22: Chapter 21 Chaotic Rift

Lin Mo stood in the square of the expanded Blackstone Town, facing one hundred and twenty fully armed garrison soldiers.

This was the Expeditionary Force that Locke had handpicked from three hundred men—everyone had experienced at least two real battles, and each was issued a flintlock musket and a melee weapon.

The ammunition carried was twice the standard amount.

The morning mist had not yet dissipated, and the torches in the square burned into blurry halos in the grey-white air.

Locke stood at the very front of the formation, the new handle of his battle axe reflecting a rough, unpolished wood color in the morning light.

He silently patrolled the formation without giving a pre-battle speech—he simply paused in front of each soldier, checking if their musket barrels were clean and their ammunition pouches were fastened tight.

When he reached the third row, he reached out to straighten the crooked belt of a young soldier, said nothing, and continued walking.

The morning mist was mingled with the scent of soot and soil unique to Blackstone Town.

No one spoke; only the torches crackled in the damp air.

One hundred and twenty men stood there like one hundred and twenty silent stone statues.

It was not that they were not nervous—they simply pressed their nervousness beneath the stocks of their flintlocks and into the sheaths of the daggers at their waists.

The objective of the expedition was to the north: there lay an area occupied by scattered Chaos forces, harboring a Chaos stronghold that had long threatened the supply lines of the border settlements.

Cassius had mentioned this stronghold in the notes of a supply report three months ago—it was entrenched in an abandoned Mining City, with about several hundred Chaos cultists and a small number of enchanted units.

If it were not removed, Lin Mo's plans would sooner or later collide with this stumbling block while expanding trade routes.

Before the unit departed, Alice found Lin Mo and handed him a small cloth bag—inside were twelve sealed glass tubes, each containing a pale silver liquid:

"High-concentration Psyker stabilizer. If you are severely injured and cannot be saved, inject one; it will hold you for about five hours until you reach a proper medical facility."

When Lin Mo took the cloth bag, he noticed that the suppression ring on her wrist seemed to have loosened slightly recently—he did not ask.

He tied the cloth bag to his belt, right where his hand could most easily reach it.

Alice watched him tie it, opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end, only said three words: "Come back alive."

After speaking, she did not wait for Lin Mo to answer, turned around, and walked under the canopy of the medical station.

The Expeditionary Force marched for about a week before reaching the outskirts of the Mining City.

Along the way, they crossed three low mountain ridges and a dry riverbed; the vegetation along the route became increasingly sparse, until only grey-brown rocks and weathered, cracked earth remained.

From a distance, the city looked like a metallic beast crouching on the hillside, its rusted shell riddled with holes, and several twisted chimneys pointing toward the sky like broken antennae.

There was a faint scent of sulfur in the air—not gunpowder, but the scent of something deep underground being unearthed.

The scouts sent by Locke reported: there were over four hundred Chaos cultists in the city, equipped with simple firearms and a small amount of captured Imperial weapons.

No Chaos Space Marines were found, but there was a Chaos Psyker in command—a traitorous Imperial Psyker, of unknown rank.

The starlight from afar shone on these ruins, casting mottled shadows.

He did not know how long he had been on this planet—time had lost its meaning in the flames of war, leaving only instinct: survive today.

Four hundred against one hundred and twenty. And there was a Psyker on the other side. Locke looked at Lin Mo, waiting for him to make a decision.

He did not answer immediately. He squatted down and used a twig to draw the outline of the Mining City on the muddy ground, marking every firing point reported by the scouts.

The firing points were distributed quite evenly—three on the east, two on the west, five on the front, and only one on the north, which was positioned quite perfunctorily.

That was a deliberately left gap, luring the attacking force to come from the north.

But he also knew that sometimes the most obvious trap was actually the path most easily turned to one's own advantage.

He looked for a long time, then crossed out the original plan for a frontal assault, and redrew an arc—bypassing the frontal defense line to cut in from the abandoned transport tunnel on the north side of the Mining City.

He organized the twenty most elite men into a decapitation squad—the goal was for him to lead the team to penetrate the defense line while the main force engaged, and directly eliminate that Chaos Psyker.

Locke looked at the arc, was silent for a few seconds, and then said: "If we take the north tunnel, our supplies won't keep up."

Lin Mo said: "That is why we must finish it before the supplies run out."

Locke did not ask again. He knew that Lin Mo was not talking about "what if we don't finish"—he never intended not to finish.

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 away from Earth, making gunpowder with high school chemistry knowledge, building guns with university club experience, and planning a village's defense system with product manager logic—he would definitely have thought that person was crazy.

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

At dawn, Lin Mo gave the order to attack.

The Expeditionary Force set out at dawn, one hundred and twenty men, three days of rations,

The night before the Expeditionary Force set out, Lin Mo went to the Intelligence Center alone.

He stood before the map of the Eastern Star Sector for a long time.

He had drawn a circle around the location of Blackstone Town with a charcoal pencil—not because he wanted to remember it, but because he wanted to confirm it was still there.

Leaving Blackstone Town for the expedition was the first time since he transmigrated that he had voluntarily left the safety range of this village.

He was not afraid of fighting—he was afraid that something might happen here while he was away.

The oil lamp in the Intelligence Center stretched his shadow very long, casting it into the projection of the star map on the wall.

He traced the expedition route he had drawn with his finger—north from Blackstone Town, bypassing the hilly area marked as "Danger Zone", and then turning east into the back of the Mining City.

Every step seemed very short on paper, but he knew that every step on the ground meant the distance between life and death.

He took the octagram pendant out of his pocket and placed it next to the location of Blackstone Town on the map.

The pendant gleamed with a dull light under the oil lamp.

He looked at the pendant, then at the surrounding blank areas on the map—those grey zones that the Empire had not marked, Chaos had not tagged, and no one claimed sovereignty over.

His expedition target was in one of them.

He put away the pendant, blew out the oil lamp, and stood in the darkness for a while before walking out.

When Lin Mo stood in the square facing the one hundred and twenty expedition members, what he was thinking about was not the odds of this expedition, but another matter—since his transmigration, he had not left the area within a day's travel of Blackstone Village.

This time, he was going very far away.

He took the octagram pendant from his pocket, gripped it, released it, and then said one word to Locke: "Move."

When the Expeditionary Force set out, Alice stood at the door of the medical station watching the unit leave.

She did not wave, did not speak, just stood there watching Lin Mo's back at the end of the formation get smaller and smaller.

She stood for a long time, until the last figure of the unit disappeared behind the hills, before turning and walking back into the medical station.

The bag of Psyker stabilizer on the table in the dispensing room was missing one tube—Lin Mo had taken it.

Lin Mo did not fall asleep on the first night of the expedition.

He sat by the campfire, looking at the faces of the expedition members in the firelight.

Some were cleaning their musket barrels, some were whittling a piece of wood with a small knife, some were leaning against rocks with their eyes closed but their eyelids still twitching slightly—no one was truly asleep.

Locke returned from patrolling the other end of the unit, sat down beside him, and handed him a piece of hard military ration.

Lin Mo took it, bit into it, and chewed for a long time before swallowing.

Locke did not ask him why he was not sleeping—he himself could not sleep before every expedition.

The campfire crackled in the night wind, and the rustling sound of nocturnal animals passing through the bushes came from the distant wilderness.

The starry sky overhead was much brighter than what could be seen from Blackstone Town—because there were no lights, no obstructions, and because this place was further from civilization and closer to the stars.

Locke threw a piece of dead branch into the fire, watching sparks fly up and fall to the ground, extinguishing.

His battle axe was stuck in the dirt beside his hand, its blade reflecting a dull light in the firelight.

After a long silence, he said: "If this trip goes smoothly, no one will dare to bully Blackstone Town in the future."

He did not speak, just continued chewing that military ration.

He knew what Locke meant—if this trip did not go smoothly, there would be no one left to bully Blackstone Town in the future. Because there would be no more "Blackstone Town".

The smoke of the gunpowder had not yet dissipated, and the field of vision was gray and hazy; one could only rely on sound to judge the enemy's position.

Lin Mo did not tell anyone that he had found it.

On the night the granary burned down, what Lin Mo found in the ashes was not grain—it was a charred pendant.

——Lin Mo's Granary Fire Investigation Notes

However, the real threat was not in front—it had always been behind him, just not yet the time for it to appear.

The campfire flickered in the night wind, stretching his shadow very, very long.

He glanced in the direction the unit had departed—those people were advancing in the darkness, every spark of light moving in the same direction.

He did not stand for too long, turned around, and walked back to the Intelligence Center.

[The yellow clouds stretch for a thousand miles, dimming the sun, the north wind blows the wild geese through the swirling snow. Do not worry that there are no friends on the road ahead, for under the heavens, who does not know you?]

——Gao Shi, "Farewell to Dong Da". Memory fragments sealed within the mirror of the emperor surfaced quietly in the darkness.

After the unit departed, Alice returned to the medical station and found something on the dispensing table—the empty shell of the Psyker stabilizer tube she had been looking for that morning.

There was a note stuck to the cap, with only one word on it: Thanks.