Chapter IX

With my Nine Yang Star foundation having firmly entrenched itself into my body, I had Elesmere summon tiny little sparks of Warp fire to test my immunity to such mystical flames and thankfully I was right as the combination of the Yang body technique would repel the heat and my cultivation art would simply devour the warp essence attempting to kill or mutate me

If anything, having Elesmere focus on basically cooking me in a bonfire of Warp Fire was far faster for my cultivation than even eating a dozen nutrient cubes at once.

Only problem with that plan was me needing to use my extremely costly Shadow Domain to subvert the coming warp entities that sensed the Warp flames opening a tiny gateway into the material world.

So, it remained inefficient until I could permanently engrave my Demon Summoning Pool into reality, having a Warp-enriched area was likely something I was going to need to forgo. Unless I could get off this planet and go to a warp-torn world closer to the Eye of Terror.

Hell, who knows maybe when I get stronger, I can remake Cadia and use the actual Eye of Terror to help my cultivation being so close to it.

A week later of arduous cultivation I could feel my Qi changing as a cascading change snowballed. Finally, my Dantian properly opened for the first time and my eyes glowed a haunting purple as my body was flooded with quickly refined Warp energies with countless tiny Warp entities being shredded by my Qi and absorbed into my body to create the tiny pocket dimension that was my Dantian to hold more than two hundred times my previous capacity of Qi.

"The Nascent Realm doesn't disappoint!" I grinned feeling how much more powerful I was. Briefly, I considered going out into the spider domain properly and out of the relative safety of our tunnel but remembering the fact that I couldn't fly nor had a way to safely get back into the tunnel quickly dissuaded me from such a choice.

But then I remembered a rather pressing issue that was in the Cistern City. That Genestealer Cult...

With Hive Fleet Levithan in this space sector, I would much rather the Genestealers not lead the Tyranids here at all.

After a bit more cultivation to ensure my cultivations, the foundation was strong and wasn't having any issues I braced myself as I stood up and walked into Elesmere's room.

"You know of the Genestealers right?" I asked as she stood up at me coming into her room and interrupting her own meditation.

"Yes? Are you planning on reporting the group that was working with those slavers?" She asked and I shook my head.

"That... Is a much better idea than just rushing in to purge them." I said with my face twitching as I remembered I needed to not let my cultivation get to my head and to remain steady. "But I do need actual combat in order to affirm my strength and capabilities," I muttered with Elesmere merely shrugging in response.

"Well in that case I need to head to church I suppose," I grumbled as I realized that attempting to work with the overzealous executioners of the emperor's church cult was likely to be my best bet in opening an inroad to those Genestealers and frankly to gather their attention so I can go unga bunga Natsu mode as I punched Genestealers into charred corpses.

My options were basically the gutter trash down here in Underhive, trying to get the worlds Guardsmen down here in the Underhive, or the easiest bet would be to pull the Ecclesiarchy into conflict with the Genestealer cult as for one they offend all the religious nutjobs tenants as the Genestealers for one are basically Xeno's with how mutated they are. They worship Xeno's as gods. And worst of all for those religious nutjobs, they actively pull good 'pure' humans away from the God Emperor's light as they indoctrinate people into the Genestealer Cult.

"Can you hide your cute ears to come with me, or are you just going to stay here?" I asked and Elesmere's face scrunched up at me teasing her ears as I had lately begun my own teasing of her as I taught her which parts of her body needed to be focused on refining with her Diamond Body as I offhandedly brushed her ears with my Qi making her shudder at the feeling of my almost Warp like energies caressing her body.

"Yes, give me a moment to fashion a band to wrap around my head then we can go." She said as she obviously was getting tired of just sitting around even if she was still getting stronger.

As she spent the next couple minutes making a tight band of cloth similar to an exercise headband I was thinking about my next options as to what I should do for my cultivation as despite my Nine Yang Body Technique providing me literally some of the best flames for alchemy in terms of pills and elixirs.

A Hivecity obviously wouldn't have the herbs I needed to create such things and I think that orb that gave me my cultivation knowledge knew that as I was soon drawn to the guides on how to create artifacts of power and more importantly how to refine a Dharma Sword.

A Dharma Sword similar to Kasaya Beads was a sword that was bound to a cultivator and would be enriched with their powers to become stronger and more malleable so mystical metals could be added to the sword, and most importantly allow the wielders to channel their sword arts far easier as the sword would literally be an extension of the wielder.

"Ok so the next plan is to refine this commissar sword and make some shield charms to protect myself from random bullets," I muttered as I took out the commissar sword and began drawing sigils with my own blood upon it.

"You ready to go Jake?" Elesmere asked me as she came out of her area with a black band tightly wrapped around her forehead and covering the points of her ears and was armed with a sword of wraith bone she created over weeks of cultivation as although she could make wraith bone, she certainly wasn't a Bonesinger.

"Yeah... Let's hope they don't kill the messenger as it were." I said as I opened up the vault door and we made our way towards the Cistern city.

'I can finish the ritual to bind my sword to myself later.' I thought as we headed down the tunnel.

Only a couple traps at the front of the tunnel were tripped so it only took us a couple moments for me to burn the bodies left behind and move the scrap weapons off to the side for us to recycle if we wanted before we left our tunnel and arrived back in the Cistern city.

"So where even is the Imperial Cult church?" Elesmere asked me as we pushed through the throngs of dead-eyed vagrants going about their lives in the Underhive.

I had gathered a decent bit of information in my times exploring bits of the Cistern City, so I knew where the largest church was down here. Whether they took our warning however was of little concern as I could always attack the Genestealers using an illusion of an Angry space marine finding them, and they would obviously mount an offensive on the people of the Cistern city.

Either way I would accomplish my goal of getting rid of the Genestealers.

Once we arrived at the Imperial Cult church, I could only gawk at the opulent grounds so separated from the surrounding squalor. A massive gothic church menacingly stood in front of us, and I could see the hidden turrets mounted on the gargoyles and windows of the church, showing how the place of worship was clearly ready for any form of invasion which made sense.

"There are pyskers below the church," Elesmere whispered and I nodded knowing full too well what was probably going to happen to them.

"Probably the poor bastards about to be sent to burn in the Astronomican," I muttered grimacing at the thought of being caught and used as psychic fuel, so the Imperium has their super lighthouse for their travels through the Warp.

Thankfully with my cultivation being at the Nascent Realm and especially the Nine Yang Sun technique I had a massive fuck you suicide technique so the moment they decide to strap me into that machine I would explode as a small supernova and the Imperium, and more importantly that undead emperor would be fucked.

As we walked into the church, I saw at the end of the ridiculously ornately decorated church's main hall a series of men in priestly clothes were bowed in front of a preaching man loudly speaking the glories of humanities god emperor but with the wealth he had as a high ranking priest he had a number of cybernetics added to his body like an eye replacement and what looked to be literally a small las gun hanging on his shoulder like some kind of Predator Plasma launcher.

"Let the head preacher do his sermon then we will try to speak with him," I said as I wrapped my arm around Elesmere's waist to deter the searching gazes of the people who were watching our late entrance as we took a seat close to the front of the congregation.

Finally, the man finished his sermon with demands for his holy flock to adhere to iron tenets of the Imperial Cult. "My sheep you must all help humanity by purging the heretics, beware the psyker and mutant, and lastly abhor the Xenos!"

Elesmere's face obviously twitched and she gripped my knee as the man droned on and on about basically killing off everything that could contest humanity's right of dominion.

But finally, the lead preacher coughed as he waved to another of the lesser priests who began preaching their own version of the same dogma.

I quickly brought Elesmere over to the headpreacher who frowned seeing us approach, but his guards quickly put themselves between us and the preacher and visibly readied their Las guns in our direction while they were still pointed downwards.

"Oh, Father of this home. Of our God Emperor, I bring most grave tidings! I have found the greatest heresy possibly taking root here within the shadows of this city!" I spoke making the man frown before he snapped his fingers, and the guards allowed us to pass them and approach the man.

"Humble citizen, what tidings do you contain? If the news bear truth I will personally see to your rewards, do not worry." He said obviously thinking I was just another street rat wanting a decent meal and was trying to sell out a psyker practicing their abilities.

"I have found Xeno's have infiltrated our dark city and have been swaying our fellow men into the madness of worshipping some kind of Star Children Cult!" I said and the priest froze as his non-cybernetic eye widened as he realized I was alluding to a gene stealer cult and when I went onto make up a tail about how I had a coworker in my factory that disappeared for several months only for me to find him with the very distinctive Genestealer Cults mutations the priest grabbed my shoulders firmly.

"My son you have brought my news of great importance now where did you see them!" He said and I saw his cybernetic eye had a series of almost web pages being reflected and I bet the man was making Vox calls to the other surrounding churches of the Hive City as he warned them of what I found.

I explained the slaving operation obviously not saying how I got Elesmere from there and he nodded understanding how such a front would be perfect for getting hold of high-value humans which those infected humans could even be sold into the Upper Hive which would spread their mind control taint to the elements that controlled the entire Hive city that hosted hundreds of millions of humans.

"My child here." He said and I was shocked as the man gave me a metal plate which prominently in high gothic and explained that I was now officially a citizen of Hive City Bornean and could leave the Underhive as I pleased and go to the Lowerhive.

"For your great service, this is the best reward I can give you. Now take your wife and flee into the Lowerhive to live a better life." The priest said and as we were gently escorted away, I heard the man speaking to his guards. "Prepare the holy warriors for battle. There is an infestation and ask the Sisters who are stationed above if they will send assistance."

Being thought of as an ignorant Underhive dweller obviously had its bonuses as the people who were actually in the know to the dangers of the galaxy knew the signs of the beings I spoke of, and they thought that I actually came across those threats as I would otherwise have no other way of finding such precise information of Genestealers.

This pass will serve me well soon enough in getting a decent comfortable middle-class home in the Lowerhive... But I still need to finish refining my Dharma Sword and I will be killing those Genestealers for a variety of reasons before I leave the Underhive for the much more peaceful Lowerhive.