Blood was flowing everywhere on the Eternal Wall.
The blasphemous thugs who had once lurked in the darkness were like light-fearing insects emerging from the soil when dark clouds obscured the sun.
They poured out from the smallest crevices of the hive city, from all directions of the entire fallen planet.
Churches that once served the God-Emperor were desecrated with blood, piles of corpses of nobles, overseers, workers, and mutants lay within them, and the bones once worshipped as holy relics released crimson flames. These flames surged from the spires of the hive city churches, eventually setting the entire hive city ablaze.
Not just one hive city, but every hive city was set ablaze.
Reyna stood on the towering Eternal Wall, seeing crimson mist rising from the spires of hive cities in the distance, like candles placed on scarlet altars sacrificed to the Blood God, staining the entire sky crimson.
Lightning constantly fell from those crimson clouds, lashing the Imperium of Man's homeworld like venomous brass whips.
"By the God-Emperor and Saint Doraemon, what a blasphemous sight."
Reyna couldn't help but murmur.
"Mortals are always emotionally unstable, and psyker and fanatical believers even more so."
Valerian, the Shield-Captain standing beside Reyna, asked with a hint of curiosity:
"You are both a mortal, an psyker, and a fanatic, yet your composure in the face of this scene is remarkable."
Valerian had been chosen to become a Custodian from the day he was born and had spent what could be called a long life almost entirely within the Imperial Palace.
But within the Palace, he had seen fanatics, psyker, and mortals; he understood that their minds were imperfect, flawed, and could not match the tempered minds of the Custodians.
Yet Reyna, a person who simultaneously possessed the identities of a fanatic, an alpha psyker, and a mortal, merely exclaimed "blasphemy" verbally when faced with these blasphemous scenes filled with Warp energy.
"..I'm used to it," Reyna said with a peculiar tone. "Some of Alexander's words are even more blasphemous than the scene before us."
Valerian tilted his corn-like head slightly, seemingly asking Reyna what Alexander had said.
Reyna thought for a moment, trying to find a less blasphemous joke from Alexander's repertoire that wouldn't provoke a Custodian.
"Alexander claims he has no faith, and he wholeheartedly believes—"
Reyna paused, then imitated Alexander's past tone:
"I wholeheartedly believe in the following truth: there are no ghosts or gods between the stars, no supernatural phenomena, and no magic or witchcraft. Everything can be interpreted through scientific means, and humanity can overcome anything with the light of reason. Nothing should be worshipped, and a rational galaxy needs to completely eliminate the backward concept of religion."
"Isn't that hilarious? I truly can't understand how he calls such a lie, which even a hive city child wouldn't believe, a 'truth.'"
"He must be one of the greatest deceivers in the galaxy to concoct such a lie."
".." Valerian responded with a deathly silence.
Reyna stared blankly as Valerian suddenly tightened his grip on the power spear in his hand, his entire body of gleaming auramite power armor humming with his trembling, and his somewhat corn-like helmet twisted to stare intensely at Reyna, then rigidly twisted back.
"..It is indeed...hilarious," Valerian said to Reyna, very stiffly and haltingly, word by word.
Reyna blinked in confusion. She could feel that this Custodian seemed to want to say something but didn't know how to begin.
"..I'm going to kill some fallen mortals," Valerian suddenly said, then rushed towards the edge of the city wall without looking back.
Reyna grew even more perplexed.
Hadn't Lord Valerian emphasized that his duty was surveillance and assessment? Why was he now directly participating in the battle?
But Reyna also had no time to ponder such minor details.
The Eternal Wall spanned the entire center of the Eurasian continent, incredibly vast.
And the fallen seemed endless, pouring in from all directions of the Imperial Palace.
Reyna almost felt like she was fighting against everything on Terra outside the Imperial Palace.
Several Astra Militarum legions, including the Lucifer Blacks, the Old Hundred Regiment, and the Cadia 184th Regiment, had to be dispersed to every corner of the city wall.
And the Ultramarines and Blood Angels from Macragge were also scattered across the battlefield, guarding different sections.
Reyna could only rely on herself to deal with the current situation...
Her gaze fell upon the priest who was shouting blasphemous words.
Clearly, in the section Reyna was defending, that fallen Adeptus Ministorum priest was the core of the thugs.
And that fallen priest was clearly protected by the Blood God's power; neither Titans nor city defense artillery could harm him in the slightest.
But the Blood God would never refuse a cruel and bloody battle. Only close combat, only primitive and bloody slaughter, could kill him.
Blazing Psyker sparks erupted from Reyna's body, and her figure almost instantly vanished from the city wall.
Grand stairs continuously extended beneath Alexander's feet, reaching up to the sanctuary that glowed with brilliant golden light.
If there was one place on Terra that had not been defiled by war, blood, and blasphemy, one place where the sun still shone, it was the Throne Room before Alexander.
Huge stained-glass windows bathed in sunlight cast seven-colored hues onto the black marble corridor beside Alexander, illuminating the exquisitely carved details.
The most peculiar thing was that this sunlight did not seem to come from the sky but from deep within the Throne Room.
Alexander's gaze swept over the carvings around, which were full of records of the past.
From the gloom of the Old Night to the glory of the Great Crusade era, from the wrath of the Great Heresy to the sorrow of the Emperor's fall, the epic of hope and despair, sacrifice and salvation, corruption and greatness from ten thousand years ago was all carved upon them.
Alexander's gaze lingered on the carving of Sanguinius defending the Eternal Gate. The marks of time had faded the carving somewhat, but it still could not diminish its impact...
Sanguinius in the carving was bare-chested, wrestling with an Emperor-class Titan.
Sanguinius had indeed defeated an Emperor-class Titan, but his method was to fly into the Titan's command room and directly decapitate all the pilots, not to engage in close-quarters combat with an Emperor-class Titan as depicted in the carving.
This carving was somewhat abstract.
"Facts become stories, stories become legends, and legends eventually become epics."
Sanguinius spoke softly:
"In this process, the original facts are constantly exaggerated, distorted, and transformed into something entirely different from the original."
"If we're talking about the most exaggerated, it's this one," Roboute Guilliman said, hearing Alexander and Sanguinius' conversation, and looked up at the magnificent giant gate before him.
This colossal gate, forged from adamantium, stood like a metal mountain at the end of the celestial stairs, embedded between intricate marble carvings and Roman columns, gleaming golden and dazzling.
On either side of it stood two Warhound-class Titan guards, but even the God-Machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus appeared tiny before this enormous gate, not even a tenth of its height, and the Custodian guards standing beneath the giant gate seemed as small as ants.
The Eternal Gate, the last gate to the Emperor's Throne Room, shimmered under the iridescent lights.
The magnificent figure of the Emperor stood on the adamantium gate.
He wore a laurel wreath, dazzling auramite power armor, held an Aquila greatshield in one hand and a power spear in the other, with a red and white battle standard fluttering beside him, depicting the Aquila clutching lightning.
And beneath the Emperor, a terrifying, metallic-glowing giant dragon coiled and entwined among the stars, roaring and spewing venomous flames.
The Emperor's spear was deeply thrust beneath the evil dragon's left wing, piercing its mercury-like flowing body.
"I once told Father, and I told Malcador, that this carving on the Eternal Gate was too religious, too full of mythical connotations."
Guilliman sighed softly, saying:
"But the Emperor and Malcador just exchanged a smile, then shrugged and brushed it off."
Alexander and Sanguinius also exchanged glances, then couldn't help but shrug their shoulders.
"It's not a myth," Alexander hesitated, then said to Guilliman.
"Hmm?" Guilliman looked at Alexander with a slight bewilderment.
"However, the carving on the gate is indeed not factual."
Alexander said with a somewhat eerie tone:
"His Imperial Majesty back then was riding a pitch-black steed, wearing armor made of fine iron, and wielding the best medieval lance—"
"What was his enemy? A Nile crocodile? A giant beast? Or a Greater Daemon?" Guilliman asked, raising an eyebrow slightly.
"..It was the Dragon of Mars, generally believed to be the pinnacle of the material universe, a fragment of the legendary greatest and most terrifying C'tan, the Void Dragon, Mag'ladroth."
"A transcendent energy being that can twist, reshape, and erase physical laws with a mere flick of a finger, and feeds on stars."
".."
Guilliman couldn't help but look up again at the Eternal Gate before him, at the Emperor depicted piercing the giant dragon's left wing with a spear:
"You mean the Emperor defeated a C'tan fragment with just a medieval lance?"
"Yes, the Emperor used a medieval lance to pierce its weakness, tied it up with a banner, and riding his steed, sealed it on Mars," Alexander said faintly. "But he said he wasn't a god."
"He still says he isn't a god," Sanguinius also said faintly. "Then this must be Father's great power."
Guilliman froze in place as if struck by lightning, his expression becoming very strange.