pertwk 0037 Prospero and the Black Knight
0037 Prospero and the Black Knight
The Soul-Eating Bee is a psionic creature that exists in both the real world and the warp. This bizarre life form can travel between the real world and the warp, is attracted by psionic fluctuations, can use terrifying psionic attacks, and can project its eggs into the brain tissue of mortals.
In the Old Night, many civilizations on planets were destroyed by sudden psychic awakenings that attracted swarms of psionic swarms. The most famous of these was Prospero, the homeworld of Primarch Magnus.
The instant Zhou Yun recognized the term "Soul-Eating Bee" from his memories, he instinctively suspected that this world belonged to Prospero.
And the archaeologists' memories also surfaced, confirming Zhou Yun's suspicions.
Prospero... Tizka, the City of Light... The Crimson Son who fell from the sky... Magnus...
This is the era when Magnus had already landed in Tizica, the last city of Prospero, and had begun leading the Prospero people. Most of the Soul-Eating Bees had been wiped out, but this archaeological team was very unlucky to encounter a remnant swarm.
Really... huh?
Just then, Zhou Yun felt his psychic premonitions being triggered.
He saw the near future, a clear and definite future—the infusion of archaeologists' psychic energy, which now gave Zhou Yun the psychic talent to possess three bodies simultaneously.
He is now at least at the level of 9 Θ limit, and may even have reached the level of 10 psionic H, which is the peak level that a mid-level psionicist can reach under the Inquisition system. He has even touched the level that would allow him to be recruited by Space Marines as a seed in the think tank.
The next level, ζ, is the level of high psionic energy. In most hive worlds, it takes decades for only a handful of people to be born with the talent to reach this level, and ultimately only one or two people will achieve it.
This enhanced psychic power, along with Prospero's thin veil, caused Zhou Yun's precognitive talent to automatically trigger upon sensing the presence of danger...
He saw the Soul-Devouring Bee Swarm, a massive swarm of Soul-Devouring Bees, surging out from all directions and attacking Zhou Yun... No!!
The archaeologist's memories resurfaced; he remembered... the Soul-Eating Bees' habit was to track psionic fluctuations, and he had just used level 10 H psionic energy to foresee the future, clearly indicating that...
Zhou Yun saw his own death in the future.
A frantic buzzing sound suddenly rang out from the air, the eerie sound spreading along both the subspace and reality dimensions, piercing into Zhou Yun's body.
A metallic taste filled Zhou Yun's mouth, and blood flowed from it. His eyes also caught sight of the swarm of thirsty bees with crystal wings.
Some of the bees emerged from the shadows, some appeared from Zhou Yun's blind spot, and some simply appeared out of thin air.
Those hideous monsters spread out their six slender limbs, their crystalline, filthy hooked feet pointing at Zhou Yun. A disgusting gel-like substance flowed down from their swollen heads, which resembled human brains, landing on their razor-like mouthparts and compound eyes that reflected Zhou Yun's image.
This damn precognitive ability... it's ruined me again.
Biyang, in this Milky Way, precognition is truly the most harmful skill.
"Get out of the way!!" Zhou Yun roared, activating the mind-to-mind connection's spiritual bewitching voice, forcibly implanting the command "Get out of the way" into the minds of these spirit-devouring bees.
But these Soul-Eating Bees only took a slight step back.
Oh no... This thing seems to be a collective will, and its ability to transmit mental energy is not very effective.
As if to verify Zhou Yun's idea, these Soul-Devouring Bees simultaneously flapped their wings and rushed towards Zhou Yun.
The hunter skill from Caliban prompted Zhou Yun to react with lightning speed. He moved swiftly, leaping over a collapsed pillar and narrowly missing the mouthparts of a Soul-Devouring Bee.
At the same time, his mind began rapidly extracting useful information from the archaeologist's brain...
It is attracted by psionic radiation, can teleport remotely, its needles can pierce almost any form of armor, it can project eggs into the victim's brain without contact, and it can release psionic waves that drive people insane just by flapping its wings... It's a group of monsters!
Zhou Yun's expression froze. His hunter's judgment told him that this was definitely a dung monster, the kind that could sit at the same table as the Caliban behemoth.
He was almost immediately certain that the body was unlikely to survive.
It's worth noting that even the later White Scar Primarch Chagatai Khan, the Primarch's Kheshig Guard, and the renowned Qin Xia all expended considerable effort when facing the Soul-Devouring Bee swarm...
The air in front of Zhou Yun trembled, and several Soul-Devouring Bees instantly teleported to Zhou Yun's front, their sharp claws stabbing straight at him.
Zhou Yun's pupils contracted sharply, and his arm instinctively swung forward.
An invisible force surged from Zhou Yun's hand, and the Soul-Devouring Bees hanging in front of him were suddenly sucked together. They let out a piercing wail, then their shells burst, their slime splattered, and their limbs scattered in all directions.
The name of the psionic spell, "Falcon School - Mind Crusher," suddenly popped into Zhou Yun's mind.
This is... a telekinetic spell?
It's one of the archaeologist's skills; this archaeologist is skilled in falconry and bright feathers... that is, telekinesis and bio-chemical psionic energy.
Zhou Yun suddenly flung his hands to his sides, compressing the psychic field formed by his spiritual energy into a thin, sharp blade. Its divine edge was invisible, and in an instant, it sliced through the approaching Soul-Devouring Bees.
Falcon School. Psionic Blade.
Here, Prospero's veil was so thin that his psychic powers were unleashed to their fullest extent.
In Macurag, his psionic blade would be nothing more than an ordinary razor blade, but here, it was as sharp as a monomolecular blade.
Two Soul-Devouring Bees teleported behind Zhou Yun. In his blind spot, their sharp claws aimed straight at Zhou Yun's back, but only managed to create a series of sparks on his body.
Liangyu School. Body like refined steel.
This biochemical psionic energy instantly raised Zhou Yun's skin hardness to the level of steel.
A bolt of lightning, formed from bio-energy, surged from Zhou Yun's fingertips and pierced through the bodies of the two Soul-Devouring Bees.
Zhou Yun exhaled a breath of stale air. Although releasing his spiritual energy made him feel refreshed, he also knew that this body was about to die.
This is the limit... Everyone in the archaeological team is a psionicist, and several of them are on par with the archaeologists in terms of psionic abilities, but in the end, they all died tragically at the hands of the Soul-Eating Bees.
This is mainly because the Soul-Eating Bee has an unpredictable skill... Zhou Yun felt a wave of dizziness and headache, as if something was crawling in his brain tissue.
These are the eggs of the Soul-Eating Bees; those insects can project their eggs into the victim's body out of thin air.
Once injected with these insect eggs, it is basically an incurable disease, and even with the medical conditions available after the empire's arrival, it is difficult to cure.
However, this body has already brought Zhou Yun quite a lot of benefits.
First, there is powerful psychic energy and a systematic set of psychic techniques, including telekinesis and bio-psychic abilities.
Secondly, Zhou Yun has already memorized the location of this planet, Prospero, and has been keeping an eye on it from the Golden Throne. If a suitable body appears in this world again, Zhou Yun can enter it immediately.
After seeing in the prophecy that he would eventually be killed by the worm eggs inside his brain, Zhou Yun stopped in his tracks and raised his middle finger at the surrounding Soul-Devouring Bees.
He sneered, and psionic energy began to gather around his head. He was going to detonate his psionic energy, blasting all the Soul-Devouring Bees that came near him into the air.
If Zhou Yun's psionic energy hadn't been connected to the Golden Throne, in Prospero, where the veil was thin, some kind of warp demon might have been unleashed.
His head exploded with a deafening roar, and scorching psionic energy surged in all directions. The Soul-Devouring Bees screamed, and their brain tissue began to burn fiercely. They plummeted from mid-air, crashing onto the sand...
The queen bee, whose body was extremely bloated and who was hiding deep in the ruins, screamed. The death of so many spirit-devouring bees that were connected to her will had caused her considerable harm.
She shrieked, cursing the shameless human... but just then, her compound eyes reflected the location where Zhou Yun had just been.
After Zhou Yun detonated his spiritual energy, a figure vaguely emerged within the howling vortex of spiritual energy...
In Tizka, in the library atop the pyramid, a red-skinned giant in a golden robe, reading an ancient parchment scroll, suddenly raised his head, his eyes reflecting a scene...
He saw it; he saw a psychic force tear open the curtain, letting something into Prospero's wasteland.
That was a powerful being, not as powerful as him, but far beyond the mortal realm.
The giant's mind detached from its body and rose up, arriving at the ruins in the blink of an eye. It hovered in mid-air and looked at the dead Queen Bee of the Soul-Devouring Bees.
A knight clad in jet-black power armor, engulfed in raging flames, and sporting a golden crown atop his helmet, stood atop the Queen Bee's deformed head.
He pulled the black blade from the queen bee's head and looked up slightly at the giant suspended in mid-air.
That was definitely not a living person...
"What are you?" the giant demanded.
The black knight remained silent, turning into a cloud of ashes that slowly dissipated into the air, as if the power that sustained his existence had been completely exhausted.
Sensing that power, the giant's eyes gleamed with various lights.
"Father?"
"Or...my teacher?"