A pig-like scream instantly spread throughout the underground bar.
"If you want a quick end, I suggest you say whatever you have to say. Don't try to test my patience; I have very little of it."
Horatio twisted the knife handle, the blade gouging out flesh in Mohawk Head's palm, cruelly and mercilessly torturing the unforgivable Cultist before him.
And in his heart, there was only extreme cold indifference, no joy felt from torturing others or trampling enemies.
This was the fundamental difference from the torture inflicted by Slaanesh's followers; he knew his torture was to pry open the Cultist' mouths, not for pleasure.
"Ah! Ah! Ah—! I'll talk! I'll tell you everything!" Mohawk Head couldn't hold on, breaking down and screaming, cold sweat pouring from his head due to the pain.
"Please wait a moment!" Just as Horatio was about to begin his interrogation, the Inquisitor interrupted him.
Horatio looked at the Inquisitor in confusion, only to see the man step forward, grab Mohawk Head by the throat, and knead it.
His thumb seemed to find something, pressing repeatedly on one spot several times.
"Gah! Cough, cough!"
The man let out a painful cry, then coughed violently, as if something hard was stuck in his throat.
"Voice-activated dead man's switch." Inquisitor Ravenor looked at Mohawk Head mockingly, saying.
"What is that?" Horatio asked.
"A small, implanted, voice-activated bomb.
When he says certain keywords, it will trigger an explosion, blowing him and you both to pieces.
This is a security measure used by everyone from classified personnel in the Ministry of Internal Affairs to high-ranking Cultist. You need to be careful in the future."
"Quite insidious," Horatio snorted coldly.
"That's how this world is; death and danger are everywhere. Several of my colleagues died this way."
Seeing his sinister plot exposed, a torrent of cold sweat instantly trickled down the Mohawk Head man's temples.
He wanted to shout the keywords and perish with the Inquisition agents.
The moment he uttered the first syllable.
Inquisitor Ravenor took a cloth from an agent, clenched it in his fist, and hammered it into Mohawk Head's mouth.
"Mmm!!!"
Mohawk Head screamed, his teeth shattered by the iron hand knuckle guards on the Inquisitor's fingerless gloves.
The ligaments of his lower jaw were torn, hanging precariously from his mandible.
Pulverized teeth, saliva, and blood mixed together, flowing from the corners of his mouth. He mumbled incoherently, unable to correctly articulate any word.
Clearly, this Inquisitor, not particularly old within the Inquisition, had extensive experience in torturing and interrogating humans.
Perhaps he had been an interrogator, or had learned from the Dark Eldar, Horatio thought.
"Now we don't have to worry about being blown up, but how do we interrogate him?" Horatio asked.
This Mohawk Head man's front teeth were all shattered.
Half of his tongue was also mangled, and his entire being was immersed in his own pain.
Like an eighty-year-old shriveled old man, he cowered against the wall, wailing miserably. He was clearly in no state for normal questioning.
The Inquisitor curled his lips, a cold sneer forming.
"This is my specialty."
He approached the man, grabbing his collar.
Suddenly, Horatio's iron hand vibrated.
[Psyker?!]
A faint blue light orb appeared above their heads.
"Oh oh oh…" Mohawk Head trembled all over, his remaining molars chattering uncontrollably, his two eyeballs rolling wildly, eventually flipping up until only bloodshot whites remained.
Soon after, black blood gushed from the corners of Mohawk Head's eyes, and two lines of bloody tears streamed down his cheeks.
The Inquisitor was expressionless, his eye sockets filled only with whites, looking eerily terrifying.
He was invading Mohawk Head's memories.
In Mohawk Head's mental world, it was like a pair of terrifying eyes floating in the sky, rolling their pupils, indifferently and mercilessly scrutinizing his memories from above, every scene within his memory, and every detail within each scene.
The names of those people, the rendezvous points, the conspiracies still brewing.
Of course, scrutinizing with psychic power was not foolproof.
When he glimpsed this person's memory of praying to the Scarlet Great One for blessings, a burning heat and an overwhelming rage suddenly surged forth, incinerating his psychic tendrils, filling his mind with the roar of brass and excruciating pain.
"Ugh…!" The Inquisitor abruptly staggered back two steps, nearly falling.
But he finally gritted his teeth, swaying, and steadied himself. Horatio could hear the grinding of his teeth and his painful groans even from a distance.
He seemed to be struggling with something in his brain; soon, his forehead was covered in large beads of sweat.
The Inquisitor began to tremble all over.
"Ha ah—!"
With a sigh of relief, he felt a wave of dizziness, covering his head and weakly retreating two more steps.
Horatio quickly supported him.
"Are you alright, Mr. Butterfly Orchid?" Horatio asked, using Inquisitor Ravenor's codename.
Ravenor leaned against the wall, body bent forward, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.
After a long while, he finally raised a hand to indicate he was fine, a victorious sneer returning to his lips.
He straightened up, roughly wiped the sweat from his face with his hand, and looked at Horatio: "Let's go, there's nothing else of value here."
"Don't we need to take him with us?" Horatio looked at the important target, pinned to the wall, unmoving, black blood still continuously flowing from his eye sockets, forming a small pool on the rough concrete floor.
He reached out to confirm; the man was still alive, but his pulse was so weak it was almost indistinguishable from death.
"He is no longer of value. You can deal with him however you wish, but I suggest killing him to prevent others from prying any more information from him."
"You used psychic power to examine his memories?"
The Inquisitor smiled, saying nothing.
But even without him speaking, Horatio now understood.
After all, utilizing mind-reading psychic abilities, which bordered on the heretical, was something that could easily get one's head exploded by an Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus within the Inquisition.
However, this Inquisitor was quite ruthless.
According to the Inquisition's Exterminatus Investigation Order, the Inquisitor who first apprehends a heretic has the right to interrogate them first, before other Inquisitors get a turn.
Yet, he himself, after interrogating, burned the bridges, killing the target and leaving no opportunity for his colleagues.
Horatio was not surprised, as he knew that Inquisitors, as a group, were more or less abnormal; normal people couldn't become Inquisitors.
Inquisitor Ravenor was considered decent within this group; who knew if others, if they showed up, would use even more sinister methods to extract information.
"I need to correct you: this isn't me being ruthless, but rather, if William Carter seizes the opportunity and surpasses me in progress, your Imperial Navy will be in trouble." He turned to look at Horatio, raising an eyebrow with a hint of triumph.
"You have a point, but please don't peek into my thoughts for no reason next time," Horatio raised an eyebrow.
"I'm also distressed, because other people's thoughts naturally appear in my mind, just like speech bubbles with text floating above your heads. I can't help but see them. Please don't make me sound like a peeping tom, thank you."
The Inquisitor shrugged, putting on an innocent expression.
Horatio snorted, then turned to the Mohawk Head man.
He flexed the muscles and bones in his hand.
He had been holding in a lot of anger yesterday, and needed to vent a little, otherwise, it would continue to bother him immensely.
Of course, he would save his greatest fury for the mastermind behind it all.
However, even releasing just a little of it would be enough for someone to only find an unusually weighty meatball the next day.
Inquisitor Ravenor knew this young man was filled with pent-up anger and needed some space to vent.
He instructed the agents handling the scene to first douse other areas with promethium fuel, temporarily avoiding the main entrance, and to wait for him to come out.
Horrific sounds of bone shattering and flesh twisting continued for five minutes.
Horatio finally emerged, covered in blood, his calm, handsome face splattered with dark red bloodstains.
Louise used a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his face.
She had worked with him for so long, yet this was the first time she had seen such a brutal and terrifying side of him.
She couldn't help but worry if the residual Scarlet corruption from the Church of the Celestial Woman battle still lingered in his body, unexpelled.
"Thank you."
Horatio felt much lighter and returned a relaxed smile to her, then turned to look at the Inquisitor who was smoking:
"Sorry for the delay, we can start now."
The Inquisitor then snapped his fingers.
The Inquisition agents poured the last of the promethium onto the entrance and the corpses outside.
The Inquisitor nodded, finished his cigarette in a few puffs, then flicked it with his index and middle fingers.
The cigarette butt landed in a perfect arc on one of the corpses.
Whoosh!—
A surging inferno instantly spread, greedily devouring everything with the help of the promethium. Tongues of fire licked along the grey-white high walls, the high temperature baking the wall plaster until it curled and peeled off in sheets. Flames and thick smoke enveloped this old factory-turned-Cultist' bar.
The black-rusted steel structure above let out agonizing creaking screams, slowly becoming pliable under the cleansing fire, eventually collapsing and bringing down everything it supported.
These agents, now back in their black overcoats and baseball caps, walked towards the shuttle hidden nearby, no one looking back at the towering flames.
Whether it was Horatio, Louise, Yoyo, or the Inquisition and his retainers, each of them exuded a chilling aura, an invisible 'do not approach' quality.
The fire grew fiercer.
Finally, the raging inferno that consumed the entire building formed the "settlement background" for the successful first joint operation of the Imperial Navy's Special Operations Division and the Inquisition's Ordo Xenos.