31: Chapter 31 Black Legion Outpost

The Black Legion's outpost arrived sooner than Lin Mo had anticipated.

After that gray-white blade of grass was placed on the table in the Intelligence Center by Locke, a few days later, the border patrol brought back more specific intelligence: a Chaos infantry unit of about a hundred men was moving toward Blackstone Town. Their speed wasn't fast, but their route was straight—they had a clear destination. Locke marked their trajectory on the sand table: an almost straight line cutting through the hills, bypassing the marshlands, and pointing toward the northwestern defense line of Blackstone Town. This wasn't scouting—this was navigation.

Locke stood at the edge of the sand table, his forearm still wrapped in bandages from a scrape during yesterday's training. He traced the line again on the sand table with his index finger, confirming he hadn't marked it incorrectly. Then he looked up at Lin Mo: "Over a hundred men, carrying heavy weapons. Not scouts—this is a vanguard."

The chaos attention level climbed from fifty-five to sixty-three in a few weeks. Lin Mo called Alice to the Intelligence Center and showed her the blade of grass. Alice didn't touch it; she only stepped closer and frowned—she could sense the lingering Chaos energy within the fibers of the leaf. It was a trace amount of Warp contamination, like an invisible film of oil clinging to the dead plant tissue. She said that to leave such a residue, it had to be at least a unit empowered by Warp energy—not ordinary Chaos cultists, but Enchanted Warrior. She explained this in a tone no different from her usual tone when diagnosing a patient—calm, certain, as if stating a conclusion she had long known. He didn't show a sense of urgency, but he accelerated his decision-making pace.

Lin Mo plotted the numerical changes as a curve on a coordinate axis—it wasn't a steady climb, but an accelerating rise. This meant the gathering speed of the Chaos forces was increasing. It wasn't just that they were strong; they were becoming stronger.

Lin Mo stood by the window of the Intelligence Center, looking toward the Chaos outpost under the distant gray canopy. He thought of a notion he had never shared with anyone—Chaos was terrifying not because it was powerful, but because it was once part of humanity. Every Chaos cultist, before their fall, was once someone's father, mother, or child. They weren't enemies from the outside—they were wounds rotting from within. This was the most terrifying thing about this universe: the greatest threat was never outside the walls, but in every heart that could be shaken.

Lin Mo stood before the sand table for a moment, then issued a series of commands: Locke was to reinforce the northwestern defense line, Old Tom was to speed up ammunition production, and Marcus was to set out early for the abandoned communication station to find useful intelligence. He himself sat in the Intelligence Center, with the map of the Eastern Star Sector spread out before him. His finger drew a line across the blank areas of the east—the end of that line was not Hope Star. He knew that if Blackstone Town could survive this wave, the next battlefield would not be here.

Locke stayed behind after the meeting. He asked Lin Mo to confirm one thing: if they truly encountered Enchanted Warrior, could the garrison's flintlock rifles cause effective damage? Lin Mo's answer was: a close-range volley could, but a single shot would not. Locke nodded after hearing this, asked no more, and turned to leave. He had the information he needed—when he returned, he raised the garrison's firing training standard from "hitting the torso" to "hitting the head and neck," and shortened the firing distance by nearly half. This meant the garrison would be fighting much closer to the line of casualties. But Locke didn't tell the soldiers about the Enchanted Warrior. He simply set up a few more rows of head-sized targets on the training ground.

The blade of grass was dead, yet it was still burning.

Lin Mo looked away from the map and glanced out the window. Under the gray-purple canopy, the chimneys of the Arsenal were still quietly puffing smoke. Every day he spent on this planet taught him the same lesson: in this universe, there are no permanent victories, only a defense that never slackens.

The ground beneath his feet was heating up.

Some choose to wait for the storm to pass—

—Lin Mo: Key defensive points recorded after receiving movements of the Black Legion

When Lin Mo marked the coordinates of the Black Legion vanguard on the map, his finger lingered on one point for a particularly long time. That point fell exactly in the North Mountain Hills area mentioned by Old Tom—the direction of that metal wall. He wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or a pattern. He drew a question mark next to that point and continued marking the remaining coordinates.

The night wind blew again. This gust was cooler than the last, carrying a scent of mixed metal and earth. He pulled his coarse cloth coat tighter—given to him by the villagers, it was much warmer than the T-shirt he wore when he transmigrated.

Locke leaned halfway into the doorway just as Lin Mo was marking the last point. He didn't ask for details—he knew the situation just by looking at Lin Mo's expression. Before turning to leave, he said, "I'll go check in with the garrison." No further explanation was needed. The operation of Blackstone Town had formed a silent understanding—Lin Mo was responsible for deciding the direction, and Locke was responsible for taking action.

On the coordinate map of the Black Legion vanguard, the marked points were like a string of gravel scattered across a star chart—seemingly random, but Lin Mo noticed a certain pattern in the spacing between them. The distance between each point was roughly equal, not a characteristic of natural distribution. He drew an extension line from the front of this equidistant line, pointing toward an unmarked area. If his hypothesis was correct, the end of that line was the true destination of the Black Legion vanguard—not Blackstone Town, but something more important behind it.

It was nearly dark when he put down his pen. Locke poked his head in the door and asked if he wanted to eat. Lin Mo said yes, and as he stood up, he reached out and flipped the coordinate map over—until it was confirmed, he didn't want anyone to see that extension line. He didn't mention it at the dinner table. After eating, he returned to the Intelligence Center, trimmed the oil lamp a bit brighter, and stared at the northern topographical map spread out on the table for a long time.

The steam forge hammers of the Arsenal sent rhythmic thuds from a distance. Each strike came at a fixed interval—thump—thump—thump—like an unceasing heart pumping blood for the entire town. Lin Mo listened to that sound in the Intelligence Center, using it to calibrate his own breathing. He needed to ensure his judgment didn't dull from fatigue or overlook small, potentially fatal details due to time pressure.

But at the town council meeting that night, someone openly opposed his judgment for the first time. A representative of the new refugees—a middle-aged man who claimed to have served in the Imperial Guard—pointed at the sand table and said, "The Black Legion's target isn't something behind Blackstone Town. Their target is Blackstone Town itself. Diverting defense forces to the north is the same as handing the town over."

The meeting room was silent for a few seconds. Locke glanced at Lin Mo, waiting for his response.

Lin Mo didn't immediately retort. He looked again at the marks on the sand table—those equidistant points—and then said slowly, "You have a point. But there's a flaw—the advance speed of the Black Legion outpost has suddenly slowed in the last two days. If the target was a border town with less than ten thousand people, they wouldn't need to slow down."

He looked up at the middle-aged man: "They are slowing down, not because they are tired. It's because they are also waiting for someone."

No one in the meeting room spoke. The middle-aged man's lips moved, but he ultimately didn't continue the argument—though the expression on his face still bore traces of being unconvinced. Lin Mo didn't try to convince him. He only needed him to know: not everyone in this room trusted him. But whether they believed him or not wasn't important—what mattered was that people had started thinking.

Locke believed one thing: there are no perfect plans on the battlefield, only perfect habits. So his way of training recruits wasn't to teach them how to execute tactics, but to make their bodies remember what to do even when they were too tired for their brains to function. Changing magazines, crawling forward, judging cover—these actions had to be practiced until they could be done without thinking. Because Chaos won't wait for you to be ready to attack. They will appear at the moment you are most exhausted, most relaxed, and most want to give up. What Locke wanted to ensure was that when that moment arrived, everyone in Blackstone Town would have bodies that moved faster than their minds.

The patrol found a line of poetry written in blood on the back of that gray-white blade of grass—it wasn't written by anyone from Blackstone Town:

"Stars fall into a lightless sea,

Beneath the throne, white bones form the steps."

—Chaos missionary verses found near the Black Legion outpost · Incinerated

—Self-check system · Automatic supplementary record

Late at night, as Lin Mo sat alone in the Intelligence Center, he suddenly remembered a scene from before he transmigrated—at the company's annual meeting, the boss held up a glass of wine and said, "We are a family." That sentence sounded hypocritically laughable at the time, but now, standing on this gray-purple planet, facing a group of people who, like him, didn't know if they would still be alive tomorrow—he suddenly understood the true meaning of those words. "Family" wasn't a slogan; it was the fact that a group of people still chose to walk forward together even when they didn't know if there was a path ahead.

He wrote this thought into his notebook and then closed it. The sound of the patrol's footsteps came from outside—even and steady, like the heartbeat of Blackstone Town.

Meanwhile, in the Black Legion outpost camp dozens of kilometers away, a figure wearing a pig-iron mask sat before a bonfire. Its armor was covered in marks of the chaos eight-pointed star, each groove seeping with a dark red light. On the sand table before it, several black flags were planted—one of which was placed at the location of Blackstone Town.

The voice beneath the mask was hoarse and low: "Let the Enchanted Warrior go first. That Psyker—bring them back alive."

Its finger tapped twice on the sand table, then pointed to the transport route on the northwestern side of Blackstone Town: "They don't have enough bullets. Start with the supply lines."

No one responded, but the footsteps in the camp began to grow dense and rhythmic—like a machine starting up in the darkness.

[Where are the sages of the past? Where are those yet to be born?

Thinking of the vastness of heaven and earth, I am overcome by loneliness and tears.]

—Chen Zi'ang, 'Song of the Youzhou Terrace'. A memory fragment sealed within the mirror of the emperor, quietly surfacing in the darkness.

The masked Commander sat before the bonfire all night. At dawn, it stood up and walked toward a black tent deep within the camp. There was no one in the tent—only a communicator. On the other end of the communicator was Terra.