74: Chapter 74, First Appointment: Governor of Hope Star

"Charge!"

Locke's roar was like a heavy hammer striking sheet metal, shaking the dust on the training ground into the air. Thirty militiamen, who had touched a gun for less than a month, held their brand-new laser rifles as they stumbled toward the target line fifty meters away. The rifle butts slammed hard into their shoulders, and the recoil made them wince. The skinny recruit on the far end, thin as a stalk of hemp, was knocked flat on the ground, his rifle sent flying far away.

"Get up!" Locke strode over, grabbed him by the back of his collar like a chick, and hauled him up. His rough palm slapped against the recruit's back with a loud thwack. "If you can't even hold your rifle steady, what are you going to do when the Chaos spawn come? Gnaw on their power armor with your teeth?"

Dust swirled over the training ground. Just as Locke was about to wave for the next group, rapid footsteps suddenly echoed from the direction of the guard tower. Yang Shitou ran over, his face flushed red, panting heavily: "Captain Locke! In the sky—there's something in the sky!"

Locke looked up abruptly. At the edge of the gray-blue sky, a black dot was enlarging at an astonishing speed. A piercing engine noise could be heard from across half the town—it wasn't the steady, heavy roar of an Imperial warship, but a ragged, creaking noise, like an old, dilapidated tractor scraping frantically against sheet metal. A small merchant ship, without any Imperial registration number, trailing a thick black tail of smoke, wobbled as it dived toward the temporary landing pad on the outskirts of Blackstone Town.

"Not an Imperial ship." Locke hoisted his modified laser axe onto his shoulder, the blade flashing with a cold light in the sunlight. "Let's go. Take two people and let's check it out."

The merchant ship slammed heavily onto the landing pad, kicking up dust and grass clippings like a sandstorm. Locke instinctively squinted. When the dust settled, he finally saw the state of the ship—it was so dilapidated it didn't look like it could still fly. The hull was covered in patches, with metal plates of different colors welded together haphazardly. A deep, bone-gouging scratch ran along the port side from bow to stern, its edges still stained with dark green blood, as if it had been viciously clawed by some creature from the Warp. Even after the engines cut out, they continued to crackle and pop, like a pot of boiling oil that had burned dry.

With a clang, the hatch opened, and the hydraulic rods let out a harsh groan. A middle-aged man walked out, wearing a meticulously ironed silk robe, sporting a carefully trimmed mustache, and wearing a standard professional smile. He carried a shiny leather briefcase in his hand. He stood at the hatch, his gaze slowly sweeping over Blackstone Town—the mottled stone walls, the chimneys of the Arsenal belching black smoke, the disheveled militiamen on the training ground, and the laser axe on Locke's shoulder that was clearly self-modified.

His expression didn't change at all, but a trace of extremely subtle surprise flashed in his eyes. It was the kind of surprise a merchant feels when seeing goods that exceed expectations—not joy, not disappointment, but more like quickly calculating the profit margin of this deal in his mind.

He walked to the edge of the training ground, his gaze lingering on Locke's laser axe for half a second longer.

"Who's in charge here?" His voice was very steady, carrying the smoothness of someone who had dealt with people for many years.

Locke didn't speak, just pointed the axe handle toward the Town Hall. Lin Mo had already walked out of the Town Hall—the engine noise was so loud that everyone in Blackstone Town had heard it.

The middle-aged man walked up to Lin Mo. There was no handshake, no pleasantries, not even a nod of greeting.

"Kahn Ross. Trader. Been running this border line for twenty years." He switched the briefcase to his left hand, and his right hand instinctively adjusted the silk scarf at his collar—it was a silk scarf embroidered with golden patterns, looking absurdly out of place on this dusty border planet where even clean water was scarce. "Heard there's an Archon here willing to trade anything for rye bread and plasma engines. I've come to see if it's true."

Lin Mo looked at him, his eyes as calm as a deep pool of water. No wariness, no enthusiasm, as if he were just looking at an ordinary stone.

"Come in and sit." He said calmly, turning and walking toward the Town Hall.

When Kahn followed Lin Mo into the Town Hall, he happened to bump into Wang Defu, who was coming out carrying a stack of ledgers. The two met face-to-face in the narrow doorway. Kahn's gaze swept quickly over the ledgers in Wang Defu's hands—the covers were worn shiny, the corners carefully wrapped in coarse burlap, with a bit of dirt still on them. He immediately stepped aside, bowed slightly, and made a gesture of "please".

Wang Defu didn't move. He stood where he was, and with a gaze honed by fifty-two years of struggling at the bottom of the Empire, having seen countless swindlers and bandits, he carefully sized up Kahn from head to toe. From his shiny leather shoes, to his meticulous mustache, to the expensive-looking briefcase in his hand.

Then he turned his head and shouted into the room, his voice not loud, but enough for the entire Town Hall to hear: "Lord Lin Mo! Do you know this person?"

"Just met him." Lin Mo's voice came from the reception room.

"Fine." Wang Defu withdrew his gaze and looked at Kahn again, his eyes like a rusty knife, slow and heavy. "I'll be next door doing accounts. Call if you need anything."

Having said that, he hugged the ledgers and walked out, step by step.

Kahn watched him walk away, a faint smile curling the corners of his mouth. It wasn't the annoyance of being offended, but the recognition of something he was very familiar with—the kind of wariness, carved into the bones, peculiar to those who survived in troubled times.

"Your accountant doesn't seem to trust me." He sat down opposite Lin Mo, placing the briefcase on his knees.

"He doesn't trust anyone." Lin Mo poured himself a cup of tea. "Including the numbers he calculates himself. He checks every account three times; he won't let even a single copper coin be missing."

"Good habit." Kahn smiled. "The thing to fear most in business isn't a swindler. Swindlers at least have patterns to follow. The most fearful thing is an honest person who can't do math—they'll bankrupt themselves and drag you down with them."

Kahn stayed in Blackstone Town for a whole day. He wasn't in a hurry to talk business, just saying he wanted to look around first. As for what he was looking at, he didn't say. Lin Mo didn't ask.

When visiting the Arsenal, Kahn stood in front of Old Tom's plasma engine prototype for a full quarter of an hour. The machine was over a person's height, its shell covered in fish-scale patterns left by welding. The heat sinks were hammered out from recycled spaceship hull plating, each one angled differently, crooked and twisted, looking like it would fall apart at any moment. Kahn walked around it twice, then took a brass pocket watch out of his pocket, measured it against the engine's heat vent, and silently put it away.

Old Tom was filing a precision part at a workbench nearby. From the moment Kahn entered, he hadn't looked up, but his wrinkled ears had been pricked up the whole time.

"What are you doing?" Old Tom asked without raising his head, his file still moving rapidly in his hand.

"I'm estimating." Kahn tucked the pocket watch back into his pocket. "Estimating how much this thing could sell for if it were mass-produced and shipped to the other end of the Green Sector."

The file in Old Tom's hand paused. "So, did you estimate it?"

"Enough to buy three Green Sector-level trading posts." Kahn's tone was very flat, not like he was complimenting, but more like he was quoting an accurate price. "But you don't intend to mass-produce it, right?"

"It's not that I don't want to, it's that I can't." Old Tom finally stopped his work, but still didn't look up. "The plasma confinement coils need Grade 2 ceramic fiber. You can't even find Grade 1 on this godforsaken planet. What I'm using right now—" He tapped the engine shell heavily with the file, making a dull sound, "—is fireproof cotton stripped from the bulkheads of a scrapped transport ship. It burns a layer every time I test it, and when it burns through, I peel off another layer. Once this layer is gone, this machine is finished."

"Grade 2 ceramic fiber—" Kahn rubbed his chin. "The Sixth Mining Station in the Green Sector has it in stock. The market price is two thousand Imperial Credits per meter; I can bring it to you for twelve hundred. The condition is that the pricing power for the first batch of goods after mass production belongs to me."

"Just the first batch." Old Tom finally looked up, staring fixedly at Kahn from beneath his thick eyebrows, his eyes like tempered steel. "Not a single batch more."

"Just the first batch." Kahn extended his hand, a standard professional smile appearing on his face. "In business, I, Kahn, value integrity."

Old Tom didn't shake his hand. He extended his right hand, covered in calluses and grease, and slapped Kahn's palm heavily—this was the way blacksmiths shook hands, the force so great that Kahn's palm went numb instantly.

"Deal. But let's get the ugly talk out of the way first—" Old Tom's voice was low and hoarse, "If you dare try to fool me with substandard goods, the next time your ship dares to land in Blackstone Town, what will greet you won't be a welcome ceremony, but my twenty-kilogram forging hammer. I will smash you and your broken ship into scrap metal."

Old Tom looked down at the machine he had built with his own hands, a flash of complex emotion in his eyes. "It'll be good enough if I can build a second one."

"Then when you build the second one, you must notify me." Kahn took a gold-stamped business card out of his pocket and placed it on Old Tom's workbench. "I'm making a reservation now."

Old Tom looked down at the exquisite business card. He didn't reach out to take it, but he didn't push it away either.

He snorted through his nose. That was the closest expression to a "smile" he had ever made in his life.

"You, a big trader, running to this godforsaken border planet to reserve a broken machine that hasn't even been built yet—" Old Tom looked up, staring at Kahn, "Is your merchant ship about to go bankrupt, and you're out of options?"

Kahn laughed. This time, the professional smile on his face finally showed a hint of genuine curvature.

"Quite the contrary." He said, "The deals that truly make big money all start from when it's 'not built yet.' Once it's actually built, and everyone knows it's valuable, the price won't be mine to decide anymore."

Old Tom stared at him for a full ten seconds. Then he reached out with his rough fingers, pinched the business card, and carefully tucked it into the chest pocket of his work overalls.

"When the second one is built, I'll have Yang Shitou notify you." He said, "That kid runs fast and has long legs."

When visiting the militia training, Kahn stood on the sidelines, quietly watching an entire group finish their shooting practice. Thirty recruits, rotating in three groups, from loading to aiming to firing, every action was strictly according to the standard procedures set by Lin Mo; although still very unfamiliar, they were meticulous.

"Good foundation." Kahn commented, "Just lacking equipment."

"You sell equipment?" Locke stood beside him, his laser axe planted heavily on the ground, his copper-bell-sized eyes staring straight at Kahn. It wasn't hostility, but the scrutiny peculiar to a veteran looking at a stranger.

"I sell. But not to a squad that can't even hold their rifles steady." Kahn jerked his chin toward the tall, thin guy who had just been knocked down by the recoil. "Practice for another month. When they can run a hundred meters while holding their rifles and still hit the target, come find me. I have a batch of second-hand power armor parts discarded by the Astral Knights. The price is negotiable."

"Astral Knights parts?" Locke suddenly shifted his axe to the other shoulder, his eyes lighting up instantly. "Where did you get them? Their armory is guarded tighter than the Emperor's vault."

Kahn smiled. It was the standard smile of someone who had been in business for twenty years when asked about their source of goods, carrying a hint of mystery and a hint of taking it for granted.

"The armory has a disposal list every month. According to regulations, this discarded equipment is supposed to be thrown into a furnace to be destroyed." Kahn spread his hands. "But regulations are for those lords sitting in offices on Terra to see. I know a few ordnance sergeants responsible for destroying equipment. Every month, they secretly keep some things that can still be used."

"You buy scrap metal?" Locke frowned.

"The laws of the Imperium govern complete ordnance, not scrap metal," Kahn said. "I just happen to know which 'scrap metal' can actually be used for another few decades. You're Locke, right? I can tell, you're someone who understands gear. The chest plating of Astral Knights power armor, if taken apart and worn separately, is thirty percent lighter than standard Imperial flak armor, yet has twice the defensive capability. Of course—the price is also twice as high."

Locke fell silent. He stared at the training ground for a good while; the recruits were still clumsily practicing their shooting.

"Bring a sample first to have a look," he said.

"Easy enough." Kahn's smile deepened slightly. "Next time I come, I'll bring you a complete set of samples."

Locke was stunned for a moment. He had originally thought Kahn would take the opportunity to ramble on with a sales pitch; after all, traders were the type who wouldn't let a potential client go once they saw one. But this man not only didn't, he actually took the initiative to offer to bring samples next time.

"Doing business like this, aren't you afraid of losing money?" Locke asked, puzzled.

"The way I do business—" Kahn straightened the silk scarf at his collar, his tone flat but carrying an unquestionable confidence, "—is exactly how I've managed to survive on this frontier line until today."

Locke slammed his axe into the ground, producing a dull thud.

"Then tell me, what specifically does that batch of power armor parts include?"

"Pauldrons, chest plate connectors, elbow joint hydraulic assemblies." Kahn pulled a neatly folded list from his pocket and unfolded it to show Locke. "They're all second-hand items phased out by the Astral Knights, with less than thirty percent wear. The physique of you recruits is different from the Astral Knights, so the sizes need to be adjusted—but it's not hard to modify. Twenty sets minimum order, seven thousand two hundred Imperial Credits per set, including modification blueprints."

Locke's eyes widened like copper bells.

"Seven thousand two hundred a set? Do you think the money in Blackstone Town grows on trees?" he growled. "Our militiamen only get a monthly allowance of five Imperial Credits!"

"Captain Locke." Kahn folded the list and stuffed it back into his pocket, his smile remaining unmoved. "Seven thousand two hundred to buy a life. Do you think that's expensive, or not?"

Locke stopped talking. He stared at Kahn for several seconds, then suddenly reached out and grabbed Kahn's hand. His grip was astonishingly strong; Kahn's knuckles made a distinct clicking sound.

"Fine." Locke's voice was low and firm. "But if the goods don't match the description, I'll settle the account with you using this axe of mine."

"Rest assured." Kahn endured the sharp pain in his fingers, maintaining his smile. "When I, Kahn, do business, I value integrity."

Just then, Yang Shitou ran over from the training formation, carrying a bowl of fresh water in his hands. He handed the bowl to Kahn with a simple, honest smile on his face. This wasn't ingratiation, just the instinct of an honest man—a guest from afar, if thirsty, should have water to drink.

Kahn took the bowl. He looked down at the water inside, clear to the bottom, where he could even see the patterns on the bottom of the bowl. He had been on this dusty frontier planet for several hours already, and this was the first person to take the initiative to offer him water.

"Thank you." Kahn took a sip of water, the cool sensation instantly spreading through his whole body. "What is your name?"

"Yang Shitou." Yang Shitou rubbed the dirt off his hands and smiled sheepishly. "I'm a sentry at the watchtower; I don't usually train here. Today I'm filling in for a sick comrade."

"A watchtower, huh." Kahn nodded. "Standing high, seeing far. That's a very important position."

Yang Shitou nodded vigorously, not saying anything more. He wasn't great with words, but Kahn saw something in his eyes—a kind of steady, firm conviction. This honest man knew that what he was doing was important, and he felt proud of it.

At noon, while eating at the town's only small restaurant, Kahn did something that surprised everyone—he took the initiative to pay the bill. And he didn't pay with Imperial Credits, nor the copper coins commonly used in Blackstone Town, but with a small bottle of high-grade lubricating machine oil contained in a metal tube.

"Use this for that forging hammer in the Arsenal." Kahn pushed the oil bottle to Old Tom, who was sitting at the next table eating stew. "The drive shaft is severely worn and needs replacing. It's not too late to change it now—if you drag it out for another three months, the eccentric error of the hammerhead will expand from two units to ten units. By then, all the gun barrels you manufacture will be crooked."

The spoon in Old Tom's hand stopped in mid-air. He stared at the oil bottle for a good while, then looked up at Kahn.

"How did you know the drive shaft needed replacing?" There was a trace of disbelief in Old Tom's voice. He had only discovered the problem with that forging hammer yesterday and hadn't had a chance to tell anyone.

"I heard it." Kahn picked up his teacup and took a sip. "Just now in the Arsenal, I listened to that forging hammer strike for three minutes. Every six strikes, the gap on the seventh strike would be a little bit more than normal. That gap isn't a problem with the hammerhead; it's caused by the wear on the drive shaft—that extra bit of time is the time the shaft is wobbling in the bearing."

Old Tom fell silent. He stared at the oil bottle for a long time, then reached out, took the bottle, and carefully stuffed it into his pocket.

"Are you a trader or an engineer?" Old Tom asked.

"I am a trader." Kahn smiled. "But if a trader doesn't understand machines, they don't know what is truly valuable—nor do they know what can still be sold for a good price before it turns into scrap metal."

This time, Old Tom didn't snort through his nose. He just nodded and continued to lower his head to eat his stew. But anyone could see that his attitude toward Kahn was already completely different from before.

After the meal, Kahn sat alone in the town center square for a while. A little boy with an injured knee was squatting on the steps at the edge of the square, waiting for a nurse from the Medical Station to change his dressing. His knee was wrapped in thick gauze, and a small patch of pale yellow medicinal stain had seeped through the outside of the gauze.

Kahn watched the little boy and fell silent for a moment. Then he pulled a fruit candy from his pocket—it was something he had brought back from a distant agricultural planet, with characters he didn't recognize printed on the wrapper.

He walked over, squatted down, and handed the candy to the little boy.

The little boy looked up, watching Kahn, his eyes full of curiosity. He didn't take the candy immediately, but instead turned his head to look at his mother standing not far away.

The mother hesitated for a moment. She saw that Kahn was someone brought into town by Lord Lin Mo, so he shouldn't be a bad person. So, she nodded gently.

Only then did the little boy reach out his dirty little hand, take the candy, carefully peel off the wrapper, and pop it into his mouth.

Kahn squatted on the ground, level with the little boy.

"Is it sweet?" he asked.

The little boy nodded vigorously, his eyes squinting into slits.

"What does it taste like?" Kahn asked again.

"I don't know." The little boy mumbled with the candy in his mouth, "But it's much sweeter than the ration bread."

Kahn watched the bright smile on the little boy's face and froze.

The professional smile on his face vanished completely in that instant. Replacing it was an extremely complex emotion—there was nostalgia, there was sadness, and there was a trace of imperceptible tenderness.

That emotion lasted only for a moment. Soon, he put back on that mask of a professional smile. But when he stood up to straighten the silk scarf at his collar, his movements were noticeably a beat slower.

In the evening, Kahn came to the guest room of the Town Hall again. This time, he didn't discuss any business matters. He took a letter from a compartment in his briefcase—an ordinary paper envelope, no wax seal, no signature, and no markings of any kind.

He placed the letter on the table and gently pushed it toward Lin Mo.

"I won't ask what is written in the letter," Kahn said. "I am only responsible for delivering this letter to your hands and taking a reply back from your hands. Postage is extra—but considering the food here is pretty good, I'll give you a twenty percent discount."

Lin Mo didn't touch the letter. He just looked at Kahn quietly.

"Do you know who wrote it?"

Kahn picked up his teacup and took a sip. It was tea brewed by Wang Defu; the tea leaves were grown in Blackstone Town itself. It tasted very bitter, but it was very effective at refreshing the mind. He put down the cup, his gaze sweeping vaguely in the direction of the Medical Station outside the window.

"I don't know," Kahn said. "But I know that the person who handed this letter to me has a very respectable job on Terra, so respectable that there's no need to personally run to this kind of frontier planet to deliver a letter. To have someone like that send you a letter through such a secretive channel shows that what you are doing here has already reached places much further than I imagined."

He paused. Just then, the light at the Medical Station outside the window turned on—it was the first light to turn on in Blackstone Town every day.

"By the way." Kahn's voice lowered a bit. "The person who sent the letter also asked me to pass on a message. He said that you have a silver-haired Psyker Medical Officer here with extraordinary abilities. He's quite curious about how you managed to find a Medical Officer of that level on such a godforsaken frontier planet."

Lin Mo's fingers tapped lightly on the desktop. The movement was extremely subtle, so fast that it was almost imperceptible. If it weren't for someone like Kahn, who had trained for twenty years at the negotiating table in observing people, it would have been impossible to notice.

"You said just now that you don't read the contents of the letter." Lin Mo's voice remained calm.

"I indeed didn't read it." Kahn smiled. "That was content the sender specifically instructed me that I could relay orally. Relaying isn't reading the letter; it's passing on a message. Passing on a message also costs money, which is already included in the twenty percent discount on postage from earlier."

Lin Mo looked at him for a long time. Then he reached out, picked up the letter, and put it into his own pocket.

"Where are you staying tonight?"

"On the ship." Kahn said. "My merchant ship is my home. The living room, bedroom, and guest room are all in the cabin of that broken-down ship."

"Fine." Lin Mo stood up. "When you leave tonight, you don't need to come and say goodbye to me specifically. But before you go, stop by Wang Defu's place. He has a batch of ore samples he wants to entrust you to take out for an appraisal."

"Ore samples?" Kahn's eyes lit up instantly. "What kind of ore?"

"Go see for yourself." Lin Mo walked toward the door. "You are a trader; you know better than I do what ore is valuable."

When Kahn found Wang Defu, the old village chief was in the storage room next to the Town Hall, carefully examining a few pieces of ore by the light of a dim oil lamp. The ore samples were neatly stacked on a wooden shelf, with a small slip of paper with a number written on it pressed under each piece.

"Lord Lin Mo asked me to come and take a look at the ore." Kahn squatted in front of the wooden shelf. "Did you organize all of these by yourself?"

"Yeah." Wang Defu moved the oil lamp closer to a dark red stone. "These three rows are iron ore, copper ore, and a kind I don't recognize. I've tested the iron and copper content, and it's written on the back of the slips. But this third kind—" He tapped the dark red stone with his finger, producing a crisp ringing sound, "—is extremely hard; even a chisel can't chip it. Fire doesn't change its color either. I don't know what it is."

Kahn took a portable ore detector from his pocket and scanned the stone with it. The detector emitted a short beep. Kahn's eyes lit up instantly.

"It's Iridium." Kahn turned the detector's screen toward Wang Defu, his voice carrying undisguised excitement. "The core raw material for the Imperial military factories to manufacture heat-resistant alloys. One ton of crude Iridium ore can be exchanged for a brand-new power axe on the sector market."

Wang Defu didn't speak. He turned the piece of Iridium ore over and placed it back down gently. Those hands, which had farmed for half a lifetime and were covered in calluses and wrinkles, left clear fingerprints on the surface of the ore, the fingerprints still carrying traces of soil.

"Is there a lot of this stuff around Blackstone Town?" Kahn asked eagerly.

"There's a vein at the foot of the mountain to the west." Wang Defu said indifferently. "My legs aren't good, so I didn't walk to the end. But it looks like the reserves are not small."

He paused, looked up at Kahn, his eyes exceptionally firm. "But if you want to mine it—that land is mine. I farmed rye there for three years before I got that land ready."

The excitement on Kahn's face vanished instantly. He put away his professional smile, took a blank contract paper from his briefcase, and spread it out on the wooden shelf.

"Old Master Wang," Kahn said, his tone exceedingly serious. "For the iridium mining rights and exclusive resale rights, I'm giving Blackstone Town seventy percent of the net profit. That is the highest commission in the industry; no other merchant will offer you more."

Wang Defu did not look at the contract. He simply gazed quietly into Kahn's eyes.

"I don't want seventy percent," Wang Defu said.

Kahn was stunned. "Then what do you want?"

"I want you to come to Blackstone Town at least twice a year," Wang Defu said, his voice slow but every word as firm and powerful as a stake driven into the ground. "One trip to deliver goods, one trip to collect them. Don't be like those merchants from the big trading posts who come once, make their fill, and never return. Blackstone Town isn't short on ore, nor is it short on money. What Blackstone Town lacks are people willing to come here."

Kahn fell silent. He looked into Wang Defu's world-weary eyes, then glanced at the Medical Station, its light still burning outside the window.

A few seconds later, he picked up a pen and wrote a line on the contract. Then, he added another line below it.

"Deal," Kahn said. "And I'll throw in a free crate of fruit candy for the town's children every year."

Wang Defu looked down at the two lines on the contract. He then pulled a stub of a pencil from his pocket and signed his name with a crooked hand. The handwriting was unsightly, even somewhat sloppy, but every stroke was pressed heavily, as if carving deep furrows into the earth.

Kahn wrote out the receipt for the reply that very night and handed it to Lin Mo for confirmation. Lin Mo took the letter and walked into the Intelligence Center alone.

He sat down at the steel-topped table and slowly unfolded the letter. The contents were brief, just a few sparse lines, yet Lin Mo read them over and over again.

The sender of the letter held an extremely delicate position within the Imperial system. He belonged neither to the reformists led by Guilliman nor to the die-hard conservatives, yet he could access core information that neither faction could reach. The core of the letter was but a single sentence—a sentence that would fundamentally alter every future decision for Blackstone Town.

After reading the letter, Lin Mo casually tossed it into the oil lamp on the table. The flames instantly consumed the paper, licking at its edges, the dancing firelight illuminating the map of the Chaos arc spread out before him.

As the last speck of ash fell onto the table, Lin Mo picked up a charcoal pencil and drew a small question mark beside the coordinates for Terra.

He recalled the sight of Kahn handing candy to that little boy in the square. A man who had spent twenty years as a merchant on the Imperial frontier, who had witnessed countless darkness and horrors, yet could still reveal such genuine tenderness in his eyes when offering a sweet to a child—this in itself was a signal. It was not about Kahn, but about the faint glimmer of humanity that had not yet been completely extinguished in a universe shrouded in darkness for ten thousand years.

The mirror of the emperor in his palm grew slightly warm. It was not a warning, but a sense of confirmation he had become increasingly familiar with. It was as if someone, far, far away, had given a gentle nod. That person had not said "well done," nor had they said "be careful"; they had simply acknowledged that he was still here, still persisting in doing what he believed to be right.

Lin Mo picked up the pen and wrote a note beside the question mark: "Someone is making a move against us from Terra. Not Guilliman. It is someone closer to the emperor than Guilliman."

It was late at night when Kahn's merchant ship fired its engines. The ear-splitting roar rolled across the night sky of Blackstone Town once more, just as noisy as when it had landed. But this time, the townspeople did not run out to watch. They were accustomed to it—every few days, something new landed or took off in Blackstone Town, be it a merchant ship, a reconnaissance vessel, or a transport vehicle heading out on patrol.

Lin Mo stood at the window of the Town Hall, watching the dilapidated merchant ship slowly ascend through the clouds of dust, turn, and finally vanish beyond the gray-blue horizon.

The door was gently pushed open. Rock walked in, his laser axe still slung over his shoulder—he was on the night shift.

"That letter—" Rock closed the door behind him, his voice lowered, "is there a problem?"

"I didn't ask—"

"I'm not asking if you asked about the contents," Rock interrupted. "I'm asking if there is a problem with the letter itself."

Lin Mo turned and glanced at Rock. Rock was illiterate, but he knew how to read expressions. He had been with Lin Mo for nearly four years, and there was a correlation between the depth of Lin Mo's frown and the gravity of his decisions that only a rough-hewn man like Rock could accurately discern.

"Someone has taken notice of us," Lin Mo said.

"People from the Empire?"

"People from Terra."

Rock fell silent. He lowered the laser axe from his shoulder and slammed it heavily onto the ground, creating a dull thud.

"How far is Terra from here?"

"Very far. So far that it would take light hundreds of years to travel the distance," Lin Mo said. "But that person's attention doesn't need a ship."

"What does that mean?"

"It means—" Lin Mo walked back to the table and turned the map of the Chaos arc around to show Rock. "From now on, we must not only guard against the open blades of Chaos, but also the hidden arrows from Terra."

Rock stared at the map for a long time. He could not decipher the dense web of coordinates and arcs, but he understood the small question mark Lin Mo had drawn next to the coordinates for Terra. The mark was drawn in charcoal, still not completely dry, reflecting a strange, dim luster in the lamplight.

"Tell me what to do. I'm with you," Rock said.

Lin Mo turned the map back, picked up the charcoal pencil, and drew a short, straight line beside the question mark.

"There are three factions in Imperial politics," Lin Mo said. "The reformists want to tear everything down and start over, the conservatives want to return to the days before the Great Crusade, and there is a third group—they take no sides, yet they know everything. The person who wrote to me is likely of the third type. They do not choose sides lightly, but when the time is right, they will hand you a knife—or hand it to your enemy."

Rock frowned. "So, is this knife being held blade-first toward us, or handle-first?"

"I'm not sure," Lin Mo said, setting down the charcoal pencil. "But regardless of whether it's blade or handle, we must catch it first. Only by catching it can we see which way the edge is facing."

Rock shifted the axe from his right hand to his left, and then back to his right—a habitual gesture when he was thinking.

"Yang Shitou can't watch both sides on his own," Rock said. "We need more people on the watchtowers."

"Starting tomorrow, double up on the watchtowers." Lin Mo walked to the window and gazed toward the Medical Station. The light was still on—the last light to be extinguished in Blackstone Town each night. "Whether it is the hidden arrows from Terra or the open blades of Chaos, we will block whichever comes first."

The night deepened. Lin Mo added a new marker to the map wall in the Intelligence Center. The information Kahn had brought and the location of the Chaos arc created a dangerous overlap on the map. If the mysterious observer from Terra and the Chaos arc pointed in the same direction, it meant that someone did not want him to live to see that arc close.

Lin Mo used the charcoal pencil to draw a large circle over the intersection of the two areas. This was no longer a speculation, but a marked potential trap. He could not step into it, but neither could he pretend it did not exist.

He set down the charcoal pencil and walked out of the Intelligence Center.

The lights of Blackstone Town went out one by one. Only the light at the Medical Station remained, always the last to be extinguished.

As Lin Mo passed the Medical Station late that night, he subconsciously slowed his pace. Through the oiled-paper window, he could see that silver-haired figure, head bowed, diligently treating the scrapes and sprains left over from the day's militia training. A row of neatly portioned medicines sat on the workbench.

He did not go inside. He simply stood quietly outside the window, confirming that the light was still burning. Then, he pulled a peppermint candy from his pocket and gently placed it on the stone steps at the entrance of the Medical Station.

He did not know if Alice noticed those footsteps that always slowed down outside her window. But he knew that if this light were ever extinguished, he would stand there for a very, very long time.

As he turned back toward the Intelligence Center, a faint signal came from the other end of the psychic link. It was not words, nor images, but a warm sensation. It felt as if someone had gently brushed against the edge of his consciousness. It was merely a confirmation that he was still there.

Lin Mo also reached out within the psychic link and gently brushed back.

The markers on the map wall in the Intelligence Center were becoming increasingly dense. It was like a map of survival and war that was being filled in inch by inch. Behind every marker was a living person—the defensive line that Rock and the militia had held with their blood, the plasma engine prototype that Old Tom had spent three sleepless nights crafting, the extra shift Yang Shitou had stood atop the watchtower, the reserve of compressed rations Wang Defu had secretly tucked away beneath his ledgers.

Lin Mo sometimes wondered if, should he ever leave this planet alive, he would not remember the complex tactics or the difficult decisions. He would only remember the lights that had remained burning in the boundless darkness.

The oil lamp on the table had burned down to its final wick. The dancing flames cast flickering shadows upon the wall. Lin Mo stood up and walked to the window.

"The sunset is infinitely beautiful, but it is near dusk." — Li Shangyin, Climbing Leyou Plain. Memory fragments sealed within the mirror of the emperor surfaced quietly in the darkness.

He did not know why he had thought of this poem at that moment. But he knew that the twilight of Blackstone Town was not yet good enough. He needed to ensure that the twilight here was one that would be followed by a dawn.

The day after the Ultramarines fleet departed from orbit, Marcus pushed open the door to the Intelligence Center. The expression on his face caused Lin Mo to immediately set down his pen. It was not the excitement of discovering a new lead, but the heavy premonition of one verifying a guess they had hoped would never be proven true.

"I found a signal in the background noise of the comms band," Marcus said, placing the data slate on the table, his voice raspy. "It is not an Imperial code, nor is it Chaos interference. It is a communication protocol I have never seen before—it repeats every few seconds."

Lin Mo stared at the weakly fluctuating curve on the data slate. The signal was extremely faint—so faint that it would have been impossible to detect had Marcus not specifically widened the frequency band to scan for it.

"Did you decode it?" Lin Mo asked.

"I did," Marcus replied, his voice so soft it was nearly inaudible. "There is only one sentence."

He turned the data slate to face Lin Mo. On the screen was a single line of cold text: [We are on our way.]

Lin Mo stared at the text for a long, long time.

The oil lamp's flame cast one final flickering shadow upon the wall. Outside the window, from the direction of the Chaos arc, came a low, rumbling roar, as if from the depths of hell. It was not thunder. It was some terrifying entity in the Warp, drawing near, greeting them in its own way.

Outside Blackstone Town, the torches atop the watchtowers flickered violently in the cold night wind. Yang Shitou stood atop the watchtower, pulling his coat tighter around himself. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, but this deathly silence—this total absence of anything unusual—was, in itself, the greatest anomaly of all.

The night on Hope Star was still very, very long.