Alexander's eyebrows furrowed as he stepped into the PDF's garrison.
Inside the PDF's garrison, some corpses lay beside the buildings.
They wore the uniforms of the Ashford Star Planetary Defense Force, their faces gaunt, bearing bite marks and signs of decay.
Most of the corpses were incomplete, suggesting that after the Governor ordered the bombing of the Old Eight District, the PDF soldiers buried under the rubble likely resorted to cannibalism.
But that wasn't what Alexander cared about.
Eating corpses in a hive city wasn't something that caused much psychological burden.
After all, a portion of the famous Corpse Starch was made from the bodies of the dead.
The Corpse Guilds, responsible for making Corpse Starch, would use hearse fleets and mobile factories to collect the dead and process their bodies into corpse starch.
Many hive city residents had consumed this corpse starch.
What truly made Alexander frown was that these corpses had been lying there for at least a hundred years,
Yet they were merely rotten, not reduced to a pile of bones.
A hint of vigilance arose in Alexander's heart. He extended a finger towards one of the corpses.
"Bang!!!" He uttered a syllable.
The corpse's head burst open like a watermelon struck by a hammer, and a mixture of red, green, and white pus splattered onto the wall behind it, forming a twisted painting.
After years of decay, the heads of these corpses had become soft and rotten; the shockwave from an air pistol was enough to shatter them.
However, the other nearby corpses remained still, as if they were truly just dead bodies.
This, this isn't right, is it?
He frowned and extended his finger again.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Three more corpses' heads burst, but the remaining corpses still didn't rise from the ground as living corpses, as Alexander had suspected.
He turned his head, glancing at Marquite and Mont behind him.
Marquite nodded slightly at him.
Sure enough, this guy did something.
Alexander nodded at Marquite, then
He waved his arm, and the mechanical arm above his head moved accordingly, sweeping across the corpses at the base of the wall.
The heads of those corpses were crushed one by one, leaving a trail of red, green, and white intertwined marks on the wall.
After clearing all the corpses within his sight, Alexander smiled at Marquite before confidently walking towards the PDF warehouse.
Marquite watched this scene and couldn't help but shake his head and sigh, saying, "How cautious."
"Is he worried I'd awaken these living corpses?"
"Brother, did he figure out that you used the incantation granted by the 'Angel' to put the living corpses to sleep?" Mont asked in a low voice.
Mont's tone carried surprise; he seemed unable to understand how Alexander knew these corpses were living corpses.
"He understands us very well, perhaps even better than we understand ourselves," Marquite said in a deep voice.
"Who exactly is he? Leman Russ, a name that sounds fake," Mont said, looking in the direction Alexander had left.
Marquite, however, fell silent. He remembered the horrified screams of the 'Angel'.
Most of the time, the 'Angel's' voice was filled with a seemingly never-fading cheerfulness,
It was the first time he had heard the 'Angel's' voice sound so terrified.
And the information revealed in that terrified scream—
"This name might have some truth to it."
Marquite said gravely:
"The 'Angel' said his face, it looks like… it looks like…"
Mont noticed the hesitation in Marquite's tone, as if he was considering whether or not to utter that name.
"Looks like who?" Mont couldn't help but press.
"That demigod of the First Legion during the Great Crusade ten thousand years ago."
Marquite took a deep breath and said:
"Lion El'Jonson. His face is almost identical to Lion El'Jonson's."
"But the physique is wrong, and the personality is not similar."
"Leman Russ looks like a Primarch?" Hearing Marquite's words, Mont gasped.
He couldn't help but think of many possibilities, each somewhat terrifying.
"Don't think about these things. He hasn't delved into our secrets, so we shouldn't delve into his."
"Finding traces of that relic is still the most important thing."
Marquite shook his head and said, looking around at the PDF garrison's office.
He patted Mont's shoulder, and they walked together towards that building.
The Imperium used many mediums to store information, the most common being parchment and data-slates.
Important, valuable information would be stored on more reliable, safer parchment,
The rest would be stored on data-slates.
Mont rummaged through the data-slates in his hand, searching for the information they both wanted.
Marquite, meanwhile, organized the parchment.
"Found it," Marquite said, pointing to a piece of parchment.
On this parchment, a dense string of low gothic letters was written.
This was the PDF's detailed record of the plague that year.
It clearly documented the plague situation in the Old Eight District.
Marquite waved at Mont: "Help me find a data-slate with a map of the Old Eight District."
Mont took out a data-slate from those he had just rummaged through.
Because he had promised Alexander to help him find a map, he specifically picked out this one.
Marquite looked at the map of the Old Eight District on the data-slate, using his finger to mark the locations where the plague had appeared that year.
These small dots marked by Marquite formed a color block that was sparse around the edges and dense in the middle.
Looking at the marked map, Marquite fell into thought.
"The plague spread through half of the Old Eight District that year; this half is likely the location of the plague's source."
"According to the PDF's records from back then, the earliest locations where the plague appeared were these…"
Marquite looked at the most densely packed area of dots, which was where the plague first began to spread.
He reached out and connected the earliest plague locations, forming an irregular circle.
He looked at the buildings within this circle and quickly found a suspicious target.
"Corpse Guild."
Marquite pointed to the location of the Corpse Guild.
The Corpse Guild was almost exactly in the middle of the first few locations where the plague appeared.
"It seems that over a hundred years ago, the Corpse Guild spread the plague, drawing the power of the garden where the 'Angel' resides into the material universe."
"According to the 'Angels', that power was injected into an ancient artifact."
"But before that artifact could be truly completed, the Governor, realizing what was happening, bombed the entire Old Eight District, burying everything beneath."
A hint of excitement showed in Marquite's tone.
"But that nearly complete artifact is very likely still within the Corpse Guild!"
"As long as we find that artifact, and then find that Warp Engine from the Bottom Nest, we can save all of Ashford."
In fact, not all hive cities would form monopolistic Corpse Guilds.