203: After the warehouse was opened in Chapter 207, not a single person was left.

There is no daylight on Frost Prison No. 4.

At least, it cannot be seen from orbit.

The planet is perpetually wrapped in a ring of grayish-white dust. When sunlight falls, it is first stripped of most of its power by that floating layer of fine ice shards; by the time it truly reaches the surface, only a layer of cold, thin brightness remains. If one stares at it for long enough, it looks like a piece of old silver paper pressed onto a coffin lid.

The Exile Fortress remained stationary beyond high orbit, making no move to press further forward.

The main control room was very quiet. The light from the screens reflected on Li Cang's face, making his already faint complexion look even thinner. Beside his hand lay the recently decrypted sub-volume of the Customs Mainframe; inside, the whitelist escort record had been pulled out separately, filling the entire main screen.

Frost Prison No. 4, a whitelist escort planet on the Federation's periphery.

Nominally, it was a high-security prison for high-risk felons.

In reality, it was more like a locked cold storage unit.

On the screen, the planet's surface structure was being peeled away layer by layer. The outer ring consisted of ash plains, broken ice, and wind erosion layers; the middle held the perimeter walls, tracks, towers, and mecha camps; only the innermost part contained the inner prison and the sample area. Further down, three incineration wells and a separately sealed underground transfer line were buried in the shallow mantle.

Li Cang stared at that line for a long time.

A prison shouldn't have such a thing.

To transport high-risk felons, an elevator shaft would suffice.

Only for escorting samples would one need to avoid the main lines.

And only for escorting living things that cannot see the light of day would one need to hide the line underground.

He zoomed out, and the entirety of Frost Prison No. 4 floated back into view.

Grayish-white, silent, orderly, and closed off.

Like a lie that had been deliberately aged.

“The Customs is the door.” Li Cang reached out, circling both the sample area and the underground transfer line in red. “And this is the cabinet.”

The standby sub-control Servitor beside him lowered its head slightly, waiting for the next command.

Li Cang was in no hurry to issue it.

He was used to reviewing everything one last time before truly taking action.

The defenses of Frost Prison No. 4 weren't fancy. It lacked the chaotic loopholes brought by the busy traffic of the outer ring Customs, and it didn't have the dirty backdoors one could find everywhere in the black market. It was more like a cold, hard machine that hadn't malfunctioned in years. Towers, outposts, sealed gates, corridors, gun emplacements, and elevator shafts were all linked together. The prisoners were locked inside, and the garrison was locked inside as well. The advantage was stability. The disadvantage was that once something broke in the middle, it would be very difficult for the entire system to pivot.

This was exactly what Li Cang had his eye on.

“Cut the communications first,” he spoke. “Don't alert the surface battery groups. Let them keep breathing for now.”

“Yes.”

“Then lock the elevator shafts. Once the main tower reacts, their first step will definitely be to seal the levels and incinerate the samples. I want them to be too late.”

“Yes.”

“For the whitelist antennas in the sample area, cut half of them first. Don't cut them all.” Li Cang stared at the ring of markers on the screen. “If we cut them all, they'll immediately know something is wrong. Leave half, and they'll think there's still a chance to save it.”

The sub-control Servitor paused for a moment, as if verifying the command logic, before pressing its fingers into the panel.

The commands were sent down layer by layer through the fortress’s lower-level silent delivery shafts.

There was no artillery fire.

There was no preliminary bombardment.

Nor were there any of those high-energy exhaust plumes used to flaunt one's presence.

Four Delivery Spears, as slender as bone needles, slid out from the fortress's belly. They reflected almost no light as they passed through low orbit, only trailing four unstable gray lines at the edge of the camera's view. Their landing points were very scattered. One went to the main communications tower, one to the elevator shaft's main axis, one to the main control tower's backup pipelines, and one was pinned toward the outer antenna ring of the sample area.

This didn't look like the start of a war.

It was more like driving a fine needle into a snake's vital spot.

—

Frost Prison No. 4 Main Control Tower, Night Watch General Control Level.

Warden Holvis was reviewing an escort manifest.

His uniform was pressed perfectly flat, with every button fastened to the top, and not a speck of dust could be seen on his cuffs. He wasn't that old, yet a few white hairs had already appeared at his temples. That wasn't from exhaustion, but the traces left by long-term poor sleep. In a place like Frost Prison No. 4, which appeared orderly and quiet, not a single person who could hold this position securely was a fool.

The hot drink by his hand hadn't cooled yet. He lowered his head to scan the last line of the sample handover serial numbers, and just as he was about to apply his seal, the small screen at the edge of the desk suddenly lit up.

【External Channel Latency Abnormality】

Holvis didn't even lift his eyelids, merely dragging the prompt to one side.

Occasional fluctuations in the external channel weren't unusual. The dust ring was thick and the orbit was eccentric, so communication delays happened from time to time. As long as the entire segment wasn't cut off, it wasn't a problem.

A second later, the second screen also lit up.

【Elevator Shaft Main Axis Feedback Lag】

Holvis's hand stopped.

Two problems falling together was not quite normal.

He looked up at the general map.

The main communications tower was still lit, the outer ring battery groups were on standby, the mecha camp was dormant, and the access controls for the triple prison zones all showed as closed. On the surface, everything looked normal.

But the more normal it looked, the more wrong it felt.

Holvis pushed the hot drink aside, stood up, and reached out to pull the local structural diagram closer.

“Who is on duty for the external channel?”

The adjutant beside him immediately reported a name.

“Wake him up. Do not use the public frequency; use the internal line.”

“Yes.”

“As for the elevator shaft, cut the main axis and switch to the backup hydraulic chain.”

“Yes.”

He didn't speak fast. Every sentence was pressed flat. The originally somewhat relaxed atmosphere in the main control level was instantly tightened by these few commands.

By the time the third prompt jumped out, the young adjutant's face had already gone pale.

【Sample Area Antenna Response Declining】

Holvis didn't say a word.

He just stared at that prompt for three seconds. Then, he reached out and turned off the decorative external lighting of the main control level, leaving only the cold white work lights of the central axis.

The hall immediately fell silent.

“Seal the external network.”

“Sir?”

“I said, seal the external network.”

The adjutant's throat bobbed, and he immediately nodded.

“Yes.”

“Recall all main control tower permissions. All mid-level duty officers are forbidden from connecting to external communications without authorization.”

“Yes.”

“Prepare the Level 1 incineration contingency for the sample area. Switch the elevator shafts to manual lock. Put the mecha camp on standby; they are not to deploy.”

The adjutant was truly stunned this time. “Not to deploy?”

Holvis glanced at him, his gaze as cold as an ice needle.

“We cannot see the enemy right now. Whoever runs around blindly first will be the one who opens the door first.”

The adjutant lowered his head, not daring to ask further.

Orders were sent out one after another. No panic broke out in the main control level, nor did anyone shout. The people here had long since grown accustomed to this silent tension. Everyone simply increased their hand speed at their respective stations; the sound of keyboards clicking merged into a single sheet, like raindrops hitting cold glass.

But they were still a beat too slow.

Because this time, the problem hadn't crashed in from outside the door.

It was already deep within the marrow.

A muffled thud suddenly came from the power distribution well at the base of the main control tower. It wasn't an explosion, but more like a thick pipe being punched through from the outside. Immediately afterward, the entire tower swayed slightly. The indicator lights on the walls that had been constantly lit seemed to have their switches pinched by someone, as half of them went dark simultaneously.

Holvis whipped his head around.

This time, even the calm on his face cracked.

“Enemy attack confirmed. Sound the Red Alert.”

The piercing alarm finally tore through the years of dead silence on Frost Prison No. 4.

But in that same second, on the other side of the grayish-white land outside the window, the first batch of drop pods had already slammed into the ground.

—

Inside the fortress's main control room, Li Cang watched the surface footage, his finger pressing down on the general delivery gate.

The alarm on Frost Prison No. 4 had sounded very late.

It wasn't because the garrison was stupid.

It was because they trusted this closed system too much. They trusted it so much that their first reaction wasn't 'the enemy is here,' but 'which pipe inside has broken.'

What a place like this feared most wasn't an external enemy.

It was when order began to stop obeying.

Behind the outer wind wall, the first batch of drop pods had already opened.

Five hundred thousand mutant cannon fodder surged forward like a swarm of wretched soldiers dumped directly from a trash heap, treading upon the grayish-white frozen soil. Those who broke their legs upon landing crawled forward; those with half their shoulder plates flipped open continued to walk while clutching their guns; the ones in the very front whose abdominal cavities were shredded by machine guns even sprayed a burst of bullets toward the towers before they collapsed.

They didn't understand retreat, and they didn't understand fear.

They only knew how to move forward.

In the bottom right corner of the main screen, the outer wall gun emplacements began to return fire. The first round of strafing wiped out the front row instantly; frozen soil and bloody mud mixed together, churning up large patches of dark red.

Li Cang looked at that patch of blood, his face devoid of any expression.

This was their purpose.

It wasn't to win.

It was to drag others into a mud pit where they could neither win nor retreat.

“Don't blow through the outer wall,” he spoke, his voice steady. “Let them fight while blocked at the door. The longer they fight, the slower things will be inside.”

The sub-control Servitor immediately adjusted the delivery waves.

The second batch of drop pods no longer landed in front of the main tower, but instead slammed directly toward the outer wall elevator shafts and the front gates of the mecha camp. It wasn't to kill, but to clog. To jam the tracks, to jam the entrances and exits, to jam the angles of fire deployment.

This move was very dirty, and also very effective.

The battery groups of Frost Prison No. 4 began to fire at high frequency. The front gates of the mecha camp were blasted open, and heavy-duty tracked mechas rolled out over the wreckage of the pods. But what faced them wasn't a conventional enemy army, but mountains and fields of mutant wretches who were still rolling forward even after their arms had been blown off.

Artillery shells struck them, killing a layer.

Immediately, another layer pressed forward from behind.

They couldn't be killed off cleanly.

And there was no time to kill them all.

Inside the main control tower, Holvis was no longer looking at the outer wall.

He knew that these things were just meat.

The true blade had not yet arrived.

He turned around and walked quickly toward the silver-white sealed door at the deepest part of the main control hall. Behind that door were the sample area's general control and the incineration hub. As long as he got in first and cleared the whitelists for Warehouse No. 1, No. 2, and No. 4, then ignited the incineration wells, even if they lost today's battle, they wouldn't lose too disgracefully.

Just as he reached the door, the entire tower swayed again.

This time it wasn't a surface vibration.

It was the wall itself making a sound.

It was as if a very long, very heavy blade was slicing all the way down against the tower wall.

Everyone in the main control hall stopped.

Holvis looked up.

The sound was very close.

So close it made one's teeth ache.

The next second, the entire right-hand wall lit up with a straight red seam down the middle. The seam was thin at first, then wide, and finally the entire slab of wall and beam collapsed inward. Sparks, metal shards, and white smoke poured into the hall together, sending documents flying and causing light tubes to explode.

Behind the white smoke, a giant steel foot stepped into the edge of the main control hall.

An Executioner Knight had arrived.

The dark green armor on its body was covered in dust from the wind wall, and metal scraps from the tower wall were still caught between the teeth of its chainsword. Following behind it was a squad of Astartes pressing inward.

Black armor. Heavy guns. Heavy boots. Not a single word of nonsense.

Holvis knew that the incineration procedure was already too late.

He didn't flee.

Nor did he shout.

He simply pressed his hand onto that black mechanical button. That wasn't to incinerate the sample warehouse, but to cut the final physical gate between the main tower and the sample area. Even if he died here, he had to close the door first.

But before his hand could press all the way down, a bolt shell had already shredded that console along with his entire arm.

Blood, metal, and glass shards exploded together.

He staggered back half a step, leaning against the wall, looked down at his severed arm, and then looked up at No. 1, who had walked up in front of him.

“You've raided the wrong place,” Holvis said, his voice surprisingly not trembling.

No. 1 did not speak.

A Power Sword was raised and swept across horizontally.

Holvis's head rolled to the ground, bumping against that silver-white sealed door that hadn't had time to close. His face was turned upward, eyes still open, as if he were continuing to watch that door.

The main control hall had completely collapsed.

—

Li Cang watched Holvis die on the screen, but his finger had already switched to the next structural diagram.

The main control tower had been taken.

But this was only the key.

The warehouse behind that door was the true prize tonight.

Deep within the main tower, the silver-white sealed door remained in a semi-closed state.

The corridor behind the door was very long, and the lights were cold and blue. The walls on both sides weren't rough like a normal prison, but excessively clean. There weren't even many footprints on the floor, only shallow marks left by heavy objects being occasionally dragged across.

This place looked too much like a hospital.

Yet it was quieter than a hospital.

Quiet in a way that felt wrong.

Li Cang pushed the perspective deeper, switching to the cameras on the periphery of the sample area.

Rows of transparent containment bins appeared in the footage. Each bin was very tall, and inside were not prisoners, but things that one wouldn't want to look at a second time after just one glance.

Some people had human forms but had grown four extra arms, their spines propped open by metal frames like they were being hung up for display.

Some people only had their heads and chest cavities left, with a whole set of external neural wires connected below, soaking in a blue liquid.

There were also people who looked the most like normal humans, except their eyes were completely white, heavy suppression rings were nailed into their foreheads, and the serial numbers on their chests were larger than their names.

These were not inmates.

They were goods.

Li Cang watched the screen and remained silent for a few seconds.

Then, he slowly pulled open the general directory of the sample area.

At the very top of the directory, a line of small characters was written:

【Outer Rim Unstable Individual Temporary Storage Area】

He smiled.

“I knew it.”

The Customs was the throat.

The prison was the cabinet.

And now, the cabinet door was open.

“Tell No. 1.” Li Cang leaned back into his chair, his voice still very flat. “Don't be in a hurry to blow things up.”

“Sort out the ones who can still breathe, who can be pulled out and used, and whose brains aren't completely ruined first.”

“The rest, register them. Return them to the furnace.”