83: Chapter 83 The Escape and Handover of the Political Secretary

The corridors of the Terra Imperial Palace were paved with gold bricks that had not faded for ten thousand years, yet they reflected not a hint of warmth. Only the holy fires atop the pillars cast the old man's hunched shadow long and thin. The mechanical prosthetics at his fingertips glinted a cold, hard silver-grey as they trembled, carefully drawing the heavy velvet curtains. His movements were as light as if he were stealing, as if he feared the vibrant figure outside the door might peek through a crack and glimpse the secrets hidden in this room for two hundred years.

He had served as the Master of Administratum for two hundred and thirteen years.

He still remembered back then, he was just like that youth, wearing brand-new administrative robes, chest held high, eyes burning with longing for power—the supreme executive power of Terra, the lifeblood of the entire Imperium of Man. It was the highest honor for his family, a stroke of luck that countless nobles could not obtain no matter how hard they jostled.

At that time, he had mocked the age and exhaustion of his predecessor, thinking it the incompetence of a mediocre man. He firmly believed he was the chosen one of the God-Emperor, capable of single-handedly rectifying this bloated and corrupt bureaucratic system and making the gears of the Imperium turn smoothly once more.

Until the moment he first stepped into this room and the door closed behind him, all his aspirations shattered into dust.

He finally understood that the predecessor Goge Vandire, who had long since become a taboo, wasn't complaining when he muttered "I'm too busy, I don't have time to die" before his death; it was a confession of despair.

The position of Master of Administratum was never a blessing, let alone a glory. It was a pair of shackles heavy enough to crush everything, a torture without end.

The life-extension technologies of the Adeptus Mechanicus had barely dragged his lifespan to the present—he had less than a century left to live. The life-support interface implanted in his neck, the nutrient delivery lines wrapped around his wrists, and his long-ago modified stomach were constant reminders: he was no longer a complete human, but merely a tool to prolong the life of the Imperial bureaucratic machine.

Those outside thought he was a glamorous wielder of power. The nobles of Terra scrambled to appear before him, offering fawning smiles, hypocritical compliments, and hidden probes just to gain a scrap of power or a slight tilt of resources from him. But only he knew that those compliments were nothing but time-wasting trash. He saw through the nobles' tricks clearly—not because he was clever, but because he simply had no time to bicker with them.

The Imperium was simply too vast.

On the desk, on the floor, even on the wall shelves, there were piles of documents that could never be finished. Some ink had long since dried, requests from colonial planets unaddressed for a thousand years; others still smelled of fresh ink, urgent reports of frontline supply shortages sent half an hour ago. Every day he opened his eyes to reading, approving, and allocating. Just understanding the requests in each document exhausted most of his energy, let alone weighing the pros and cons and issuing orders.

Once, he too had been high-spirited, proposing countless schemes to increase efficiency and mocking his predecessors for being stuck in their ways and mediocre. But no matter how he reformed, the documents piled onto his desk every day never decreased by a single jot. Instead, they were like a tide, surging more and more, drowning him in a sea of paper.

He was too busy. So busy he had no time for normal meals and had to have the Adeptus Mechanicus modify his digestive system so he could ingest the energy needed to sustain life through nutrient paste lines implanted in his body day after day. He was so busy he had only thirty minutes of sleep a day, and even in that brief rest, his dreams were filled with mountains of documents, the wails of frontline soldiers, and the fall of Imperial territories.

The nobles of Terra, those vermin! Greedy, corrupt, and arrogant, thinking that with a bit of petty cleverness they could evade his gaze, line their own pockets, and survive on the Imperium's blood loss. They were wrong, completely wrong. It wasn't that he didn't see it, but that he had no time to settle scores—the Imperium was bleeding, countless people died every day from war, famine, and Warp corruption, and the Imperium's territory was being consumed by enemies every day. If he relaxed even slightly, all of humanity would slide into an abyss of eternal damnation.

The Emperor stared at him from the Golden Throne, the Custodes stared at him in the corridors, the High Lords stared at him in meetings, and even the governors of distant star sectors were secretly staring at him. Every decision he made concerned the life and death of billions of humans. He dared not have the slightest slack, dared not make a single mistake; just one tiny error and both he and his family would be purged.

Until today, he was finally free.

The young man outside the door was vibrant, his eyes burning with the same light he once had, full of yearning for this position. Presumably, he was prepared to take it all on. He finally had time to get a good night's sleep without correcting documents in his dreams; finally had time to taste normal food instead of cold nutrient paste; finally had time to fall in love, father children, and make up for the debt he owed to himself and his family over these two hundred years.

He adjusted the curtains carefully once more, ensuring there wasn't a single gap, then opened the door cautiously, his footsteps so light they were almost silent. The moment he stepped out of the room, he immediately shut the door behind him, as if to completely lock away that paper-sea cage full of despair, preventing the young man outside from glimpsing even a fraction of it.

The handover ceremony was held in the council chamber of the palace. He walked onto the stage, holding the seal that symbolized the power of the Master of Administratum—that seal was as heavy as a red-hot iron. He had held it for two hundred and thirteen years, and finally, he could put it down. He solemnly handed the seal into the young man's hands, the mechanical prosthetics at his fingertips trembling slightly—not from reluctance, but from the exhaustion that follows liberation.

The young man looked at him, his eyes full of confusion. The old man before him was aged and disheveled, his hair white and messy, his face lined with the marks of years and fatigue. His administrative robes were somewhat wrinkled, lacking any of the majesty of a powerful Imperial official. Instead, he looked like a thief who had stumbled into the palace and was afraid of being discovered.

The young man had noticed it earlier; in the corridor, this old man had suspiciously drawn the curtains and suspiciously closed the door. Even now as he left, his footsteps carried a sense of a hurried flight. How was this a handover of power? It was clearly a pathetic escape. He found it difficult to understand how someone who held the highest executive power in the Imperium could live so miserably.

He took the seal and watched the old man turn and board a carriage pulled by two Purebred Terran Horses. As the carriage slowly drove away from the council chamber, the old man looked back through the window and gave him a meaningful smile—a smile containing liberation, pity, and a hint of unspeakable mockery.

Filled with confusion, the young man walked toward the room that symbolized the highest executive power of the Imperium. The moment he pushed open the door, he froze completely.

The room had no magnificent decorations, no comfortable seats, only dense, mountain-like piles of scrolls extending from the floor to the spires of the palace, covering every single wall. The entire room had only one door for entry and exit, and one window covered by heavy curtains, so oppressive it made it hard to breathe.

An attendant stepped forward respectfully and said in a low voice, "My Lord, all of these scrolls are the administrative affairs you need to handle today."

The young man froze in place, his gaze sweeping over the endless scrolls. He felt as tiny as a grain of dust—he wasn't even as tall as a single layer of scrolls here, and there were tens of thousands of layers, stretching along the walls all the way to the top of the nine-thousand-meter-high palace.

He whipped his head back toward the doorway, but the carriage had long since disappeared at the end of the corridor, leaving only that meaningful smile echoing repeatedly in his mind. At that moment, a strange chill rose from the bottom of his heart, an ominous premonition that slowly crawled up his spine to the top of his head.

He seemed to understand something. Yet, he also seemed to understand nothing at all. Only that yearning for power, upon seeing this endless sea of paper, quietly lost a bit of its luster.