---o---
"What the hell, this is Istvaan III?"
Zhou Ye stared at the Gene-seed in his hand and made a face like he had eaten something bad. How had he ended up here of all places. No wonder the entire region's Warp was so unstable.
The unresolved, unyielding will of the loyal dead was still drifting through the area.
"Right, I remember there should be a Contemptor Dreadnought around here somewhere. The one meant to bait Fulgrim. Where is that thing exactly, the planet is this big, it might even be underground. I'm not going to find it easily."
It was only now that something clicked in Zhou Ye's memory. That particular Dreadnought had originally been left as bait for Fulgrim. There was even a viral bomb here, the one that had made Fulgrim thoroughly sick.
Though that was probably an event that wouldn't happen until after the Great Rift opened. Aside from Angron, the other fallen Primarchs had kept themselves almost completely out of sight for the past ten thousand years.
Especially for a fallen Primarch — showing up somewhere without being noticed was nearly impossible. But given Warhammer's chaotic timeline and its self-contradicting writers, Zhou Ye had already stopped trying to think too hard about it.
Still....
"Ai-chan, help me monitor signals in the surrounding area. Track the signal source if you can."
"Leave it to me, Captain."
"Alright, I'm going to grab some fries."
He pulled out a container, carefully sealed the pure Gene-seed inside, and then began his sweep — using the Warp in combination with his own Authority to fish out whatever he could.
And then....
"Emperor's Children, Death Guard, Luna Wolves, and some Blood Angels this time around. Quite a few though are contaminated, heavily mutated by Warp exposure. These are useless, I'll just absorb them...."
Zhou Ye stared at the thousands of Gene-seeds floating in the air before him and covered his eyes. These things were ten thousand years old. Most of what he had dredged up was severely Warp-corrupted, badly decayed, and incomplete besides.
Honestly, even Chaos Space Marines wouldn't give these to their own recruits. They had to raid loyalist forces just to get viable Gene-seeds. So Zhou Ye devoured the lot of them on the spot, converting them directly into energy.
"Not bad. The energy it costs to fish up a hundred recovers about twenty to thirty back. Since leaving Aestia I haven't had a proper energy source. This helps."
Feeling his reserves refill, Zhou Ye was satisfied. As for the clean ones, he kept every single one. In the blink of an eye there were hundreds of Gene-seeds floating around him, the majority from those four Legions.
Most of the rest had been consumed as fries. Keeping them would have served no purpose.
"Besides those four Legions, there seem to be a few others mixed in here. There's a Space Wolves one — by the look of it, probably Vlka Fenryka. I remember the Space Wolves of that era were more or less the Emperor's executioners, discipline so catastrophically bad they needed actual military commissars."
Zhou Ye was momentarily surprised to have fished up a Space Wolves Gene-seed. It made him think about what the Wolf Pack had been like in the M30 era versus today — completely different animals. You had to hand it to Bjorn the Fell-Handed, that ten-thousand-year-old walking freezer had actually managed to shape the Space Wolves into something decent.
"Anyway, not worth overthinking. Horus was the Warmaster after all. Having a small number of loyal holdouts in his forces is perfectly normal. Don't ask, the answer is the Emperor's divine power."
Zhou Ye muttered this to himself and tucked the Gene-seed away. As he had suspected, this place could still produce a few surprises.
Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Alpha Legion, and two more he didn't recognize at all — but they looked reasonably promising.
None of these were remotely comparable in quantity to the hundreds of Gene-seeds from the four main Legions sitting beside him, but he gathered them all up regardless. He planned to add some of his own seasoning to them later, after which they would be ready to use.
He had what he needed in terms of Gene-seeds, and had also recorded the scattered, fragmented memories carried inside them. These memories could almost be assembled into a nearly complete account of the Great Crusade. Exactly what he needed. He could have fabricated Gene-seeds from scratch, but that consumed a fair amount of energy.
Everything was working out. All he had to do now was take the Warp-tainted elements inside them, replace them with Imaginary energy, and dye them with his own signature. Anyone implanted with these modified Gene-seeds would become his absolute Kin.
Even if they ever stood face to face with their genetic fathers, they would not be influenced. They would not be corrupted or fall to Chaos either. Naturally, the exception was someone like Horus who had been pumped full of Chaos power like a cream puff — that thing made you genuinely question whether he was still the Warmaster at all. And more importantly, something like the Alpha Legion would never be able to infiltrate this from the inside.
He did suspect the assembled Legion was going to look extremely abstract. But he was too far past caring. So at that point he carefully placed just over two thousand clean Gene-seeds into the Thousand-Person Theater.
"Almost there. Shame it isn't Istvaan V instead. That place has huge quantities of Titan wreckage. But then, that is where the loyal dead rest. The Imperium has almost certainly already recovered everything of value from there — I wouldn't be able to pull out a thing, and trying would violate causality. I remember that even in the animated episode Plague Song, even Nurgle himself has to obey the Law of Causality. Violating it brings consequences even he cannot bear."
He muttered this to himself, then stretched and rolled his shoulders.
And just then.....
"Captain, a special signal has been detected coming from an underground ruin somewhere on the planet."
"So it's that last son of the Emperor's Children after all. Might as well see if I can dig him up. He can do me a few favors while he's at it. Pure Gene-seeds alone aren't quite enough for what I need.... hold on, does this count as pulling a Fulgrim?"
He muttered it to himself, then stretched again. But after thinking for a moment, he realized he couldn't just walk in like this.
So, shortly after....
A large figure clad in black and gold power armor appeared, leading a squad of seven or eight. For someone with the Authority of Creation, adjusting his own size was trivial. And for the sake of authenticity, he had also pushed one of the Ultramarine Gene-seeds he had just collected into himself, giving his appearance the faint essence of a Smurf.
As for the squad of Astartes behind him, those were all homunculi he had sculpted himself. While he was at it, he had also steeled himself and fabricated a few Gene-seeds to match.
"So this is what it takes to look like an Astartes. Pity I can no longer use the 010 Omega alias. From now on I am a Chapter Master of the Ultramarines successor Chapter — the Star of Trailblaze!!!"