80: Chapter 80: The Silver Hair in the Ruins, I Saved the Star Knight

At three in the morning, the right-wing engine collapsed.

It wasn't an explosion, but rather the internal structure finally giving way under the continuous twisting stress, collapsing inward with a loud crash. Debris and wreckage rained down like shrapnel into the swampy water, splashing mud three meters high to the top of the wreckage. Locke was leading some men to drag a deformed bulkhead panel with a steam winch when the shockwave knocked him flat into the mire, his right shoulder slamming hard against a protruding metal frame. When he scrambled up, half his face was covered in black mud. He spat out a mouthful of turbid water tasting of rust, his roar drowning out the remaining echoes: "Everyone back off! There's still residual fuel in the engine compartment—don't get close!"

Three minutes before the explosion, the search and rescue team had just carried two survivors out of the engine compartment's partition—an engine technician and a navigator. The two had been trapped in the bulkhead mezzanine, surviving the first few hours after the crash on emergency oxygen. When they were carried out, they were covered in blood, most of which wasn't theirs. Another crew member had his chest cavity impaled by a broken support beam at the moment of the crash, spraying blood all over the compartment. The first thing the engine technician said upon waking was: "He took that beam for us."

Three other crew members had died on the spot. Alice personally closed the eyelids of each deceased, then covered them with clean white medical cloths.

"Do you pause this long every time?"

Lin Mo stood at the edge of the swamp, his gaze resting lightly on her hands. He noticed that whenever her fingertips touched a deceased person's eyelids, she would always pause for an extra fraction of a second.

Alice did not look up. She pulled the last medical cloth to the deceased's jawline, her fingertips folding a neat triangular crease at the corner. "In the field hospitals of the Astral Knights, the military doctors recite a prayer when closing a person's eyes."

"An official Imperial prayer?"

"One I modified myself." She stood up, casually wiping her hands on her lapel—wiping away not blood, but rather a weight far harder to erase than bloodstains. "I say: You can rest now."

Lin Mo did not press further, only silently committing those words to heart. No Emperor, no glory, no holy crusade. Only rest. This woman gave the final gift to everyone who failed to make it out of the operating room: permission to fight no longer.

"How is the Deputy Medical Officer?" He changed the subject.

"Three fractured ribs, a mild concussion, and the impact wound on her forehead isn't too deep. I did a purification scan with my psychic power—no Chaos contamination." Alice snapped the buckle of her medical kit shut. "But the injuries are trickier than I initially estimated. The rib fractures are very close to her left lung. If she had tried to free herself from the safety belt before being rescued—"

"She didn't," Lin Mo interrupted. "She stayed buckled in her seat until I cut the safety belt."

Alice looked up at him. Her gaze wasn't exactly grateful; it was more like someone long accustomed to bearing all consequences alone, realizing for the first time that someone had confirmed the most critical variable for her before those consequences could even manifest.

Lin Mo didn't return her gaze, or rather, he pretended not to see it. Back when he was a product manager, he had learned that when you couldn't gauge someone's boundaries, the best way to get close was to quietly stay by their side and do useful things. During the four hours Alice spent treating the fractures just now, he had stood by, passing her instruments without saying a single word. He had handed her a pair of hemostatic forceps no fewer than twenty times.

"Her hand can be saved," Alice suddenly said.

"What?"

"You kept looking at her hand—the one she uses to suture." Alice picked up the medical kit. "Her hand is saved. The wound on her forehead won't leave a scar either—I used the Astral Knights' standard suture spacing, not the Imperial Army's crude three-stitch method."

Only then did Lin Mo realize that his gaze had indeed drifted toward the medical tent. He withdrew his eyes, fished out the silver-veined crystal from his pocket, spun it halfway between his fingertips, and put it back.

"She's awake," Alice said.

The Deputy Medical Officer opened her eyes in the early hours of the morning. First, she saw Alice—her fellow trainee who was currently changing the bandage on her forehead. Then, she saw a strange man standing at the entrance of the tent, wearing a faded black training uniform. Her gaze lingered on him for a full three seconds.

"You tied your hair up."

No words of thanks, no asking where they were. It was about the hair.

Alice's movements paused for half a beat. She looked down at her hair—haphazardly tied back with a strip torn from a medical bandage. During her years on Hope Star, she had tied her hair up more times than in her ten years with the Knights combined.

"This isn't the Knights' medical bay," Alice said calmly, her hands never stopping. "You have to learn to suture with one hand while holding down the wounded with the other."

"Leaving it loose gets in the way of your vision." The Deputy Medical Officer slowly sat up and looked around the makeshift tent—wooden supports, a tarpaulin roof, two operating tables converted from handcarts, and a crate of emergency supplies transported from Blackstone Town. After studying her surroundings for a long time, she suddenly asked, "What has been the survival rate of the wounded over the past year?"

Standing at the tent entrance, Lin Mo graded the Deputy Medical Officer in his mind upon hearing this. He wasn't assessing her medical skills, but her sense of priority. When most Imperial officers landed, their first question was about the Department of Military Affairs' orders, the second was about the nearest communication station, and only third would they think to ask about casualties. This woman bypassed all procedures and went straight for the results. Her gaze sweeping over the equipment held no disgust or condescension; she was simply categorizing: what could be used, what needed repair, and what had to be replaced. It was exactly like the first thing he used to do when taking over a botched, half-finished project.

"Ninety-four percent," Alice said.

The corner of the Deputy Medical Officer's mouth twitched. It wasn't a smile, but rather her deliberately suppressing her surprise. "In the field hospitals of the Astral Knights, that number is ninety-one percent."

"This is not a field hospital." Alice tucked in the end of the bandage. "The people here don't have standard-issue medical equipment, but they have something heavier than equipment—every time I wheel a patient into the operating room, their family is waiting outside. They aren't just waiting for an outcome; they are waiting for an account."

The Deputy Medical Officer fell silent for a few seconds.

"You've changed a lot," she said.

"Perhaps," Alice stood up, "perhaps not."

Lin Mo placed the surgical instruments back onto the tray and straightened up. "I'll leave you two to talk. I'm going to take a look outside."

"Archon," the Deputy Medical Officer suddenly spoke, her voice still raspy from just waking up. "I read the ship's briefing before I came—this planet is a frontier colony, isolated and helpless. Usually, in places like this, an Archon would use heavy-handed measures to maintain order. You don't."

Lin Mo paused at the tent entrance, shifting the instrument tray to his left hand, as if looking for a response that required no further explanation.

"Heavy-handed measures don't require brains," he said. "Finding a different path is what takes effort." He lifted the tent flap, and the morning light filtered through the gap, carving a blinding white line on the ground. "Once you recover from your injuries, see for yourself. We can talk after you've seen it."

Stepping out of the tent, he added a line to the logbook: "Survivors settled." Then, he walked toward the wreckage clearance area by the swamp. The sky was not yet fully bright; on this first dawn after the crash, a thick swamp fog wrapped everything in a semi-transparent grayish-white.

Locke was keeping watch outside the engine compartment on the right side of the wreckage, leading some men to haul medical equipment and communication gear with the steam winch. The right-wing engine that had collapsed in the early hours had completely gone cold, and the winch's steel cable was pulled into a straight silver line in the morning fog. Seeing Lin Mo approach, Locke pulled his foot out of the mud and handed over a waterproof document bag salvaged from the wreckage.

"Found this in the cockpit," Locke said, slapping the mud off his hands. "There's something in there you might want to see. Look at page three first."

"How did you know I'd want to look at page three?"

"Don't you always do that?" Locke paused, startled by his own words—he actually had no idea what a "product manager" really was, yet the words had slipped out naturally. "Every time you give me documents, you always flip to the table of contents and the appendix first."

Lin Mo took the document bag and opened it. Inside was a ship mission briefing, along with several personal letters. The briefing read: "The Third Medical Squadron of the Astral Knights is ordered to proceed to the eastern frontier sector to support the construction of the local Imperial garrison's medical system. While passing through the airspace of Hope Star, they encountered anomalous Warp fluctuations and were forced off course." At the end, there was a handwritten annotation in neat handwriting, with soft curves at the ends of several letters:

"If you encounter Lin Mo, the Archon of Hope Star, on that planet, please hand over the ship's military supply inventory. Over the past two years, this Archon has properly handled the aftermath of three Imperial crashes and has been included in the Department of Military Affairs' cooperation list for aftermath management."

Lin Mo stared at those words for a long time.

"What does it say?" Locke asked.

"The three Imperial crashes I handled before—every single one was resolved in accordance with the Department of Military Affairs' regulations." Lin Mo folded the document. "This list shows that the Department of Military Affairs has already noticed Hope Star—not because of my reforms, but because of my efficiency in handling aftermaths."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"The good thing is that I've been recognized. The bad thing is—" Lin Mo stuffed the document back into the waterproof bag, his fingertips pausing for half a second at the opening, "once the Department of Military Affairs sets its sights on your methods, the next step is usually to make you hand them over."

A golden stream of light flickered gently at the edge of his vision. It was extremely faint, with no imagery, only an intuition akin to a change in temperature: this list would ultimately lead him to a place where a price had to be paid.

Seeing that his expression was off, Locke didn't press further and changed the subject. "There are still plenty of supplies in the wreckage. The medical equipment was carried out first, and about a third of the communication gear is usable. The metal in the ship's engine compartment is of very high quality; Old Tom is already calculating its salvage value."

"What about Yang Shitou?"

"He's transcribing the ship's communication logs. He said he can get them all copied onto backup paper before dawn. Part of the original manuscript was soaked in coolant; if we don't hurry, it'll be completely ruined."

"And Aunt Zhang?"

"She's taking care of the survivors, giving them water every three hours." Locke paused, then added, "A rule she set for herself. She said she would have done it even if you hadn't ordered it, but since you did, she feels more reassured carrying it out."

Lin Mo told Locke to sit on an unturned rock near the wreckage and began assigning tasks. The way he spoke reminded Locke of the first time Lin Mo had assigned reconstruction tasks in Blackstone Town's square—every single directive was followed by a designated person in charge, a deadline, and acceptance criteria.

"Locke, you're in charge of clearing the wreckage supplies. Before sunset, move all usable medical equipment and communication gear to the square to be piled together. The standard for 'usable' is: tested and able to power on normally."

"Old Tom, evaluate the salvage value of the metal materials in the engine compartment and give me a written report by noon tomorrow. Don't just tell me verbally; write it down, clearly marking the estimated weight and use of each alloy."

"Yang Shitou, transcribe all communication logs onto backup paper before midnight tonight. Keep the original sealed and preserved, and make two copies of the backup—one for you and one for Locke. If there are lines that are unreadable, clearly mark the location and the number of missing characters. No guessing allowed."

"Aunt Zhang, you're in charge of caring for the three survivors. Feed them water and liquid food every three hours, and record their body temperatures. If their temperature fluctuates by more than half a degree within four hours, call Alice immediately."

Locke had been used to this way of doing things since the first day he met Lin Mo. He didn't need to understand what a product manager was; he only knew that when Lin Mo said, "You are responsible for this, I'll see the results tomorrow morning," he had better produce results. But this time, he asked one more question.

"How do you plan to arrange things for the Deputy Medical Officer?"

The tip of Lin Mo's pen paused. "Let her recover first. Once she's healed, we'll keep her here with work."

"I'm not talking about work arrangements." Locke stood up and looked toward the medical tent. "She is another Alice. I could tell the moment you carried her out of the wreckage by the swamp."

Lin Mo made no reply.

"You don't have to answer me." Locke slapped the mud off his trouser legs. "But you have to understand one thing: just like Alice, she is no ordinary person. The work you arrange won't keep them here. There has only ever been one thing that can keep them."

"What?"

Locke didn't say it directly, only chin-gesturing toward the medical tent—Alice was stepping out, her long silver-white hair blowing in the morning fog, holding the Deputy Medical Officer's medical records in her hand.

"See for yourself," Locke said.

Lin Mo watched Alice's retreating figure, then looked down to open the supply inventory in the document bag. He flipped to the third page—the third page Locke had mentioned. In the middle of the page, an item was circled by hand: Psychic Resonance Crystal, purpose unknown, quantity one, kept in the custody of the ship's medical officer.

He read the entry three times.

The silver-veined crystal Alice had handed him might be a fragment of the same item listed, or it might be completely unrelated. But there was one thing he was absolutely certain of: the mirror of the emperor would never show him visions at insignificant moments.

And the very moment he read it for the third time, it came.

A half-frame golden vision exploded at the edge of his vision—inside a sealed medical bay, the walls were the standard gray padded panels of an Imperial medical facility. A woman held a crystal up to a light source, the veins inside the crystal refracting a color that did not belong to any known spectrum under the light. Her face was not visible in the vision, only her hands—her fingers were slender, and faint golden patterns floated on the back of her hand, identical to the light patterns that appeared on Alice's hand when she channeled her psychic power.

The vision dissipated.

Lin Mo snapped back to reality, folded the supply inventory, and put it back into the document bag. He added a new entry to the logbook: "Investigate the wrecked medical bay tomorrow; prioritize searching for crystal-type items. Note: Psychic Resonance Crystal, purpose pending investigation, suspected to already have a fragment." At the end, he drew a triangular symbol—a mark he specifically used to flag matters that "required Alice's confirmation."

"Locke," he called out to Locke, who was walking toward the winch.

"What's up?"

"Does the ship component diagram in your hand mark the specific location of the medical bay?"

Locke pulled the crumpled component location diagram from his chest pocket and flipped through a couple of pages. "It's on the second level of the midsection. But that area was crushed and deformed during the crash, so the hydraulic shears can't get in. To enter, we'll have to go around the engine compartment first, then crawl through the ventilation ducts."

"Then we crawl through the ventilation ducts."

"The ducts are full of coolant residue. A person can't stay in there for long."

"Wear gas masks." Lin Mo stood up. "First thing tomorrow, you're coming with me."

Locke stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly grinned—not a relaxed smile, but the kind of grin from a veteran who had rolled in the swamp for four years, realizing his Commander was about to personally crawl into the wreckage again.

"That crystal she gave you—"

"Not necessarily related," Lin Mo interrupted him. "But if it really is a fragment of the same item, then the valuable things on this ship aren't just these supplies. As long as the words 'Psychic Resonance' appear on an Imperial military inventory, it cannot possibly be an ordinary material."

"Could it be of Chaos—"

"Impossible," Lin Mo said. "The Emperor wouldn't let me see things of Chaos."

The moment the words left his mouth, he was startled himself. Not because he had uttered the word "Emperor," but because when he said it, there wasn't a shred of hesitation in his heart. In four years and six months, he had transformed from a product manager who knew absolutely nothing about the Imperium into someone who could stand by a swamp and make theological judgments. He couldn't say whether this change was good or bad. But he was certain of one thing: the faint golden patterns on the woman's hand in that half-frame vision were the exact same color as the light that rose on Alice's hand when she performed the psychic purification on the Deputy Medical Officer in the tent.

In the morning fog of the swamp, the silver-white long hair caught no specks of mud,

only shimmering with an extremely faint light.

It was not a brightness that daylight could illuminate,

but rather something slumbering in her bloodline, quietly refracting the light of this world.

Inside the tent, the two women who came from the same legion silently confirmed one thing:

They were not the only ones who had survived.