Chapter 317: The Star God's Forge

At the threshold between the Warp and reality, within a shimmering webway passage, Qin Mo emerged from a fiery ring. As he stepped into the corridor, he glanced back, catching sight of his research facility through the still-burning portal. The Burning One had already thrust one of its legs through the ring.

It was Qin Mo's first time entering the webway, and his curiosity compelled him to survey his surroundings. The passage appeared as a narrow golden conduit, only wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Contrary to his expectations, it was neither vast nor grandiose.

"From a positional standpoint, we're currently orbiting Tairon One," the Burning One explained, pacing five steps forward. "Five steps from here, we're in the Beisu Star System."

"Fascinating," Qin Mo mused, his thoughts racing. No wonder the Aeldari seemed to appear and vanish at will. No wonder even the Emperor coveted the webway. This passageway was an unmatched tool for traversing the stars. 

If a certain Star God refused to share its dimensional space, then the webway was undeniably the best alternative for faster-than-light travel.

The Burning One suddenly burst into laughter, its voice reverberating through the corridor. "Those wretched creatures never dreamed I'd find a way into the webway. They burned in despair beneath the fury of my flames."

Qin Mo thought to himself: even the ancient Old Ones couldn't have anticipated this pyromaniac's ingenuity. The Burning One had somehow managed to replicate the Aeldari's mastery of creating gateways into the webway. When its flames failed to reach within, its desperation was akin to a smoker without a match—forcing it to find a solution.

The Necrons' webway-breaching technology, as it turned out, had been taught to them by this very entity.

"This feels more like a sanctuary than a pathway," Qin Mo remarked as he approached the webway's end. His gaze pierced through the golden membrane, revealing a realm of chaos and unreality.

Standing beside him, the Burning One smirked with evident pride. "During the War in Heaven, I secretly preserved a handful of Old Ones. In exchange for sending them beyond the galaxy, they helped me construct this segment of the webway—one disconnected from all other routes. It is my treasure trove, hidden even from the eyes of the C'tan."

Qin Mo hesitated but refrained from asking the obvious: the fate of those Old Ones. Clearly, they hadn't been sent beyond the galaxy. More likely, they had been incinerated by the Burning One afterward.

"Now, help me with the fusion." The Burning One raised its hands toward the void. The fabric of space tore and reassembled, revealing two fragments of itself.

One fragment sat in a corner, idly playing with fire, its gaze vacant. The other, upon spotting Qin Mo and the Burning One, erupted into a torrent of flames, screaming hysterically about burning all in its path. Its manic aggression was palpable.

Unfazed by the fiery assault, the Burning One manipulated the flames with ease, using them to subdue and wound its frenzied counterpart. 

Qin Mo raised his hand, summoning a hovering orb-like device—the *Forge*. Crafted from a shard of the Creator's essence, this tool was designed to merge fragments of Star Gods. It also integrated a unique feeding mechanism for Qin Mo's research, akin to a simplified version of the Necrons' Breath of the Gods, capable of drawing energy from stars across past, present, and future.

"Hurry up," the Burning One urged, its impatience mounting. Qin Mo, however, remained motionless.

Sensing something amiss, the Burning One narrowed its gaze. Before it could react, Qin Mo demanded, "Give me the technology you used to access the webway."

The Burning One hesitated, feigning ignorance. "You want to enter the webway? I could take you anytime—"

"Do you want the fusion or not? If not, go rot in the labyrinth with the Nightbringer."

Faced with Qin Mo's unyielding stance, the Burning One sighed inwardly, lamenting the shifting tides of power. Reluctantly, it shared a fragment of its memory—a glimpse into the process of mastering webway gate construction.

In this memory, the Burning One had studied the Aeldari's webway gates, deciphering how to link these constructs to the webway itself. Unlike the Aeldari's psychic-based methods, its approach was a brute-force application of science to pierce the webway's defenses. The resulting gates were unstable, randomly connecting to existing webway routes. Moreover, the webway viewed such intrusions as hostile, attempting to eradicate the invaders or self-destruct. Thus, precise timing and careful navigation were essential.

If Tairon's sector adopted this technology, its gates would closely resemble the Necrons' Tomb Gates—unsurprising, given their shared teacher.

"Are you satisfied now?" the Burning One spread its arms. "Let's proceed."

Qin Mo activated the Forge. All three fragments of the Burning One were drawn into its dimensional core. Inside the Forge's compressed dimensional space, countless ripples of energy ebbed and flowed. These ripples distorted the dimensional lines, searching for the fragments' states at different points in time, then crushing and reforging them into a unified whole.

The process was akin to a temporal machine but far less omnipotent. Only a Star God could endure the hellish agony of the Forge's refinement.

As the Forge did its work, Qin Mo retrieved a portion of the Burning One's essence—a fragment he had withheld. Through his studies, he discovered this fragment acted as a kind of voodoo doll: any torment inflicted upon it resonated with the Burning One's very essence.

No one could predict which fragment's characteristics the reforged entity would inherit. If it adopted the traits of the maniacal one, the Burning One was in for further torment.

"Fusion complete."

The immense energy within the Forge dissipated, though some had destabilized the surrounding webway. The once-erratic passage eventually stabilized along with the Forge. A larger, more formidable Burning One emerged, its power unmistakably enhanced.

As for its demeanor, it seemed a blend of the fragments' personalities—neither overly compliant nor recklessly unhinged.

"It seems I am the first among our kind to approach wholeness," the Burning One mused, admiring its seemingly unchanged form.

"Indeed. But you won't surpass Mimicry in completeness anytime soon," Qin Mo retorted, reclaiming the Forge and the withheld essence. "Your largest fragment still hangs above the Silent King's throne."