62: Chapter 62 The Limits of the Suppression Loop

The occupation of the abandoned base went more smoothly than expected. But the real threat only appeared after the occupation.

After the main Chaos forces learned that the frontline base had fallen, they launched a psychic counterattack late that night.

A Chaos Psyker launched a psychic attack from some distance away from the base—not a physical strike, but a form of mental suppression.

Multiple soldiers inside the base clutched their heads at the same instant, and some began to bang their heads against the walls.

Alice sensed this attack from the basement of the Medical Station.

She had already removed her suppression ring—not because it was broken, but because she had realized upon entering the base that the intensity of the psychic interference here exceeded the effective suppression range of the Imperial suppression ring.

The suppression ring was working, but it was overloading.

The temperature of the ring on her wrist was continuously rising, already leaving a faint burn mark on her skin.

She walked out of the Medical Station and headed toward the frontline command post where he was.

With every step, she could feel the fluctuations of the psychic attack passing through her body like an electric current.

The incident where the suppression ring shattered at the Chaos Psyker tower—it was not an accident.

It was the result of her unconsciously choosing to break through her limits.

This time, she was doing it consciously.

When she walked into the command post, he was confirming defensive deployments with Locke in front of a map.

He saw Alice walk in, saw her bare wrist without the suppression ring, and saw a thin layer of sweat on her forehead.

He didn't ask her why she had removed the ring, only asking: "How long can you hold out?"

Alice's reply was short: "Enough for you to use."

She walked to the center of the room, closed her eyes, and expanded her psychic senses outward.

The Chaos Psyker's mental attack was like a wave crashing against a reef—it was blocked before her psychic barrier.

It wasn't destroyed; it was intercepted.

While intercepting that mental attack, she traced the origin of the opponent's psychic signal in her consciousness and found the Chaos Psyker—sensing his anxiety.

After seeing the base fall, his level of anxiety had exceeded his own threshold for psychic control.

She pushed her own psychic energy back along that connection line for a short distance—not an attack, but a transmission.

A message that let the opponent feel, "You have been locked on."

The Chaos Psyker voluntarily severed the psychic connection.

Alice lowered her hands and opened her eyes. There was a trace of blood in her nostrils.

She said to him: "He ran away. He won't come back tonight."

No one spoke. Locke glanced at her, then lowered his head to continue looking at the map.

Lin Mo said as she turned to leave: "Thank you."

Alice didn't look back. She waved her hand and walked in the direction of the Medical Station.

But after walking out the door, she stopped in the corridor, reached out, and touched the red mark on her wrist burned by the suppression ring—then continued walking forward.

The burn mark from the suppression ring on her skin was like an imprint left by a ring she had never chosen to wear.

When Alice sensed the Chaos Psyker's mental attack in the basement of the Medical Station, she did not immediately counterattack.

She spent about three seconds judging the opponent's psychic intensity, attack frequency, and possible intentions.

Three seconds later, she concluded: the opponent's state was unstable—anxiety and anger were interfering with his focus.

He had committed the mistake that all Chaos Psykers make—letting emotions drive psychic power in battle, rather than using psychic power to control emotions.

Alice closed her eyes. She did not choose to block it head-on, but did something more dangerous—she found a gap in the opponent's mental attack, a flaw created by anxiety.

Then she pushed her own psychic perception back along that gap for a short distance.

It was not an attack, but a transmission. A signal of "You have been locked on by me."

The Chaos Psyker severed the connection after receiving that signal because he realized his position had been exposed.

When Alice lowered her hands, there was a trace of blood in her nostrils. But she knew—she had bet correctly.

That Chaos Psyker would not come back. Not because he feared her—but because he was not sure how many people like her were in this base.

When Alice walked out of the Medical Station basement, the sweat on her forehead quickly condensed into a thin mist in the cold outdoor air.

She stood at the doorway and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, then saw Lin Mo leaning against the wall, waiting for her.

He didn't ask what she had just done—he only handed her a canteen.

Alice took it and took a sip, stood for a while holding the canteen, and said: "I used psychic energy that exceeded the limits of the suppression ring. I might not be able to control it next time."

Later that day, Lin Mo went to the Arsenal and found Old Tom to ask a question he had never asked before: "Can you make a suppression ring that can withstand a higher psychic output?"

After Lin Mo handed the canteen to Alice, he didn't leave immediately. He waited there, leaning against the wall, until she finished drinking the water and her breathing returned to normal.

Then he took the empty canteen, hung it on his belt, turned around, and left. He didn't say "Be careful," and he didn't say "Don't do this next time."

He knew how dangerous what she was doing was, and she hadn't stopped not because she didn't know the danger.

He brought the empty canteen back to the Intelligence Center, filled it up, and placed it on the windowsill. The next time she came, she could take it herself.

That was her own choice.

Morning light slanted in through the window, drawing a golden line on the floor.

Lin Mo watched the light move forward inch by inch, as if it were marking the time for him today.

He stood up and walked toward the door.

Ammunition can be used up, supplies can be exhausted—but as long as Old Tom's forging hammer is still ringing,

—Lin Mo's internal notes during the continuous defensive operations.

The Ultramarines' liaison officer sent a second encrypted communication late that night.

The signal this time was much stronger than the last—indicating that their fleet was approaching Hope Star.

The content of the communication was a short assessment report, accompanied by an attachment that made Lin Mo frown: a star map regarding psychic activity in the Eastern Star Sector.

On the star map, the location of Hope Star was marked with a red dot—representing "abnormal psychic activity."

Abnormal psychic activity. Lin Mo stared at that red dot for a long time.

He knew that one of the sources of this "abnormality" was his own mirror of the emperor, and the other source was Alice's psychic fluctuations.

But the fluctuations of the mirror of the emperor were passive and hidden—they should not have been detectable from the outside.

Unless—someone outside of his range of perception was using a more sensitive method of psychic detection than the Imperial standard.

He closed the report.

If the Ultramarines had already noticed him—then Chaos must have noticed him too.

The essence of psychic power is bidirectional: what you can perceive can also perceive you.

The Ultramarines' psychic activity report made Lin Mo realize a problem he had previously ignored—his mirror of the emperor generated psychic fluctuations when running, and although they were weak, they were not completely undetectable.

If the Ultramarines' detection methods were more advanced than the Imperial standard, then they might have already noticed the existence of the mirror of the emperor.

He needed to figure out the psychic shielding mechanism of the mirror of the emperor before the next contact with the Ultramarines—if it had one.

He closed his eyes and tried to "talk" to the mirror of the emperor, but the golden stream of light only flickered slightly at the edge of his vision, giving no response.

It either did not understand his question or believed that now was not the time to answer.

The existence of the Ultramarines fleet had always been an "unactivated variable" in Lin Mo's heart.

He knew that the fleet was sailing in some direction, and he knew that its target was very likely Blackstone Town—but between "very likely" and "certain," there was a long distance.

The elimination of this distance came on the twenty-third day after Locke's Expeditionary Force set out.

That morning, Marcus's communication equipment captured an extremely weak signal that did not belong to Chaos nor to any Orc communication protocol.

The signal's encryption level was extremely high, but with the analytical capability of the mirror of the emperor, Lin Mo still extracted a recognizable segment of content:

"...Imperial Ultramarines Chapter... is advancing toward Hope Star... Estimated time of arrival: uncertain... Purpose: Investigate abnormal psychic signal..."

Abnormal psychic signal. That probably referred to the mirror of the emperor inside Lin Mo—or Alice's psychic power.

Regardless of which one it was, the arrival of the Ultramarines would break the current balance.

Lin Mo made a decision that day: before the Ultramarines arrived, he must obtain at least one hard result that "could prove the value of Blackstone Town."

The autonomy plan was just a piece of paper. What he wanted was a seed—a seed that could let the Ultramarines see with their own eyes and admit with their own mouths that "this place is worth existing."

He wrote this decision on the first page of his notebook and drew three lines under that line of text.

That was his "deadline."

The torch flickered in the wind and then stabilized. He stood on the watchtower, looking at the darkness in the distance.

The movement of Chaos seemed to have stopped tonight—but on this planet, silence was never good news.

He gripped the gun at his waist and did not step down from his post.

[I dwell in the Northern Sea, you in the Southern; I send a goose with a letter, but it cannot reach. A cup of wine amidst the peach and plum blossoms in the spring breeze; ten years of lamplight in the rainy nights of the wandering world.]

—Huang Tingjian, "To Huang Jifu." Fragments of memory sealed within the mirror of the emperor quietly emerged in the darkness.

When Alice was asleep, the silver ring shone faintly under the moonlight.

It was as if someone, from very far away, was confirming through this thread that it was still being worn on her finger.