27: Chapter 27 The Entrance to the Underground Shelter: The Empress's Secret Revealed

The metal wall on the North Mountain Hills lit up on its own one early morning. Lin Mo saw it from the training ground—a faint flash of light pulsed from the direction of the distant hills, like a silent flare rising on the horizon, vanishing after a few seconds. He didn't lead a team to investigate immediately, but first checked the chaos attention level: forty-eight, stable. It wasn't Chaos activity. That light had come from deep underground.

It wasn't Lin Mo who touched it. It was Alice. She had followed Lin Mo's team to the North Mountain Hills to collect a sample of moss said to be useful for wound disinfection—she had read about this moss in a fragment of an Imperial Herbal Manual while searching her memories, which stated that crushing it and applying it to a wound could suppress infection, making it the most accessible substitute on a frontier planet lacking medicine. She stopped as they passed the abandoned mine pit, saying, "Something down there is calling me."

Lin Mo glanced at her. He didn't ask "Are you sure?"—he could tell from her expression that she wasn't just speaking casually; she was never that kind of person. He took Locke and Old Tom to re-excavate the pit. As dirt and gravel were turned up from the mouth of the pit, Locke dug continuously with his shovel, sweat dripping from his brow into the mud. Old Tom crouched at the edge of the pit, striking the ground with a hammer every few shovelfuls to listen for echoes and judge if there were any hollows below. Halfway through, the shovel hit metal—not ordinary metal, but an alloy that sparked against the edge of the shovel without leaving a single scratch on its surface. Old Tom crouched down and brushed away the loose soil with his palm, revealing a corner of the wall. He was silent for a few seconds before saying something Lin Mo rarely heard from him: "This isn't Imperial."

As the metal wall was exposed to the morning light, the patterns on it—which Lin Mo couldn't understand—were flowing. It wasn't mechanical movement, but a trajectory of light slowly crawling across the metal surface, like sap flowing through branches or some sleeping creature adjusting its breathing rhythm. When Alice approached, the speed of those flowing lights suddenly quickened, as if her proximity had activated some sensing mechanism. The suppression ring on her wrist began to heat up—not scalding, but a warmth above body temperature, as if something inside the ring was responding to a signal. She looked down at the ring and did not retreat.

The moment her fingers touched the metal surface, all the patterns on the wall lit up simultaneously.

Earth and stones rustled down from the surroundings.

Alice's touch didn't feel like cold metal—what she felt was a warm surface that seemed to be breathing. A voice exploded within her psionic perception, not through her ears, but appearing directly in her mind—low, calm, and devoid of any emotional fluctuation, like a machine that had waited in the darkness for a long time finally being plugged into power.

Wind whistled through the ruins with a low sob, as if something massive were breathing underground. He told himself it was just the wind. But in the warhammer 40k universe, the sound of the wind was never just the wind.

That voice was outside the range of what Lin Mo could hear. He saw Alice's body stiffen slightly the moment the voice came, and then she pulled her hand back as if burned. When she turned to look at him, her face was pale—not from fear, but because the information contained in that sentence was too vast for her to digest in a few seconds.

"Psionic signature identified. Matches Emperors Genetic Archive Batch 17. Match degree: 97%. Access permissions: Partially granted."

The light on the wall stopped at a certain threshold, not completely extinguishing but no longer moving. She understood the content of those words—Emperors Genetic Archive, Batch 17, 97% match. Each of these terms was like a nail driven into her cognitive framework. She was an Imperial Psyker, her suppression ring had a serial number, and her number matched this wall's identification system—she didn't dare think further.

Locke stood at the mouth of the pit, gripping his battle-axe, without saying a word the entire time. He didn't understand how the wall lit up or what those flowing lights meant—but he understood the look Lin Mo and Alice exchanged. It wasn't the look of having found an answer. It was the look of having discovered a much larger problem—they thought excavating this wall would provide answers, but before the wall even opened, it had already asked them a question: Who are you, and by what right do you stand here?

The door deep underground recognized her fingerprints,

Yet she didn't recognize the pair of rings on her own wrists.

—Alice, fragmented thoughts on the way back to Blackstone Town

34→

35→It was already dark by the time they returned to Blackstone Town. The oil lamps in the square had just been lit, and a few villagers were gathered around the well drawing water. Before parting with Locke at the Town Hall entrance, Lin Mo said, "Don't spread word of what happened today yet." Locke nodded, put his shovel back in the tool shed, and went to the training ground for extra practice—this was his usual way of dealing with stress.

After Alice retracted her hand from the metal wall, a lingering sensation of warmth remained on her fingertips—unlike metal, more like skin. The amount of information she had received in that instant was overwhelming: Emperors Genetic Archive, Batch 17, Access permissions partially granted—each of these terms was like a nail driven into her cognitive framework. She was an Imperial Psyker, her suppression ring had a serial number, and her number matched this wall's identification system—she didn't dare think further.

He saw her face turn pale in that instant. He didn't press her. He merely stopped Locke with a look before he could speak. Some things needed to be discussed after the person involved was ready. All he could do now was stand by Alice and confirm she was still standing. She was still standing. That was enough.

The team remained very silent on the way back to Blackstone Town. No one asked about the wall—it wasn't that they didn't want to know, but everyone felt there was a connection between the wall and Alice that they shouldn't interfere with. Locke walked at the front of the group, his shovel still shouldered. Old Tom walked in the middle, occasionally striking a roadside stone with his hammer to listen for the echo—a professional habit of an old blacksmith. Lin Mo and Alice walked at the rear, with about two paces between them.

Neither of them spoke.

After walking for about twenty minutes, Alice suddenly spoke softly, "What are you thinking about?"

"Thinking about why that wall recognized you." He didn't beat around the bush.

"I'm thinking about it too."

"Thought of anything?"

She shook her head. Then, after a moment of silence, she said something Lin Mo hadn't expected: "But one thing is strange—when I touched that wall, it felt like it wasn't my first time here."

"What do you mean?"

"It's like... you walk into a room you've never been to before, but the smell in the air is familiar. I can't explain it, I just feel like I've been here. Maybe not in this life."

Lin Mo glanced at her. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the canopy, falling on her profile; a strand of silver hair was lifted by the wind and then fell back. Her expression was calm, but he saw something he recognized in her eyes—the kind of quietness that appears in someone's eyes when they realize they might not be who they thought they were.

He wanted to say something, but in the end, he simply slowed his pace a little so she wouldn't have to walk so fast to keep up. The two-pace distance between them gradually shortened over the rest of the way. Not physically—but in a way only they could perceive, something that didn't require words.

Alice didn't sleep that night. She sat on a chair in the medical station, holding the silver crystal—Lin Mo had left it with her. The surface of the crystal gave off a very faint glow in the moonlight, its internal patterns moving slowly like something alive. She tried pressing the crystal to her forehead—nothing happened. It wasn't that the method was wrong, but the timing. Everything that had happened in the mine pit required a more stable state than she was currently in to be replicated. She put the crystal back in its box and locked it.

When she lay down, the feel of the new suppression ring on her wrist against her skin was the same as the old one—cold, tight, like a constant hand gripping her wrist. She closed her eyes and only fell asleep after a long time. In her dream, she stood before a silver-gray metal door engraved with a line of high gothic, which she found she could read without needing a translation: Human Survival Archive · Batch 17 · Operator Authentication Terminal. She reached out to touch it—but the moment before her fingertips made contact, the words suddenly changed. They were no longer in high gothic, but had become the Simplified Chinese she had seen on Earth before her transmigration: Are you ready to know the answer? She froze. Then she woke up. The ceiling was wooden, the ceiling of the Blackstone Town medical station. Her hand was still suspended in mid-air, fingers slightly spread, as if reaching for something still half a meter away. She withdrew it and clenched it tight under the covers.

—Self-check System · Automatic Supplementary Recording

On the other side of the sea of stars, a pitch-black ship was changing course. Its destination—was exactly the same as the direction he was in.

["In these things there is a true meaning, but when I try to express it, I forget the words."]

—Tao Yuanming, "Drinking Wine". Memory fragment of the mirror of the emperor