68: Chapter 68 The arc is moving; Old Tom finds a person in the data.

When the alarm in the Intelligence Center blared, Marcus was performing his routine early morning communication scan.

The signal strength of the Chaos frequency jumped four decibels at the same moment.

"Damn it—"

Marcus pushed his chair away and rushed to the console. The curve on the screen representing the chaos arc was shaking, like a rope being pulled from the middle.

"This isn't noise."

He stared for three seconds, then opened the backup system to rerun the data. The result was the same—the middle section of the arc had retracted inward overnight, a distance equivalent to several days of travel.

He rushed out of the Intelligence Center. His boot soles slammed against the gravel road, creating a series of rapid sounds that echoed three times in the empty alleyway at dawn. The sentry at the gate of the Arsenal was startled, his laser gun raised subconsciously.

"It's me—" Marcus gasped for air, "Where is Commander Lin Mo?"

"Still in the Intelligence Center."

"I just ran from there."

"Then go check the meeting room. He has been up since before dawn."

Marcus stopped at the door of the meeting room. Lin Mo was leaning over the table, marking a hand-drawn map of the defensive line. The flame of the oil lamp was tugged by the airflow rushing in from the door, and his shadow flickered violently on the wall.

"Commander Lin Mo—the arc has moved."

Lin Mo raised his head. The tip of his pen stopped in mid-air.

"How much did it move?"

"The middle section retracted. In terms of travel distance, it has pushed the frontline forward by at least three days. And it wasn't gradual—" Marcus handed the data screen to Lin Mo, "Look at this set of data, all the changes happened within the past four hours. It's like someone pulled a section in from the middle."

Lin Mo put down the pen. He stood up and walked to the arc diagram on the wall, gesturing with his finger at the distance between the new position of the arc and the current defensive line of Blackstone Town.

His fingertip stopped exactly above the abandoned frontline base occupied by Operation Nail.

"It's not a coincidence."

"What?"

"Look at this protrusion." Lin Mo tapped that location on the map with his finger, "The arc didn't retract uniformly; it is arching inward along a curve. The deepest part of the curve—is pointing directly at our nail."

Marcus leaned in to take a look. The sweat on his face hadn't dried yet, leaving a dark trace on the back of his collar.

"They found the nail?"

"Chaos isn't stupid." Lin Mo picked up a charcoal pen and drew a circle on the protruding curve, "They know someone drove a nail there. Now they are sending people to pull it out."

"Then what do we do?"

"Are you afraid?"

Marcus was stunned for a moment.

"Following you—I'm not afraid."

Lin Mo drew a smaller circle next to the circle with the charcoal pen, then drew an arrow pointing outward on the small circle.

"Call the communicator over. The fastest one."

Locke was on the training ground when he received the message.

A recruit who had just graduated from the basic combat class was forced back five steps by his training axe. He didn't stand firm on the last step, tripped, and fell into the sandpit, splattering sand all over his face. Locke didn't reach out to pull him up, just shouldered the training axe.

"Get up. No one on the battlefield will wait for you to crawl up."

The recruit gritted his teeth and pushed his body up. The sand on his knees was falling off.

The communicator ran over from the other end of the track, clutching a note in his hand. He almost tripped over the training pit's rope when he ran to Locke.

"Captain Locke—an urgent message from Commander Lin Mo."

Locke handed the training axe to Duran, who was standing nearby, and took the note to scan it. Then he read it again.

"Duran."

"Here."

"Go to the armory. Call everyone who participated in Operation Nail—twenty veterans, not a single one can be missing. Then pick ten of the best from the newly graduated recruits."

"Now?"

"Depart in thirty minutes."

Duran didn't ask any extra questions, turned around, and ran towards the barracks. He looked back at Locke's expression after running three steps—and then ran even faster.

Locke folded the note and stuffed it into his bosom, then turned and walked towards the armory. He took the copper-wire-wrapped battle axe off the wall and tested the grip of the handle with his hand. After returning from the expedition, he had replaced the copper wire with a piece of freshly whittled hardwood, and now the grip was polished to a shine again.

He hung the battle axe on his waist and glanced at the indicator light in the direction of the Arsenal, which was more than twice as bright as before.

"Let's go."

Thirty people behind him stood up at the same time. The recruits were still fastening their equipment belts, while the veterans' guns were already loaded.

When Locke arrived at the abandoned frontline base, the Chaos Forces' advance troops had already established a small outpost a few kilometers outside the base.

He crouched behind a rock pitted by wind erosion and observed for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea with binoculars. It wasn't a large-scale force—about three platoons of infantry plus a modified armored personnel carrier. But the position was chosen very precisely, just enough to block the only hidden passage between the base and the outer plains.

"Captain, hit them directly?" Duran lay on the gravel ground next to him, his voice very low.

"Look closely." Locke handed him the binoculars, "The sentries' positioning—what do you see?"

Duran watched for a while and put down the binoculars.

"They are covering each other. There is a line of sight intersection between the first row of sentries and the second row, and the sniper point at the southwest corner covers all the gaps in the front with its overhead angle."

"Correct. This isn't a mob without discipline. Ordinary Chaos believers can't set up this formation. The Commander of these people has something in their stomach."

"Then what should we do? If we hit them head-on—our position is on low ground, they are on high ground. When we charge, we will be exposed on the hillside, and the armored personnel carrier's autocannon can cover the entire attack route."

Locke used his finger to draw a circle on the sand, then tapped the side of the circle.

"See that high ground. Gravel and low shrubs, natural cover. We bury the explosive mines there, and then—"

"Lure and kill."

"You understood." Locke patted Duran's shoulder, "Take two men to the front and fire. Shoot three times and retreat, retreat to the south, lure them into the kill zone."

"What about you?"

"I'll lead the main force around to the flank. When they chase out of the outpost and step into the kill zone, and the explosion sounds—we cut in from the flank. All their attention will be on the front, and their flank defense will have at least one gap."

Duran nodded, extended three fingers to point at his own chest, and then pointed at two recruits.

The setup of the kill zone was completed within twenty minutes. Twelve homemade high-explosive mines were buried under the gravel layer on the high ground, and the pull-ring fuses were uniformly connected to a hidden pit. Locke personally checked the burial position of every mine. He added an extra layer of thin soil to the burial depth of three of them.

"Captain—too deep, I'm afraid they won't go off." The recruit in charge of wiring squatted on the edge of the pit, still clutching the fuse wire in his hand.

"Not for the infantry. It's for that armored vehicle." Locke flicked the recruit's forehead with his finger, "The wheelbase of an armored vehicle is exactly three times wider than an infantryman's stride. Buried at this depth, infantry won't trigger it, but the armored vehicle's front wheels will trigger it when they press on it. How about that—did I make myself clear?"

The recruit looked down at his wiring position, then looked at the direction where the armored personnel carrier was parked.

"Clear."

"Good. Go hide in the back."

Duran took two men and crept to the front of the outpost. The three gunshots were not loud in the night sky, but clear enough. The first shot hit the iron plate of the sentry tower, the second shot shattered the searchlight on the watchtower, and the third shot pierced through the water tank next to the outpost gate.

The Chaos Forces in the outpost reacted quickly. The armored personnel carrier's engine roared within ten seconds, and the front of the vehicle turned towards the direction from which the gunshots came. About two platoons of infantry poured out from behind the cover, forming a skirmish line on both sides of the vehicle body.

Duran fought while retreating. After three shots, he and the two recruits didn't linger—they ran south as Locke said, running neither fast nor slow, just at a distance where the pursuers could see them.

The Chaos Forces chased out. The sound of the armored personnel carrier crushing the gravel was like a huge iron bell rolling on the ground. The infantry skirmish line unfolded behind the vehicle, with neat formation and even spacing—they were indeed not a mob.

Then the first mine exploded.

The high-explosive mine lifted a curtain of shockwave mixed with gravel and dust directly in front of the infantry queue. The first three infantrymen were directly flipped over, their bodies turning half a circle in the air before landing. The second and third followed closely and exploded simultaneously near the armored personnel carrier's external fuel tank—the firelight almost dyed half the night sky orange-red. Fragments of the fuel tank mixed with torn metal shells flew like rain in the firelight.

"Now!" Locke stood up from the high ground on the flank.

He was the first to rush into the outpost.

The copper-wire grip of the battle axe was scalding in his palm. When the first Chaos soldier turned out from behind the cover, his muzzle hadn't aimed in the right direction, and Locke's axe blade had already cleaved into the opponent's chest. He pulled out the axe and turned to parry—the second soldier who sneaked up from the side was hit in the helmet by the back of the axe, and the dull sound bounced three times between the covers.

"Duran! Right side! Three!"

Duran was already turning when he heard the shout. His muzzle swept across the cover on the right, and two shots took out the Chaos squad that was about to set up the autocannon. The shell casings bounced on the gravel, and the sparks splashed just enough to illuminate the positions of the other two Chaos soldiers behind the cover.

"Seen them—" Duran roared back, "Locke, behind you!"

Locke didn't even turn his head. He backhanded an axe into the waist of the Chaos soldier rushing up behind him, and then took advantage of the momentum to hit the opponent's face with the axe handle.

This was a short and fast battle.

The annihilation battle inside the outpost lasted less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. The remaining Chaos Forces didn't persist for long after losing the cover of the armored vehicle—the last Chaos soldier was forced into a corner by three recruits, his back against the iron plate wall of the outpost. The hands of the recruits holding the guns were shaking, but the muzzles didn't lower.

He didn't surrender.

Locke stood next to the smoking wreckage of the armored personnel carrier. He knocked his blood-stained battle axe against the wreckage and opened the communication channel.

"The nail is still there. Tell Commander Lin Mo—if they want to pull it out, they have to lick their own wounds first."

The chaos attention level jumped from seventy-three to seventy-eight after the battle ended. Not because of this small-scale conflict—but because Chaos confirmed one thing in this probing attack: Blackstone Town had no intention of retreating. It needed to re-evaluate the strategic value of the location where this nail was located.

Duran walked over from the battlefield, holding a short blade seized from a Chaos soldier. He looked at the knife over and over twice. The texture of the blade edge shone with a dark purple light under the firelight.

"Captain—the pattern on this knife isn't painted. It's cast in."

Locke took the knife and looked at it, flicking the blade with his finger. A hum sounded, the lingering sound lasting at least twice as long as ordinary steel.

"Keep it. Bring it back. The things buried under this nail—might be more than we imagined."

"Do you think this knife has anything to do with the nail?"

"I don't know. But the rebel legion from thirty thousand years ago wouldn't build an outpost in a place with no value." Locke handed the short blade to Duran, glanced at the ground under his feet, "Keep it."

On the morning of the second day after the blitzkrieg at the frontline base, Locke did something on the position that Duran couldn't understand at all.

He asked the soldiers to dig a drainage ditch.

"Captain—" Duran stood on the soil loosened by Chaos artillery fire, watching Locke pull a straight line on the ground with a rope, "Isn't the most important thing for us now to reinforce the fortifications? Chaos might come back at any time."

"Look at the soil under your feet."

Locke squatted down and grabbed a handful, crushing the soil clods with his thumb and spreading his palm to show Duran.

"The soil turned over by artillery shells—see it? The porosity is at least three times larger than the undisturbed soil. These pores are not visible normally. But when it rains, water will seep in, and once it's full, these soils will turn into mud in less than half an hour."

"That's why we need to dig a drainage ditch."

"Not only that. Charging in mud, speed is reduced by half. The field of fire is blocked by muddy water, and accuracy drops by seventy percent. The loss of traction for wheeled vehicles on muddy ground—forget it, you don't need to know this."

"I need to know."

Locke raised his head and glanced at Duran.

"The drainage ditch channels the water into the depression on the flank, so the ground of the main position is always dry." He nailed one end of the rope into the ground, "Dry—run fast, shoot accurately. Tell me, is it necessary to dig?"

Duran was silent for three seconds. Then he turned and picked up a shovel from the ground.

"What are you standing there for?" Duran roared at the new recruits. "Pick up your shovels—dig along the line drawn by Captain Rock. Two people to a team, each team responsible for two zhang. You must finish before dark."

The new recruits picked up their shovels one by one. Thirty men spent the entire afternoon digging into the ground, a mix of gravel and frozen earth. The sound of flying gravel echoed against the perimeter wall, like someone beating a giant stone drum with a hammer.

After the trench was dug, Rock laid a layer of wooden planks over it.

"Try it."

A bold recruit walked across the planks. His footing was much steadier than it had been on the gravel ground. He walked across a second time, then turned to look at Rock.

"Captain—how long will this drainage ditch hold?"

"If there's no torrential rain, until you retire."

The recruit smiled. He turned to glance at Rock's reaction—but Rock had already walked to the front of the position. His battle-axe was stuck in the dirt beside him; he wasn't holding it. He just stood there, next to that crack, gazing in the direction of the Chaos Arc.

The recruit didn't call out to him. He didn't know what Rock was looking at. But he suddenly felt that the crack—that nail—might really hold. Not by luck, but by this axe, this trench, and this group of people.

That evening, the communications officer rode a steam-powered motorcycle back from the direction of the outpost. He handed a piece of intelligence from Blackstone Town to Rock.

Rock unfolded the note and read it, saying nothing. He folded the note up and put it in his pocket, placing it next to the identification tag he had brought back from the Green Sector.

Then he walked up to the highest observation point of the base. By the faint starlight, he glanced toward the horizon.

Duran followed up from the ladder. He didn't speak, just stood by the ladder and handed him a piece of dry ration.

"What did Lord Lin Mo say?" Duran asked.

"The arc is still shrinking."

"Then—"

"The nail is still there." Rock took a bite of the dry ration, chewing for a long time before swallowing. After swallowing, he looked up at the darkening sky.

"Dig the drainage ditch another half-meter deeper tomorrow morning."

"Another half-meter? It's deep enough already."

"It's never enough." Rock stuffed the last of the dry ration into his mouth. "Before all the battles that may come—get the drainage ditch finished first. That is the only thing we can be sure of."

Duran nodded. After turning and walking a few steps, he stopped and looked back—Rock was still standing at the observation point. The hand that wasn't holding the axe was tucked into his pocket. Duran knew that besides the note and the identification tag, there was nothing in that pocket, but Rock was gripping it very tightly.

When the news reached Blackstone Town, Lin Mo was in the Intelligence Center, frowning at the latest reconnaissance photos of the Chaos Arc.

He silently recited the message Rock had sent back—the nail is still there. Then he put the photo down and let himself lean back against the chair for a moment. It wasn't relaxation, but a temporary withdrawal from constant alertness, giving his nerves a second of rest.

Outside the window, the sound of the Arsenal's forging hammers continued at a steady pace. He listened to the sound, counted three beats in his mind, and then sat upright again.

"Lord Lin Mo—" Marcus poked his head in from the door. "Old Tom says he wants to see you. He says he dug up something in the STC data. It's very important."

"Let him come over."

Marcus's expression was a bit off.

"He said—for you to go to his workshop. He said those things cannot be seen by a second person."

Lin Mo stood up. He picked up the notebook on the table and went out.

While walking through the narrow alley on the outskirts of the Arsenal, he suddenly stopped.

No one knew what he experienced in that moment. He stood in place, one hand propped against the stone wall of the alley, the fingers of his other hand pressing against his temple. If Alice had been there, she would have seen an extremely faint arc of golden light flash in the air behind his head—like the spark that bursts out when a match strikes a striking surface.

The mirror of the emperor silently opened a fragment in the darkness.

It wasn't a complete memory. Just a scene: a door that had been closed for too, too long, with a faint sliver of light seeping out from under the crack. In the light was a figure, blurred to the extreme, kneeling on the other side of the door, in a frequency slow to the point of despair, one, two, three—tapping. Tapping for thirty thousand years.

The image flickered and vanished. Lin Mo took a deep breath and withdrew his hand from the wall. He looked at his fingertips—they were turning red, as if burned. But nothing on this planet could burn him. He continued walking forward. He walked faster.

Old Tom's workshop was on the far east side of Blackstone Town, right next to the main building of the Arsenal. The door was always half-closed, with piles of scrap metal and unsorted ore samples half a person's height stacked at the entrance. When Lin Mo pushed the door open, it set off the string of iron bells hanging on the door—Old Tom had made them himself; the sound was short and not harsh.

"Old Tom."

"Over here."

Old Tom's voice came from a small cubicle at the end of the workshop. It contained his personal toolbox and three data terminals salvaged from the ruins of the Rebel Legion—two of which were completely broken, their screens covered in spiderweb-like cracks. The third was running, emitting a buzzing low-frequency noise.

When Lin Mo entered the cubicle, Old Tom was sitting behind a table welded together from scraps of armor plate. In front of him lay a portable data screen. The text on the screen was green, and the font was the standard Imperial military coding font from thirty thousand years ago. Old Tom's knuckles were tapping rhythmically on the tabletop—this was his habitual action when entering an analytical state. The faster he tapped, the bigger the problem.

"Sit down."

Lin Mo sat down on the old chair opposite. The chair leg was a bit loose, so he steadied it with his foot.

"What did you find in the STC database?"

"Not the STC." Old Tom turned the data screen around. "It's a personal log buried at the bottom layer of the STC database. It was encrypted with four layers—the first two were standard military codes, which took me three days. The third and fourth layers used encryption protocols from different eras, with at least eight thousand years between them. The fourth layer of the password wasn't cracked until last night."

"Eight thousand years?"

"Someone has been to this place in those eight thousand years. Not just one group. Each group added a new layer of encryption to this log." Old Tom's fingers tapped faster on the table. "Not to keep others from seeing it. But to keep what's underneath from being forgotten."

Lin Mo stared at the line of green text on the screen.

"Observation Station No. 7 Report—Target awakening progress approximately 34%, estimated remaining time: unpredictable. Recommend initiating backup plan."

"Awakening progress?" Lin Mo's brows furrowed. "What target's awakening?"

"Look down."

Old Tom extended a rough index finger, covered in burn scars, and swiped down on the data screen.

The next page had only one line of text.

Not an ordinary line of text—but text that had been deliberately deleted and then manually restored. The data traces left by the restoration operation were still there, showing that this line had been written back into the record at some unknown point after its deletion. The protocol version used by the restorer was two thousand years later than the deleter's.

The line of text read—

"The target is not a weapon. It is a person."

Lin Mo read the sentence three times. The first time was to read the literal meaning. The second time was to overturn all the assumptions he had made while reading it the first time. The third time—he didn't think about anything. He just looked at those six characters.

"A log from thirty thousand years ago." Old Tom's voice suddenly dropped by half. Low, as if afraid of eavesdroppers. "Thirty thousand years ago, someone already knew—there is something under this planet. Not a weapon. It's a person. Then they deleted this sentence. After deleting it, someone came back and restored it."

"What do you think this means?"

"It means—" Old Tom stopped his fingers from tapping the table. "This is not a simple abandoned base. Their code name wasn't 'base', not 'research institute'—'observation station'. Observing what? What kind of person needs thirty thousand years to awaken? What kind of person started this process thirty thousand years ago? And who is it—every few thousand years during these thirty thousand years—that comes back, adds a new layer of encryption to this record, ensuring it won't be completely forgotten?"

Lin Mo didn't answer. Only the low-frequency buzzing of the data terminal remained in the cubicle.

"One more thing." Old Tom pulled out a folded piece of paper from under the table—not an electronic document from the data screen, but a handwritten note. Old Tom only used pen and paper when reaching the most important conclusions.

"I compared the writing style of this log with other documents in the same batch of STC data. The timestamp shows the author of the log was someone whose name was erased—but he was not an ordinary observer. His writing style—I don't mean the font, but the expression habits—is completely different from those military reports. This person entered Observation Station No. 7 with special authorization. This means—"

"The relationship between the observer and the observed is unusual."

"Correct."

The sound of the forging hammers in the workshop stopped just at that moment. The sudden silence caused the two old men in the cubicle to hold their breath at the same time. Lin Mo stared at the line on the screen. The target is not a weapon. It is a person. Thirty thousand years ago. Awakening progress 34 percent.

"Who else knows about this?"

"Only me."

"Good." Lin Mo turned off the data screen and pushed it back to Old Tom. "Lock this log away."

Old Tom unhooked a key from his belt—an iron key he had forged himself, the teeth were crooked but every side was meticulously filed. He opened the safe under the table, which had been modified from scrap steel plates, and put the portable data screen inside.

When the bolt clicked, it made a very soft sound. But both men in the cubicle heard it clearly.

"Give me the key." Lin Mo extended his hand.

Old Tom hesitated for less than a second. He pulled the key out of the keyhole and placed it into Lin Mo's open palm. The coldness of the iron seeped from his palm into his fingertips. Lin Mo remembered the burn he had felt in the alley just now—the same spot on the same hand. That burn, this chill.

"Old Tom—if one day in the future, I am no longer in Blackstone Town, I leave the decision of this key to you. But until you have my message—"

"You don't trust me?"

"I do." Lin Mo put the key into his pocket. "That's why I'm giving it to you."

Old Tom was silent. He folded the handwritten note again and tucked it into the bottom compartment of his toolbox.

"Do you think the person who restored the log—" Lin Mo stood up and walked to the door. Just as he pushed it open, he turned back to ask, "Could they still be here?"

The forging hammers outside began to ring just then. Old Tom did not answer the question. He just started tapping the table with his fingers again—the sound of his knuckles hitting the steel plate was slower than before, but heavier.

Lin Mo pushed the workshop door open, and the iron bells rang again.

He walked into the night wind. The iron key in his pocket pressed against his thigh, still carrying the warmth of Old Tom's palm. He didn't go straight back to the Intelligence Center. He stood in the shadows at the entrance of the Arsenal for a while, looking up at the faintly purple starlight in the sky of that planet, which didn't even have a name.

Then he lowered his head and spoke a sentence to his clenched fist. The voice was very soft, so soft that only he could hear it.

"Under this planet—a person is hidden."

The night wind blew his voice away. The sound of the hammers drowned out everything. But the key in his pocket was burning hot. The same kind of heat as in the alley just now.

"The moon of Qin, the pass of Han, the ten-thousand-mile march, the men haven't returned. If the Flying General of Longcheng were here, he would not let the Hu horses cross the Yin Mountains." —Wang Changling, Border Song. The memory fragments sealed within the mirror of the emperor emerged quietly in the darkness. A nail makes no sound when it is driven in. But when someone comes to pull it out—the person pulling the nail will find that there is a thread attached to the bottom of the nail. A thread that has dragged on for thirty thousand years. And at the other end of the thread—someone is waiting.