47: Chapter 47 The Abandoned Foundry World

The Expeditionary Force's first intergalactic voyage encountered two problems.

The first problem arose during Warp navigation. Marcus discovered that the old transport ship's Warp engine had an intermittent fault—at regular intervals, the navigation system would automatically deviate from the course by about zero point something degrees. A single deviation was negligible, but after several accumulations, the actual position differed from the planned position by nearly a day's voyage. Locke cursed when he discovered this issue and had Marcus manually calibrate it at set intervals.

The second problem occurred when they arrived at the Abandoned Forge World.

The orbital station was still there, but they weren't the only ones using it.

A Chaos armed transport ship was already docked at the orbital station's docking port. Judging by the livery on the hull, it belonged to the logistics unit of an unknown Chaos Warband. Their numbers were small—about dozens of people—but enough to turn the orbital station into a stronghold that would take time to clear.

Locke saw the Chaos transport ship in the reconnaissance footage from the raven reconnaissance drone. He stared at the screen for a few seconds, then tapped a finger on the image—not for himself, but for Duran behind him: "Its engines are still dissipating heat; it just arrived." Duran leaned in for a look and nodded. This meant the Chaos logistics unit hadn't had time to establish effective defensive positions. Locke made a decision: no more waiting. The Expeditionary Force's first battle wouldn't be fought in the Green Sector, but on the orbital station of this unnamed Abandoned Forge World. The landing troops filed out of the transport ship's forward cargo hatch. Moving in a zero-gravity environment was far more complex than on the ground, but Locke's deployment was concise: one platoon to seal both ends of the docking corridor, one platoon to flank through the ventilation ducts to the rear of the Chaos Forces, and the rest to launch a frontal assault.

The battle ended in less than a few dozen minutes. The logistics unit on the Chaos transport ship hadn't expected to encounter resistance at such remote coordinates—their reaction speed was more than a beat slower than regular combat troops. Locke stood in the orbital station's control room, looking at the grayish-yellow abandoned planet outside the window, and said one sentence over the communication channel: "The transit station has been cleared. We can land for resupply."

Locke inserted the dataslate into the transport ship's reading terminal. The first line of text that popped up on the screen wasn't parameters or coordinates—it was a handwritten transcription note, written in ancient high gothic: "The above route has been battle-tested."

An orbital station forgotten for untold years,

Reflected a dull metallic luster under the starlight.

The Abandoned Forge World's orbital station was better preserved than expected. After clearing out the Chaos logistics unit, Locke stood in the control room, looking at the grayish-yellow abandoned planet outside. An indicator light on the console was still flashing—not a fault signal, but an ancient standby signal still waiting for a command. Someone hadn't shut down the system before evacuating. The engineers had left in a hurry after receiving the evacuation order, but they left a light on. A light that had waited for ten thousand years.

Locke stood before that flashing indicator light and did something he wouldn't normally do—he reached out and pressed a button on the console. The indicator light turned solid. The screen lit up. The system was online. After ten thousand years of silence, someone had pressed the power button for this world again.

After the cleanup of the orbital station was over, Locke found a metal plate embedded under the console surface. There was no text or symbols on the surface—but the precision of the edge machining was extremely high, not a product that the industrial level of this Forge World could achieve. He scraped the edge of the metal plate with the edge of his battle-axe—not even a scratch was left.

Locke pried the metal plate off and flipped it over to look at the back—there was a line of tiny characters engraved on it. It wasn't high gothic, nor Chaos runes, but a script he had never seen before. He wrapped the metal plate separately and put it in his backpack, not with the rest of the loot. After returning to the transport ship, he handed the metal plate to Marcus and said only one thing: "See what this means." Marcus took it, looked it over, remained silent for a long time, and then said something that silenced the entire cabin: "This is script from the Golden Age."

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 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 you are most tired, most lax, and most want to give up. What Locke wanted to ensure was that when that moment came, everyone in Blackstone Town would have bodies faster than their brains.

In this universe, hope is a luxury. Not because it is rare, but because it is fragile—like a match burning in a sandstorm, liable to be blown out at any moment. But he discovered something interesting: when you gather many matches together and light them, they are not so easily extinguished. Everyone in Blackstone Town was like those matches gathered together. Picking up any single one, it might be blown out by the storm of Chaos in the next second. But when gathered together, the light and heat they emitted were already enough to make the surrounding darkness retreat a few steps.

— Locke's Abandoned Forge World Orbital Station Clearance Record

While organizing documents, Lin Mo discovered a previously overlooked report. The report was written by Yang Shitou—the handwriting was crooked, but the content was exceptionally detailed. In his daily patrols, he recorded the water quality changes of all water sources around Blackstone Town, including pH values, mineral content, and microbial indicators. Yang Shitou had learned basic water quality testing while working as a miner—the skills used to determine if groundwater was safe in the mines of his hometown were equally useful on this planet.

After reading the report, Lin Mo did one thing—he called Yang Shitou to the Intelligence Center and gave him a pen and a blank notebook. "Submit a water quality report every week from now on." Yang Shitou took the pen and notebook, flipped through the blank pages, and then looked up and asked: "Does this... count for work points?"

Lin Mo looked at him and couldn't help but smile. "It counts."

Yang Shitou nodded and turned to leave. His pace was a bit faster when he left the Intelligence Center than when he arrived—not because he got work points, but because someone had entrusted him with an important task. In Blackstone Town, being trusted was itself a reward more valuable than work points.

The day after submitting the first water quality report, Yang Shitou came to submit the second. Lin Mo looked at his notebook, which was already one-third full, and asked: "Didn't you say one per week?" Yang Shitou scratched his head: "Some data changed faster than I thought, I was afraid of delaying things." Lin Mo took the notebook and flipped through it—every page was densely written, and although the handwriting wasn't pretty, every piece of data was marked with time and location. He wrote a note on the last page: Add one salary. Yang Shitou froze for a moment after seeing that line, then lowered his head and flipped through the notebook—as if confirming he hadn't misread.

The systematic management of water quality monitoring data soon yielded its first practical effect. Yang Shitou pointed out in the third weekly report: The mineral content in Blackstone Town's main well had risen significantly over the past three weeks, and the concentration of an unknown component called "element x" had exceeded safe drinking standards.

When Lin Mo saw this report, he immediately thought of the strange ore Old Tom had tested. Could element x be the dissolved form of that ore in the groundwater?

He had Yang Shitou perform a tracking test: taking water samples upstream and downstream along the flow. The results showed that the concentration of element x was significantly lower upstream. This meant the source of pollution came from beneath the surface of Blackstone Town—likely the underground shelter, or some other deeper structure they didn't know about yet.

That night, Lin Mo organized a small-scale underground exploration. Alice went down with him—her psychic powers could detect energy fluctuations in underground structures. When the two reached the end of the shelter wall and continued about fifty meters deeper along the passage, Alice suddenly stopped.

"There's something below," she said. "Something very big."

Lin Mo looked in the direction her finger was pointing—it was an area not marked on the underground shelter's design blueprints. An "extra" space. A space deliberately hidden by the builders.

He marked this discovery on the map. Another mystery. Another thread waiting to be pulled.

[The road ahead is long and arduous, but I will seek the truth high and low.]

— Qu Yuan, "Li Sao." Memory fragments sealed within the mirror of the emperor quietly surfaced in the darkness.

Deep within the Abandoned Forge World, an engine was still running. It wasn't started by a worker—it started itself. Five seconds after receiving a certain signal, it began sending a response signal to a set of coordinates. Those coordinates were exactly within the margin of error for Blackstone Town.