32: Chapter 32 The Imperial Fleet Arrives on the Border

The Black Legion had not yet arrived, but another set of visitors arrived first.

An Imperial Frigate appeared in orbit over Hope Star—not Cassius's wire-patched communication ship, but a true warship. Its hull was fully painted, its engines stable, and it bore the hull number of the Imperial Navy's Eastern Star Sector sub-fleet. It lingered in orbit for about half a day, during which it sent no communication requests. It simply stayed in orbit, like a bird perched on a branch observing its prey.

It was not Cassius's wire-patched communication ship, but a true warship. Its hull was fully painted, its engines stable, and it bore the hull number of the Imperial Navy's Eastern Star Sector sub-fleet. Lin Mo observed it through a telescope for a long time, waiting—waiting for the ship to open fire. But it did not.

Lin Mo saw its silhouette through the telescope. He counted—at least four broadside gun ports, a level of firepower far beyond the upper limit of what Blackstone Town could resist. If this ship was coming for Blackstone Town, he had no way to stop it.

But after half a day, it released a small landing shuttle. The shuttle landed in an open space on the outskirts of Blackstone Town—not in front of the Town Hall, not in the plaza, but on a patch of wasteland without any markers. Three men in Imperial Navy uniforms stepped out of the shuttle, led by a lieutenant colonel about forty years old, whose face bore an expression Lin Mo knew well, one belonging to Imperial bureaucrats: polite indifference.

While shaking hands, Lin Mo noticed a faint wear mark on the inside of the lieutenant colonel's uniform cuff—the kind of mark left by long-term handling of a standard Navy issue telescope. This man was not a desk-bound civil officer; he was someone who had truly served on the front lines. This discovery did not make Lin Mo lower his guard—but it gave him some confidence in the quality of the conversation: the other party understood the language of the battlefield.

The message he brought was brief: The Imperial Navy's Eastern Star Sector sub-fleet was conducting combat capability assessments of all active settlements in the region. Blackstone Town had been added to the assessment list. "Assessment" meant the Imperium would decide whether the settlement was worth protecting or needed to be "dealt with." The lieutenant colonel sat in the Town Hall for a few hours, observed Lin Mo's management style, and then left with the words, "The assessment results will be delivered within a few weeks," before boarding the shuttle with his men.

Lin Mo stood behind the window, watching the landing shuttle take off. He knew the assessment results were almost meaningless to him—whether the Imperium decided to "protect" or "deal with" them, Blackstone Town wouldn't last until that ship returned. The Chaos Pursuers were less than half a month's journey away. But the Imperial fleet's appearance in orbit at this point was a statement in itself: someone in the upper echelons had noticed him—and that person hadn't decided yet whether they needed an ally or a disposable pawn.

A ship stayed in the sky for half a day,

neither attacking nor communicating.

Lin Mo shifted his gaze from the map and looked out the window. Under the gray-purple canopy of the sky, the Arsenal's chimneys were still quietly emitting smoke. Every day he spent on this planet told him the same truth: in this universe, there are no once-and-for-all victories, only a defense that never slackens for a single day.

It was just watching.

This Imperium is better at waiting than you imagine—

—Notes by Lin Mo after the Imperial Frigate's departure

The visit of the Imperial Frigate broke the surface tranquility Blackstone Village had maintained for a while. The ship stayed in orbit for half a day, not attacking, not communicating, and not leaving—like a bird perched on a branch observing when the snake below would move.

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

Lin Mo observed through the telescope for a long time, confirming that the hull number indeed belonged to the Imperial Navy's Eastern Star Sector sub-fleet. When he lowered the telescope, his fingers were somewhat numb—not from nervousness, but from the realization that he had finally entered a domain he was not yet prepared for. The Imperium had begun to notice him. This was not luck; it was a risk. He needed to prepare for a higher level of attention before that ship sent its observation report back to Terra.

After the Imperial Frigate left orbit, Lin Mo arranged for patrols to strengthen security around the town over the following days, expanding the search area to all surrounding hilly regions—not because he feared the ship would return, but because he feared its appearance would attract those who wanted to see why it had come. Scouts brought back a set of footprints the following evening—human footprints, not left by townspeople. The footprints appeared on a dry riverbed about a day's journey north of the town, walking parallel to the bank for a distance before turning back, as if confirming the direction before returning to report. From then on, Lin Mo began to list the northern riverbed as a priority monitoring route in his regular patrol plans.

The map of the Eastern Star Sector hanging on the wall of the Intelligence Center already had dozens more markings than it did a few months ago. Each marking represented Blackstone Town's expansion trajectory—new outposts, new farms, new settlements. But these expansions also meant a stretched defense radius, meaning more gaps for Chaos to cut into. Lin Mo would sometimes stare at that map for a long time, not at the occupied areas—but at the unmarked blanks. Blanks were not no-man's-lands. Blanks were the unknown. And in this universe, the unknown was rarely empty.

Locke believed in one thing: there are no perfect plans on the battlefield, only perfect habits. Therefore, his way of training recruits was not to teach them how to execute tactics, but to make their bodies remember what to do even when their brains stopped working from exhaustion. Changing magazines, crawling forward, judging cover—these actions had to be practiced until they could be done without thinking. Because Chaos would not wait for you to be ready before attacking. They would appear at the moment you were most tired, most lax, and most wanting to give up. What Locke had to ensure was that when that moment came, for everyone in Blackstone Town, their bodies would be faster than their brains.

—Self-Check System · Automatic Supplemental Record

Late that night, Lin Mo encountered Alice as he walked out of the Intelligence Center. She was coming from the direction of the Medical Station, holding a stack of gauze in her arms, her silver-white hair blowing in the night wind. As they passed each other, she suddenly stopped.

"You didn't eat again today," she said. It wasn't a question.

Lin Mo was stunned for a moment and subconsciously felt his pockets—there was indeed nothing there.

"I had the kitchen save a portion for you," Alice's tone was very flat, as if she were speaking of something as ordinary as the weather. "It's on the stove at the Medical Station, covered with a lid."

She finished speaking and continued walking. Lin Mo stood in place for a while, watching her back—the silver-white ends of her hair swaying slightly in the night wind like a small flag. He turned and walked toward the Medical Station. Under the lid on the stove was a bowl of hot porridge, still steaming. He stood by the stove and finished the bowl of porridge, then washed the bowl and put it back in its original place. The porridge was light, but he drank it very slowly.

Locke had drilled the recruits on the training ground until dark that day. Not because he was harsh—but because he knew that in the eyes of Chaos, there was no such thing as being "ready." It would come when you were at your weakest. His voice was already hoarse, but he didn't drink water—he wanted the recruits to remember one thing: on the battlefield, no one stops just because they are thirsty. When training ended, a young recruit walked up to him, face flushed, and asked, "Captain, can I practice a bit longer?" Locke glanced at him, nodded, and handed him an empty flintlock rifle. "Face that target wall and do the loading action another hundred times." The recruit's hand shook as he took the gun, but his eyes were bright. As Locke turned to walk back, the corner of his mouth moved slightly—not a smile, but a form of confirmation. This kid would do.

Late that night, Lin Mo flipped through transcripts of distress signals from various places in the Town Hall. They weren't signals received by Blackstone Town—they were signals that had never been answered by anyone. Some signals had been sent months ago, and the senders were likely no longer around. He marked the most repeated coordinates from those signal transcripts on the map—some points overlapped, meaning the same place had sent multiple signals to Blackstone Town, but none had received a response.

He drew a circle around each of those repeated coordinates. This meant those people were watching this place—watching Blackstone Town grow from a village to a town in just a few years, from a forgotten location to a coordinate in the Eastern Star Sector. Those circles weren't gratitude—they were the only gesture people from far away could express when they had no way to come together: watching you survive, as if they were surviving themselves.

He hung that map on the wall of the Intelligence Center. In the future, every time a signal was received, whether they could go to the rescue or not, he would mark it on the map. This was a promise—not to the senders of the signals (who were likely gone), but to the living: You have not forgotten us, and we have not forgotten you.

[The moon was bright then, once shining on the colorful clouds returning.]

—Yan Jidao, "Lin Jiang Xian." Memory fragment of the mirror of the emperor