54: Chapter 54 The Call from the Genes

The process of the "Tears of the Martyr" falling out of the Warp was not a gentle one.

The hull shuddered violently, as if vomited out from the depths of some gargantuan throat.

The moment the Emperor's light failed, the shriek of the boundary between the Warp and reality seeped through the hull, causing all surviving crew members to painfully cover their ears.

[Holy shit, Neoth, you have no heart! You'd just throw a pretty young lady in there, too?]

In the mind of everyone present, such a roar seemed to flash by.

But no one dared to dwell on it—perhaps this was Warp corruption?

The armor plates retracted layer by layer, and the auspex array began to refocus after the dizziness of jumping out of the Warp.

Cold readings slowly took shape on the tactical display.

Sister Superior Ludmilla Zaragoza stood beneath the observation dome of the bridge, one hand pressed against the console to steady herself, while the other—that crude mechanical prosthetic—clenched involuntarily.

She was waiting.

Waiting for the star charts to finish cross-referencing, waiting for the navigation officer to tell her where they were, waiting for this system—which the Emperor had guided them to, allowing them to escape the Warp storm with their lives—to give her an answer.

"Positioning complete," the navigator's voice carried a hint of uncertainty. "Sister Superior, we… we are in an unrecorded system."

"Unrecorded?" Sister Superior Ludmilla's voice sounded more like she was asking herself than posing a question.

"There are no matches in the database," the navigator quickly added. "This star, this world, this system—none of them are on our known star charts."

"It is unmapped; it doesn't exist in any of our current data."

"Perhaps it was once Imperial territory, but now, it is merely a lost, nameless world."

"Since the Great Rift opened, there are simply too many such lost worlds, and even the light of the Astronomican is barely visible here."

"Let me see." Sister Superior Ludmilla activated the observation system.

The observation dome's light filtering system adjusted automatically, masking the visual noise left over from the Warp jump.

The void slowly unfolded before them.

What burst into view was a world radiating a dazzling blue.

That blue was an interweaving of deep and shallow seas, a blending of lakes and oceans.

That shade of blue was highly aggressive, carrying an indescribable, vibrant aura of life—pristine, majestic, blooming from the edge of the world's polar night and spreading all the way to the end of the day.

In the pitch-black space, this blue was more dazzling than any star, more brilliant than any gemstone.

Clouds were like whispers, like a layer of thin white gauze, gently wrapping around the blue and outlining its gentle curves.

At the same time, this white gauze was playful; it would occasionally obscure the land and oceans, then refract the star's light, scattering fine, fragmented glares that made it difficult to see clearly.

This world was not ostentatious, yet it possessed an undeniable power.

It was like a pair of gentle blue eyes, silently gazing at the three natural satellites orbiting it, and also gazing into the distant depths of the universe.

Its gentleness seemed to be blessed by the entire material universe, making one subconsciously want to return to its embrace.

The winding, undulating red forests of steel intertwined with green grasslands, inlaid upon the earth like dual-colored jade.

Only at the equator, a blue river of steel transporting materials wound like a ribbon, like a belt wrapping around the entire world, operating ceaselessly. It packaged this world into a gift from the gods to mortals.

The moment all the crew members saw it, they were drowned in this gentleness, unable to extricate themselves for a long time.

This scene triggered the unfading memories carried within their genes, lighting up the softest attachments in the depths of their hearts—Terra, Ancient Terra. They did not know what Ancient Terra was like, but their genes told them that if it existed, then Ancient Terra must be like this...

Sister Superior Ludmilla closed her eyes, not daring to acknowledge everything she saw.

Her hand released the console, and her mechanical prosthetic hung by her side, emitting a faint, confused hum—as if even this crude machine was struggling to understand everything before it.

"This is impossible," she whispered, her tone full of disbelief.

No one answered.

On the bridge, no one could answer her.

She opened her eyes again and gazed at the blue world. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed—she had discovered traces belonging to the Empire.

A Hive City.

A solitary Hive City rose from the surface, like a rusted steel nail piercing the blue firmament.

The spire glowed faintly at the edge of the thin atmosphere—that was the dome isolation system resisting the vacuum.

This was something she was familiar with, evidence of the Empire's existence, a mark that this world had been conquered by the Empire.

"In orbit…" Elena's voice came from behind her, carrying a hint of extremely rare hesitation. "There are no defense platforms, no interceptor fleets."

"Only a shattered spaceport… It was a recent war; there are no signs of life on the spaceport."

Sister Superior Ludmilla did not turn back.

Her gaze was firmly drawn to something else.

That ring.

That blue ring, like a belt.

It circled the entire planet's equator, submerged in the gentle blue background, not appearing abrupt, but rather blending into the environment, as if it were always meant to be this way.

It was a man-made structure, no more than a few hundred meters wide, yet it stretched the entire length of the equator.

Imperial orbital facilities were not like this.

Imperial technology was always cumbersome and crude; always covered with weapon platforms and defense arrays, like huge tumors parasitic upon a world.

But this ring—it was too clean.

Its edges presented perfect straight lines in the starlight, with no protrusions, no redundancies, and certainly none of the decay seen everywhere on Imperial architecture due to lack of maintenance.

"Xenos technology? No… it can't be…" Vera's weak voice came through the communication channel, her light grey eyes already filled with tears.

Sister Superior Ludmilla did not answer.

She intently gazed at that blue world—the color of the oceans, the contours of the continents, the curves of the clouds—every single detail was knocking at her consciousness from deep within her genes.

It was like a mother's gaze, like a soft harbor, like everything referred to as "homeland" and beautiful imagery.

Yet the reason and vigilance in her heart, and her emotional yearning, split her in two.

At this moment, the three natural satellites slowly orbited out of the planet's shadow, appearing on the auspex of the "Tears of the Martyr".

Their orbits were not regular, as if they had been deliberately placed there.

The orbital inclination of one of them was almost perpendicular to the planet's equator.

Under the light of the blue giant star, it appeared somewhat dim, but in localized areas, biting lights flickered sporadically.

That light was very much like the sacred relics shrouded in incense smoke used by those oil-worshippers—the flame cores of candles, the reflections on the edges of gears, and the runes flashing in binary prayers, flickering uncertainly.