Chapter Fifty: Magnus on the Run

“So you’re Magnus, huh!” With a thunderous slap, Wang Ming struck Magnus so hard that he stood there, utterly stunned.

“Aren’t you supposed to have been corrupted?” Magnus, dazed for a few seconds, finally snapped back to his senses.

Wang Ming didn’t bother to reply. He simply drew the massive golden sword from his waist.

Raising the golden greatsword, Wang Ming swung it at Magnus. Magnus hurriedly parried with his staff, but Wang Ming’s strength was overwhelming—the force alone drove Magnus several steps back.

After parrying Wang Ming’s attack, Magnus quickly retreated.

“This Primarch’s strength is immense…” Magnus eyed Wang Ming, who wielded the golden greatsword. This unfamiliar Primarch’s raw power was terrifying—it would be suicide to fight him in close quarters.

It was plain to see: Wang Ming’s four-and-a-half-meter frame stood before him, even taller than some other gene-forged Primarchs. That size translated to strength far surpassing most of his peers.

Magnus widened the distance and raised his staff, rapidly chanting a string of chaotic incantations. In an instant, evil flames from the Warp flared to life around Wang Ming.

The psychic fire seared at Wang Ming’s body. Yet his ornate power armor shielded him, the flames unable to inflict the slightest harm.

Wang Ming charged straight through Magnus’s psychic blaze, golden greatsword swinging for Magnus’s neck, intent on beheading him.

“In the end, brute force is all that works,” Wang Ming thought grimly. He’d planned to kill Magnus with high-powered weaponry, but it had proved almost useless, and he himself had been wounded in the attempt.

Step after relentless step, Wang Ming bore down on Magnus, while psychic fireballs and blasts hammered his armor. The power armor’s defenses were nearly pushed to the limit, and for reasons unknown, its shielding fields offered no protection against the psychic onslaught.

Beneath the psychic assault, the ornate armor actually began to melt—though the “Golden Age” restoration technology embedded within continuously repaired the damage.

The suit’s auto-repair systems, in theory, could restore the armor as long as it wasn’t reduced to ash in an instant. Even a small fragment could be rebuilt, given enough metal and time.

Wang Ming was now face-to-face with Magnus, golden sword slashing for the head. Magnus moved to block.

Sword met Chaos staff with such force that the ground itself trembled. If there were air here, the shockwave would have been visible to the naked eye.

While Magnus struggled to parry, Wang Ming shifted his grip to one hand, freeing the other to deliver a devastating uppercut to Magnus’s jaw.

This was the punch that, by rights, should have been Guilliman’s to deliver—but Wang Ming landed it instead, shattering Magnus’s jaw. Seizing the moment, Wang Ming retracted the sword, then swept it in a deadly arc for Magnus’s neck.

Magnus, seeing the blade racing for his throat, frantically raised his right hand in defense.

But even so, Magnus’s fingers were sliced clean off. He quickly gathered psychic energy and struck Wang Ming square in the chest, blasting him across the battlefield.

As Wang Ming was flung away, the tip of his golden sword passed so close to Magnus’s throat that it nearly grazed his skin.

Magnus watched Wang Ming crash into a lunar hillock, then hastily tore open a rift in the Warp beside himself, preparing to flee.

Wang Ming had inflicted too much psychological trauma—he’d nearly been slain by this unknown Primarch, and dared not fight on.

Just as Magnus was about to escape into the Warp rift, a Dreadnought suddenly burst from a nearby dirt mound.

This was Wu Xuan, long since hidden here in ambush. Earlier, the traveler who maintained him had left to attack Magnus without setting his activation timer, so he’d only powered up now.

To hide Wu Xuan, the traveler had dug a five-meter pit, buried him in it, and covered him over.

Wu Xuan had witnessed everything that transpired. When the travelers charged Magnus, he’d been stuck anxiously in his earthen hide, desperate to join the fray—but powerless while still deactivated. Now, finally, he was online.

The Dreadnought’s power claw seized Magnus’s arm in an instant. Under Magnus’s astonished gaze, the Dreadnought’s armored chest slowly opened, revealing a melta cannon pointed directly at him.

Wu Xuan fired at point-blank range. The melta blast struck Magnus squarely, inflicting grievous damage, but Wu Xuan himself was also caught in the blast’s radius.

The Dreadnought’s frontal armor melted away in places, but Wu Xuan didn’t care. He even aimed his twin shoulder-mounted plasma cannons at Magnus, preparing to fire again.

Magnus, seeing the guns targeting him at such close range, panicked. At this distance, if the plasma cannons fired, the Dreadnought would be caught in the plasma surge as well. Who were these maniacs?

First he’d been beset by lunatic Astartes, then a powerful unknown Primarch, and now a suicidal Dreadnought.

Magnus was rattled. He broke free of the power claw, unleashed a blast of psychic fire, and incinerated Wu Xuan inside the Dreadnought.

Only after dealing with Wu Xuan did Magnus open another Warp rift and escape through it—no doubt, it would be a long time before he dared approach these travelers again.

“As I thought, I still couldn’t keep Magnus here…” Wang Ming climbed out of the lunar mound, watching the slowly closing Warp rift, then hefted his golden greatsword and made his way toward the spot where the First Squad was reviving.

The residual psychic fire from Magnus and Wang Ming’s battle had burned almost all of the nearby First Squad travelers to death.

“Boss, Magnus’s psychic flames are too much. We couldn’t even get close before we were burned alive,” Wang Xiaofa said as Wang Ming approached.

“It’s a real problem,” Wang Ming agreed. “If it weren’t for psychic powers, I’d have almost finished Magnus off right here on the Moon.”