20: Chapter 20: Promoted to Baron, the Horn of Expedition Sounds

The official approval from the Imperial Logistics Department arrived on the 180th day. It didn't come via communicator—Cassius delivered it personally. He landed a scarred small transport ship on the newly expanded simple runway of Blackstone Village, carrying a formal document stamped with the seal of the Eastern Sector Quartermaster Department. Standing in the square, he unfurled the parchment and read the full text under everyone's gaze: Blackstone Village was officially upgraded to Blackstone Town, Lin Mo was conferred the title of Imperial Baron, and his territory covered administrative jurisdiction over approximately one surrounding region. The square fell silent for a few seconds. Then Locke took the lead with a roar, and everyone else followed suit.

When Lin Mo took the document, he noticed the texture of the paper—it was high-quality paper, specifically for official Imperial documents. The seal—even if it was questionable whether the Logistics Department itself still held actual jurisdiction—at least proved one fact: in the Empire's records, Blackstone Village was no longer an unmarked gray dot on the map. Before leaving, Cassius pulled him aside: this wasn't free. "A fixed amount of agricultural products and minerals must be handed over every quarter as tax. If you fail to pay for two consecutive quarters, your Baron status is automatically revoked, and the territory is reclassified as an undeveloped zone."

He knew that what he brought was not just a title of nobility, but also a ledger written in physical taxes. He accepted it. He had no choice—during Blackstone Town's expansion phase, any recognition of diplomatic status was an invaluable resource.

Locke expanded the defense force to three hundred men. Lin Mo hung a new map in the Archon's office—it was no longer a local map of Blackstone Village's surroundings, but a full map of the Eastern Star Sector drawn by Marcus from memory.

After the crowd in the square dispersed, Locke stayed behind alone. He waited until the last villager turned the street corner before taking the title decree from Lin Mo's hand to look through it, then handed it back as it was, saying one sentence: "Baron, this title... you'll find it useful." He paused, "But that tax—I'll find a way." Lin Mo knew what he meant: Locke didn't intend to let this decree become the straw that broke the camel's back. There was no need for more words between them; Locke gave a nod and left, his back casting a long shadow in the sunlight.

Before leaving, Cassius found Alice. Lin Mo was not present, but Old Lady Wang from the Medical Station told him about it later. Cassius asked Alice: 'The man here—do you trust him?' Alice only answered with two words: 'I do.' Cassius didn't speak then, but as he reached the door, he looked back and added: "In the history of the Empire, those who are trusted live longer than those who are obeyed." Old Lady Wang thought it was just a common blessing at the time, but Alice repeated those words in her heart many times.

The word "Expedition" was officially proposed three days after the reading of the title decree—not by Lin Mo, but by Locke. He placed a reconnaissance report on the desk in the Archon's office and pointed to a coordinate in the southeast: "There is a derelict Imperial supply station there. The scouts say the ammunition inside is well-preserved, but there are small Chaos units operating around it." He didn't ask for authorization, just stated the fact, and then stood there waiting for Lin Mo's reaction. Lin Mo looked at the coordinate and asked one question: "Do you think it's worth fighting for?" Locke said: "I think if we don't fight, they'll empty it out." That afternoon, Lin Mo wrote a single word in the blank space of the reconnaissance report: Fight. Blackstone Town's first active Expedition thus began its preparations with a one-word instruction.

Alice knocked on Lin Mo's door at midnight. In her hand, she held a translucent white crystal—she said she discovered it today while treating the wounded at the Medical Station, found in an ore sample brought by a miner; it had a faint psionic resonance.

Lin Mo took the crystal and examined it against the oil lamp for a long time: under the light, extremely fine silver veins flowed inside it like frozen lightning. He put the crystal in a drawer. He didn't know what it was for, but he had a vague feeling that there might be some yet-to-surface connection between this crystal accidentally found in the ore and the metal wall beneath the northern hills.

Alice didn't leave immediately. She stood at the door, the light from the oil lamp only illuminating half of her face, her silver hair shimmering with a faint blue cold light in the shadows. She glanced at the map and notes spread out on Lin Mo's desk and suddenly asked: "Do you never let anyone else into this room?"

Lin Mo was stunned for a moment. He indeed didn't—the Archon's office was his war room, and everything inside was placed according to his logic. But when Alice stood at the door and asked this, he didn't feel offended. He simply said: "Haven't you come in?"

As he closed his notebook, that poem surfaced in his mind again—not his own memory, but one of the countless fragments the golden figure had shoved into his mind one late night:

*[This feeling could have become a memory to cherish, but even then, it was already a sense of loss and bewilderment.]*

*—Li Shangyin, 'The Ornamented Zither'. He didn't know why the Emperor had put this line of poetry together with those tactical data, but he had a vague feeling that both were equally important to him.*

Alice looked at him for two seconds, her lips twitching—it wasn't quite a smile, but that curve was more memorable than any expression she usually wore. She turned and left. The moment the door closed, a night breeze slipped through the window crack, making the papers on the desk rustle. Lin Mo sat back in his chair and found himself still holding the crystal—he had forgotten when he had taken it out of the drawer and held it in his hand again.

The chaos attention level broke fifty. This number was something Lin Mo had derived after drawing a line on paper during a sleepless night half a month ago: chaos attention level—he had drawn a rough segmented model for this thing. Below thirty was safe, thirty to fifty was a gray zone, and above fifty began to enter Chaos's "effective range of attention." The reason he made this judgment was that in the past week, Alice had reported a phenomenon to him: over the last few days, the sleep quality of every Psyker had been declining. It wasn't just her—several mild Psykers being treated at the Medical Station also began reporting strange dreams. They weren't nightmares, but a feeling of "something is watching this place."

Lin Mo stood on the expanded defensive wall, folded the paper with the inferred lines of attention levels, and put it in his pocket. He had three hundred guards, an Arsenal producing several flintlocks a day, an officially recognized Imperial Baron status, and a silver-veined crystal of unknown purpose that made him vaguely uneasy. At the end of the horizon was a silent gray-purple—there were more planets, more threats, more answers.

*A silver crystal shimmered with faint light under the oil lamp,*

*like frozen lightning locked within stone.*

He remembered a sentence he had read in materials before crossing over: The Imperium of Man has spanned the Galaxy for a million years, yet has never truly conquered any single planet. They are merely occupied, forgotten, and then rediscovered at some dawn—if anyone still remembers to look.

When Lin Mo reopened his eyes in the darkness, the moonlight outside had already shifted its position. He sat up from the bed and walked to the desk. Without lighting a lamp, he relied on memory and the direction illuminated by the moonlight to reach out between the two items on the desk. His fingers didn't touch the crystal, nor did they touch the pendant—his fingertips landed on the empty tabletop between them. The temperature there was the same as elsewhere—cool. But he felt there should be something there. Not that there already was—but that there was about to be.

As he withdrew his hand, his fingertips brushed the edge of the silver crystal. The surface of the crystal lit up for an instant, not because of his touch—but because the moonlight outside happened to pass through its facet at that exact angle, projecting a spot of light onto the wall. The shape of that light spot was not a dot. It was an arrow. Pointing in the direction of his notebook.

Lin Mo looked at that projected arrow and remained silent in the darkness for a long time. Then he lit the oil lamp. Under the lamplight, the crystal returned to its ordinary translucent state, and the arrow on the wall disappeared. But he knew how to use it—not by machine reading, not by psionic activation, but by light. A specific angle, a specific light—and it would tell you where.

He held the crystal up to the oil lamp and adjusted the angle a few times, but the arrow didn't appear again. The angle of the moonlight was the specific wavelength that triggered it. He wrote a line in his notebook: Moonlight trigger. He found the corresponding page and confirmed that what was recorded on that page were the coordinates of the metal wall Old Tom had mentioned.

*A silver crystal shimmered with faint light under the oil lamp,*

*—Late at night, Lin Mo placed the crystal and the pendant side by side.*

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Lin Mo placed the silver crystal on the windowsill, waiting for the moonlight to move across that angle. His notebook was open to the page with the coordinates of the metal wall. If the crystal's direction was true—then what lay behind that door had been waiting for him for more than a thousand years.