---o---
The Great Devourer quickly initiated a series of maneuvers, primarily because it was baffled. It truly could not comprehend what it was up against, and its opponent had no projection in the Warp whatsoever, making a direct confrontation impossible.
Thus, it began to use one part of its fleet as a screen while the other part slowly began to withdraw. It was planning to take a detour.
This time, it would bypass the Underworld System and strike directly at Baal, no matter the cost. It had no idea how much biomass it would have to sacrifice to take this fortress-like star system. Moreover, it was operating on incomplete and terrifying information.
If the legendary Primarchs possessed such power, then what kind of horrifying entity was the Emperor, who sat upon his throne?
It now desperately needed the flesh of a Primarch for analysis, but all nine loyalist Primarchs had almost entirely vanished. The only two it knew of were Guilliman on Macragge and the flesh of Sanguinius on Baal. It had tried and failed many times to reach Macragge; that Primarch was not truly dead, and his sons would protect him with their lives. But on Baal, there were only remains.
Furthermore, according to the latest intelligence, Guilliman had already awakened and left Macragge. This meant that, for now, the flesh of Sanguinius was its only viable option.
The Great Devourer was determined to obtain it. As long as it acquired the flesh of a Primarch, everything would turn around!
Besides, Baal lacked these formidable defenses. And so, the Great Devourer decided to risk everything for a surprise assault on the Blood Angels' homeworld.
However, with the Underworld System blocking its path, bypassing it was easier said than done. It immediately readjusted the positions of its node-beasts, allocating extra biomass to make the synaptic links more covert.
At the same time, it converted more biomass into psychic units to better shield its connection to the node-beasts from Warp observation and prepared even more backup synaptic creatures.
But getting around the Shield of the Underworld would be no simple task. The journey was destined to be an arduous march for the Tyranids. Even in the original timeline, after breaking through the shield, they had force-marched all the way to Baal.
They barely stopped at the planets along the way, only briefly replenishing their biomass before pressing on, never entering a full consumption phase.
This time, the march would be even more brutal. They would have to use their incredible speed to charge towards Baal while fending off pursuing warships from behind. The distance between the Underworld System and Baal was measured in light-years. While it might look small on a galactic map, the actual distance was immense.
For context, even the real-life Sol system is about a light-year across. Without using the Warp, even a Tyranid mothership traveling at faster-than-light speeds would take a very long time.
---o---
"Did the Great Devourer give up?"
Zhou Ye was a little surprised as he stared at the Tyranid fleet, now sitting quietly outside the ice crystal ring. He hadn't expected his opponent to simply give up. His plan to encircle a point to ambush the reinforcements seemed to be dead in the water, but it wasn't a huge problem.
If that was the case, he would simply switch to a war of annihilation. The number of Tyranids was still vast, even outnumbering his own fleet.
But setting aside the individual combat prowess of the Tyranids, without the command of their node-beasts, they were just a disorganized mess.
However, as the saying goes, it would take three days and nights to catch fifty thousand pigs. And here he was dealing with a swarm of Tyranids scattered everywhere, their numbers measured in the countless billions.
If he didn't clean them up properly, they could become a troublesome local species, much like Grox.
"How boring. The Tyranids just abandoned a third of their forces. And they're pulling back. Dammit, what a loss."
Watching the retreating Tyranids, Zhou Ye grimaced. That last attack looked incredibly satisfying, but the energy consumption was enormous. If he were connected to the Imaginary Tree like the Cocoon of Finality, he could spam attacks like that as his basic auto-attack.
But as things stood, if you asked him to fire another one, the cost would be just as painful for him as it was for the Great Devourer. Truth be told, Zhou Ye and the Tyranids had a mutual dislike for each other; he much preferred dealing with Chaos. Still, the current situation was manageable. With the further expansion of his Star Rails, he could slowly regenerate his energy. While the recovery rate was slow compared to his expenditure, it was better than nothing.
"What's your next move?"
Seeing the Hive Fleet hesitant to advance, Zhou Ye wasn't in a rush to meet them for a decisive battle. Without the protection of the ice crystal ring and the fortress anti-air defenses, engaging in a firefight with an enemy that outnumbered him by dozens, or even a hundred times, seemed like a losing proposition.
The Imperial Navy had been wiped out by making that very mistake. They saw the swarm get frozen in the ice crystal ring and thought it was the perfect opportunity to kick a dog while it was down. They moved out from under the cover of their cannons and were promptly devoured by the swarm.
With such a clear precedent, Zhou Ye had no intention of repeating their mistake. Losing too many of his own forces would be a huge loss for him. He wasn't the Imperium of the Great Crusade, with a vast number of planets backing him up.
He had already pushed his own star systems and Ultramar to their absolute limits. Until his domain underwent another fundamental expansion, this was the best he could do. Although he looked like one of the Imperium's tech-priests, he operated on a completely different system.
He didn't dare use the ships and other wargear built by those Mechanicus grease-monkeys unless he was absolutely forced to.
"My Lord, the shadow in the Warp seems to be fluctuating. I need to continue my observations and will report back to you."
After his initial shock and confusion, Ahriman had collected himself. The being before him couldn't really be called a Primarch, in a sense. But that no longer mattered. His power was beyond Ahriman's comprehension.
Only the Emperor himself could achieve such a feat. Of course, this man was surely no match for the Emperor, but that was irrelevant. To unleash an attack of that magnitude while under the influence of the Warp's shadow was likely his limit.
Ahriman shuddered to imagine how powerful he would be without the Warp's influence. It was time to resume his scrying.
"Good. Report to me the moment you have any news."
Zhou Ye nodded at Ahriman's words. Although his ambush plan had failed, it didn't matter. He had several backup plans.
The Underworld System was like the Maginot Line; the line was static, but the Great Devourer was not. He couldn't rely on this fortress system to completely contain the Tyranids forever, but that wasn't a problem. He had already implemented detailed follow-up plans. On one hand, he had Dante's men take a beacon and head back to Baal. On the other, he was using every available moment to lay down Star Rails throughout the Underworld and Baal systems.
According to Dante, his journey to the Underworld System had taken only nine days, aided by some mysterious force. Two-thirds of his forces remained on Baal to defend it.
How long it would take to get back was uncertain. But for such a short-range Warp jump, even with the Great Devourer's shadow, it would probably take fifteen Terran days at most. That was, of course, assuming the Chaos Gods didn't interfere. But given their hostile relationship with the Great Devourer, they were more likely to fan the flames.
"Let's see, they just left yesterday. As for the trailblazing fleets I sent out, they've already linked up with dozens of planets. Those will all serve as my teleportation nodes. While I can't move my entire army through them, I can observe the swarm's movements and give them a few little surprises."
Zhou Ye said, looking at the star chart before him. It was just like that propaganda video where Guilliman frowned at a map as his sons fought desperately, only for the red dots to multiply, his expression growing ever darker.
But in Zhou Ye's eyes, these coordinates were being lit up one by one as more and more planets were covered by his Star Rail network.
The only unfortunate thing was that, apart from his flagship Hyperion which could jump at will, the trailblazing jump drives he had manufactured all had an overheating issue. Under normal circumstances, they needed a cooldown of about twenty-four hours after a single jump.
They could perform consecutive jumps, but the engine would severely overheat after the second one. As for a third jump and beyond, that depended on the machine spirit's mood. A third jump would most likely end in an explosion.
A one-day cooldown wasn't a major issue for his ships. They could often use the time to conduct business or gather intelligence locally.
An engine capable of stable, consecutive jumps had yet to be developed. Further advancement was no longer a matter of pure physics but of whether the concept of "Trailblazing" itself could become stronger.
The first trailblazing engines would explode on the second jump. Now they could make it to the third.
Therefore, Zhou Ye couldn't just drop large numbers of troops randomly along the route. But if the bugs decided to launch a major offensive, he could give them a nasty surprise.
"We have deployed over a thousand Alphariuses. They will act as intelligence agents, gathering information from various worlds while observing and assessing the swarm's movements," Ashira's voice rang out.
Zhou Ye had at least several thousand Alphariuses under his command. They had been dispatched to key planets, not to fight on the front lines, but to use their unique gene-seed characteristics as his intelligence network.
Currently, over half of the dynamic intelligence on various planets stored in Prometheus was provided by his Alphas.
The Alphas were truly worthy of being Malcador's key assistants. A truly reliable asset was just so useful. After all, every other Primarch, even Horus, had been scattered across the galaxy, but the Chaos Gods had practically performed a "Primarch TP" for Alpharius.
"..."
As Zhou Ye laid out his various plans, Ahriman beside him fell silent. Since becoming Zhou Ye's Chief Librarian and only Librarian, he had a strange feeling. He couldn't shake the question of whether he had ever truly escaped his old life, or what Tzeentch's true purpose was in tricking him into coming here.
Where the hell was this damned sense of familiarity, this feeling of belonging, coming from? While all of Zhou Ye's plans were necessary and constantly adapted to the realities of war—a completely different concept from Tzeentch's schemes for the sake of scheming—he couldn't shake this accursed feeling.
"Sigh…"
Ahriman sighed. The biggest difference between Zhou Ye and the Lord of Change was that Zhou Ye never actively screwed over his own people. In fact, he did his best for everyone. Otherwise, Ahriman's PTSD would have flared up long ago.
---o---
While Zhou Ye was busy with his plans, the battle below had reached a fever pitch. He had initially intended to keep the reinforcing Blood Angels in the rear. After all, their combat effectiveness was inconsistent.
While their willpower was beyond question, their fighting capabilities were, to put it bluntly, all over the place. They would only create chaos when fighting alongside Zhou Ye's grand legion formations. Zhou Ye had thrown all of the Imperium's standard doctrines out the window. The worlds under his direct control didn't even use Imperial law.
The coordination between his auxiliary troops and Astartes was forged in the Abyssal Battlefield. It wasn't trench warfare; it was complex mobile warfare involving various deep-strike maneuvers coordinated with creeping barrages.
They used superior firepower to penetrate enemy lines and encircle disparate enemy units. It wasn't that the Blood Angels were incapable of this, but without specialized tactical training, their coordination would never match that of Zhou Ye's own men. This was a battlefield, where a single misstep, or even a moment of poor coordination, could lead to disaster.
But then Aslot had come to him, crying about how they were the sons of Sanguinius and how it was their honor to defend Baal and all that.
So now, in a district on Asphodel, a successor chapter of the Blood Angels was stationed. According to calculations, this would be a major landing point for the scattered Tyranids. The sector was now theirs to defend.
And the name of this Blood Angels chapter was a heavy one indeed… the Blood Knights.
"For the glory of Sanguinius!!!"
The Blood Knights' Chapter Master roared his battle cry…
"..."
The air fell silent. And then…
"Blargh!!!"
"Seth!!!"
Looking at the overwhelming tide of Tyranid creatures, and at his battle-brother who, after a brief moment of silence, had started dry-heaving again, a warrior named Jor gritted his teeth.
They had embraced the Red Thirst, which meant the potion's side effects were strongest on them. For warriors accustomed to fighting in a berserker frenzy, it now felt like they had a mouthful of shit.
---o---