Chapter 168: Hive Ecology

Mona, the name on this card.

This reminded Fu Qinghai of many things at once.

Schwerin hive.

Throughout the Space Hulk phase of milestone events, there was the dark hand behind the scenes, the name that would vaguely emerge from time to time.

Chen Xinlu and a group of reincarnations from Horus' camp landed in the Schwerin hive. After some exploration, they decided to overthrow the rule of the planetary governor by relying on their magical powers, and then sent a message to the Warmaster's army to welcome the arrival of the rebel fleet.

As a result, they overestimated themselves and underestimated the Empire's standing military strength. Even a military force like the Imperial Guard could not be overthrown by a group of illegal psychics. They were suppressed by the planetary governor alone, and the rebellion ended in failure.

In the end, it was proved that Chen Xinlu and his group of reincarnations with super-dimensional self-esteem and self-confidence were just used as pawns by the local natives of the hive city, and finally became a discarded pawn arranged by Tzeentch - becoming bait to attract enslavers in the wrecked space ship.

Fu Qinghai looked at the drug residues on the ground, thinking to himself that the group of reincarnations that Chen Xinlu had worked so hard to pull together in the nest city at that time were really stupid.

Entering the samsara world to take drugs?

What a piece of crap.

Fu Qinghai recalled the mess on the floor after he entered the cabin. Looking back now, it might have been a group of drug addicts gathering together to take drugs. No wonder after he brutally killed two of them, the rest scattered.

But then again, seeing how sickly Chen Xinlu looked at the time, who knows if she was taking drugs or not? After all, reflective tablets and necromancy potions, things that are related to the subspace, are not just drugs for psychics, they should be considered some kind of magic potion.

The pink demon who transformed herself into a little girl to deceive Chen Xinlu's trust - Mona, a low-level Tzeentch demon, has been killed by Chen Xue with the Holy Sword of Vishanti. There is nothing much to say.

But there is one person's name that Fu Qinghai still remembers.

"Baron Zeddu..."

Fu Qinghai stood up and whispered to himself.

According to information provided by the space ape Slan, it was captured by the Baron Zedu family of the Schwerin hive and kept in captivity for decades before being sent to the space hulk and responsible for the creation of the gravity siphon device.

At that time, Fu Qinghai judged based on Shi Lan's description that Baron Zedu's family was most likely a family of cultists who secretly served the evil god Tzeentch.

The fact that Chen Xinlu and his group were able to avoid pursuit by the planetary governor's troops and escape to a wrecked space ship was probably the work of Baron Zedu.

A hive noble who secretly serves the evil god and is involved in a conspiracy against the Space Marine fleet.

"The grudge has not been repaid, and the lingering love is still there..."

Fu Qinghai laughed, his laugh was somewhat evil and cruel.

Suddenly, he changed his mind:

"This...isn't this another conspiracy of Tzeentch?"

The smile on Fu Qinghai's face disappeared.

Be careful, you still have to be careful.

Fu Qinghai reminded himself secretly, opened his palm and aimed it at the garbage and debris on the ground. The hexagonal armor in the middle of his palm slid open, and a hot white beam of light shot out. The arc pulse cannon burned all the drug residues such as the reflector.

…

Carrying a huge jet pack and a pile of weapons hanging around his waist, Fu Qinghai trudged through the ruins of the bottom nest.

The scattered black water pits were bottomless. Whenever Fu Qinghai encountered a puddle blocking his way, he would simply start the turbofan and jump over it.

Who knows how deep the water is, who knows what is in the water at the bottom of the nest.

At least this set of armor is not good at underwater combat.

Fu Qinghai suspected that this should be a hive city near the ocean, and the bottom nest was located at an unknown depth below the sea level. His engineer's intuition told Fu Qinghai that it was the huge and thick pressure walls and the complex and ancient drainage system that prevented this dark land from being swallowed up by the sea. Even so, hundreds of tons of seawater still poured in here day after day from the dilapidated cracks, forming small sea swamps in the poorly drained low-lying areas.

Fu Qinghai quietly came to the back of the man-made building on the ruins. It was the dim light he had seen from afar before. It looked like a shack made of garbage. When a Space Marine decided not to make a sound, the heavy armor would not reveal his whereabouts. Fu Qinghai slowly walked to the light.

It was a tin-sheet promethium lamp hanging on the shore, emitting a dim yellow light.

Next to the rusty chandelier, a figure wearing a hood and tattered robe sat quietly.

Fu Qinghai put his hand on his thin shoulder and whispered,

"Hello."

The tattered robe shook, and the man sitting on the shore was startled. He turned around, and the face revealed under the hood also startled Fu Qinghai:

a distorted face with seven eyes of different sizes.

Mutant!

Fu Qinghai raised his eyebrows, and understood.

"You... who are you and why are you here?"

The mutant looked up at the tall and ferocious armored giant behind him, his thin body trembling and his tone full of fear.

Dichao's cruel survival instinct told her that a guy like this must not be easy to deal with.

In the bottom of the hive city filled with thousands of years of garbage, toxic radiation and evil ways, heresy has always been a breeding ground, so it is not surprising to see cultists and mutants.

You can't even tell whether it's because humans mutated that they were driven to the bottom nest, or because they were driven to live in the bottom nest that they mutated.

Judging from the mutant's voice, she should be a young girl, but this face full of eyeballs made Fu Qinghai unable to associate her with a "young girl".

Fu Qinghai retracted his arm and said calmly,

"Don't worry about who I am. I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat?"

The mutant girl lifted up her tattered robe, revealing her skinny chest with ribs protruding. Apart from two pitiful little dots, there was no female feature at all. She said:

"As you can see, I'm hungry too."

Fu Qinghai was silent.

Besides being as thin as a skeleton, the mutant girl's skin was not young at all. It might have been damaged by radiation or corroded by toxic air and water. In short, it was dull, wrinkled, and covered with ugly spots.

Fu Qinghai turned his head to look at the promethium iron lamp on the shore. The light was reflected on the dark water, and ripples appeared on the water, as if there were living creatures swimming underneath.

"What is that?"

Fu Qinghai pointed at the water and asked.

"Bottom-nesting grouper."

The mutant girl answered honestly.

Fu Qinghai asked:

"Why don't you eat it?"

The mutant girl shook her head:

"It will eat me first."

Fu Qinghai looked at the promethium lamp, then at the water surface, and said:

"Is it phototropic?"

The mutant girl thought for a while before she understood what "phototaxis" meant and nodded.

Fu Qinghai walked to the water's edge, leaned out half of his body, stretched out one arm, pointed his palm at the water, and a blazing white light lit up in the middle...

"Crash!"

With a loud bang and splashing water, a huge creature leaped out of the water rapidly, opened its huge mouth and bit Fu Qinghai's arm. Fu Qinghai did not shrink back, allowing the huge mouth of the strange fish to swallow his entire arm.

"Crack!"

The fine teeth hit the ceramic steel of the shoulder armor and broke it.

Fu Qinghai dug and squeezed with his palm, and dug through the internal organs of the strange fish. He felt something in his palm, and immediately squeezed it hard. "Piaji", it felt like a balloon or water bag bursting.

Fu Qinghai twisted his waist, raised his arms, and swung with force. The giant strange fish, which was two meters long, was thrown to the shore by Fu Qinghai.

Even though its internal organs were crushed by Fu Qinghai, the fish was still flapping its arms and legs. Its dorsal fin, pectoral fin and caudal fin opened and closed, and its long hollow spikes were exposed to the air. Fu Qinghai walked over, raised his knee and stepped on the fish's head.

"Bang!"

With a crisp sound, the strange fish became quiet.

The mutant girl was stunned.

He didn't even draw any kind of weapon.

…

A two-meter-long bottom-dwelling grouper was laid out entirely on the table in the shed.

All resources in the Bottom Nest are limited. The mutant girl has no cooking utensils or fuel to cook this huge monster fish. Fu Qinghai can only use the arc pulse cannon built into his palm and the Japanese method of roasting sashimi. The edge of the high-temperature laser passes over the surface of the fish to heat it slightly.

The fish skin is very sticky, like grouper, and the fish meat is snow-white and firm and tastes good, but if you put a Geiger counter next to the fish, the instrument will sound an alarm.

There is radiation in fish.

Fukushima grouper is clean and hygienic.

Fu Qinghai only ate the fattest belly and middle belly, and left the rest.

He sat quietly, watching the mutant girl burying her head in the belly of the fish and devouring the meal. She even pulled out the half-cooked fish intestines and stuffed them into her mouth, wishing she could smash the fish bones to suck out the marrow.

It seems that a whole fish can be stuffed into its tiny body. The mutant is indeed not to be underestimated.

"What are you lighting that lamp for?"

Fu Qinghai was a little curious. Since resources were limited and it was impossible to catch the strange fish, would it be a waste of fuel to light the lamp?

"Give my parents directions."

The mutant girl said vaguely.

"How long have you been waiting on the shore?"

"Fourteen days."

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

Sure enough, what unfolded was another tragic story from the bottom nest.

Her parents are probably dead.

But what does it have to do with me?

Fu Qinghai sat on the construction waste, thinking to himself.

Fu Qinghai asked again:

"I want to go to the upper level. Do you have any methods or connections?"

In the vast and complex hive city that reaches from the stratosphere in the clouds to the mantle layer in the deep sea, the leap from one layer to another cannot be achieved by simply flying up at full speed on a jet pack. A guide or a map, or special means of transportation, is required.

The mutant girl raised her head from the open fish belly, blinked her seven eyes, and said,

"I don't have it, but I know someone who might have it."

Fu Qinghai picked up the helmet on the table and put it on:

"Take me to see her."

…

The empire believes in and advocates pure humanity, and the skull symbols that can be seen everywhere are proof of this.

However, the Empire's attitude towards mutants is not the same as that towards illegal psychics, where they are not killed once caught. Mutants suffer discrimination in Imperial society, but strictly speaking they are not illegal citizens. The Imperial government often expel them or send them to do hard labor in mines. Some galaxies where wars are frequent will even form redemption forces composed entirely of mutant criminals to use as cannon fodder death squads.

Fu Qinghai is a Space Marine, not a hive bailiff. The problem of mutants is not his responsibility. He just wants to get to the upper level of the hive as soon as possible to see what the current situation in the Schwerin hive is. It would be even better if he could contact the loyalist fleet by the way.

Become a wild Space Marine and rule the mountain? That is the choice of a fallen angel who has nowhere else to go. Fu Qinghai is a loyal White Scar with a good family background. He must return to Terra to report.

Fu Qinghai followed the mutant girl to a secret place, where there were only mountains of ancient construction waste and countless floors, roads and bridges sunk here. In the "入"-shaped space supported by two broken bridges, Fu Qinghai saw the woman.

She had a yellow afro, with tufts of hair gelled up like hedgehogs piercing the sky, heavy smoky makeup, and wavy red tattoos all over her cheeks. She wore shiny metal armor that only covered her chest, thighs, and arms, and had some kind of fur vest draped over her shoulders. Her body was decorated with chains, rivets, belts, and skulls.

One hand held a long-handled laser gun, and the other held a saber with a gauntlet.

The light under the broken bridge was very dim, and Fu Qinghai's superhuman vision locked onto the woman before she discovered him.

She was like the lead singer of a hardcore heavy metal rock band from the 1970s, except that she was holding a weapon instead of an electric guitar. Judging from her figure, the woman was voluptuous, sexy and hot, but the aesthetic style of Chaodu women was really unacceptable to Fu Qinghai. She was a very typical female member of the Xiachao gang, the so-called "Gothic Punk".

She stood proudly on a pile of cement waste, one foot on a stone pier, and looked in the direction of the person coming with her chin raised. But when the woman gradually saw the little armored giant walking slowly in from the broken bridge, especially the pair of scarlet goggles...

She was so frightened that she could hardly hold the saber in her hand.

"A... Astartes..."

"Hello."

It was still the same fixed opening line, and Fu Qinghai spoke in a flat tone.

There was a promethium lamp on the ground. When the tall and burly Fu Qinghai stood in front of the woman, the dim light illuminated his front. Looking at the clear metal relief of the lightning eagle wings emblem on the breastplate, the rusty red gears and skull on the shoulder armor... the woman's eyes widened.

The famous Martian red.

Space Marines + Mechanicus = ...

The gang woman understood what these elements represented. She quickly withdrew her feet from the stone pier, lowered her head and dared not look directly at Fu Qinghai's visor. She lowered her shoulders and said in a low voice timidly:

"Respected... Respected Lord Astartes, I salute you."

Unlike the Marvel Comics universe where one relies on fists to gain fame, in the Warhammer 40K universe, Fu Qinghai's tall and strong physique, the power armor he wears, and the symbols on the armor are symbols of strength and status.

The woman lowered her head and saw the mutant girl following Fu Qinghai. She couldn't help but glare at her and cursed in a low voice:

"Why didn't you say earlier that you were a Space Marine..."

The mutant girl blinked her seven eyes under her hood and said innocently:

"What is a Space Marine, Sister Hulda?"

"I..."

The gangster woman Hulda was so angry that she wanted to beat her to death, but Fu Qinghai interrupted her with his hand:

"alright."

"I want to go to the top floor of the hive. Do you have any ideas?"

Fu Qinghai put forward his request directly.

The gang woman raised her head and said carefully,

"I can only lead you to the upper level, from the bottom nest to the lower nest at most. The passage to the upper level is guarded by the nobles' private troops and the hive police. If you want to pass, you may need to make some arrangements..."

Hulda stopped talking suddenly here.

The woman cursed herself for being so stupid. She, a member of the Lower Nest, needed to be bribed. He was a Space Marine of the Imperial Army. What did a Space Marine need to bribe?

It seemed that with the ability of this gang woman, she could only lead herself to the Lower Nest. Fu Qinghai understood.

He nodded and said:

"Then please take me to the upper level. By the way, what reward do you need?"

Hulda quickly shook his head like a drum:

"No, no, I don't want any payment. It's my honor to be your guide."

Hulda thought to himself: If I refuse, the only reward I will get is losing my life.

Fu Qinghai was very satisfied to see that the woman was so sensible.

As for rewarding the woman, Fu Qinghai really had nothing to give her. The weapons and equipment on his body were all assimilated with great effort in the previous reincarnation world. The spoils from the tomb world were also advanced technology of the Necrons. They were all Fu Qinghai's treasures.

The gang members who infiltrate the bottom nest are not like the mutant girl who can't even get enough food. They can be dealt with by a bottom nest burrowing grouper. Just look at her plump and well-proportioned body and you will know that at least she won't have to worry about having enough food.

In this way, this gang member will act as a guide and lead Fu Qinghai from the bottom nest to the lower nest.

Before leaving, the mutant girl waved her hand and said to Hulda, who had a bitter face,

"Don't worry, Sister Hulda, this stranger is a good person."

Fu Qinghai smiled. He turned his head to look at the ugly mutant girl and asked,

"How do you know I'm a foreigner?"

The mutant girl said seriously:

"No one in the Underhive says 'hello', and no one in the Hive says 'hello' to a mutant."

Fu Qinghai nodded, turned around and left the broken bridge with the gang women.

To say that this mutant girl is ignorant is true. She was born and raised in the Bottom Nest and doesn't even know the famous Space Marines.

To say that she is stupid is not really that stupid. She judged that Fu Qinghai was a foreigner from a detail. Perhaps this is the survival wisdom of the residents of Dichao.

As for saying that I'm a good person?

Fu Qinghai shook his head and laughed.

I say "hello" because I am polite, but whether I am a good person...only God knows.

...

　Thanks to two book friends, Mishi Iai and Yu Ji, for their rewards.

　　Warhammer 40K is generally translated as "mutants". I am worried about confusion with Marvel, so they will all be called "mutants" in the future.

　　Can Space Marines survive by eating stones? I really don't know where I saw this setting, it's too ridiculous, how can they eat inorganic matter? Even Tyranids can't eat stones, so can Space Marines? I don't think so.

(End of this chapter)