71: Chapter 71 Extreme Warrior Trial: Why Should Mortals Be Recognized?

Blood.

On the slide, two blood samples were lined up side-by-side under the microscope. Alice's hand was frozen on the focus knob, her knuckles white.

She had already looked three times.

The first time, she thought it was an instrument error. The microscope in the dispensary was pieced together by Old Tom from scrap parts; its precision was barely adequate, so errors weren't surprising. The second time, she re-prepared the samples, following the standard Imperial medical officer procedure for every step—sterilization, centrifugation, staining, mounting—and then refocused. The result was exactly the same.

The third time, she didn't look through the microscope. She closed her eyes and pieced together the molecular structure diagrams of the two samples in her mind. The position of every chain link, the angle of every fold, the orientation of every active site—they overlapped perfectly.

It wasn't similarity.

It was identity.

"Impossible."

She opened her eyes and said the word aloud. She was the only one in the dispensary. The microscope's cooling fan hummed, and a fine sound of rain came from the tin roof. More than half of the tube of Emperor's Gene Repair Fluid extracted from the Underground Shelter had been used up; the remaining sample was only enough for one more comparative analysis. As for her own blood—the drop she had pricked from the tip of her left ring finger with a blood collection needle—it had congealed on the slide into a small, dark red film, its edges already beginning to dry and curl.

She removed the slide from the stage and placed it into the disinfectant. Those cells had completed all the tasks they were meant to finish today.

Then she pulled open a drawer and took out that silver wire-fixed ring.

On the inside was cast a tiny serial number: "Batch 17 · Sample γ".

She had looked at this line of text countless times. Since she had memories, this ring had been on her finger. The archives of the Imperial Psyker training system contained no information about her parents—only serial numbers, batches, and test scores. She never asked. In the Empire, a Psyker did not deserve to have a past. You were a tool, and tools didn't need to know who forged them.

But today, this line of text suddenly took on a new meaning.

She stood up, locked the door of the dispensary, and walked toward the Intelligence Center.

The door to the Intelligence Center was open. Lin Mo sat behind the desk, with three documents spread out in front of him.

The first was a front-line casualty report sent by Locke—the numbers were thirty percent higher than last month.

"Thirteen more dead."

Lin Mo turned the report to the last page. He recognized every name circled in red. Yang Shitou's younger brother was on the list. Wang Defu's deputy was, too.

The second was an inventory assessment of the supply station. Ammunition reserves could hold out for fifty more days at the current rate of consumption.

"Fifty days."

The third was a line he had written himself, pressed under the other two, the handwriting heavy—

"That door on the second floor of the Underground Shelter—what opens it?"

He had been stuck on this line for nearly a month. The door was metal, without any mechanical latches, and without any keypad he could recognize. Old Tom had tried once with a cutting tool; the cutting head wore down by a third, and the door didn't even have a scratch.

"Old Tom says that door isn't opened with tools."

Every time the mirror of the emperor approached that door, it would emit a slight pulse—like a heartbeat, rhythmic, but never giving any executable instructions.

"Like it's waiting for someone."

"Waiting for someone it knows."

Lin Mo said these two sentences to the line of text. The voice wasn't loud, and it was scattered by the wind blowing in from outside the window.

Fifty days. People were dying on the front lines, the chaos attention level was climbing, and he was being blocked out by a door that wouldn't open.

"What exactly did you lock inside?"

Then he heard footsteps.

Alice stood at the doorway. In her hand, she held a tube of pale golden liquid; there was no name on the label, only a symbol—a simple line drawing of a human silhouette with a beam of light above its head.

She closed the door behind her as she walked in. The closing motion was light, but Lin Mo noticed—this was the first time she had voluntarily closed his office door.

"What is this?"

Lin Mo took the tube of liquid and held it up to the light. Extremely fine silver veins flowed within the pale golden liquid, like solidified lightning captured in a test tube.

"My blood."

Alice said. Her tone was as calm as if she were saying dinner was ready.

Lin Mo's hand stopped in mid-air.

"Your blood."

"I isolated the active ingredients of the Emperor's Gene Repair Fluid," Alice said, "and discovered a molecular structure. It's not in the codex, not in any Imperial medical literature. It's not the blood of the Emperor, not a variant of Primarch gene-seed. It's something older."

"Something older."

"Something from before the Golden Age."

She paused. There was the sound of rain outside the window, a uniform white noise beating against the tin roof.

"Then I performed a comparative analysis with my own blood sample."

"And the result?"

"Identical," Alice said. "Not similar. Every chain link, every folding angle, every active site of the molecular structure—completely identical."

Lin Mo placed the test tube on the table, between the three documents and that line of text.

"Are you sure there was no cross-contamination?"

"I did it three times."

"And all three times the result was the same."

"All three times the result was the same."

Silence. The sound of the rain suddenly became very loud in this office.

"So you came to find me," Lin Mo said.

"I have seen that line of text." Alice raised her left hand, showing him the serial number on the inside of her suppression ring. "Batch 17. My ring is cast with the same serial number. The test subjects of this batch—whatever the experiment was—only produced one thing. This molecular structure."

Lin Mo looked down at the serial number. Then he looked up at her.

"You have never asked me whose descendant I am."

There was no probing in the tone, no surprise, no superfluous emotion. It was a confirmation.

"You haven't asked me, either," Alice said.

In this room, they confirmed the same thing at the same second.

They didn't care about each other's origins.

What they cared about was that the other person stood on their side.

"What do you need?" Lin Mo pushed the tube of liquid back to her. "Tell me."

When Alice took the test tube, her fingertips brushed against the outer wall. The tube was cold—the constant temperature cabinet in the dispensary was set to four degrees, and several minutes had passed since she left, so a very thin layer of mist had formed on the outer wall.

"That door," she said, "the one on the second floor of the Underground Shelter that says 'Human Civilization Continuation Laboratory'."

Lin Mo's body leaned forward five degrees.

"How do you know about that door?"

"I can open it."

Silence. Longer than before.

"How do you know you can open it?"

Alice looked down at her wrist. The skin under the suppression ring had a faint mark, a scar left from a burn years ago. Back then, she was just a serial number in the Psyker training camp, and an instructor had branded the suppression ring onto her wrist with a soldering iron.

"Because of the handwriting of the text on the door."

"Handwriting."

"And the handwriting of the casting mark on the inside of my suppression ring—it was written by the same person."

Lin Mo looked at her.

"Are you sure?"

"My job is to identify molecular structures. Identifying handwriting is a hundred times simpler than identifying molecular structures," Alice said. "The same starting angle, the same stroke pressure, the same slant of the brushwork. In the characters for 'Batch 17', the horizontal bar of the '7' curves 0.3 millimeters more than others. The '7' on the door is the same."

After she finished speaking, there was only the sound of rain in the office. The raindrops on the tin roof went from dense to sparse—the rain was about to stop.

"Someone who has never seen their own biological parents," Lin Mo said, "recognizing the handwriting left by kin on a silver-gray metal door."

Alice didn't answer. Her finger gently turned the suppression ring once.

"So what do you plan to do?" Lin Mo asked.

"Analyze the remaining tube of fluid first," Alice said, "and then—"

"Then go open the door."

"Then go open the door."

Lin Mo stood up and walked to the window. The rain outside had almost stopped, and the muddy dirt road shimmered with water in the moonlight. The light from the Intelligence Center shone out through the window, casting a crooked rectangle on the ground.

"Alice."

"Hmm."

"Are you afraid?"

Alice was silent for three seconds.

"Afraid," she said. "But not afraid of whose descendant I am. What I'm afraid of is—after pushing that door open, finding something I don't want to see."

"Like what?"

"Like me being a test subject. Like me being a tool created by someone from start to finish. Like my meaning for existing being just something someone else wrote on an experimental record sheet."

Lin Mo turned around.

"Your meaning here was not written by someone else."

"Is that so?"

"It was chosen by yourself," Lin Mo said. "You chose to turn off the communicator. You chose to stay here. You chose to bring your blood sample to me. Every choice was made by you, not an experimental record sheet."

Alice looked at him for a while.

"Then you are the same."

"What?"

"You said you haven't asked whose descendant I am," she said. "Then your own descendant—have you asked yourself?"

Lin Mo didn't answer. The moon outside the window was large, and the moonlight shone on his profile, casting a deep shadow over his eye sockets. The tube of pale golden liquid in his pocket pressed heavily against his thigh; he could feel its chill even through his coarse cloth trousers.

"I come from a very far place," he said. "So far that no one here can verify where I came from."

"So you don't ask, either."

"So I don't ask, either," Lin Mo said. "Because—in this world, I only need one person to know where I came from."

"Who?"

"Myself."

Alice looked into his eyes. In the moonlight, there was a faint golden reflection in his pupils. It wasn't the color of psychic power—the light of psychic power was blue-white. That kind of gold was deeper, quieter, like a piece of metal buried very, very deep underground.

"That place," she said, "the very distant place you mentioned."

"Mm."

"Do the people there—are they also fighting wars, like they are here?"

Lin Mo turned his head back and looked at the moon outside the window.

"No fighting," he said. "At least, not this kind of war. The way people there fight is different from here."

"What kind of way?"

"With rules. With debate. With a whole set of procedures that make everyone agree."

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't."

"Then those rules you brought over—the user mindset and process optimization you mentioned—"

"They are all being used," Lin Mo said. "All of them, and they are useful. But not all of them. Some rules don't apply here."

"For example?"

"For example, some problems cannot be solved by procedures." He turned his head to look at her, his hand resting on the windowsill unconsciously clenching. "Some doors need you to open them."

Alice stood up. She didn't speak, but she paused before she left.

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow."

"I'll finish analyzing the remaining tube of fluid, and then—"

"Then we'll go open the door together."

She nodded, turned around, and walked out of the office.

Alice walked along the town's path back to the Medical Station. The night wind was cold, carrying the unique scent of soil and vegetation mixed together after the rain. She did not quicken her pace.

She was thinking about what Lin Mo had said— "I told you, you never asked whose descendant I was." He hadn't comforted her, nor had he shown surprise. He had simply confirmed one thing: what they cared about wasn't the other person's origin, but whether the other person stood on their side.

"He didn't say 'it's okay'."

"He didn't need to say it."

When she reached the entrance of the Medical Station, she looked back at the direction of the Intelligence Center. The light was still on.

"Staying up late again."

"Same to you."

She stood at the entrance and watched that light for a few seconds, then turned and walked inside, took the separated sample from the cabinet, and placed it back under the microscope.

She needed to figure out what the molecular structure in her blood, which was identical to the emperors gene repair fluid, actually meant. Not for the Empire's archives.

"For myself."

"To know where I came from. And then decide where I am going."

She said this to the microscope. Then she lowered her head and readjusted the focus.

She didn't notice—Lin Mo was also behind the window of the Intelligence Center, looking towards the Medical Station. The two lights, separated by a muddy dirt road, faced each other from afar in the night.

Lin Mo sat at his desk for a long time. He held the tube of pale golden liquid up to the light—the liquid had extremely fine silver patterns flowing within it, like solidified lightning. He placed the test tube back on the table, side-by-side with the octagram pendant.

No reaction occurred between the two items. Just like before.

"No reaction."

He repeated it in a low voice.

But he knew that they were not unrelated—they were just missing a trigger condition. Just like the condition missing between him and Alice.

"It's not feelings."

He said this to the empty office.

"It's confirmation. We are both standing facing the same direction."

It was something deeper. A kind of confirmation that could only emerge amidst chaos and war.

He placed the tube of liquid in the safest spot in his drawer. Then he turned off the light and walked back to his living quarters.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow we will open the door together."

The moon outside the window was large. Moonlight shone on the muddy dirt road, like a layer of crushed silver spread across it.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers away, inside the command bridge of a Chaos outpost, the Masked Commander was standing in front of the projection table. On the star map in front of him, there was a new marker—at a coordinate north of Blackstone Town, a faint energy pulse was flashing at regular intervals. The frequency was about three times per minute.

"She is approaching that door."

The Masked Commander's voice came through the mask, carrying a metallic resonance. The mask had no expression, but every word carried a hunger that had been suppressed for a long time.

The adjutant—a lanky Chaos sorcerer, with unstable purple flames flickering in his eye sockets—stepped forward.

"My lord. The intensity of the energy pulse is increasing. At this rate—"

"I know."

"Three days at most."

"It won't take three days." The Masked Commander raised his hand, covered in burn scars, and drew a line on the projection table. The line pointed directly from the Chaos outpost's location to the mountains north of Blackstone Town. Where his fingertip passed, the topographic profile on the star map automatically expanded into a 3D model of the underground structure. The interior of the mountain was hollow—a massive inverted pyramid-shaped space, with at least seven levels from top to bottom, each labeled with different functional areas.

"Look here."

"This is—"

"Human Civilization Survival Laboratory. A relic from the Golden Age." The Masked Commander's finger stopped at that area. "That door requires her Psyker signature to activate. Without her, we cannot open it."

"So we are waiting for her to push it open herself."

"Correct."

"And after she pushes it open?"

"After she pushes it open—"

The Masked Commander's finger stopped at the very top level of the inverted pyramid. That area was marked in red on the projection.

"Orbital deployment."

"When?"

"Depart after dark." The Masked Commander turned off the projection table. The bridge fell into momentary darkness, with only the indicator lights on the dashboard flickering, casting spots of light onto his expressionless mask.

"The moment she pushes that door open is the moment I reclaim her."

The adjutant laughed in the darkness. The sound wasn't loud, but it was reflected back and forth three times off the metal walls in the enclosed bridge.

"Thirteen days," the Masked Commander said, more to himself. "On the night of the thirteenth day, she will open that door. I can feel it."

"Because she feels it."

"Correct. Because she feels it." The Masked Commander slowly clenched his scar-covered hand. "Someone who has never seen their biological parents recognizes the handwriting left by blood relatives on a door. That is the common mark of their batch. She cannot escape."

Outside the bridge, the engines of three Chaos orbital deployment pods ignited simultaneously. Orange-red flames tore three gashes into the night sky.

The night wind poured in through the bridge's ventilation port. It carried a scent of metal mixed with machine oil—not the scent of soil after rain in Blackstone Town. It was the dead air belonging to the interior of a Chaos warship, filtered countless times.

When Lin Mo walked back to his living quarters, the night wind picked up again. This gust was colder than the previous one, like a thin-bladed knife pressing against his cheek. He wrapped his coarse cloth coat tighter around himself—it was given to him by the villagers, much warmer than the T-shirt he wore when he transmigrated, and the cuffs were already frayed.

When he pushed the door open, the mirror of the emperor vibrated slightly against his chest.

It wasn't an alarm. It was a pulse, slower, deeper, and more regular than an alarm—as if something had just awakened.

He stopped. Moonlight shone in from the window, illuminating the tube of pale golden liquid on the table. The silver patterns brightened for an instant in the moonlight.

Then he heard that voice.

It was not a sound heard by ears. It appeared directly in his consciousness—a memory fragment, rising from the deep database of the mirror of the emperor like a piece of broken glass.

A memory from Earth.

"Since ancient times, who has never died? Leave behind a loyal heart to shine in history."

Wen Tianxiang. "Passing Lingding Ocean."

Lin Mo stood in the darkness, the moonlight drawing a sharp line of light and shadow at his feet. When that person wrote these two lines of poetry, the Great Song had already been crushed into powder in the waves of Yashan. He knew he would die. He knew he couldn't win. But he wrote it anyway.

Why?

Because he knew—what was more important than "living" was "what one lives for."

The Emperor had sat silently on the Golden Throne for ten thousand years, not wanting a group of slaves who only knew how to kneel and shout slogans—he wanted humanity to live standing up. Lin Mo suddenly felt that he and the person sitting on the Golden Throne might want the same thing. They just took different paths.

Lin Mo looked down at his chest. The pulse of the mirror of the emperor hadn't stopped. It was right below his sternum, beating rhythmically like a silent clock.

"What are you telling me?"

He asked. The mirror of the emperor did not answer—it never answered. It only provided information, not making decisions. Decisions were always made by people.

Lin Mo walked to the table. He picked up the tube of liquid and turned it around in the moonlight. The laser engraving at the bottom of the test tube was very small—he had always needed a magnifying glass to see it clearly. But tonight, the moonlight happened to pass through the bottom of the test tube at a certain angle, projecting that line of text onto the tabletop—

"If you are reading this line, it proves that I am no longer here. Then—go to Zone B and find Container No. 00. There is a letter left for you there."

Lin Mo stared at the text projected on the table, staring for a long time.

"A letter left for you."

He repeated it.

That person—the one who left this line of text—knew they would die. Not only did they know they would die, but they also knew precisely who would read this line.

It wasn't "left for the next person who discovers it." It wasn't "left for those who come after." It was "left for you."

He put down the test tube and sat on the edge of the bed.

The moonlight was still shining. The mirror of the emperor was still beating. In the direction of the distant mountains, a faint energy pulse signal was flashing regularly, with a frequency of about three times per minute. But he couldn't see it—he only knew that somewhere in this world, someone had already issued the order for orbital deployment.

It was almost dark.