"The experiment failed again." Dr. Iven clutched her hair dejectedly, data slates scattered densely across the lab table. "But why? The experiment succeeded on you, so why can't other subjects even achieve basic genetic stability?"
"Could it be that we misjudged the dangers of genetic mutation?"
Dr. Iven slumped into her swivel chair. "The human genome truly is as complex as a tangled mess. Your genetic sequence is indeed unique; it can greatly increase your survival rate to 100%. But your core genetic sequence is the same as theirs, and it does suppress other mutations. So it makes no sense… why does it only work on you and not on anyone else?"
Karin spoke softly, "Dr. Iven, scientific exploration is inherently a process of constant trial and error. You shouldn't be discouraged by this."
"You're right… maybe I should try another approach."
…
"Karin! What are you doing?!" Eve's voice twisted with anger. "You're defying the god!"
Karin's fingertips trembled, yet she firmly pressed the confirmation key, "I am doing what I should do."
The nutrient solution in the culture chamber rapidly drained. The subject's limbs began to convulse.
When Dr. Iven rushed into the laboratory, the subject in the chamber had already become a stiff corpse.
"I need an explanation!"
Karin's voice was as light as a feather. "The experiment failed. He would have destroyed the shelter."
Dr. Iven gazed at the stiff corpse in the culture chamber. After a long silence, she slowly nodded, offering no reproach for Karin's actions.
Her experiment indeed had not succeeded. The subject's mutations not only failed to be effectively controlled but had begun growing a secondary brain.
Most importantly… Dr. Iven believed Karin's prophecy.
This could help her eliminate another wrong option.
Life lies in evolution. Those options that fail in evolution would only pollute humanity's gene pool.
…
"Eve! Have you lost your mind?!"
Dr. Iven's shout exploded through the laboratory.
"Subject 6666 has been stable for 65 days! Every measurement shows her genome is even more perfect than your original data!"
"Just a little more! Just a little more, and our experiment would have succeeded! Her success could have been replicated in everyone! Tell me, why did you personally strangle the hope of saving Baal?!"
"N-no… it wasn't me…"
Karin's lips trembled. It wasn't her, it was Eve. But her defense was as pale as her face.
And how could Dr. Iven possibly believe her?
Explanations were meaningless.
To everyone else, she and Eve were the same person, because she had hidden Eve.
"This is your retribution," Eve sneered in the depths of her consciousness. Her laughter was like a snake's hiss, eroding her sanity inch by inch
Yes, Eve was her retribution.
She had buried this with her own hands; it was the last thing she could do.
…....
"Why?"
Dr. Iven's final desperate question before death, and her last look, filled with shock, disappointment, and heartbreak, pierced Karin like a blade.
"It wasn't me…" She wept, trying to defend herself, but couldn't even convince herself.
She curled up in the depths of her consciousness like a helpless child.
She couldn't save Dr. Iven. She couldn't even stop Eve.
"That was you. I am you."
"Admit it, my dear."
"We were always one."
Eve's low laughter gradually warped into a satisfied sigh.
There was no longer any Karin.
Now there was only Eve.
Eve greedily coveted her final trophy, Karin's pure and foolish soul.
Yet that soul was an indispensable sacrifice in the god's grand design.
She endured… but she envied Karin more than anyone.
Why was her foolish sister pure, while she, who could hear the divine voice, was impure?
They shared one body; this body was pure, and Karin was pure.
So why wasn't she?
God was unfair.
"I am the priestess who hears the divine revelation, yet why do their eyes always linger on my foolish sister?"
Eve murmured resentfully in the depths of her consciousness, her voice tangled with jealousy and bitterness.
Yet she dared not defy the gods....
…....
Following divine instructions, Eve led all genetically untainted humans out of the shelter.
As the hereditary priestess passed down through generations, she quietly awaited the fated day prophesied by the divine over the long years.
Fifteen years before that fated day, a brand-new "Karin" was born.
Eve envied this new Karin as much as she had envied the original Karin. This reborn soul was like a blank sheet of paper, untouched by writing.
After thousands of years, she had long understood why the gods said she was impure.
Because she had been tainted from birth, born incomplete.
Her existence depended on Karin, yet she was fated to destroy her.
Even the name "Eve" was not hers, merely taken from Karin.
Karin could remain ignorant, but she had to endure millennia of solitude protecting these foolish mortals.
She had to preserve Karin's "purity."
Why? Why only Karin?
…..
"These… are my memories?"
Karin sat blankly on the white hospital bed, her fingers unconsciously gripping the bedsheet.
The cold white lumens cast her shadow onto the metal wall, sometimes clear, sometimes blurred, just like her chaotic thoughts.
The memories were vivid yet terrifyingly unfamiliar.
She felt every emotion within them.
Karin's regret pierced like thorns, Eve's jealousy coiled like a venomous snake around her heart, and Dr. Iven's gaze nearly tore her soul apart.
That was when Eve seized control.
"Then and there is just like here and now."
Eve leaned beside her ear and whispered with distorted pleasure, "This time I don't have to hold back. I'll devour every inch of your soul! God belongs to me, only me!"
Karin's body trembled slightly, yet she slowly raised her eyes, staring at her nightmare:
"Your god abandoned you."
"I abandoned Him!" Eve suddenly lunged forward, her shadow slowly spreading across the bed. "He is a false god! I no longer need Him! Because I have seen the True God. He chose you, and I will eat you. He is mine!"
"My Lord never chose anyone. It was fate."
"There is no fate! From five thousand years ago, every step was within His calculations! Even if fate exists, you're just a pawn!"
"Besides being in the right place, we are nothing. A pawn reaching this point is enough to prove fate's favor towards me."
"You're insane!"
"Thank you. You too."
Eve had thought the cruel truth would shatter Karin. But Karin's reaction was surprisingly calm.
"Why am I Eve and you Karin?! Why?!"
"We share one body and the same soul. Why do you receive divine grace while I crawl in darkness?!"
"You're wrong," Karin said softly. "You were never Eve. That name never belonged to you."
"But you gave it to me!"
"Eve carried Dr. Iven's hope for a new humanity. You don't deserve it, and I regret giving it to you."
"Her" face twisted. "She" violently pressed down on Karin, her fingers digging deep into Karin's slender neck: "What right do you have to regret? What right!"
"You're going to die! Eve is my name, Karin is my body, and you're just a fading afterimage!"
"Your memories, your emotion, your self-righteous purity all will nourish me!"
Karin's throat rattled, face reddening from suffocation, yet she smiled.
"Why are you smiling?! You're dying!"
"Because unlike you… my god has not abandoned me."
"That is MY God! MINE!"
"You still don't realize?" Karin's eyes reflected her distorted face.
"My Lord is watching us. I've won."
"Impossible!"
"Her" face suddenly froze. "Her" pale fingers unconsciously loosened slightly. Like a trapped beast, she searched frantically around the room, as if wanting to pry open every crack to find the eyes peeping at them.
Karin seized the chance, flipped over, and pinned her down.
"Now I'm on top."
…...
Fulgrim had once again transformed into a flickering mass of light, connecting Caelan's and Karin's minds.
This time it was not shared thoughts, but one-way observation.
Caelan's consciousness quietly entered Karin's mind. Her life unfolded before him like a film.
Her first half-life was very short. Her second half-life was also very short. Yet it was sufficiently magnificent.
She was favored by fate.
Both a perpetual and a psyker.
In her first life, there was Dr. Iven. In her second life, there was Caelan. Though her life was full of hardships, there was always someone to care for her.
Even Eve's betrayal was merely a trial, a passing interlude; she would ultimately overcome herself.
Caelan did not need to act; he was only a spectator.
She needed only one last step.
"You're awake?" A gentle voice rang out like a morning bell piercing the mist.
Karin's long lashes trembled, her pale-blue eyes slowly focused, and upon seeing Caelan, a devout light flickered in them.
"My Lord…" Her lips parted, releasing a trembling whisper.
"Do you remember who you are?"
"I am your priestess, Karin."
Caelan couldn't help but marvel at her fortune.
Within the vast population of the Imperium, psykers were countless, but perptuals were exceedingly rare.
Those who were both were almost nonexistent. So far, only two had been publicly acknowledged: the Emperor and Malcador.
Erda was also a perpetual, but her power was suspected to be related to Enuncia.
Vulkan was a perpetual and possessed the essence of the Warp, but before awakening that essence, he could not truly be counted.
In theory, both psykers and perpetuals could be mass-produced through genetic engineering, and there were indeed examples of creating either. But in practice, it was far from simple.
Karin was unique.
Born a perpetual, and through Dr. Iven's genetic treatment, she had inadvertently become a psychic.
Even trapped in Tzeentch's conspiracy all her life, she had remained unharmed.
Even though her entire life was lived within Tzeentch's schemes, those schemes somehow never harmed her in the slightest.
Moreover…
Caelan's gaze lingered on the girl for a long time.
'She used to be a rustic girl. After awakening her psychic power, she radiated beauty, luminous skin, and lively eyes. Not equal to Claudia, but still breathtaking.'
'Wasn't this change too dramatic?'
"Dad, we need to talk," Fulgrim said.
…
Fulgrim's eyes flickered with unease. "Dad, don't you think Sister Karin is a little strange?"
Caelan nodded slightly. "She is abnormal… but we cannot take her life because of that."
He knew her memories, yet many doubts still lingered in the fog.
For example, why did "Eve" want to steal thirstwater? What was the point?
Even if the jar containing thirstwater were shattered, it could not escape the sealed medical chamber.
Even if "Eve" injected thirstwater directly into the shelter's water system, at most it would kill some civilians.
If her goal was to exterminate the Baalites, she had countless opportunities over the past millennia to do so.
Neither purebloods, mutants, nor shelters could withstand her psychic power.
Even if she died accidentally, as a perpetual, she could always return.
Even if she killed before his eyes, what would she gain beyond burdening him with guilt?
Caelan's life was not only about Baal. Compared to the survival of humanity as a whole, what were tens of thousands of people?
Fulgrim and Sanguinius were similar to Caelan.
They cared for Baal because it was their birthplace.
But in the vast galaxy, Baal Secundus was just another ordinary death world.
If Tzeentch truly planned this, then thirstwater was merely a shallow layer in a carefully woven lie, like a clumsy move on a chessboard, meant only to conceal the masterstroke to come. Perhaps the true plot was brewing elsewhere. Perhaps Karin herself was still part of it.
Regardless, Caelan would not murder an innocent girl.
His principle was clear: as long as one had not fallen into Chaos, he would always grant the lost a chance to repent.
He had given Typhon a chance, and he would give Karin one too.
Erebus was the exception.
Sanguinius added, "If fear of the gods' scheme makes our blade turn against the innocent, then we have truly fallen into their trap.
The gods excel at weaving plots.
Tzeentch most of all, though the other three are no less cunning.
When suspicion drives people to slaughter one another, the gods have already won.
Many of history's most tragic events stemmed from the collapse of trust.
The Horus Heresy began with the Emperor's secrecy toward his sons.
The rifts between the Primarchs widened the cracks through which Chaos seeped.
Perturabo's and Mortarion's betrayals, and the burning of Prospero, all were born of mistrust between the Primarchs and the Emperor.
Trust is like a chain: break one link and everything collapses.
Perhaps Tzeentch intended them to destroy themselves through suspicion and self-destruction.
If Caelan tried to unravel this seemingly flawed plan, how could he know it wasn't yet another nested puzzle deliberately displayed by the Changer of Ways?
Though passive, this approach kept them cautious. Rash action was often deadlier.
'What if the plot has already succeeded?' The thought suddenly surfaced in Fulgrim's mind.
So far, their actions seemed few: saving the purebloods, moving into the shelter, Karin serving as his Father's priestess.
The plot had not shaken his Father's convictions. But beneath these appearances, did every act conceal hidden meaning?
"Don't let doubt consume your judgment," Caelan said. "Like deconstructionism, once begun, it spirals without end."
Once a person falls into the whirlpool of doubt, if they cannot stop in time, they will eventually stumble into the pit themselves.
The Primarchs must be especially cautious.
"I understand. Still, I feel Sister Karin is the key."
"I will speak with Karin openly. Whatever the plot may be, honesty is always better than concealment."
Fulgrim and Sanguinius exchanged a nod. Between the two Primarchs and their father flowed a trust that required no oath.
If Tzeentch's plot was to make them consume themselves in suspicion, then it would never succeed among them!
…....
Caelan gazed calmly at the trembling girl.
"Karin, what do you think?"
He did not hide his suspicion, but it went no further. Suspicion was not grounds for judgment, evidence was.
He would not lose his composure because of doubt, nor would he abandon suspicion without cause.
This was his compromise.
"My Lord…" she whispered, eyes clear.
"Could… could the angel use his power?"
"Why?"
"I can show you my heart." Karin's slender fingers brushed lightly against her chest, her voice ringing like pure crystal. "I am your priestess. I swear to you, I will never deceive you."
"But I am foolish. If there truly is a conspiracy against you, my shallow mind may not perceive it. So I beg you, let the holy Angel wield his power, so that you may personally examine my memories and soul."
Caelan leaned slightly forward. "I'm not interrogating you. But since you're inside this situation, you may notice details we missed."
Caelan gazed at Karin, his eyes both gentle and resigned. "Karin, I am not questioning you. But precisely because you are within this, you may notice details we have overlooked, those seemingly insignificant anomalies."
"Details…" Karin spoke hesitantly, then shook her head. "Maybe I'm overthinking."
"What did you notice?"
"That number." Karin's voice was so soft it was almost inaudible, her eyes drifting into the distance. "That designation… it's too unusual."
.....
15 chapter ahead in [email protected]/DaoistJinzu