57: Chapter 57 Outsiders

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The clouds on the distant ridge were dyed a rusty hue by the last rays of the setting sun, like a piece of scorched iron sheet.

The population of Blackstone Town broke a new threshold—two thousand people—in the fourth week after the universal healthcare program was implemented. This number didn't seem large, but for a frontier village that had fewer than three hundred people a year ago, it meant the scale had already exceeded the upper limit that the management system Lin Mo initially designed could carry.

He learned this news during the morning meeting at the Intelligence Center. When Locke told him this fact using the numbers from the duty register, there was no triumph in his tone—only a sort of "what now" hesitation.

Lin Mo looked at the numbers on the register and fell silent for a few seconds. Two thousand people. It meant food rations had to be recalculated, water distribution needed new rotations, and patrol routes had to be extended to cover the new settlements—it meant he needed an administrative system capable of self-operation, rather than personally handling every single application form.

He thought of the roll of blank Imperial requisition forms Cassius had left behind. The paper quality was excellent, official Imperial paper, stamped. Blank meant the management system of the entire Eastern Star Sector existed in name only. But blank also meant he could draw his own forms from scratch. He opened a drawer, took out a blank requisition sheet, and drew a new organizational chart on the front—Administration, Medical, Production, Defense, Infrastructure, five branches, with heads and reporting relationships marked on each line. He left a blank remark under the administrative branch: at least one full-time clerk needed—later changed to two—and finally to three. The management cost for two thousand people was nearly double his initial estimate.

Locke glanced at the chart but offered no opinion, though he memorized the names marked on each line. As he walked out, he said something cryptic: "I'll go over the new batch of people." He didn't say "screen" or "vet," but Lin Mo understood. Out of the two thousand, how many came for medical treatment, how many for a livelihood, and how many with other motives—Locke intended to distinguish them in his own way. The next morning, he placed three hand-drawn topographical maps on Lin Mo's desk, each with a time written in small script in the bottom right corner—he had already made a trip himself during the night.

The outpatient volume at the Medical Station only first showed a downward trend in the fifth week. It wasn't because fewer people were coming—it was because Alice's consultation speed had become twice as fast as before. She had improved the registration process, shortening the injury assessment from three minutes to within one, and triaging minor injuries and serious cases into two different consultation rooms. Old Tom used scraps from the Arsenal to forge four new types of hemostatic forceps for her, with a precision level even higher than the Imperial standard.

When Lin Mo passed by the Medical Station in the evening, three people waiting to have their dressings changed were still sitting on the wooden benches by the door. Alice stood before the consultation table, suturing a knife wound on a young man's forearm—the result of a brawl in the tavern the day before, caused by a dispute over Blackstone Town's management style. Such things, which had never happened in Blackstone Village before, were becoming the norm as the population swelled.

He didn't enter the Medical Station. He stood at the door for a moment, confirming she could handle it, and then turned to leave. After a few steps, the door behind him opened. Alice leaned out and said, "I need an assistant tomorrow. Not an apprentice—one who can independently suture and judge infection levels." Her voice wasn't loud, but every word carried the weight of "not a request, but a notice."

Lin Mo nodded without turning back. He flipped through the list of two thousand people in his mind, trying to find a face that had both a medical foundation and was trustworthy.

The chaos attention level jumped from seventy-five to eighty. It wasn't because of anything Lin Mo did—it was because Chaos sensed a certain change: a social structure forming on a frontier planet that could operate on its own without Imperial orders.

Late that night, Lin Mo sat alone in the Intelligence Center for a long time. The hand-drawn organizational chart was spread out before him, and the "full-time clerk" remark under the administrative branch had been changed to "at least three full-time clerks." He filled in three names—all refugees from Riverbend Town. One was reportedly an assistant to the local town tax official, literate, good with accounts, and had reached Blackstone Town with his family while fleeing. He hadn't met the man, but judging by the handwriting on the registration form, it wasn't bad.

He put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. On the wall of the Intelligence Center hung that map of the Eastern Star Sector; the edges of the canvas were already frayed, and there were several cracks at the seams, but more and more lines and coordinates were being marked on it, as if this planet was being filled into the map inch by inch.

He opened his eyes and looked at the location of Blackstone Town on the map. A tiny dot, surrounded by circles of defensive lines and outposts. This dot didn't exist a year ago. Now, it was surrounded by three new settlements, an Arsenal with steadily increasing daily output, a Medical Station seeing dozens of patients daily, a communication relay station cobbled together from scrap metal—and a group of two thousand people shifting from "wanting to survive" to "wanting to live better." He wouldn't say it aloud, but at that moment, he vaguely felt—this planet was being awakened.

Lin Mo picked up his pen again and added another line of text in the blank space at the bottom of the organizational chart. The handwriting was different from the neat structure above—more like a reminder written to himself while alone late at night:

"A system can be designed perfectly—but what keeps it alive isn't the blueprints; it's the people who don't slack off during every night on duty. Behind every name is a person, and every person deserves to be recorded in the right position."

He didn't erase the line. He closed the folder, turned off the light, and walked out of the Intelligence Center. It was raining outside, and the dirt roads of Blackstone Town had been soaked into mud. The flag of Breaking Dawn in the square was drenched by the rain and hung limp against the flagpole, motionless. But at the end of the road, the light was still on in the window of the Medical Station. Through the oil-paper window panes, a blurry silhouette could be seen working with head bowed.

Lin Mo stood in the rain for a while, looking at that silhouette.

He didn't walk over. He turned into the rain and walked along the muddy road toward the Arsenal—Old Tom said they were trial-producing the first batch of alloy steel rails tonight, a material used for reinforcing watchtower structures. If they turned out well, Blackstone Town's fortifications could be upgraded from wood and stone to steel-concrete structures.

When he was about halfway there, hurried footsteps came from behind—someone was running after him in the rain. Lin Mo stopped and turned. It was Yang Shitou, wearing an oilcloth cloak and clutching a soaked envelope. His expression was hard to see in the rain, but his voice was tense: "A signal from Terra. The communication relay station received it—it's an encrypted Imperial military channel." Lin Mo took the envelope but didn't open it immediately. Rainwater dripped from the corners of the envelope, and the ink on the kraft paper was smeared by the water in a small patch, revealing the remains of a line of high gothic underneath. He put the letter into a waterproof document bag, not reading it in the rain.

As Lin Mo crossed the muddy square toward the Arsenal, the rain grew heavier, and water flowed down his collar. But as he walked in the rain, he heard the unhurried sound of the steam forging hammer from the distant Arsenal. Thud. Thud. Thud. It was like the steady heartbeat of a small town. He knew that sound wouldn't stop.

*Two thousand people gathered in a place without an Imperial permit,*

*Some are seeing doctors, some are forging iron, and some are standing guard in the rainy night.*

*—Lin Mo, inspection notes on the day the population of Blackstone Town broke two thousand.*

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Far away, in the depths of the sea of stars, a golden ship was sailing silently through the Warp. On the bridge, an armored figure watched the flickering coordinate data on the screen—there was a psychic signal on that planet that highly matched the genetic signature of his brother who had been missing for three thousand years.

[Change course.] The voice was emotionless, like metal scraping. [We are going to find him.]

In the Arsenal, the first batch of alloy steel rails was formed. Old Tom held it up to the night light and looked at it repeatedly, then put it down, rubbed his hands together, and said to his apprentice, "Another furnace." Rain drip from the corrugated iron roof into a bucket by the furnace, drip by drip, interlacing with the rhythm of the forging hammer, like a song written by this planet in the dark night that no one heard. Lin Mo tucked the envelope into his chest and pushed open the door of the Arsenal, greeted by a familiar smell of rust and coal. This was the smell he had breathed on this planet for nearly five years; he no longer found it pungent—it was the scent of this place, the scent of a future forged by a thousand ordinary people in a universe without a future.

He had survived on this planet. He had helped another two thousand people survive. And in that letter he had yet to open, the next answer was waiting for him.

*[In these things there is a true meaning, but when I try to explain it, I forget the words.]*

*—Tao Yuanming, "Drinking Wine." Memory fragments sealed within the mirror of the emperor quietly surfaced in the darkness.*

Yang Shitou placed the letter from Terra on the table without opening it. The envelope was sealed with triple wax—each layer a different crest. The outermost layer was the eagle of the Imperial Administration, the middle layer was one he hadn't seen before, and the innermost layer—was a single letter. J.