemed to be an instinct for him, at least after he got out of the stasis field, he soon found that he couldn't stop thinking like this.

I cannot stop trying to unravel the deep causes and theoretical thinking from the surface of reality, I cannot stop discovering the irrationality and absurdity from the most common scenes, and extending meaningless thinking from the absurdity, I cannot stop transcending the tangible things to metaphysical thinking, I cannot stop looking down from the metaphysical dimension and explaining everything that happens in the tangible world.

He gained a lot of insight, both helpful and harmful. The clone wanted to stop, his consciousness was clamoring for rest due to the excessive information, but he couldn't stop - even at this moment, the voice of the dead still echoed in his mind: Do you really think you are ready?

The clone still didn't reply, but he couldn't help but think along with the other party's question: Am I really ready?

He thought so, but now he was not sure. Time in the subspace might be different for everyone, just like Akurdona thought they had only traveled a few hours on the vehicle, but in the clone's perception, they had been moving day and night for several days. At this moment, he also felt that he had been walking along the track left by "Prototype No. 1" for several days in extreme boredom, but this only road with a landmark still stubbornly stretched forward.

Sometimes he wondered if it had really been that long. Sometimes he felt like he had been walking on the same road for a hundred years. The scenery around him was unchanged, with similar stones scattered all over the sand, which even made the clone doubt whether he was really moving forward.