29: Chapter 29 Population Surge and Sudden Food Crisis

After news of the expansion spread, three times more people arrived than Lin Mo had expected. Not dozens—hundreds. Exiles, drifters, draft dodgers, and families of retired soldiers forgotten by the Empire in the fringe sectors—they appeared on the outskirts of Blackstone Town dragging all sorts of transport. Most people's first words were: "I heard you can survive here."

The first thing Lin Mo did after receiving the news wasn't to open the granary, but to climb the only watchtower in Blackstone Town. Looking down from the top, the tents on the outskirts had sprouted like mushrooms overnight, stretching for hundreds of meters along the base of the walls. He counted three times—not the tents, but the cooking smoke. Every wisp of smoke represented a struggling family. The wind whipped his coat tails, and in the distance, a few children looked up at him before lowering their heads to continue gnawing on grass roots thinner than a finger. He committed the number to memory: one hundred and seventeen wisps of cooking smoke. One hundred and seventeen families had flooded into Blackstone Town within three days.

A white-haired old man pushed a wheelbarrow carrying his wife, who could no longer walk, and an iron pot. His first words upon seeing Lin Mo weren't to beg for food, but to ask, "Do you take blacksmiths here?" A half-grown youth led a pack beast so thin its ribs were showing, following behind the crowd. He had no family and had traveled alone for an unknown number of days to find this place; upon arrival, he squatted by the earthen wall at the town entrance and stopped moving, as if he had used up all his strength.

Blackstone Town's population surpassed the two thousand mark in just a few dozen days. For a settlement that had just upgraded from a village to a town, this growth rate exceeded the capacity of the infrastructure. Wang Defu's granary hit rock bottom within a few weeks—even with rations compressed to the absolute minimum, the remaining stores were only enough to last less than a month.

The newcomers lived in makeshift tents, shelters made of scrap wood and tarps lined up along the town's perimeter. Every night, the sound of children crying and adults arguing in low voices could be heard—not because of discord, but because it was too crowded. Someone had strung clotheslines between the tents, hung with freshly washed, tattered clothes; water droplets left dark marks on the cracked earth. A retired soldier's family had built a simple stove out of stones in front of their tent, smoky fire boiling the last handful of stored grain into a pot of clear soup. When Lin Mo passed by, the veteran was distributing the soup to two children; the portion each received was only enough to cover the bottom of the bowl.

On the night the population broke two thousand, Lin Mo did one thing. He took out the complete inventory of Blackstone Town's resources and estimated that a full-speed supply line could shorten the grain delivery cycle to one-third of the original time. Combined with the labor exchange system using work-point vouchers, the food shortage could be alleviated within two weeks. He posted the estimates on the door of the Town Hall. As he did, a bit of wet paste trickled down from the edge of the paper; he wiped it away with the back of his hand and stood at the door looking at the paper for a moment. There weren't many words on the paper, but every figure was the result of him recalculating three times. Lin Mo stood at the granary door, looking at the rows of sacks that had reached the bottom. The sacks were stacked high, but when touched—most were soft, with less than a third truly full. Wang Defu stood beside him and said after a long silence: "I've farmed all my life and never seen anything like this—the crops aren't even in the ground, and the people have arrived several times over." Wang Defu's voice was calm, but after speaking, he pinched the edge of a sack with his fingers, a habitual movement of an old farmer estimating a harvest—even when everything before him was empty. He didn't answer. He recalculated every number on the resource list in his mind, confirming that even if all reserves were pushed to the limit, a gap still existed. Then he went to find Marcus. Marcus was sharpening a knife in a corner of the Arsenal's backyard. The blade made a steady rasping sound on the whetstone; he didn't look up, but his sharpening slowed—he knew the person coming was Lin Mo. Lin Mo placed a slip of paper on the toolbox next to him. On the slip was a coordinate—the location of a Hope Star abandoned communication station. Lin Mo said, "I am officially hiring you now. Your mission is to find that communication station and see if there's anything left inside that can be used." Marcus stopped sharpening. He picked up the slip, looked at it, and put it back down.

He didn't say "okay," nor did he say "I won't go." He simply folded the paper carefully and put it into an inner pocket—placing it together with the discharge certificate he had kept from his service in the Empire. That was the first time on this planet he had been hired as a useful person—not a handout of food for a survivor, but a formal mission with coordinates and a meal.

*The people have come, the grain is gone,*

*Wang Defu's abacus beads are clicking so fast that sparks are flying.*

*—Record by Lin Mo, sitting on the threshold of the half-empty granary*

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The night wind blew from the north, carrying the characteristic sulfur scent of the deep ore veins mixed with the smell of wood smoke from cooking fires; it smelled like a unique, somewhat unsettling dinner aroma belonging only to this world.

Lin Mo stood on the wall and watched the distant horizon for a while. Just this afternoon, Old Zhou—a hunter who set traps in the northern mountains and forests year-round—brought back a piece of news: he had discovered giant footprints in a mountain valley three days' journey north of the town. The distance between each footprint exceeded two meters, unlike any creature he knew. Old Zhou said he had lived on the border for most of his life and had never seen such footprints; when he said the words "never seen," his voice dropped very low, as if he were afraid of being heard by something. Chaos would not stop because of the giant footprints Old Zhou saw. But at least—he knew where they were coming from. The direction was clear; the rest was just a matter of time.

"[What is this thing?]" Someone poked the metal fragments on the ground with a gun barrel.

"[Don't touch it,]" Lin Mo stopped him. "[It might be a chaos mark.]"

On the night the food crisis was at its worst, Lin Mo made the most difficult decision since his transmigration—rationing. Changing from two meals a day to one, with each portion reduced by a third. The night this decision was posted on the bulletin board, a line for grain formed at the door of Wang Defu's granary. No one caused trouble. No one complained. Every person who came to receive food fell silent as they took that small bag of wheat—they knew this wasn't Lin Mo's fault; this was the norm for this land. The line was long, but not a single person cut in. An old man in a tattered military uniform stood at the end of the line, his posture straight—the kind of posture that wouldn't bend even on an empty stomach.

Lin Mo stood in the shadows of the granary, watching the line move slowly. A woman holding a child didn't leave immediately after receiving her grain; she stood at the granary door for a few seconds and then bowed to Wang Defu. Not to him—but to the old man who had even shared his own stored grain with everyone. Wang Defu didn't look at her, keeping his head down as he continued to scoop wheat, but his hand shook more than before. After that bow, another layer of silence was added to the line—not a silence of despair, but one where everyone knew this winter would not be easy, yet no one intended to give up.

On the night the notice of reduced food rations was posted, there was a knock on the door while Lin Mo was processing documents in the Intelligence Center. The knock was light, as if the person had hesitated for a long time before deciding. Opening the door, he saw a young woman holding a child. She wore a faded coarse cloth garment with frayed cuffs. She wasn't there to complain about the insufficient rations—she held a small cloth bag containing about a few catties of wheat. "My man didn't come back from that battle at Mining City. I can't eat this much alone." She placed the cloth bag on the threshold, looked down at the child in her arms, and then turned to leave. The child had fallen asleep on her shoulder, oblivious to the small cloth bag that held nearly half of their family's possessions.

Lin Mo stood at the door, watching the cloth bag and the woman's receding back in the night. Her figure became increasingly blurred at the edge of the oil lamp's glow, finally merging into the darkness. He didn't call out to her. When the granary was nearly empty, a woman who had just lost her husband had delivered her saved rations to his door. He lifted the bag of wheat and walked back inside, finding it heavier than it looked—the woman's "I can't eat this much" was a lie; she had likely packed more than half of her stored grain into this bag. He added it to the supplement section of the rationing list. Not as a handout—but as a debt to be remembered. He turned to the last page of his notebook and wrote a line: Debt—Anonymous Woman, one bag of wheat. After writing, he paused and added a date under the line.

*—Self-Check System · Automatic Supplemental Entry*

The night grew deep. The lights of Blackstone Town went out one by one, leaving only the torches on the watchtowers swaying in the wind. He stood by the window for a while, then returned to his desk to continue writing his plan.

*["The sounds of flutes and drums follow as the Spring Festival approaches; the simple dress and headgear retain the ancient customs.

From now on, if I am allowed to enjoy the moonlight at leisure, I shall lean on my staff and knock on your door at any hour of the night."]*

*—Lu You, "A Visit to Shanxi Village." A memory fragment sealed within the mirror of the emperor quietly surfaced in the darkness.*

Among the latest batch of refugees was a child who said something during registration that stunned Wang Defu: "I've seen that glowing wall. It's to the north, beneath a burnt forest."