75: Chapter 75 Awakening New Abilities, Emperor's Mirror, Third Tier

Marcus practically smashed open the wooden door to the Intelligence Center.

His shoulder slammed hard against the doorframe, and the heavy oak door swung into the wall with a dull thud that sounded as if it might shatter. The screen of the data pad he was clutching tightly was blindingly bright; the blood-red serial number matching confirmation box flickered frantically on it for seven full seconds before finally solidifying into a bottomless, deep crimson.

It was not a false alarm.

It was not data corruption.

It was a confirmation.

"Lord Lin Mo." Marcus's voice sounded as if it had been forcibly clawed out of a pile of rubble, raspy and harsh. "The serial numbers match. The first seventeen digits, not a single character off."

Lin Mo turned away from the star map of the Green Sector on the wall. He was still holding a charcoal pencil in his hand—he had been marking the latest convergence nodes of the Chaos arcs. The convergence speed of the arcs had not slowed in the slightest, yet the chaos attention level was abnormally receding. These two completely contradictory signals had kept him staring at this map for an entire morning.

"Start from the beginning." Lin Mo pulled over a chair and sat down, placing the charcoal pencil gently on the table. "Which trail did you follow?"

"The ancient marching route of the Ultramarines. Before that unknown officer left the Green Sector, he conducted a final, complete equipment inventory and left behind a loss manifest." Marcus pushed the data pad in front of him; two rows of cold numbers flickered side-by-side on the screen—on the left were the serial numbers of the Chaos weapons seized during Operation Nail, and on the right were the inventory list numbers he had unearthed from the cargo chips of the Abandoned Forge World orbital station. "The weapons on the list are divided into two categories: Column A is equipment produced by the Legion, which has corresponding receipt entries in the Imperial archives. Column B—"

"None." Lin Mo interrupted him.

"Not a single corresponding record." Marcus nodded heavily—this was the first time after seven days of sleepless pursuit that he could state a definitive conclusion without any explanatory clauses. "The note for Column B is 'Allocated from local supply station.' I dug back along this note and, in another damaged chip sector of that orbital station, found the original inventory records that correspond perfectly to Column B—coming from an old supply station with the designation GRN-047-KL. It lists the first seventeen digits of every batch of weapons in storage. One of those batches matches the Chaos weapon we seized—perfectly."

Lin Mo's gaze was pinned to the overlapping numbers on the screen. "What is the status of that supply station now?"

"There are no subsequent records in the Imperial archives." Marcus's speaking speed slowed down abruptly, a habit he had before delivering his most important conclusions. "The last status update stopped in the year when the Horus Heresy was at its most intense—"

"Marked as what?"

Marcus paused for a second, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Rebel-controlled zone."

The Intelligence Center instantly fell into dead silence. There was only the monotonous hum of the data pad's cooling fan and the faint, indistinct sounds of passwords being exchanged during the militia shift change in the distance.

"And after the marking?" Lin Mo's voice was exceptionally steady, like a Tech-Priest examining a Servo-skull that had developed a core logic error.

"No clearance report. No reclamation record. No audit trail whatsoever." Marcus flipped to the last page of the tracking log and tapped the data pad three times heavily—accessing each layer of data had been ten times harder than the previous one, and every step had involved bypassing the standard Imperial information approval process. He was using the Intelligence Center's self-built offline mirror database; once these data were requested online, the access request itself would leave an indelible trace. "During the post-war Imperial reconstruction period, this supply station was never re-incorporated into the logistics system. But its inventory—for the next ten thousand years—has been continuously extracted by someone."

"Ten thousand years." Lin Mo tested the three words on his tongue. "Who could maintain operational authorization for a rebel supply station over such a long span of time and evade every top-down audit and liquidation by the Empire?"

Marcus did not answer. He knew Lin Mo was not asking him.

Lin Mo stood up and walked back to the star map on the wall. The large star map was densely marked with Chaos activity trajectories, Imperial garrison nodes, and fragile supply lines. He pinned a red thumbtack at the location of the orbital station, a second one at the GRN-047-KL supply station, and a third at the coordinates where the weapon was seized during Operation Nail. Then, he used the charcoal pencil to connect the three thumbtacks with a straight line—starting from the orbital station's cargo records, passing through the supply station's ten-thousand-year slumbering inventory, and finally converging on that Chaos weapon sitting on the evidence rack. He added two auxiliary dashed lines, extending them in reverse along the Space Marine's marching route from years ago, and the entire map instantly formed a seamless circle. The circle had no gaps. The start and the end point connected perfectly.

The tip of the charcoal pencil stabbed hard into the center of the circle. Two words, slow and heavy, piercing through the paper. "Mole."

Marcus looked at the ink-black word, his Adam's apple bobbing again. "Not an ordinary Chaos cultist."

"No." Lin Mo put down the charcoal pencil and turned around. "It is someone who possesses legitimate, supreme access privileges within the Imperial supply system—privileges high enough to evade every audit and liquidation in the ten thousand years since the war. Someone of this level would never personally appear on a battlefield of Blackstone Town's caliber, but the traces of his supply chain are like a thread being slowly pulled, extending all the way from the edge of the Green Sector to this table of ours."

"Do you know what this means?"

"It means the source of the Chaos Forces' equipment has never been entirely from the black market or battlefield spoils. A portion of it—is flowing out openly through the Empire's own supply system." Lin Mo's voice was terrifyingly calm, the unique composure that comes after discovering a fundamental, irreparable flaw in an entire system. "Someone has opened a private channel at the Empire's back door. And it has been open for ten thousand years."

Marcus was silent for a very, very long time, and then asked the question that had been buried at the very bottom of his data pad for the seven days he had been investigating, the one he hadn't dared to ask aloud: "What do we do next? This person has been able to hide within the Imperial system for ten thousand years; he must have a way to monitor his supply chain twenty-four hours a day. As soon as we touch any record related to the serial numbers, he will know immediately."

"So, for now, we don't touch it." Lin Mo said. "He has built a perfect supply black hole that has operated under the nose of the Imperial audit system for ten thousand years without anyone noticing. People like this aren't afraid of being discovered; they are afraid of not knowing who is investigating them. We won't touch his supply chain; we will only keep a close eye on our own end of the inbound records. Let him continue to believe that the channel is still absolutely safe."

When Locke pushed the door open and came in, he was still carrying his modified laser axe—there was a fresh burn mark on the blade, left from when he had split a piece of old tree root deeply contaminated by Chaos energy while patrolling the north wall earlier. He couldn't read, but he immediately saw the glaring red circle on the wall.

"What happened?" He looked at the pale-faced Marcus, then at the expressionless Lin Mo.

"Locke, from now on—" Lin Mo's tone carried an unquestionable weight. "All supply station inbound and outbound records must be duplicated in paper form. No data pads, no connecting to any network. The source serial numbers for every batch of equipment must be registered and cataloged separately, and after you sign and seal them, hand them directly to me."

Locke froze for a moment. He hated paperwork more than anything in his life—but he could hear the weight in Lin Mo's tone. He had only heard this tone three times in his life: the eve of the orc siege, before the deployment of Operation Nail, and now.

"Is someone stealing our stuff?" Locke gripped the axe handle tightly, his knuckles turning white.

"It's more troublesome than stealing. Someone has been supplying Chaos for ten thousand years on the same supply chain that supplies us."

The wooden grain of the axe handle was almost crushed by his grip. In his life, Locke had fought greenskins, fought Chaos fanatics, and slammed tables on greedy Imperial quartermasters—but he had never imagined that the guns he cleaned every day and the ammunition he maintained every day were, in part, coming from the same furnace as the deadly weapons in the enemy's hands.

"Who is that person?"

"I don't know yet. But I do know he is not in Blackstone Town. He is in a higher place."

Locke was silent for a few seconds. Then he nodded heavily and turned to walk out. When he reached the door, he paused without turning back. "When you find him, let me know. I'll go split him in two."

Old Tom was called over from the Arsenal by someone sent by Marcus after Locke left. The reason was simple: Marcus needed a blacksmith's eyes to look at the physical structure of that Chaos weapon, not just the cold serial numbers on the data pad.

When Old Tom walked into the Intelligence Center, his hands were still stained with coal ash from the forge, and his cuffs still carried the lingering scent of iron filings. He picked up the Chaos laser gun from the evidence rack, turned it over to examine the interface on the gun body, and then tapped the metal wall of the barrel with his knuckles.

He tapped it three times. The first was light, the second heavy, and the third carried that unique, confident force of a blacksmith judging whether the heat treatment of metal was done correctly.

"This gun isn't some piece of black-market trash assembled from parts." Old Tom put the gun back on the table and pulled a greasy rag from his pocket to wipe his hands. "The interface precision is one level higher than what we build in our own Arsenal. The heat treatment of the barrel—" He tapped it again; the sound was crisp. "It's top-tier military factory craftsmanship. A small workshop couldn't make this even if you gave them another thousand years."

"Are you sure?" Lin Mo asked.

"I've stood in front of an anvil for forty-two years in my life and fired thirty-seven thousand furnaces of iron." Old Tom's tone left no room for negotiation; it was the confidence of a craftsman who had his expertise etched into his bones. "A gun, I tap it three times, and I know what level of furnace it was fired in. This one—is at least above the highest standard of Imperial military supply. It has one more precision tempering process than the Ultramarines issue gun you showed me." He stuffed the rag back into his pocket. "A modified gun in the hands of an ordinary Chaos cultist would not have this level of craftsmanship."

"So it's not a modified gun."

"No. It was built as standard Imperial equipment from the very beginning—it was just that someone changed the ownership label later." Old Tom pointed to the area on the gun body where the mark had been scraped off, his rough finger tracing along the smooth scratch. "Look here. The person who scraped the mark off knew exactly how deep to scrape to remove all the serial numbers without damaging the stress structure of the barrel wall. Another 0.3 millimeters and it would have destroyed the rifling, and the gun would have been ruined. He scraped it just right. This wasn't something found by trial and error; it was calculated. The person who modified it had a steady hand; this isn't something just any smuggler could do. It was a true expert."

Lin Mo and Marcus exchanged a glance.

"Old Tom," Lin Mo said. "Everything you just mentioned—the tempering process, interface precision, scratch depth—can you write it into a technical appraisal report? It doesn't need to be too long; you dictate it, and Marcus will help you input it."

"Of course I can." Old Tom huffed. "But a report is a report; I won't be writing the conclusion on it. I'm not an investigator. I only deal in blacksmithing."

"You just focus on the forging. I will write the conclusions."

After Old Tom left, Marcus finally placed the question that had been weighing on his heart onto the table.

"If this conclusion is to be verified one hundred percent—" his voice returned to its usual calm and precision, "I need to access the access permission logs of the Imperial supply system core."

Lin Mo looked up.

"Accessing those records will leave traces of the inquiry that cannot be deleted. The Departmento Munitorum's Supply Audit Office has a dedicated monitoring line for the safety of the supply chain during the chaos war, directly under the jurisdiction of Inquisitor Kovac. Any access request generates a timestamp, an applicant unit number, and a visitor identification code, which cannot be deleted within seventy-two hours."

"Kovac." Lin Mo went over the name in his mind, "Kahn mentioned it in his letter last night—someone on Terra is already moving against me. If that mole has managed to retain supply station permissions for ten thousand years without being discovered, he must have a way to monitor all the logs of the Audit Office. He is likely watching Inquisitor Kovac's monitoring line as well."

Marcus's fingers stopped on the data pad. "What is your judgment?"

"Your judgment." Lin Mo looked at him, "You've been investigating for seven days—you tell me."

Marcus considered for a long time. He had never hesitated in intelligence analysis, but this time he hesitated. Because what he was about to say was less of a conclusion derived from data, and more of a decision that would completely change the entire direction of the intelligence tracking. "My judgment is to stop. Continuing the investigation will alert the enemy, causing the person who has been hiding for ten thousand years to retreat before revealing any real flaws. Stopping here, at least we have confirmed that the serial number chain is real. It is not a coincidence, not a misunderstanding. It is real."

"Then stop."

Lin Mo flipped the serial number chain file to the last page, looking at the string of numbers already etched into his brain.

"It's stopped."

Marcus did not press further. He knew that when Lin Mo said "It's stopped," it was never about giving up. It was about waiting. Waiting for the moment when the time was ripe to follow this clue and strike with a single fatal blow.

He put the last piece of data into the encrypted filing cabinet, closed the cabinet door, and turned the combination lock three times. Then, he took a small bronze key off his keychain and placed it gently on Lin Mo's desk.

"One end of the chain is already in your hands. Where the other end leads—is still unknown. But you can wait."

After Marcus left, Lin Mo sat alone in the dark Intelligence Center. He took down the star map on the wall with the red circle and the words "mole" drawn on it, rolled it up carefully, and placed it in the bottom layer of the encrypted filing cabinet.

He manually lowered the chaos attention level from eighty to seventy-eight—not so much because the threat had diminished, but because he needed to make the chaos believe that he had not yet discovered the existence of this serial number chain.

Then, he blew out the oil lamp.

In the darkness, the golden mark on the palm of his left hand suddenly lit up.

It was not the intermittent, flickering glimmer from before. It was a stable and warm golden halo that lasted for several seconds—the light spread slowly along every branch of his palm lines, like a sacred circuit sealed within flesh and blood, finally fully connected for the first time after ten thousand years of silence.

A massive stream of information unfolded in his consciousness with a roar.

Not images. Not sounds. It was a method of transmission that bypassed all senses and injected complete cognition directly into his brain. The capacity and structure of the information had undergone a qualitative leap: the hidden logical connections between every record on the serial number chain, the complete background of that supply station when it was marked as a rebel-controlled area ten thousand years ago, the desperate choice made by a human officer when the rebellion broke out—and the butterfly-effect-like chain reactions that choice was still generating ten thousand years later.

The moment the last fragment of information fell into his consciousness, it condensed into a single Chinese character.

It was not the cold dot-matrix font of a data pad. It was handwritten, written in a script he had never seen before, yet felt incomparably familiar with. Every layer of the strokes was embedded with massive amounts of secondary information, like an entire library compressed into a single character.

"Mirror."

The golden handwriting lingered in his consciousness for a breath, then, like melting gold leaf, slowly spread along the boundaries of his consciousness, finally unfolding into a line of text he had never seen before but could fully understand:

"The lock has been found. The key is on its way."

The information stream ended abruptly. Lin Mo opened his eyes in the darkness.

The response pattern of the mirror of the emperor had completely changed.

Previously, the information was scattered fragments that required him to piece together and guess.

This time, the information was complete—from beginning to end, from the Horus Heresy ten thousand years ago to Blackstone Town at this very moment.

It was not so much that the amount of information had increased, but rather that the organizational dimension of the information had risen by a whole level.

Third level.

He wrote a line in his notebook in the dark: The information transmission mode of the mirror of the emperor has upgraded from fragmented delivery to complete cognitive injection—suspected third-level activation. Response frequency abnormally increased. Cause unknown. Requires continuous observation.

The golden light in his palm dimmed, but did not completely disappear. It was pulsing—at a frequency he had never felt before. It was less of a pulse, and more of a continuous, rhythmic cadence, like footsteps walking towards him from very, very far away at a constant speed.

He did not know what he was perceiving.

But he was absolutely certain that something was approaching him.

In the depths of the distant star sea, a ship made entirely of gold was sailing silently through the Warp.

The Astropath on the bridge had just completed a long-distance psychic scan spanning hundreds of light-years. In the scan data, there was an exceptionally bright psychic signature—with a match rate of over ninety-seven percent to the Primarch file marked "Top Secret: Missing for Three Thousand Years" in the Imperial genetic database.

When she reported this result to the bridge Commander, her voice was very low, as if reporting news that was enough to overturn the Empire, which she herself was still digesting.

The Commander was silent for a long time. He stood up and walked to the huge observation window. The Warp was surging with never-ending chaotic colors; purple energy tides surged, split, and recombined outside the window, like a cosmic wound that would never heal.

"Change course." His voice was devoid of emotion, like metal grinding against metal, "Target: Eastern Star Sector border. Hope Star."

Everyone on the bridge instantly stopped their work.

No one asked why. In the Astral Knights' chain of command, questioning a superior's order was a more unforgivable crime than disobeying orders on the battlefield—but they exchanged glances. A deep confusion, having sailed in space for hundreds of years and experienced countless course changes, yet still not understanding why this one was so different.

In the corner, a gray-robed Tech-Priest wrote two lines in the notes section of his personal log:

"Primarch seeks Primarch."

"Ten thousand years of separation, perhaps there is an end."

The engines emitted a low roar. The golden ship carved a perfect arc in the Warp, its bow tearing through the surging chaotic energy, heading at full speed towards the edge of the Eastern Star Sector.

The Astropath reopened the psychic scan data—she had originally just wanted to recheck the signal strength of the Primarch signature. As a result, at the very bottom of the data, she discovered something else that absolutely should not exist:

Two psychic signatures.

Tightly intertwined, like two threads woven into the same rope—perceiving each other, echoing each other, yet not knowing of each other's existence.

One from Hope Star. From that ordinary human who held the mirror of the emperor.

The other—from the deepest part of this ship. From the core chamber where the Primarch slept.

She verified it seventeen times.

There was no physical connection between the two signatures, no traces of psychic communication, and perhaps neither side even knew of the other's existence. But between the signal frequencies they emitted, there was a correspondence relationship precise to every harmonic peak—like a lock finding its only key, like two beats in the same heart, sharing the same eternal rhythm.

She marked this data separately and saved it into the core database using the highest level of encryption algorithm. In the notes section, she did not write a single word.

Some things do not need annotations.

They only need waiting.

Blackstone Town. The windows of the Intelligence Center were gently swaying in the night wind.

Lin Mo sat in the darkness, his left palm pressed tightly against his chest. That bronze key had been warmed by his body temperature—the cold metal had finally become the same temperature as his skin. The moonlight outside the window fell through the sparse canopy, painting irregular silvery-white spots on the ground, like a mirror that had been shattered for ten thousand years.

He did not know that a golden ship was sailing at full speed towards him through the Warp.

He did not know that sailing with the ship was an Imperial Primarch who had been missing for three thousand years.

Even less did he know that in the core chamber of this ship, there was another person bearing the same fate as him—that person's heartbeat frequency was exactly the same as the pulsing frequency of the mirror of the emperor mark in his palm.

He only knew that his palm was burning.

The mirror of the emperor gently vibrated in the depths of his consciousness—not as a warning, but as a confirmation. Like a coin that had been forgotten for a very, very long time, finally flipped out from the pocket of time.

On the distant horizon, a very faint golden band of light was slowly passing through the edge of the atmosphere, as if someone had struck a match in the deepest part of the universe.

His palm pulsed again.

And then another—the interval was so precise, it was as if someone was calibrating it bit by bit with a stopwatch.

Lin Mo pressed his left palm, counting the sixth pulse in the darkness.

At the moment of the seventh pulse, his heartbeat suddenly skipped a beat.

It was not palpitations.

It was his own heart, actively keeping up with the rhythm of the mirror of the emperor.

Like two pendulums placed on the same table, they would naturally move towards synchronization without any physical contact.

He suddenly realized one thing:

This was not a one-sided signal reception.

The frequency at which the mirror of the emperor pulsed in his palm, and the heartbeat frequency of the existence sailing towards him in the Warp—were calibrating each other.

It was not him receiving the other party's signal.

It was more like they were approaching each other.

Once this synchronization was complete, what would happen?

Thick clouds pressed down, stifling the starlight and moonlight above the dome. In the darkness, that golden band of light disappeared completely from the spectrum—as if it had never existed. But the frequency in Lin Mo's palm was still pulsing.

Faster than before.