13: Chapter 13 Imperial Transport Plane Crashes; Rescue Mission Receives Supplies

When the first lathe officially started running, Old Tom didn't let anyone watch. He started the machine by himself, and the sound of cutting echoed in the workshop for several full minutes—he was waiting, waiting for a certain gear to make a sound that shouldn't be there. But nothing happened. All the sounds were exactly where they were supposed to be. Only after confirming that every gear was running normally did he call him over to take a look.

Lin Mo stood before that crude lathe, assembled from wooden frames and handmade parts, and touched the metal surface of the headstock, which still carried the warmth of machine oil. What he thought of wasn't what this lathe could build—he thought of how, three months ago, the villagers of Blackstone Village were still using flint to make fire. Three months. One lathe. On a planet where even iron ore had to be carried back by human strength, this speed was not slow at all. He stood beside the rumbling machine, and another thought popped into his mind: with this one, the next one would be even faster.

That night, for the first time, Lin Mo slept for more than three hours straight. It wasn't because he was relaxed, but because he finally had a solid baseline to rely on—having a lathe meant being able to make more precise parts, having more precise parts meant being able to build better weapons, and having better weapons meant being able to fight bigger battles. This logical chain was simple, but on a planet where even iron nails had to be hammered by hand, it was a real and viable path.

Under the kerosene lamp, Lin Mo opened his notebook. From the first day of his transmigration, he had been recording every event he considered important: the weaknesses of the orcs, the bureaucratic structure of the Empire, the fluctuation frequency of underground energy, and the temperature changes of the octagram pendant. These records looked chaotic—but in his mind, they were slowly forming a web. Every piece of information was a thread in this web. He believed that one day, when enough threads were interwoven, he would see the complete picture of this web. He added what happened today to it as well. Then he closed the notebook and locked it in his desk drawer.

The parts list for the lathe was transcribed into three copies and distributed: one posted on the wall of Old Tom's workshop, one filed into the new filing system of Blackstone Town, and one placed in the drawer of the Archon's office as a backup. This was the first archival system Lin Mo had established. Old Tom's comment on this was: "What use is paper? If you can't build things with it, it's just waste paper." But despite what he said, his hands carefully flattened the blueprint. He knew that Lin Mo was doing something that transcended the present—recording, archiving, and preparing for some need that would arrive one day.

Three days later, the first lathe spindle was finished. Old Tom installed it onto the wooden bed, turned it by hand, and leaned in to listen to the sound of the gears meshing. He stood in front of that crude lathe for about the time it takes to burn a stick of incense, starting and stopping it three times. When he turned it off the third time, he didn't start it again. He straightened his back, walked to the door to look at the sky, where a grayish-purple twilight hung over the distant hills—and then said to his apprentice: "Call Lin Mo." No one knew what he had discovered between those three startups—but from then on, Old Tom had something he hadn't had before regarding his craft: a sense of certainty. A heavy, solid grasp of knowing exactly what shape the iron in his hands could become.

In the first week that the lathe was officially running, Old Tom slept for only about ten hours. He didn't trust the machine's repeatability, so after finishing each batch of parts, he would stop to measure them, confirming that the error was within an acceptable range. A week later, he compiled all the measurement data, calculated the average error, and was silent for a moment. Then he posted that data sheet right in the center of the workshop wall—more seriously than he had posted anything else. When Lin Mo passed by, he took a look at the data but didn't ask Old Tom why he had posted it on the wall. He knew the answer. This lathe was the starting point of the industrialization of Blackstone Town. Old Tom wanted to remember every piece of data from this starting point, to remember the moment it was truly reliable for the first time—because in this place where there weren't even spare parts, the quality of every part meant someone could come back alive, and someone wouldn't have to lie on Alice's medical table.

Later that day, Blackstone Town used this lathe to produce the first batch of standardized ammunition—fifty-seven rounds. Lin Mo picked one up and weighed it in his hand; the weight was consistent, the dimensions were consistent, and the primer was installed properly. This batch of ammunition would be used in the next battle, and the outcome of that battle would determine the survival of Blackstone Town. He put the ammunition back into the box, closed the lid, and said one sentence to Old Tom: "Can you produce twice as many in the next batch?" Old Tom didn't speak, but he had already turned around to start preparing materials for the second batch.

**Chapter Type: Turning Point Event Chapter**

The night wind blew from the north, carrying the distinctive sulfur scent from deep within the mineral veins, mixed with the woody smell of cooking smoke; it smelled like the dinner aroma unique to this world, one that wasn't very reassuring.

The night wind blew again. This gust was cooler than the last, carrying a scent of mixed metal and soil. He wrapped himself tighter in the coarse cloth coat that had worn-out edges—it was given to him by the villagers, and it was much warmer than the T-shirt he had been wearing when he transmigrated.

That Imperial transport had crashed.

Lin Mo was at the training ground checking the shooting scores of the new recruits when he suddenly heard a sharp whistling sound approaching from afar—it was coming from the direction of the atmosphere. He looked up and saw a black dot in the sky rapidly enlarging, dragging a grey-black tail of smoke. The black dot swept over the northwest corner of Blackstone Village and plunged into the hilly area about three kilometers away from the village. The dull sound of the impact reached the village several seconds later.

When Lin Mo arrived at the crash site with Locke and a squad, the transport had already broken into two pieces. The nose was stuck in the mud, the tail was tilted into the air, and flames were licking the wings. They found three survivors in the twisted metal frame—a pilot, an Imperial officer, and a military clerk. The pilot's leg was trapped under the dashboard, and Locke used a battle axe to pry open the deformed metal and dragged him out.

The Imperial officer's uniform was embroidered with the emblem of the Eastern Star Sector Quartermaster Corps. He sat on the ground, wiping the abrasions on his arm with a cloth soaked in alcohol, observing the militiamen who had run all the way there, wearing motley clothes but carrying standardized flintlock rifles.

"This place... has an Arsenal?"

He was silently calculating in his mind: how many days the food reserves would last, how much ammunition had been consumed, and how many people were needed for the next patrol. These numbers interlocked in his mind like gears, and every number was connected to three others—change one, and everything had to be recalculated.

"Just getting started," Lin Mo said.

The officer was silent for a moment, then revealed a piece of news that shocked everyone. The mission of his flight was originally to deliver a batch of supplies to a neighboring planet, but they were attacked by a Chaos pirate ship outside the atmosphere, and this was the only escape pod from the entire ship that had successfully ejected. About half of the supplies remained in the cargo hold.

Lin Mo led his men to move those boxes out of the twisted cargo hold. Medical kits, ammunition boxes, compressed rations, and a box of intact Imperial standard laser rifles—not flintlocks, but real laser rifles. There were twenty in total, with spare energy cells. Old Tom squatted beside the box, picked up a laser rifle, looked it over repeatedly, and then put it down. He didn't say anything, but he saw his gaze linger a moment longer on that row of neat barrels—there was no amazement in that gaze, only an old blacksmith measuring the internal logic of a machine.

During the few days the Imperial officer—his name was Cassius—was recovering from his injuries in Blackstone Village, he witnessed how Lin Mo managed the food distribution for over five hundred people using spreadsheets—every row of data was precise down to the individual, and every column was marked with the source and consumption cycle. He saw the calmness of the villagers as they buried the underground metal wall, and also noticed a piece of iron chain engraved with an octagram pendant peeking out of Lin Mo's pocket. Before Cassius left, he told Lin Mo: The Empire's sphere of influence in the Eastern Star Sector was still shrinking, but what Lin Mo was doing here, if known by the right people, might receive support.

He left behind a roll of blank requisition forms and a certificate of Imperial honorary citizenship. That certificate was stamped with the seal of the Eastern Star Sector Quartermaster Corps—regardless of whether this agency was still actually operating, this stamp could at least save them a few bullets when they encountered Imperial patrols. Lin Mo placed the roll of blank forms in his desk drawer. He knew what the blank forms meant—it meant the upper-level management of the entire Eastern Star Sector was in name only.

chaos attention level: 20 → 20. The wind in the forest had stopped for the moment. But he knew this was just a breather before the next storm arrived.

* One lathe and twenty laser rifles arrived at Blackstone Village on the same day. *

* One grew out of the mud, and the other fell from the sky. *

* — Lin Mo, memo recorded on the day the first batch of lathe products were put into storage *

Old Tom stood at the workshop door for a while, wiped the machine oil off his hands with his apron, and then turned and walked back into the room. He didn't lock the door—from today on, this lathe belonged to Blackstone Town. Whoever wanted to use it could come themselves.

* [Though the thousand siftings are arduous, only after the wild sands are blown away does the gold appear.] *

* — Liu Yuxi, "Lang Tao Sha". A memory fragment of the mirror of the emperor *