42: Chapter 42 Guilliman Arrives, Three Legions Come to the Rescue

Before the discovery of the underground shelter could be fully processed, the second event arrived.

The communication relay station in orbit of Hope Star intercepted a set of faster-than-light signals from the edge of the system—the encoding format was the Imperial Navy's highest military frequency. Marcus's fingers began to tremble halfway through deciphering the signal. He called him to the communication station and let him see the decoded results on the screen: an Ultramarines fleet was sailing toward Hope Star, with its flagship being a Macragge's Honour-class warship, estimated arrival time—in a few weeks.

The encoding format was the Imperial Navy's highest military frequency. Marcus's fingers began to tremble halfway through the decryption—he called him over to the communication station and let him see the decoded results on the screen for himself.

When he saw that name, the fingers holding his coffee cup froze. Roboute Guilliman. Imperial Regent, Primarch of the Ultramarines. The most powerful man currently in the entire Imperium.

The chaos attention level climbed rapidly after the news spread. Chaos forces had clearly also intercepted information about this fleet—the appearance of a Primarch would trigger psychic fluctuations in the Warp sufficient to illuminate an entire star sector. To Chaos, this was both a massive threat and an irresistible prey.

Weeks later, when the first Ultramarines warship jumped out of the Warp and appeared in Hope Star's orbit, the entire sky seemed to darken. It wasn't a metaphor—the Ultramarines' fleet eclipsed the starlight. The leading flagship was more than a class larger than the other warships, its golden Aquila on the prow reflecting blinding light under the sun's rays.

Lin Mo stood on Blackstone Town's newly built plaza, looking up at the warships that blotted out the sun. He thought of the words Wang Defu said when he first took him in—"It's not easy just to survive." Today, over a year later, Blackstone Town had its own flag, its own garrison, its own STC production line, a half-opened underground shelter—and an entire Ultramarines fleet appearing in the sky overhead.

Looking up at those ships that blotted out the sky, the morning light was obscured by metal, and the entire plaza was shrouded in the shadows cast by the hulls. Locke's garrison had already lined up at the edge of the plaza, every man's weapon polished to a shine—not for show, but to let the visitors know that this was not a defenseless village.

As the landing shuttle descended, he straightened his cuffs. He didn't know if he was about to face a dialogue or a trial.

He stood there, watching everything before him, and suddenly felt a very strange sensation—if someone had told him a month ago that he would be on a planet unknown light-years from Earth, using high school chemistry to make gunpowder, university club experience to build guns, and product manager logic to plan a village's defense system—he would have thought that person was insane. But now he stood here, and every single thing was actually happening.

But before the hatch opened, he was already prepared.

Lin Mo stood on the plaza, not turning around until the last landing shuttle disappeared into the clouds. His fingers accidentally brushed against the folded copy of the autonomy proposal in his pocket. It hadn't been signed, nor had it been returned. In the Imperial bureaucratic dictionary, 'not returned' was a safer term than 'passed'.

He had once read a sentence in a fragment of an Imperial database—[Humanity has expanded among the stars for ten thousand years, yet has never truly understood any single planet.] He hadn't understood it then. Now, standing on this planet that didn't even have a name, smelling the sulfur and rust in the air—he understood.

When the sky darkened,

No one knew if it was because night had come,

Or because the ships had arrived.

Lin Mo shifted his gaze from the map and glanced out the window. Under the grey-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 is no such thing as a permanent victory, only a defense that never slackens for a single day.

A ship can eclipse the light of a planet,

But a single person—

Perhaps can change its destiny.

During that entire morning while Guilliman's fleet appeared in Hope Star's orbit, not a single person in Blackstone Town was doing their usual work. The militia forgot to train, the blacksmiths put down their hammers, the cooking squad forgot to light the fires for meals—everyone stood where they could see the sky, looking up at the warships that eclipsed the starlight. After watching for a long time, someone whispered, "Those ships are on our side... right?" No one answered the question. Because no one knew the answer.

Lin Mo stood on the plaza for a long time. He felt a slight vibration from the mirror of the emperor mark on his palm—it wasn't a warning, but more like a response. As if confirming: Yes. They have come.

He didn't find Alice on the plaza. She was in the Medical Station—she hadn't come out to see the warships. It wasn't that she wasn't interested, but that she had three wounded patients currently on IV drips. When he passed by the Medical Station entrance, he saw her profile by the window through a crack in the door. She glanced up at the sky, just for a brief moment, then lowered her head to continue preparing her medicine. He stood outside the door for two seconds and didn't push it open. He knew she chose not to stand on the plaza—not because she didn't care what those warships meant, but because she still had untreated wounded in her hands.

The visit of the Ultramarines fleet caused complex emotions among the residents of Blackstone Town. Some stood on the plaza looking up at the warships that blotted out the starlight, whispering prayers of the Ecclesiarchy—a habit left over from their years of living in the Imperium, an instinctive reaction upon seeing the military power representing the Emperor. Others lowered their heads and walked quickly back to their homes, closing their doors—their trust in the Imperium had been exhausted long ago on the day they were forgotten by the Imperium on the frontier.

Lin Mo noticed a detail: the Ultramarines fleet did not send any ground troops into Blackstone Town during their stay. Only Guilliman and a few of his Honor Guards descended in a landing shuttle. This meant the fleet Commander did not want the soldiers to have close contact with this planet. It wasn't out of disdain, but caution. Guilliman was protecting his soldiers from the potential influence of Chaos contamination on this planet. This detail raised his assessment of Guilliman by a level—a cautious Primarch is harder to deal with than a brave one, but also more worth cooperating with.

The footsteps of the militia on the training ground were faintly audible in the distance. While Locke was away, the training was taken over by the veterans he had trained—those who had survived the expedition and the defensive battles. Their training methods were stricter than Locke's because they knew more clearly how low the margin for error was on the battlefield. Lin Mo would occasionally stand outside the fence of the training ground to watch them train, not to check progress, but to remind himself—those people crawling in the mud and holding guns under the scorching sun were the true foundation of Blackstone Town.

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 they were too exhausted 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 before attacking. They will appear at the moment when you are most tired, 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 faster than their brains.

—Lin Mo's notes on the eve of the Ultramarines fleet's arrival

On the other side of the sea of stars, a pitch-black ship was changing course. Its objective—was exactly the same direction as where he was.

Yang Shitou did something that day on the firing range that no one expected—he shot his best score since the flintlock modification. Eight out of ten hits, with three of them hitting the weak points of the Ork model targets—the eye sockets and the neck. This result exceeded Locke's expectations by nearly double.

Locke walked to the edge of the range and watched him for a while, then asked: "How did you do it?"

Yang Shitou looked down at the flintlock in his hand, then looked up at the target. His expression was very calm, as if he were stating something obvious: "When I used to farm at home, what I was best at was weeding. The key to weeding isn't strength—it's a sharp eye. Your hoe has to land exactly in that two-finger-wide gap between the weed root and the crop root. If you're off by a finger, either the weed root stays, or the crop is cut."

Locke didn't speak. He just nodded, then added an asterisk after Yang Shitou's name in the training record book. That asterisk meant: This person can be trained as a sniper.

Yang Shitou's shooting talent was fully verified in the following training sessions. Locke gave him a flintlock with the highest precision—specially tuned by Old Tom, with two more rifling turns in the barrel than the standard version. Yang Shitou's expression changed when he held that gun—from an ordinary soldier to a hunter. He wasn't just aiming; he was waiting. Waiting for the wind to stop, for his breath to steady, for his heartbeat to fall in that quietest interval between two pulses. The moment he pulled the trigger, his finger was faster than his thought. Locke watched him from the side, silently making a judgment in his heart: This man doesn't need to be taught—he just needs a better gun.

The light from the Ultramarines fleet filtered through the porthole, casting a straight blue band of light on the floor. He stood at the edge of that band of light, not stepping onto it. Not because he didn't dare—but because he didn't want to. By the time the Imperium's light reached his position, there wasn't much warmth left.

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

"The Great River flows east, its waves scouring away the gallant heroes of a thousand ages."

—Su Shi, 'Nian Nu Jiao: Memories of the Past at Red Cliffs'. Memory fragments sealed within the mirror of the emperor quietly surfaced in the darkness.

After Guilliman left, Lin Mo found an extra gear on his desk—it wasn't a standard Imperial part, nor a product of the Arsenal. The number of teeth was very specific. He found a matching tooth count on Old Tom's STC blueprints—it was a standard part from an ancient era, specifically used for a certain type of device.