37: Chapter 37 The Lords of Chaos unite, their armies pressing in.

Blackstone Town was targeted once again.

The first reconnaissance flight of the raven reconnaissance drone sent back an ominous message. As Marcus sat in the co-pilot's seat, using that old communication device to scan the surrounding Warp wave signals, he captured a set of abnormal communication patterns—not a single Chaos warband frequency, but multiple different Chaos markers appearing within the communications of the same area. Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle—their signals intertwined in the same sector into a chaotic yet coordinated metronome. This was no coincidence.

As Marcus sat in the co-pilot's seat, using that old communication device to scan the surrounding Warp wave signals, he captured a set of abnormal communication patterns—not a single Chaos warband frequency, but multiple different Chaos markers appearing simultaneously within the communications of the same area.

Lin Mo stood in the Intelligence Center, the reconnaissance data sent back by the Raven, an old map of the Eastern Star Sector, and the defensive positions marked in charcoal by Locke spread out before him. He knew three things: First, a large number of Chaos Forces were moving toward Hope Star. Second, they were not a single unit—at least several forces, including Chaos Space Marine warbands and Possessed Warbands, were converging from different directions. Third, there was only one possibility in this situation—a will stronger than each of them individually was coordinating this operation, forcing these Chaos Forces, who were normally hostile toward each other, to temporarily set aside their differences and point their blades in the same direction.

While Alice Vian was taking inventory in the Medical Station, she felt a vibration pressing in from the depths of the Warp—not heard through her ears, but sensed through her psychic perception. Her fingers paused on a roll of bandages for a moment, then she continued the inventory as if nothing had happened. She didn't tell anyone what she saw in that instant—four pillars of light shooting into the center of the same darkness from four different directions.

Her fingers paused on a roll of bandages for a few seconds. In those seconds, her psychic perception captured a vision: four pillars of light shooting into the center of the same darkness from four directions. When she released the roll of bandages, her expression was as calm as if nothing had happened. But she placed that roll of bandages on the top shelf—the spot usually reserved for the most urgently needed supplies.

[Uncertain.] Lin Mo replied without looking back, [But moving forward is always better than waiting to die.]

The chaos attention level soared from sixty-eight to seventy-eight. Locke raised the garrison's alert level to the highest grade. Old Tom adjusted the rotation speed of the forge hammer to its limit. Lin Mo stood before the wall of the Intelligence Center, facing the map that was becoming increasingly crowded with markings, and made an estimate—this might be the most severe test Blackstone Town had faced since its founding. For perhaps the first time, he would not place all his hopes on the word "defend." He needed to find a path that wasn't just "waiting for them to attack" before the storm arrived.

Four pillars of light pierced into the same darkness from four directions,

The roll of bandages in the Medical Station stopped rolling under her fingers.

Lin Mo looked away from the map and glanced out the window. Under the grayish-purple sky, the chimneys of the Arsenal were still quietly emitting smoke. Every day he spent on this planet told him the same truth: in this universe, there are no permanent victories, only a defense that never slackens every single day.

She didn't tell anyone what she saw.

Some wars are not discovered with the eyes—

They are sensed through the marrow of one's psychic essence.

The raven reconnaissance drone sent back a set of data during its first long-range cruise that silenced the entire Intelligence Center. The images showed that the movement of the Chaos Forces was not a scattered migration—it was a structured, organized assembly with a clear direction. Lin Mo cross-referenced that data with all Chaos activity records from recent months and discovered a disturbing pattern: Chaos was deliberately avoiding the patrol routes of the Ultramarines and only attacking unprotected civilian targets. They were learning and adapting.

Locke stood before the data slate for a long time before saying, "These things—they are getting smarter." This sentence was more unsettling than any description of a Chaos threat. If Chaos could learn, it meant the experience from every battle would be absorbed by the enemy. The next battle would only be harder.

The threat assessment report on the Union of Chaos Lords sat on Lin Mo's desk for two full days. During those two days, he cross-checked every line of data in the report at least three times—confirming the reliability of the intelligence sources, the movement speed of the Chaos Forces, and the maximum hold-out time for Blackstone Town's existing defensive forces. Locke did not rush him during these two days—he knew what Lin Mo was doing, for he was doing the same: repeatedly simulating every possible course the battle might take in his mind.

On the evening of the second day, Lin Mo closed the report and walked to the window. He didn't tell anyone what conclusion he had reached. However, he rearranged several matters that night: he changed the blacksmith shop's production schedule from one shift to two, had the female dependents build a second supply route behind the town, and ordered the relocation of some elderly and weak personnel to a safer area further back. These actions were his conclusion—preparing for the worst-case scenario.

[According to the map, three days.]

The rhythmic pounding of the Arsenal's steam forge hammer echoed from a distance. Each strike came at a fixed interval—thump—thump—thump—like a heart that never stopped, pumping blood for the entire town. Lin Mo listened to that sound in the Intelligence Center, using it to calibrate his own breathing rhythm. He needed to ensure his judgment wouldn't be dulled by fatigue or overlook small, potentially fatal pieces of information due to the pressure of time.

Locke believed in one thing: there are no perfect plans on the battlefield, only perfect habits. Therefore, 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 lax, and most want to give up. What Locke had to ensure was that when that moment came, everyone in Blackstone Town would have bodies that moved faster than their minds.

—Alice Vian's fragmented thoughts upon sensing the Union of Chaos Lords

The morning light pierced through the windows of the Intelligence Center, casting a long, thin golden speck on the desk. Lin Mo rubbed his eyes and closed the last document before him. A new day had begun, and he had more to do.

Wang Defu took a fall on the ridge of the field that morning. It wasn't because the ground was slippery—it was because his knees finally couldn't hold out anymore. Knees that had farmed for a lifetime had accelerated their wear under Hope Star's 1.3x gravity. He sat on the ridge rubbing his knees for a while, then climbed up on his own and continued to bend over and work.

Lin Mo saw this scene from a distance. He didn't walk over—he knew that if he did, Wang Defu would immediately stand straight, deny he had fallen, and work even harder. That was the stubbornness of the older generation, and his way of respecting that stubbornness was to pretend he hadn't seen it.

But that afternoon, he arranged for Old Tom to build a section of wooden boardwalk on the ridge Wang Defu often walked. Wang Defu didn't say anything when he saw the boardwalk the next day, but his steps were noticeably lighter when he walked on it.

Wang Defu found Lin Mo that evening. The old man hesitated at the door for a moment before speaking: "I want to teach my farming experience to the newcomers." He rubbed the soil on his hands as he spoke, his tone filled with an unease—not a fear of being rejected, but a fear that what he did wasn't important enough. Lin Mo looked at him and said seriously, "What you teach is more important than anything I can teach. I can teach them how to fight—you teach them how to survive." Wang Defu fell silent for a few seconds after hearing this, then nodded and turned back toward the fields. His step was much lighter than when he arrived—as if he had confirmed that his position wouldn't be pushed away just because more people had arrived.

Wang Defu's knees had actually been hurting for a long time. He never mentioned it to anyone—not because he was stubborn, but because at this age, pain was a habit. For someone who had farmed their whole life, there wasn't a part of their body that wasn't scarred. What did a knee matter?

But the fall that morning made him realize his knees had reached the point where he "couldn't just rely on habit to pull through." While he sat on the ridge rubbing his knees, Alice Vian walked over. She didn't ask if he needed help—she simply knelt down and pressed several acupoints around his knee with her fingers.

Wang Defu felt a wave of soreness and numbness. Then heat. Then pain. Then the pain vanished.

"You..." He looked at Alice Vian.

"It's temporary," Alice Vian said. "The wear on your knees is too severe; I can only help alleviate it for a while. To truly cure it, you need the emperors gene repair fluid from that underground shelter."

Wang Defu was silent for a few seconds. Then he smiled—his wrinkles bunching together like parched earth. "That stuff... I'll go get it when I can move again."

Alice Vian looked at him. Then she did something she rarely did—she smiled. Not a grin, not a bitter laugh, but a micro-reaction from deep within, born of being touched.

When he closed his notebook, that poem surfaced in his mind again—not his own memory, but one of the countless fragments the golden figure had stuffed into his head one late night:

["Searching for her thousands of times in the crowd, suddenly looking back, that person is there, where the lanterns are dim."]

—Xin Qiji, "The Jade Table: The Lantern Festival." He didn't know why the Emperor had placed this line of poetry alongside those tactical data points, but he vaguely felt that these two things were equally important to him.

Wang Defu saw that smile. He said nothing, just brushed the dirt off his knees, stood up, and continued toward the fields. But his pace was a bit slower than before—not because of pain, but because when someone looked at his knees, they used the look of "how to help you" instead of "why haven't you collapsed yet."