Talos squatted down and checked in person. Sure enough, the two tracks ended at the same time, although the road inexplicably continued through the jungle.

He turned his pace and passed the other five recruits, whose weapons were now more focused on the green dark light.

Talos was still bent over, and he stroked the depression on the ground with his hands as he walked.

"The trajectory has not gone deeper."

He said, looking up at his company.

"But it doesn't seem to slow down."

Sabrin spoke, then glanced at the surroundings.

"And there is no sign of weapons being released."

"There are no signs of explosives."

Li Lin then added that each of them was eager to impress Talos, and although they had overcome the test and proved that they were qualified to enter the Astral Knights, they still had to pass the scouts' assessment.

“It’s like… disappearing.”

Bahram looked at the traces on the ground with a little confusion.

"But dozens of tons of armored personnel carriers will not disappear without a trace."

Talos turned his attention back to the track and stared at the dense jungle outside.

"Don't be so sure, first of all, we must understand that we are now on a planet filled with subspace power, where the physical rules have long been distorted, and you have never seen the truly crazy side of subspace... I have seen things that make people understand at the limit, fighting creatures and entities that appear as human greatest fear. I have witnessed huge interstellar spacecraft, powered by subspace, burning in the void of vacuum, I have witnessed soldiers who turned into crazy beasts in front of me, and also infectious diseases that took away all lives in one breath, as well as a planet-sized flesh and blood mass, and alien technology that makes the greatest achievements of the Mechanics seem like the invention of the wheel."

Talos stood up and walked towards the lush trees.

"Can a Chimera disappear out of thin air? It may sound incredible, but of course it can teach you in one lesson, in the face of subspace power, nothing is ‘impossible’, before we use up all the other options, maybe it is somewhere in the jungle, now spreading and searching within a radius of two hundred meters."

A few hours later, just as the sun of the Pai Shangxing reached its peak, Sabrin's team located the missing Chimera.

It didn't disappear, or it didn't disappear in the initial search area, but their findings revealed more questions than it answered.

"It must have been here for decades, or even hundreds of years."

Nias said, touching the corrosion layer that wrapped the vehicle shell with one hand.

"Some parts of the body are almost rusted."

"Maybe it's the chemical composition of rainwater in this world that causes it to rust so quickly?"

Li Lin whispered while looking at Chimera:

"But how could it be so far away from the trace, and what overturned it?"

The soldiers surrounded the damaged personnel carrier, and their original number was hardly visible under the oxidized metal dense layer.

There was no sign of how it stopped more than half a kilometre from its traces, and there was no trace of it being thrown into the air, nor of it rolling across the ground and digging out the soil.

It's like Chimera was pulled out from one place and put down on the other side.

Talos knelt down and poked his fingers at the jungle ground. His arms stretched through the rotten mud until he approached his elbow, then tore the dry mud open and finally found what he was looking for.

He pulled out his hand and held the dirty black water he had just dug out, and there were a few wriggling mud bugs between his fingers.

"The corrosion level here is not deep, and there is not much odor of oxidized metals, and the humidity here will not accelerate the oxidation process to this level."

Talos then paced up and down in the overturned personnel carrier, his uneasiness not at all relieved by discovering it.

The transport seems to have been abandoned in the jungle for many years, and there is no evidence of how it became that way.

There seems to be another secret in the disappearance of this team.

"Sabrin, Nias, help me open the hatch."

Talos said, tearing off a bunch of vines wrapped around the back of Chimera.

Despite the combined efforts of three Space Marines, the rusty door was still unwilling to move.

Eventually, the hinge that supported it was broken and the corroded metal plate was thrown aside.

Everyone took a step back when the air was wet inside, emitting foul smell.

Buttalos did not retreat, but approached the open hatch.

The other members aimed their weapons at the holes, ready to wait for their commander in those wet and humid spaces for anything that could happen.

The green jungle light shot into the troop transport cabin, casting an ethereal light on the wreckage inside, and guns and ammunition were scattered in it, blocking the passage between the corpses in the chalk armored lying in the burial place.

The prophet's vision was as effective as it was during the day. He counted and found eight bodies, all wearing the uniforms of the Astral Army.

Although the armor maintained its integrity, and what it was designed to protect did not, the skull stared blankly in the maskless helmet, all the remaining flesh and blood had long rotted.

As this grave reopened to the outside jungle, flies and other insects buzzed into Chimera, attracting them from the smell of the place and hope of a brand new breeding farm.

Talos lifted the nearest body buried on his companion and dragged it towards him.

Under the protection of the carapace, the internal organs have liquefied but have not completely decomposed.

Talos pulled open the collar of his armor, revealing his skinny neck, showing what he expected.

The two vertebrae were completely cut off, almost certainly during Chimera's mysterious flight and violent landing.

In the 41st millennium, serving the God Emperor of Humanity will almost certainly end in death, an undeniable fact that for the Space Marine, this ending is usually glorious, a heroic sacrifice made in the face of insurmountable difficulties.

For those throne believers who have not been subjected to the genetic heritage of the Primarch, such deaths will also occur on the battlefield, holding their weapons tightly, defending a world that does not belong to them, against seemingly endless aliens or devils.

But it is more likely that death will be futile and a waste of human life whose potential will never be realized.
Chapter completed!