"Is that for real?"
Alexander was suddenly drenched in sweat.
What kind of existence was a High Lord? The probability of a High Lord dying from overwork on the job was about the same as a Cadian dying on the front lines.
Especially the Adeptus Administratum, the most exhausting, most 'corporate slave' position in the entire Imperium of Man with the highest mortality rate from overwork.
Tens of billions of Adeptus Administratum officials engaged in eternal work within a dizzyingly complex and vast bureaucracy, constantly calculating populations, tithes, and expenditures, performing almost ceaseless document processing in a hell of parchment scrolls.
Many members of the Adeptus Administratum were even permanently integrated with their workstations; logic engines and parchment almost became a part of them, until they died from overwork on the job, and their children inherited the work, just as they had inherited the position from their parents.
And the Minister of Adeptus Administratum was at the apex of this inefficient and exhausting bureaucratic pyramid. The work accumulated on him did not decrease; instead, it accumulated even more than for an average Adeptus Administratum bureaucrat. Just the complex relationships between the myriad governmental departments accumulated over billions of years within the Adeptus Administratum alone would be enough to burst his head.
This position was undoubtedly for the unluckiest person in the entire Imperium; they were almost equivalent to undertaking a task that should have been borne by the Emperor with a mortal mind.
Alexander could barely endure transmigrating to a hive city, but if he were to transmigrate as the Minister of Adeptus Administratum...
Alexander guaranteed he would cry louder than a pixie whose toe had been run over by a giant machine.
"Why not? I have to arrange positions for you and Sanguinius in the High Lord Council, don't I?"
"With the Accelerator Gear, High-Efficiency Pills, and Deduction Hat, I think you can handle the duties of the Minister of Adeptus Administratum —"
"— Of course, all of this can be discussed further. There will always be a more suitable position for you and a more suitable person for the Minister of Adeptus Administratum position."
Guilliman, seeing Alexander half-pulling out a Earth-Destroying Bomb from his four-dimensional pocket, quickly waved his hands, indicating that they could continue discussing.
"..How about the position of Prime Minister of the Imperial Senate? It's not a High Lord position, but it presides over the High Lord Council... Let's talk about it when we return to Terra."
Two-thirds of the Earth-Destroying Bomb was already out of Alexander's four-dimensional pocket, and Guilliman could only sigh.
Binding Alexander to Terra and even the entire Imperium's administrative system was part of Guilliman's plan for the Codex Astartes.
Politics, in the final analysis, is the wisdom of checks and balances, not individual checks and balances, but checks and balances between groups.
Guilliman hoped for a force to check the Adeptus Ministorum, to check it on both the spiritual and practical levels. The Saint Doraemon Sect was a very good choice.
Sanguinius would represent and serve as the Pope of the Saint Church, and Alexander would also have a seat among the High Lords.
This way, if the Adeptus Ministorum wanted to oppose the Saint Doraemon Sect, it would have to be loyal to Sanguinius, completely follow Sanguinius' orders, and be controlled by Sanguinius.
The same principle applied to the Saint Doraemon Sect; it had to rely on Alexander's inherent power.
Guilliman would push the Adeptus Ministorum and the Saint Doraemon Sect to become the two most powerful forces in the Imperium. Other factions, in pursuit of power, would inevitably attach themselves to these two.
Thus, other factions would be dependent on the Adeptus Ministorum and the Saint Doraemon Sect, the Adeptus Ministorum and the Saint Doraemon Sect would be dependent on Sanguinius and Alexander, and Sanguinius, Alexander, and Guilliman would form a triumvirate.
This way, the three of them would also be able to wield the power of the entire Imperium more easily.
Further on, Guilliman intended to secularize the Adeptus Ministorum and the Saint Doraemon Sect, which was also why Guilliman hoped Alexander would serve as the Minister of Adeptus Administratum, allowing the Adeptus Administratum and the Saint Doraemon Sect to merge into one.
After all this was completed, Guilliman himself could smoothly withdraw from the entire system, leaving Alexander and Sanguinius to manage the entire galaxy, and then he would find a feudal world to farm.
The biggest problem now seemed to be how to persuade Alexander to take on the position of Minister of Adeptus Administratum.
"What are you two talking about?"
Just then, the door to Guilliman's office was pushed open again. Sanguinius, with his clean wings tinged with a little metallic blue, walked into the command room.
A slight smile played on his lips, as if he had encountered something interesting and wanted to share it with them.
Guilliman slightly raised his head, looked at Sanguinius, and said, "I'm considering that when we return to Terra, you will serve as the Pope of the Saint Church, and Alexander will serve as the Minister of Adeptus Administratum."
Sanguinius stood still, and the smile on his lips instantly vanished.
"No way," Sanguinius said, shaking his head. "I plan to feign death directly after humanity is saved, then return to Baal to grow grapes."
"Yeah, yeah, I also plan to open a fried chicken shop on Terra, called 'Saint KFC'," Alexander also nodded repeatedly.
Listening to Alexander's words, Sanguinius showed a look of accustomedness, then turned to look at Guilliman.
"You're good at politics; why don't you handle it?"
Sanguinius said softly:
"You are a born political creature, devouring power and spitting out policies. Isn't that your instinct? Besides being a ruler, I can't think of anything else you could do."
Guilliman's mouth slightly opened, as if he wanted to say something.
But in the end, he let out a deep sigh and said nothing.
Watching this scene, Alexander couldn't help but chuckle twice.
Even during the Great Crusade, most Primarchs had a common view of Guilliman: he was extremely deep, no one knew what he truly desired in his heart, or what kind of thoughts he truly hid.
But Alexander knew what Guilliman's deepest hidden thought was:
He wanted to farm on an Agri-world once everything settled down.
But Sanguinius saying that Guilliman was a political creature, feeding on politics and power, a born politician only suited to being a ruler, was not at all a prejudice or stereotype.
Even if Guilliman were to farm, he would begin to meticulously analyze the nutrients in the soil, judge changes in climate and the perfect time for planting crops, find suitable fertilizers, and meticulously manage every detail of the land.
Then, one day, Guilliman might find the existing fertilizers unsatisfactory, so he would start building his own fertilizer factory. Another day, he might find the machinery for producing fertilizer unsatisfactory, so after building a machinery factory, he would find that steel couldn't meet his needs, and then he would start establishing a monopoly enterprise covering every step from steelmaking to fertilizer packaging.
Finally, he would still discover that the local political system limited him from continuing to produce better fertilizers, so he would begin to reform local politics, becoming the ruler of the entire planet. Subsequently, he would discover that chaotic and disordered inter-system trade limited him, so he would begin to try to establish an inter-system regime...
This was Roboute Guilliman's innate instinct, making one wonder if the Emperor, when creating the Primarchs, forgot to add political ability to the other twenty and then added all twenty-one portions to Guilliman.
"Let's talk about these things when we return to Terra."
Guilliman sighed, skipped the topic, then looked at Sanguinius and asked:
"You had Tigurius tell Alexander and me to temporarily put down our work. What exactly did you discover?"
Listening to Guilliman's words, a faint smile crossed Sanguinius' lips, carrying a mysterious aura.
"I discovered something interesting, perhaps about the nature of the Warp before Magnus' birth, about his essence."
"Magnus' Warp essence?" Alexander slightly raised his eyebrows.
"Can you guess where it is?" Sanguinius asked, looking at Alexander.
"In Tzeentch's hands?" Faced with Sanguinius' question, Alexander pondered for a moment before replying.
In his previous life, there were rumors that the essences of the so-called daemon Primarchs were all taken by the Four Gods, but these were merely unconfirmed rumors.
Sanguinius just smiled and shook his head: "It's in Magnus' own hands."
"You are a resident of the third millennium of humanity; you should understand the concept I'm about to explain very well."
"If there were such an existence that perfectly replicated your way of thinking, your emotions and memories, all the knowledge you still remember or have forgotten, and was completely identical to you on a conscious level, could it then be considered you yourself?"
"You should ask Archmagos Belisarius Cawl that question; he would firmly say that it is himself," Alexander replied, pondering the meaning of Sanguinius' words.
Belisarius Cawl had endured these ten thousand years by repeatedly changing his body and transferring his consciousness, and he firmly believed that his current self and his self ten thousand years ago were the same individual, the unique Belisarius Cawl, with no issues in self-perception whatsoever.
"Then, what if your original self were shattered, or even lost that crucial and important part of your soul in life? Which of you and the copied you would be closer to your essential self?"
Sanguinius asked again:
"Especially in the Warp, a dimension where there is no distinction between past and future, no before and after."
"In the Warp, there is no 'who was born first' between you and your copied self."
Alexander stared at Sanguinius. He remembered that Sanguinius' essence originated from Sanguinius' death; the echo of his own death in the Warp led to his birth.
"Magnus' book?" Alexander said, raising his voice slightly in surprise.
He remembered Magnus' book, that grimoire personally written by Magnus, which indeed clearly recorded all of Magnus' knowledge, memories, emotions, and ways of cognition. It was a work into which Magnus had poured his heart and soul.
Furthermore, Magnus' book, due to the immense power of the knowledge it contained, even caused the knowledge itself to become animated, forming consciousness and vitality, and even comprising an inner miniature world.
Magnus wrote Magnus' book, recording himself and everything he knew, and in the Warp there is no concept of time. Did the Emperor, when shaping Magnus, in turn use Magnus' book to create him?
"Wait."
Before Alexander could clear his thoughts, Guilliman suddenly spoke:
"What do you mean by 'Warp nature before birth'?"
"What do you mean by 'Warp essence'?"