4: Chapter 4 Arming the Villagers

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The clouds on the distant ridge were dyed the color of rust by the last rays of the setting sun, looking like a piece of scorched iron.

Lin Mo drew a circle on the ground.

Inside the circle was Blackstone Village. Outside the circle was the direction the Orks might come from. He squatted on the ground, using a branch to sketch out three defensive lines in the dirt: an outer pit trap zone, a middle-range archery fire zone, and a core wall for melee combat. Each defensive line was marked with estimated engagement distances, garrison numbers, and ammunition reserves.

The villagers gathered in a circle to watch him draw. Some squatted, some stood, and some leaned on their hoes. Luo Ke squatted at the very front, nodding as he watched. Wang Defu stood behind with his hands behind his back, saying nothing.

After finishing the drawing, Lin Mo stood up and clapped the dust off his hands: "This is our defense plan."

He calculated silently in his mind: how many days of food reserves were left, how much ammunition had been consumed, and how many people were needed for the next patrol. These numbers meshed like gears in his head; every number was linked to three others—change one, and everything had to be recalculated.

But Old Yang Tou could do it.

Old Yang Tou's full name was Yang Tiezhu. He was in his early sixties and had lived in Blackstone Village for most of his life. He was the strongest man in the village besides Luo Ke, and also the most stubborn. Before Lin Mo arrived, all the village's major and minor affairs were decided by him and Wang Defu through discussion. Now, an outsider in his twenties had appeared, wearing black-rimmed glasses, who had only learned to use a bow yesterday and today wanted to stand in the middle of the village drawing circles and commanding everyone—Old Yang Tou was not pleased.

The first conflict came sooner than he expected.

“Why should I believe in this thing you've drawn?” Old Yang Tou's voice was as loud as if he were picking a fight. “How many days have you been here? Do you know what kind of wind blows here in winter? Do you know which road gets cut off in the rainy season? You don't even know the name of that mountain to the north, yet here you are drawing circles and commanding the whole village?”

The surroundings went quiet. Luo Ke opened his mouth to retort, but Lin Mo raised a hand to stop him.

“You're right. I don't know what wind blows in winter, nor do I know which road gets cut off in the rainy season. I will learn all of that.” His voice was calm and steady, but every word carried weight as it fell on the dirt. “But that's not what you really want to ask.”

Old Yang Tou was taken aback: “Then what is it?”

“What you really want to ask is—by what right do I lead.”

Old Yang Tou didn't speak, nor did he deny it.

He squatted down and drew two more lines in the dirt: “I don't know the winds here, nor the roads. But when I stand behind this wall, I can calculate one thing clearly: the effective kill radius of a Black Powder Grenade is two meters, and a militiaman can throw three in twenty minutes. Three times the current number of combatants times the hit rate—is that enough to repel the first wave of an Ork charge? Having calculated that, I drew this circle. You've hunted your whole life; you should know better than I—the hunter who sets traps in advance always outlives the one who sharpens his knife at the last minute.”

Old Yang Tou didn't say another word. But he didn't leave either. That afternoon, he was the first to shoulder a hoe and go dig the pit traps.

Lin Mo thought the matter was settled.

That evening, Old Yang Tou cornered Wang Defu by the well at the village entrance. Lin Mo didn't hear everything as he passed by, only catching Old Yang Tou saying in a lowered voice: “Brother, he's not one of ours. No matter how right his methods sound, it doesn't feel right in my heart.” Wang Defu's voice was very low, almost a whisper: “Tiezhu, trust me this once. This kid has something about him... something I can't quite put into words. I've lived long enough, and I've only seen that quality once before on a dead man.”

A golden stream of light at the edge of his vision flickered imperceptibly.

It wasn't data, nor parameters—it was a line of poetry. It was as if someone had crumpled up a paper full of writing and stuffed it into his brain; he didn't have time to unfold it, only catching one line:

*[Beacon fires burn for three months straight, a letter from home is worth ten thousand gold.]*

*—Du Fu, 'Spring Prospect'. He froze for a moment—why would there be Earth's poetry in the Emperor's memories?*

Old Yang Tou was silent for a long time before turning to leave. He no longer hindered the miners.

The second conflict occurred on the third night.

Old Yang Tou deliberately picked faults at the construction site: “He split the militia into three groups for rotating patrols, and the result is that there are a third fewer people on guard at night than during the day—isn't that just waiting for someone to raid our home?” Luo Ke explained for Lin Mo: “Because Orks aren't active in the latter half of the night; they have no night vision. Attacking at night is suicide for them. This is reallocating the saved manpower to build fortifications during the day.”

Old Yang Tou said nothing after hearing this and left again.

The way time passed on this planet was different from Earth. There were no phones to remind him of meetings, no calendars to tell him what day of the week it was. There was only sunrise and sunset, combat and calm, living and dying. He used vertical lines in his notebook to record the days, crossing every fifth line with a horizontal one. This primitive counting method made him feel grounded—at least he knew which day he was on.

During the third conflict, he didn't say anything, but silently increased the number of pit traps in the defensive line he was responsible for from the required forty to sixty.

Lin Mo later learned that this planet had a designation on the Imperial Star Chart, but no one remembered its name. In the warhammer 40k universe, there are far more unnamed planets than named ones—they are just a string of numbers on a star chart, gathering dust in an archive, waiting for some battle destined to go unrecorded to wipe the numbers away.

Wang Defu set a table with coarse grain cakes and wild vegetable soup in his courtyard. Luo Ke, Old Tom, and Old Zhou sat around the table, Lin Mo sat opposite, and Old Yang Tou sat the furthest away. Wang Defu picked up his bowl and gestured toward Old Yang Tou: “Tiezhu, do you still have something on your mind that you haven't said?”

Old Yang Tou remained silent for a long time. The oil lamp on the table flickered in the wind, stretching his shadow long and short. Finally, he spoke, his voice as raspy as sandpaper on wood: “I've lived sixty-three years. On this wretched planet, I've seen people from the outside. Imperial Tax Collectors, Rogue Traders, Wandering Knights—none of them ever truly treated this place as home. They came, took what they wanted, and left. Some even burned our granaries before they went.”

He looked up at Lin Mo: “How do you prove that you won't leave?”

The question was sharper than any Ork. He didn't answer immediately. He was quiet for a moment, then gave an unexpected answer: “I can't prove it. I've been here for less than ten days. If I were you, I wouldn't trust someone who's only been here ten days either. But I can give you a promise: when the Orks come, I will be standing on the front-most wall.”

Old Yang Tou looked at him, his gaze carrying a heavy scrutiny. After a long while, he lowered his head and muttered: “...Fine. Then I won't leave either.”

Early the next morning, Old Yang Tou raised the section of the wall he was responsible for by another level.

On the fifth day of preparations, Lin Mo was alone late at night adjusting the gunpowder proportions. The results of the previous batches had been unsatisfactory—either they lacked power, or they deflagrated too quickly, causing the clay pots to explode before they could be thrown. He sat in Old Tom's blacksmith shop, staring blankly at the raw materials spread across the table.

Then, the golden stream of light at the edge of his vision brightened.

There was no image, no sound. But a piece of information suddenly appeared in his mind—like a fine adjustment to knowledge he already possessed: When filtering saltpeter with limewater, for every five degrees the temperature drops, the crystalline purity increases by approximately twelve percent.

He didn't make a sound. He simply carried the pot of limewater outside—the May night breeze was cool.

The next morning, he packed the new batch of gunpowder into clay pots and went to the clearing outside the village for a test detonation.

A loud boom. The diameter of the crater was nearly double what it had been before.

Luo Ke was jolted back a step: “Holy shit! What did you do last night?!”

“Dropped it by five degrees,” Lin Mo said.

From that day on, Old Yang Tou never questioned him again. It wasn't because he was submissive, but because he realized that everything this outsider did—even the smallest thing—was backed by a reason. He couldn't explain what the reason was, but he could feel that the logic was sound.

*In a place that doesn't believe in the future,*

*I am teaching people how to prepare for it.*

Wang Defu kept him back alone after the meeting ended. He closed the door and spoke in a low voice under the dim oil lamp: “Blackstone Village has had outsiders before. Over ten years ago, a Rogue Trader stayed here for a few days. Before leaving, he said one thing—'This planet will not remain silent forever.' I didn't understand it then. Now, I think I understand a little.” Lin Mo looked into Wang Defu's eyes; there was something in those eyes he had never seen in the villagers' eyes: not fear, not hope—but memory. An old man who had witnessed things he couldn't comprehend was trying to use his limited language to warn a newcomer.

By the light of a kerosene lamp late at night, Lin Mo pieced together the fragments of his laptop. The screen was shattered, but the hard drive was still there. He used the screwdriver from his nail clippers to open the hard drive casing, took out the platters, and glanced at them by the firelight—there was no physical damage to the surface. The data might still be there.

The smell of blood and gunpowder mingled together, lingering in this windless canyon for a long time.

He wrapped the hard drive in a cloth and placed it at the bottom of his backpack. Back on Earth, this hard drive contained full sets of PRD documents for three products, a fundraising roadshow PPT, and hundreds of photos he had taken. He didn't know what use these things would have in this world—but throwing them away felt like throwing away the evidence that he had ever lived.

The sound of Luo Ke's footsteps came from outside the window. Lin Mo zipped up his backpack and blew out the oil lamp. Moonlight spilled through the oiled paper window, laying a layer of pale light on the floor. He kept his eyes open in the darkness, listening to the occasional Ork howls in the distance—those sounds traveled far in the night breeze, sounding like the planet itself was breathing.

*—Lin Mo's Inner Records during the Preparation Period*

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

But what he didn't know was—deep beneath that clearing blackened by gunpowder, something that had slept for thirty thousand years was slowly changing its breathing rhythm.