43: Chapter 43 The Question of the Primal

---

The Landing Shuttle's hatch opened.

There was no Honor Guard. No trumpets. No welcome formation of two rows of Space Marines—only a single figure stepped out from the hatch, and the moment he walked down the ramp onto the ground, everyone in the square fell silent. It wasn't the kind of silence that comes from being ordered to be quiet, but the kind where breath and heartbeat are suppressed by something in the same instant.

A golden stream of light flashed at the edge of his vision, and a line of information naturally surfaced in his consciousness—Psychic awakening progress: 3.7%. There was still a long way to go before full awakening; until then, large-scale psychic use was a gamble.

When Roboute Guilliman stood, he was like a mountain.

He was taller than Lin Mo had imagined—at over three meters tall, the tallest building in the Blackstone Town square only reached his shoulders. His deep blue artificer power armor bore no battle scars; every plate was as clean as if it had just been taken from the forge, with only the slightest wear visible on the edges of the knee pads and pauldrons—traces left by long marches and time, not by combat. The Sword of Mastery hung at his waist, but his hand did not touch the hilt. Two Ultramarines Honor Guards followed behind him, their helmets tucked under their arms, their gazes sweeping across every face in the square like two searchlights.

Guilliman's gaze lingered on the square for a few seconds—not looking down, but observing. Like a person walking into a room he had heard of but was seeing for the first time with his own eyes, looking into every corner of the room.

Then he saw Lin Mo.

A normal human of about 1.7 meters, wearing faded black training clothes with sleeves rolled up to his forearms, standing in front of a group of civilians holding flintlocks and modified tools. No power armor, no psychic halo, no Imperial official's crest—only a pair of eyes that were unnaturally calm.

Guilliman confirmed two things at that moment: First, this man was the true decision-maker of this planet. Second, this man did not rule through fear.

"Lin Mo," Guilliman said.

It wasn't a question. It was a confirmation.

He did not bend his waist in a bow, nor did he drop to one knee. He placed his right hand over his chest—the civilian etiquette of Blackstone Village, with no weapon in hand and no malice in his heart.

"It is Blackstone Town's honor to have the Imperial Regent personally inspect a frontier agricultural planet," he said.

Guilliman did not respond to that. He tilted his head and glanced at the row of newly repaired fortifications at the edge of the square—a mix of wooden stakes, sandbags, and laser-cut steel plates, every piece of material bearing the marks of manual welding. He saw the steam and heard the hammer strikes coming from the direction of the Arsenal. He saw the neat wheat seedlings on the distant ridges, the newly laid ceramic pipes in the roadside drainage ditches, and a hand-painted blackboard nailed to a wooden sign in the corner of the square—on it was written "Blackstone Town Third Phase Construction Project Public Notice," the handwriting so neat it didn't look like it was written with charcoal.

Guilliman looked for a long time.

Then he said something that made even the Honor Guards behind him frown slightly.

"Let me see what you have done."

---

Guilliman did not go to the Town Hall. He walked through Blackstone Town for the entire afternoon.

He saw the Arsenal—Old Tom stood by the steam forge, covered in oil, still clutching a file he hadn't had time to put down. He locked eyes with the Imperial Regent for about five seconds and then asked a question that no one in the history of the entire Ultramarines Legion had ever asked a Primarch: "My Lord, do you understand steelmaking?"

The Honor Guard's finger had already pressed against the Bolter's trigger guard. But Guilliman was not angry. He stepped forward to glance at the still-operating steam forge and said: "The design concept is correct, but the transmission efficiency can still be increased by twelve percent."

Old Tom was stunned for a moment, then revealed a smile missing several teeth.

He saw the hospital—Alice was changing the dressing for a militiaman whose arm had been burned by Chaos energy. She did not panic when she saw Guilliman walk in, and she didn't even stop what she was doing. She finished the last wrap of the bandage before standing up and performing a standard Astral Knights medical officer's salute.

Guilliman looked at her for three seconds. In the third second, his gaze paused on her wrist—the suppression ring. Then he looked away.

"In the Astral Knights' medical system, you are marked as killed in action," he said.

"I know, My Lord," Alice said.

"Do you not intend to correct this record?"

"I do not."

Guilliman did not ask further.

He saw the militia training ground—Rock was leading recruits in position rotation drills, his shouting so loud it could be heard a kilometer away. He saw Rock kick a recruit in the rear for having his muzzle pointed in the wrong direction, sending him stumbling, then reach out to pull the man up and pat the dust off his shoulder. At that moment, Guilliman showed the only expression during the entire trip that could be interpreted as a smile—the muscles at the corner of his mouth moved by perhaps less than a millimeter.

"How long has he been an instructor?" Guilliman asked.

"He has been teaching since he became the Village Guard captain," Lin Mo said. "It has been about eight months since the transmigration."

"He has no formal military academy training."

"But he has fought nine defensive battles with zero losses."

Guilliman nodded.

---

By evening, they finally entered the Town Hall. A wooden table cobbled together, a few hand-nailed chairs. A full map of the Eastern Star Sector was spread out on the table, covered in defense lines, supply lines, and predicted attack directions marked in charcoal by Lin Mo and Rock.

Guilliman sat in the chair that had clearly been widened for him, his hands on the edge of the table, his gaze falling on Lin Mo.

"You are very special," he said.

He did not deny it.

"A Transmigrator, carrying a soul from Earth, who built a functioning town from scratch in this world. You repelled the Orks, repelled the Chaos Allied Forces, found a relic that even the Imperium had not discovered, and transformed a frontier wasteland into the settlement with the highest grain self-sufficiency rate in the entire sector within a year. While doing these things, you also made every civilian in this town feel that they are not selling their lives for the Imperium, but living for themselves."

Guilliman spoke in a flat tone, as if reading a battle report. But Lin Mo could hear the weight beneath those words.

"Do you know what your actions imply?" Guilliman asked.

Lin Mo thought for a moment and gave an answer that left Guilliman silent for a long time.

"It means a normal person, without the lineage of a Space Marine or the surname of a noble, can live with dignity."

Guilliman's fingers stopped on the edge of the table.

[What is this thing?] Someone poked a metal fragment on the ground with a gun barrel.

[Don't touch it,] Lin Mo stopped him, [It might be a chaos mark.]

He was silent for a long time—so long that the sky outside turned from orange-red to deep blue, so long that Rock knocked on the door once from outside to ask if they wanted food delivered. He did not answer Lin Mo's statement. What he was pondering in the silence was not whether Lin Mo's words were right, but rather—if Lin Mo was right, then what did the foundation upon which the entire Imperium was built, those sacrifices, that blood, those burned planets, and those fallen legions—

Amount to?

"I need some time," Guilliman said.

"Your time is precious," Lin Mo said.

"This matter is worth the time."

When Guilliman stood up, he glanced at the "Hope Star Autonomy Proposal" on the corner of the table, which Lin Mo had not proactively handed over—it was handwritten, the script as neat as if it were printed.

He did not take that proposal. Instead, he took another document from a side pocket of his power armor—a single sheet of paper with three lines of text, stamped with the Ultramarines Legion's wax seal. He placed the paper on the table and pushed it toward Lin Mo.

"Read it," Guilliman said.

He looked down at the three lines on the paper.

First line: Eradicate the remaining Ork forces in the Green Sector.

Second line: Submit a logistics supply order no lower than the imperial guard logistics standard, with self-produced materials.

Third line: Draft a Blackstone Territory Autonomy Proposal, covering the four major systems of administration, economy, military, and judiciary.

He did not look up to see Guilliman's expression. He knew what these three tasks meant—the first was a test of combat power, the second was a test of industrial capability, and the third was a test of his political stance. Guilliman had not come to destroy Blackstone Town, nor had he come to reward it. He had come to test it.

"The day all three things are completed," Guilliman said, "I will take your proposal back to Terra."

Lin Mo folded the paper and put it into his breast pocket.

"It won't be long," he said.

Guilliman glanced at him. There was no doubt in that look, no threat—only a kind of expectation that even Guilliman himself had not yet fully defined.

He paused for a step at the door, not looking back.

"Don't make me wait too long."

---

When the Landing Shuttle ascended, it was already late at night. The engine lights of the Ultramarines fleet trailed three long, thin arcs across the night sky of Blackstone Town, like three needles sewing a forming decision onto the star chart.

Lin Mo stood at the entrance of the Town Hall, watching those points of light grow smaller and smaller until they finally vanished behind the clouds. He clutched the paper in his hand, a small corner of it dampened by sweat.

Rock stepped out from the shadows, stood beside him, and flicked the edge of the paper with his thick thumb.

"What's written there?"

"Three things," Lin Mo said.

"Can we win the fight?"

Lin Mo was silent for a few seconds, then he smiled—not a relaxed smile, but the kind of smile of a person who knows he has three mountains to climb, yet finds that he actually wants to climb them.

"We'll talk when it's light out."

---

That night, the Ultramarines fleet did not immediately warp away. Guilliman remained on the flagship, sitting alone in the command room with a dataslate brought back from Blackstone Town spread out before him—recorded on it were Hope Star's grain output, population growth rate, crime statistics, and neonatal mortality rate over the past year.

Every metric far exceeded the standards of similar Imperial planets.

Under every metric, the same name was noted: Lin Mo.

The moment Guilliman put down the dataslate, he said something that no one heard. A judgment he himself was not yet fully prepared for.

It wasn't praise. It wasn't doubt.

It was a question for which he already anticipated the answer, but did not yet dare to confirm.

**

*A person standing in the blank space between the Imperium and Chaos,*

*Neither kneeling to the Emperor, nor turning to the Chaos Lords.*

*If common people can live well on their own,*

*Then what are you afraid of?*

**After Guilliman left, Lin Mo wrote a line in his notebook:**

*A lone star hangs in the dark night, a tiny flame illuminates the cold shore.*

*Not kneeling to the monarch, only bowing to the common people.*

*—Thought fragments from the night of Guilliman's visit to Lin Mo*

*—Ultramarines Flagship Commander's Log · M31.010 ·*