62: Chapter 62 The Unspoken "Heretical"

Gluck finished speaking and said no more. He shoved his hands back into his pockets, turned, and walked toward the chimera armored vehicle, leaving behind only one sentence: "Let's go, the Archmagos is still waiting for you."

Sister Superior Ludmilla, however, did not move. She remained where she was, head tilted back, gazing at that river of metal. She watched it flow silently, watched it refract ring after ring of dazzling light in the glow of the blue giant star, while shock and unease intertwined and spread within her heart.

Elena walked silently to her side and likewise raised her head, looking toward that river of metal, which was so magnificent it was suffocating. This taciturn heavy weapons expert said nothing at this moment.

Facing such a megastructure, it was simply too great for a mortal sister. Resolute as she was, she felt a trace of discomfort; a shred of cowardice, never felt before, quietly sprouted and grew in her consciousness, instantly overwhelming her.

She knew better than anyone that behind this nearly endless torrent of matter lay a production capacity the Empire could not hope to reach. Its very existence was a lofty declaration, proclaiming an entirely new order, distinct from that of the Empire.

"Elena." Sister Superior Ludmilla withdrew her gaze and spoke softly.

"Yes." Elena's voice had lost its calm, carrying a slight tremor.

"What do you think this is?"

Elena was silent, then spoke the longest sentence she had uttered since leaving the "Tears of the Martyr": "It has no litanies, no holy oils, no rituals of any kind, none of the things the Adeptus Mechanicus believes in. Yet it operates better than any Forge World I have ever seen."

She paused, her gaze remaining fixed on the river of metal, her tone filled with confusion: "This shouldn't be possible."

Sister Superior Ludmilla turned her head to look at Elena.

Elena's face remained calm, but her eyes betrayed everything; her will had been shaken.

"Let's go." Sister Superior Ludmilla took a deep breath, suppressing the waves in her heart, and turned toward the armored vehicle.

But after a few steps, she stopped again; she sensed something was wrong—Vera had not followed.

"Vera?" She called out softly and turned to look.

Vera was still standing beside the armored vehicle, head still tilted back, staring fixedly at the river of metal. Her light gray eyes were wide open, filled with incredulous astonishment.

Her lips were no longer moving silently, and her prayer beads were gripped so tightly her knuckles had turned white.

Sister Superior Ludmilla could tell she wasn't looking; she was "listening," tracing the silent operation of that river of metal, hearing some kind of whisper hidden beneath the torrent that she could not comprehend.

"Vera." Sister Superior Ludmilla called out again, her tone carrying a bit more concern.

Vera slowly turned her head, her face bearing an expression Sister Superior Ludmilla had never seen before—a kind of near-speechless bewilderment. It was as if she had just witnessed an event that could not be described in words, causing all vocabulary to instantly lose its meaning.

"It has no sound." Vera's voice was as light as a spiderweb in the wind. "Such a massive river... it should have a violent roar, but it doesn't. There is only..."

She closed her eyes gently, her brows slightly furrowed, as if concentrating all her psychic energy to carefully discern something. Her presence, to the extent that Sister Superior Ludmilla could perceive it, became increasingly faint and somewhat chaotic.

"Only the sound of treads sliding. Like silk rubbing, or like... someone quietly turning pages." She slowly opened her eyes, a thin veil of moisture coating her light gray pupils.

She looked directly at Sister Superior Ludmilla, like a small beast seeking its mother's protection, and asked softly: "Captain, does this river... does it think?"

Sister Superior Ludmilla was silent, unable to say a word.

She did not know the answer, and did not even have the courage to attempt an answer.

What Vera had asked was a theological barrier spanning the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Ecclesiarchy.

According to the dogma of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the operation of any machine cannot be separated from the blessing of a machine spirit, and the machine spirit requires prayers, rituals, and holy oils to remain pleased; the slightest disrespect causes it to malfunction. Yet this river of metal before her operated more perfectly than any machine in the Empire, but she could find no trace of any attempt to appease a machine spirit.

What was it? Did it have a machine spirit? If so, why did it require no appeasement? Did it lack one? Then why did it cause such an anomaly in Vera's psychic perception?

The admonitions of the Ecclesiarchy were chanted loudly in her ears: The Emperor protects all things; without His grace, all things are extinguished. Yet this river was clearly mocking all her piety in silence.

It needed no Emperor, no faith, and it operated steadily just like that. Her anger and bewilderment collided back and forth in her heart, but she could not squeeze out a single word of rebuttal.

She checked the Warp readings on her sister's power armor several times.

There was no Chaos here, no psychic fluctuations, no blasphemy as she understood it. It conformed to Imperial rules, yet it was detached from the faith of the Ecclesiarchy.

Finally, her lips moved, and the word "heresy" hovered on her lips, but she could not spit it out. Her throat felt as if it were being scorched by searing prayers, or perhaps tightly constricted by cold metal chains.

The chimera armored vehicle restarted and drove slowly eastward. The equatorial conveyor belt bus line always extended in the sky to their right, like an eternal mark.

Sometimes it was closer, close enough for Sister Superior Ludmilla to clearly see the details of the materials on the conveyor belt—the sharp edges of ore, the clear serial numbers on metal ingots, the packaging still attached to semi-finished components; every detail exuded extreme order and precision.

Sometimes it was farther away, far enough to transform into a blue barrier spanning the sky, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other like an endless wall, gently encircling the entire planet.

But regardless of distance, it was always there, operating silently, never stopping, as if it had existed since the dawn of the world.

Sister Superior Ludmilla sat in the back of the vehicle, her mechanical left arm resting gently on her knee, her gaze through the window following that river of metal fixedly. The struggle and confusion in her heart surged repeatedly like the tide.

As the chimera armored vehicle drew closer to the Hive City, they could see more and more details, and the operational logic of that river of metal gradually became clear.

Raw ore flowed into the bus line from the starting point, entered the intermediate processing stage via branch conveyor belts, and after being smelted, shaped, and polished, it flowed back into the main bus line, surging toward the manufacturing end; semi-finished products produced at the manufacturing end flowed into the bus line again, moving toward the final assembly stage, and finally took shape as various supplies; the finished products were sent to large supply warehouses, then transported to interstellar logistics transport towers, waiting for transport aircraft to send them to every corner of the planet.

The waste generated during the production process was not discarded but reintegrated into the bus line and sent back to the start of the cycle, either to be put back into production or processed and returned to the world, forming a perfect, flawless material cycle.