The strongest astral army in Warhammer 40K

Mortalian's massive claws crushed a rusted bronze mirror, and Guilliman's image within twisted and vanished amidst pus and blood. Inside the rotting chest cavity, seven decaying hearts convulsed and beat at different frequencies.

"Perfect...how perfect..." The Primarch's voice echoed like the buzzing of a thousand flies through the mold-covered palace. Yellowish-green pus seeped from the ground beneath his feet, reflecting scenes from his memories—

**The Great Expedition Period.**

The Ultramarines' blue legion marched in perfect unison through the Arc de Triomphe, while his Death Guard was delayed in assembling due to internal strife.

**Terra Council.**

Guilliman calmly explained his management plan for the Five Hundred Worlds, while his own theory of plague warfare was gently set aside by the Emperor.

**Now.**

The blue-armored Primarch is leading the largest expeditionary force in human history, while he can only hide in the festering sores of the Warp, barely maintaining the rate of corruption in the Reality Realm with these **Blackstone Devices**.

"You even need an external object to show yourself!" The Nurgle demon Krugas chuckled beside him, his fat fingers stirring the cauldron of plague. "And your brother, he's being revered by all!"

Mortarion's giant scythe "Silence" suddenly cleaved half of the demon's body, but the demon simply laughed and regenerated from the pus.

"Enough!" The Plague Primarch's roar shook the rotting flesh from the palace rooftops. "Activate all Blackrock Beacons! I want Guilliman to watch his 'Perfect Legion' rot in the mud!"

Russell's tactical goggles flickered wildly. With the destruction of the first black pillar, the planet's crust was cracking, exposing a network of crisscrossing black veins beneath—each pulsating with the plague runes of the Death Guard.

"The scan shows at least two hundred similar devices." Katosikalius uploaded the data to orbit. "The distribution pattern matches an octagonal array... This is a subspace anchoring array."

The black-armored guard suddenly knelt on one knee and plunged his halberd into the crevice. The scanning wave released from the halberd tip rebounded after penetrating three thousand meters, revealing a chilling scene on the hologram—

The planet's core has been transformed into a massive plague furnace, with tens of thousands of Death Guardian Immortals embedded in the Blackrock Network, continuously pumping corrupting energy like living batteries.

**"The embodiment of Mortalian's jealousy."** Carleon's psionic vision saw through it all. **"He wants to turn this place into a second Ishtarvan—to prove his strength through the destruction of the Ultramarines."**

Guilliman's communication request suddenly interrupted. The Primarch's holographic image stood before the star map, with the main gun array of the Macragge fleet behind him.

"Orbital bombardment cannot destroy the core reactor." His voice was chillingly calm. "A small team is needed to penetrate deep into the core and manually shut down the energy hub."

Russell looked at the collapsing canyon: **"Teleportation?"**

"No." Guilliman pulled up a cross-section of the planet, a winding red line running through the mantle. "The Death Guard left an 'invitation'—the Plague Drainage System leads directly to the heart of the Furnace."

The sound of teeth grinding came from beneath Katosicarios's visor. Everyone understood what this meant—the tubes were flowing with concentrated Nurgle sludge.

"Russell and I will go," the platoon leader suddenly said. "The Ultramarines know Deathguards' twisted sense of humor best."

The black-armored imperial guard stepped forward: **"Imperial guards, proceed together. This is the Emperor's decree."**

…………

The Garden of Decay: The Labyrinth

Mortalian's bone-white fingers traced the petri dish, where hundreds of beating hearts floated in the yellowish-green pus—each from a different race, each transformed into an independent plague incubation chamber. His respirator spewed out murky mist, which condensed into decaying frost on the glass.

"The 36,000th iteration." He recorded this in the empty laboratory, his voice echoing through the rusty copper pipes. "The success rate of Tyranid gene grafting has increased to 12%, but it will still trigger host autolysis..."

In the corner, the Tyrande warrior specimen, chained up, suddenly convulsed, and a foul-smelling cloud of spores burst forth from the cracks in its shell. Mortarian didn't even glance at it, but with a backhand scythe, he severed its head, and the rotting green blood dripped precisely into the collector.

This should have been the perfect testing ground.

Far from the Empire's main shipping lanes, the chaos of the Zerg and Orc battles masked the energy fluctuations, and even other Chaos forces didn't bother to spy on this ruin. For three years, the Black Stone device he had buried here wasn't a weapon at all, but a **precise biological incubator**—until three days ago, that damned psionic flash tore through his covert agreement.

**“Master…Master…”** A Nurgle crawled out of the ventilation duct, its pustule-like head topped with a shattered monitor. **“That living saint…has found culture column number seven…”

Mortalian's recording motion froze. The heart in the petri dish stopped beating for a moment.

Russell's entrenching tool cleaved through the last barrier of mycelium, revealing a suffocating sight behind it—

Within a spherical space two hundred meters in diameter, hundreds of suspended corpses were mutating under the catalysis of Blackstone energy. There were Astragalus soldiers injected with Zerg genes, Death Guards grafted with Orc spores, and even several melting Tyrannical warriors. A faded Death Guard rune was inscribed on the cultivation column:

**[Perfect Plague Prototype - Iteration]**

"This isn't a trap." Katoscarius used his power sword to pry open a broken tube. "It's a lab...he's creating some kind of hybrid plague here."

The black-armored guards suddenly raised their halberds, and their scanning beams focused on the central control panel—the holographic record showed that seventy-two hours earlier, the moment Russell and Guilliman's fleet arrived, the programs of all the incubation pods were forcibly rewritten.

"Look here." The Imperial Guard retrieved an encrypted command: **[Emergency Protocol Activated: All Blackrock Units Converted to Warp Beacons]**

Carleon's wings suddenly spread: **"We stumbled upon his secret research... Now he's trying to frame us for the experiment's failure."**

The lab's communicator suddenly activated on its own, and the decaying holographic image distorted and took on a new shape—

Mortarian's figure appeared in the pus-like image, his breathing tubes crawling with maggots.

"Guilliman's henchmen." The Primarch's voice carried the characteristic cold cruelty of a laboratory setting. "You destroyed the most promising sample in my 36,000 experiments... Now, I will use your corpses for the 36,001st."

The image switched to a planetary scan, and all the black stone devices simultaneously lit up with a scarlet light—they no longer emitted plague energy, but began frantically drawing heat from the Earth's core.