17: Chapter 17 Post-War Reorganization, Imperial Recognition

The aftermath of the war spread like ripples.

Several surviving settlements in the vicinity sent envoys—not with letters of gratitude, but with requests to pledge allegiance.

Lin Mo spent about a week handling the process: receiving, registering, and allocating.

Merely settling the refugees from external settlements and distributing limited supplies caused his hair to thin at a visible rate.

The population rose from just over a thousand to nearly two thousand.

The scale of the population he was now managing already exceeded that of many towns under the official Imperial establishment.

Cassius—that Imperial officer—did not leave immediately after recovering from his injuries.

He stayed in Blackstone Village for a few more weeks, observing Lin Mo's management methods: supply distribution tables, personnel rosters, and records of incoming and outgoing weapons and ammunition.

The gravel under his feet crunched softly, sounding exceptionally clear in this silent valley.

He subconsciously lightened his footsteps—here, any unnecessary noise could attract unwanted attention.

Before leaving, Cassius asked Lin Mo a question: "What does your town use as currency?"

Lin Mo was stunned for a moment; he realized he had never thought about this issue.

Internal exchange in Blackstone Village had always been barter—three catties of wheat for a knife, five animal skins for a roll of bandages.

But as the population surged to nearly two thousand, the efficiency of bartering was declining at a visible rate.

The day before yesterday, someone traded a live pig for a pair of boots, but no one knew how to slaughter the pig, so it lost several catties of weight from hunger before Old Tom finally butchered it.

Cassius took out a brief chart of the Imperial standard monetary system from his briefcase—he carried it for exchange rate assessments on remote planets.

The official currency of the Empire is the Imperial Eagle, but its circulation in the Eastern Star Sector is almost zero—the last time he saw an Imperial gold coin in the Eastern Star Sector was years ago.

Looking at the chart, Lin Mo's mind began to construct a new plan: issue a voucher within Blackstone Town backed by labor hours, with one voucher redeeming the output of one standard person's daily work.

Cassius was silent for a few seconds after hearing his idea, then said in a complex tone: "If there were still living people in the Imperial Administration, your plan would be classified as 'dangerous innovation'."

He stood there, looking at everything before him, and suddenly had a very strange feeling—if someone had told him a month ago that he would be on a planet countless light-years from Earth, using high school chemistry knowledge to make gunpowder, university club experience to build guns, and a product manager's logic to plan a village's defense system—he would have surely thought that person was crazy.

But now he stood here, and every single thing was happening in reality.

He did not take this assessment as a criticism.

Before leaving, Cassius filled out a formal observation report, changing the status of Blackstone Village from "Illegal Settlement" to "Pending Certification Settlement".

Once this report was archived through the Imperial Quartermaster's system—even if it was a nearly non-existent Quartermaster's office—Blackstone Village would have obtained de facto legitimacy.

Locke selected thirty veteran soldiers with combat merits from the new batch of militia to serve as the backbone, formally reorganizing the militia into the Blackstone Garrison.

Five platoons, with sixty-two men per platoon.

He equipped each platoon leader with a captured Orc battle axe as an insignia.

When Lin Mo asked him why he didn't use laser guns, he said that laser guns were too precious to risk bumping, while a battle axe wouldn't hurt to drop.

The chaos attention level dropped from forty-two to thirty-eight.

It was not because Chaos had relaxed its vigilance, but because during this large-scale psychic engagement, Chaos had not found any anomalous signals worth recording—that golden streamer only shone quietly at the edge of Lin Mo's vision, never once exceeding the normal threshold of a Psyker.

The clouds on the distant ridge were dyed rust-colored by the last ray of sunset, like a piece of burnt sheet metal.

He knew this was just the beginning.

But the beginning itself was the best news.

The day the flag of Blackstone Town was raised, Cassius wrote a note on the report:

Wang Defu's story was interrupted by the sparks of the oil lamp.

He was silent for a long time, then stood up and patted Lin Mo on the shoulder: "You are stronger than I was when I was young."

He paused at the threshold without looking back: "Don't let the things you've seen become things you dare not speak of."

Lin Mo sat alone by the window, taking out the octagram pendant and placing it in his palm.

The pendant was heavier than he remembered—or perhaps his own hand had become lighter.

He turned the pendant over to look at the patterns on the back.

They were denser and deeper than the front, like an information carrier compressed to its limit.

Lin Mo opened his notebook under the kerosene lamp.

From the first day of his transmigration, he had been recording every event he considered important: Orc weaknesses, the Imperial bureaucratic structure, 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 shape of this web.

He added the events of today as well.

Then he closed the notebook and locked it in the desk drawer.

After Wang Defu left, Lin Mo sat alone in the room for a long time.

The bowl of soup, now completely cold, slowly formed a layer of oil film before him.

He did not drink it.

He was thinking about what Wang Defu said: Don't let the things you've seen become things you dare not speak of.

What had Lin Mo seen?

He had seen a world where one could counter-kill Orcs with a power bank.

The efficiency limit of an agricultural society is far lower than that of an industrial society, and the efficiency limit of an industrial society is far lower than that of an information society.

He knew that knowledge—knowledge forgotten or destroyed by the Empire.

He wrote two lines in his notebook.

First line: Knowledge is not a weapon—knowledge you dare not use is.

Second line: I need to understand the rules of this world better.

After Wang Defu left, Lin Mo sat alone in the room with that bowl of cold soup in front of him.

A thin layer of fat had congealed on the surface of the soup, shimmering under the oil lamp.

He didn't drink it, nor did he pour it away—he just left the bowl there, like a witness, silently bearing witness to a conversation he did not want to forget.

That incident Wang Defu spoke of—the rebellious planet whose grain was entirely seized by Imperial taxation—Blackstone Village was only one step away from following that same path.

If Lin Mo hadn't appeared here at this moment, if the knowledge he brought hadn't happened to fit into this gap, Blackstone Village would have faced the same choice in a few months: starve to death, or rebel.

Late at night, Lin Mo took the octagram pendant out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

The pendant remained silent in the darkness, with only the moonlight filtering through the window reflecting a slender spot of light on the metal surface.

He stared at that spot of light for a long time—he suddenly realized a problem: everyone who had come to this world had died.

Wang Defu's company commander, the garrison of that Mining City, Old Zhou—everyone who tried to change something had died.

Only he was still alive.

This was not luck.

It was someone or something keeping him alive.

He put the pendant away and blew out the oil lamp.

In the darkness, he closed his eyes and said one sentence to himself: Then don't live in vain.

Lin Mo could not sleep that night.

He kept thinking about what Wang Defu said—when he was young and serving in the Imperial Guard, he was ordered to pacify a rebellious planet, only to find the cause of the rebellion was that their grain had been completely seized by Imperial taxes.

He couldn't bring himself to do it.

The company commander took the blame for him.

Lin Mo lay in the darkness with his eyes open, and an image appeared in his mind: a young man in an Imperial uniform standing on a ridge, looking at the starving farmers before him who used farm tools as weapons.

The young man's company commander walked up, patted him on the shoulder, and then walked toward the military tribunal.

Lin Mo turned over, watching the tree shadows illuminated by the moonlight outside the window.

He did not know that company commander's name.

But every person he had seen in this universe who stood up for what was right was continuing that company commander's choice in their own way.

This was not a story about heroes.

This was a story about ordinary people who chose kindness.

He fished the octagram pendant from under his pillow, held it, and closed his eyes.

The temperature of the pendant was consistent with his body temperature—between cold and warm, it blended into a temperature that brought peace of mind.

There was another battle to fight tomorrow.

He needed to sleep for a while tonight.

Lin Mo held the octagram pendant in his hand for a long time before letting go.

The pendant landed on the pillow without a sound, but there was an extremely faint noise in his ears—like a drop of water falling into a container filled with water.

He sank into sleep amidst that sound.

This was one of the few truly good sleeps he had had on this planet.

It was not because he was tired—it was because he had made a decision.

He decided he would no longer just be the person who calculates risks.

He would be the person who takes responsibility when necessary.

But we haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

A moonless night, and an oil lamp that would not go out in the wind.

Lin Mo pressed the octagram pendant against his palm—it was warming up slightly.

A moonless night, —Lin Mo, returning from a late-night patrol.

Another day had ended.

The number of days he had spent on this planet was slowly becoming a number he dared not think about too closely.

But he was still alive every day—that was enough.

"Shatter the Dawn." Locke turned back before closing the door to repeat the cultist's words, then added: "This name—you came up with it, right?"

Lin Mo was silent for a moment and nodded.

Locke didn't say anything else, but the act of closing the door was much lighter than usual.

[The moon of Qin, the pass of Han, the ten-thousand-mile march, men never return. If the Flying General of Longcheng were here, he would not let the Hu horses cross the Yin Mountains.]

—Wang Changling, "Border Song". Fragments of memory sealed within the mirror of the emperor quietly emerged in the darkness.

Among the latest batch of exiles to arrive, there was one person who had not told anyone his true identity.

His name appeared on Locke's roster, but that name—in the Imperial archives, it had been crossed out for thirty years.