The Emperor’s Angel of Death

Chapter 2643: The Black Limb Uprising

About one sector away from the Brakato star system, there was a small forge world called Ekvorria. It was a relatively late-forming forge world. Around M37, a group of exploration fleets set out from Mars and arrived at this world, discovering promising mineral resources and some lost ancient human ruins. The sage of the exploration fleet simply settled down, trying to excavate something that would make them famous from the underground.

Unfortunately, that sage didn't find anything before his death. Instead, after more than a thousand years of development, the exploration fleet formed a forge world of considerable size on the planet. Subsequently, the following sages continued to tinker with those ruins, but they didn't find much of use from them, and they didn't even know why this human settlement was destroyed. Afterward, this world became one of the forge worlds registered by Mars, but it was of the second-to-last tier, with its main products being civilian goods and some low-level military products, such as light weapons and armored vehicles.

After Ulan Huda settled in the Brakato star system, Banguela used some means to establish contact between the two forge worlds in less than ten years. Although they knew that Ulan Huda's "origins were questionable," they couldn't resist Ulan Huda's large technical reserves and good academic atmosphere. The forge director of Ekvorria was extremely welcoming to the visiting Ulan Huda sages. Although the two sides did not have formal exchanges, they already had some secret transactions.

However, Ekvorria recently encountered a big problem!

Huge sinkholes began to appear under Coking City, the third-largest city of Ekvorria. Large-scale secret tunnels appeared one after another under each foundry in the city, or entire chunks of the earth's crust disappeared. Countless mutated multi-limbed monsters poured out of the underground nests, tearing apart the Protectorate troops who were ordered to isolate the sinkholes before attacking the civilians.

Many foundries and workshops fell, and then the entire mechanical city. The Genestealer Cult, which obtained weapons and supplies, rapidly expanded and began to spread around.

The forge director of Ekvorria hurriedly dispatched the Protectorate troops to suppress the uprising, and even used orbital bombardment, but still failed to extinguish this alien disaster. Moreover, even with orbital bombardment, the director did not dare to attack those important facilities. The Genestealers continued to survive under the Mechanicus's reluctance to risk damaging its own assets. Although their expansion was also contained, it was difficult to eliminate them.

Moreover, the tech-priests of Ekvorria also discovered that the Genestealers seemed to rarely use their huge sinkhole network after leaving the underground, even risking air raids and bombardments to travel on the surface.

The priests speculated that something underground might be preventing the Genestealers from acting. This might be good news, but it could also be bad news.

In any case, it was difficult for Ekvorria to solve the problem in a short time with its own strength alone, and if the turmoil continued, their production would suffer a fatal blow. However, the Departmento Munitorum turned a blind eye to their request for assistance, and the Space Marine generals directly replied, "Are your Protectorate troops all dead?"

Helpless, they had to turn to their old friend for help, but Banguela thought further and more.

If only Ulan Huda's army went to help, the other party would definitely just express their gratitude or provide some resource compensation, which was far from the goal he wanted to achieve.

Banguela wanted to control, or rather, puppet the forge world, and make it accept Ulan Huda's new teachings. This military aid was a good opportunity for expansion. If Soshjan could participate, it would be enough to exert enough influence to make the other party submit.

Soshjan also agreed with this, and the White Templars and his new auxiliary army also needed to practice and find out the problems.

So he mustered his troops and waited for the arrival of the Fourth Nayseth Transport Fleet before setting out on the expedition.

However, before that, he still arranged for a squad of Eldar scouts to scout the area near the webway. The Ekvorria star system was located on the dark fringes of the Storm Worlds region, and the nearest Imperial administrative sector was the Orpheus Sector. They also sent a request for assistance to the Space Marines of the Orpheus Sector, but it was ruthlessly rejected—this was not only because of the Imperium's consistent tendency to shirk responsibility, but more importantly, Ekvorria's products were mainly sold to the Orpheus Sector, and their prices were relatively high. After all, there were not many forge worlds in the dark fringes, and it was completely a seller's market, which made everyone in the sector, from the governor to the civilians, very annoyed with Ekvorria.

After the Eldar scouts confirmed that there were no problems around that star system, the joint force composed of the White Templars and the Ulan Huda Protectorate troops set off from the star system—

"Do you see that? Brothers and sisters, we must open up this passage, otherwise our blood relatives in Trevank City will be strangled by the mechanical slave owners. No matter how threatening the front is, those terrifying threats lurking underground cannot stop our footsteps. For the Black Limbs, for our relatives!"

Zane Keating, the bishop of the Black Limb Cult, and many hybrid creatures gathered in a spacious underground space. This was originally the platform of the underground railway station of the forge world. Below him, the eyes of many Genestealer Neophytes flashed with passion. The followers of this cult were basically the deformed products of the hybridization of the forge world's underground slave laborers and the Genestealer strain, and they were very adapted to the environment of the underground world.

On the blood-stained walls of the platform, the remains of the Protectorate troops and the mechanical priests were everywhere, and some of them were preserved by the cult followers in a very macabre style.

These stubborn resisters, their bones symbolically hung on hooks in every corner and were engraved with the unique inscriptions of the Genestealers. This was a threat to the invaders, and also an encouragement to the devout faith of the family members.

Thousands of cult followers gathered here, and they were about to embark on a dark road—through the complex underground railway transport tunnels to reach another city. This was originally easy for them.

But not long ago, some kind of terror in the depths of the underground seemed to have awakened. The cult, which was still accumulating strength to wait for the uprising, suffered heavy casualties upon initial contact, and what was worse was that they didn't even know what it was. Helpless, they had to start the uprising in advance, which in a sense could be said to be an escape. Although the effect was also good, they quickly occupied a considerable amount of ground space and captured many weapons and equipment, but it did not give the forge world a fatal blow. The forge director still commanded the encirclement and suppression of the cult in his mechanical city, and he still had a considerable number of foundries that could continuously produce Protectorate troops and equipment.