Retreat Successful

The retreat went fairly smoothly. After using several fragmentation grenades and a melta bomb to block the pursuing Scarabs, Chen Xi and Ovilia successfully returned to the mine with their haul.

"Blow this place up. We can't let those xenos follow the tunnels and pursue us."

The moment he emerged, Chen Xi demanded that Ovilia seal off the breach.

Ovilia hesitated, but in the end, she gritted her teeth and agreed.

The last melta bomb they had brought was placed at the breach. After the explosion, collapsed rubble blocked the passage leading to the Necron tomb. Until it was cleared away, the tunnel could no longer be used.

Even so, Chen Xi did not lower his guard. He told Ovilia, "These xenos possess phase-travel technology. They can pass through buildings and solid matter. Simply blocking the tunnel may not be enough to stop them from infiltrating. I'll deploy a regiment to garrison outside the mine and prevent these xenos from invading this planet."

"I understand. I'll set up more automated turrets and armed servitors here." Ovilia had no desire to discuss such matters at the moment. All of her attention was fixed on the spoils they had brought back.

Through Ovilia's insistence and effort, the mining servitors dismantled the crucial equipment from the stasis chamber, along with some of the Stasis Coffins, and brought back more than a dozen Necron Warrior bodies.

There were also three Canoptek Spiders and two Tomb Spyders. Though their bodies had all been blasted apart, they remained largely intact and were sufficient for analyzing various key data.

At this point, Ovilia no longer cared whether the Necrons in the tomb would crawl out and cause trouble. She only wanted to return to her workshop and laboratory to study these precious gains.

However, Chen Xi blocked her path and said, "Regarding the spoils from this expedition, what are your plans, Magos Ovilia? I know you can't wait to study these things, but I have to ask: do you have the ability to research them independently? As an exiled Bio-Sage, you do not even have an apprentice working under you, much less proper servitors or labor slaves. Can you really research them?"

Chen Xi's words did somewhat expose Ovilia's weakness.

Indeed, as a Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, she did not even have an apprentice under her command to do the work. It was difficult not to question her capabilities.

Even if she truly was a Magos herself, without the resources to match, the value of that title...

But Chen Xi had not raised the matter to rub salt in Ovilia's wounds. He wanted to pry some of the spoils out of her hands.

Given the Adeptus Mechanicus' nature, Ovilia would certainly want to keep all these spoils for herself and would not give Chen Xi so much as a scrap.

If he did not strike hard while he had the chance, this whole trip would be a massive loss.

Although Ovilia had promised Chen Xi a thousand sets of Sisters of Battle equipment, Chen Xi seriously doubted whether she even had the means to pay.

And if he did not settle these matters now, Chen Xi doubted whether Ovilia would still acknowledge them later. The Tech-priests' credibility was not quite as bad as the secretless Dark Angels or those mystical White Eldar, but at least in some respects, they were difficult to trust.

Faced with Chen Xi's doubts, Ovilia struggled with herself for a long time. In the end, she tapped her Forged Great-Axe, activated a silence field, and said to Chen Xi, "Although I have indeed been stripped of everything, that does not mean I have nothing left."

"So what, then? Do you have a secret laboratory? Or a hidden Forge Ark?" Chen Xi was not surprised that Ovilia had contingencies in place. He was merely curious what sort of backup she had prepared.

"Since you know who my teacher is, you should know that, given his status, having a forge on a Forge World in the Mariupol Sector is nothing unusual." Ovilia spoke with a somewhat embarrassed tone, but the person she mentioned was her teacher, Belisarius Cawl.

"High Sage Belisarius Cawl has a forge on a Forge World in this sector?" Chen Xi looked surprised, but then he realized it actually made perfect sense.

Ten thousand years ago, Belisarius Cawl had accepted a commission from the Primarch Roboute Guilliman to carry out a plan to improve the Space Marines.

Over those ten thousand years, High Sage Belisarius Cawl not only completed his work perfectly, but also buried nearly a million Primaris Space Marines in stasis fields across countless places in the galaxy, along with their accompanying equipment.

After Guilliman returned to the Imperium, these became the main force behind his Indomitus Crusade.

On Mars alone, Belisarius Cawl had hidden at least several hundred thousand Primaris Space Marines.

When Guilliman launched the Indomitus Crusade, Belisarius Cawl had even produced the fully equipped forces of eighty Chapters in one go.

It reminded Chen Xi of a question that was widespread in Cloudhammer, absurdly funny yet very practical: "What should I do if the High Lords of Terra/the Emperor finds out I've been raising several hundred thousand Space Marines?"

Chen Xi did not know how others answered that question, but Belisarius Cawl, who really had raised several hundred thousand Space Marines, apparently had no desire to become the Fabricator-General of Mars.

According to Ovilia's explanation, Belisarius Cawl had once stayed on a Forge World in the Mariupol Sector for a long time. He had personally overseen the construction of a forge that belonged to him, leaving behind one student and a team to maintain it. That student was naturally the now-exiled Ovilia, while the forge and its maintenance team remained there.

What was more, that forge had now fallen into the hands of Ovilia's rival.

"The forge has fallen into your rival's hands, and you're telling me this because you want me to help you take it back?" Chen Xi stroked his chin. If he could truly help Ovilia reclaim the forge, he was very interested in searching beneath it for buried Primaris Space Marines. Given Dora Caur's habits, there might really be tens of thousands of Primaris Space Marines wrapped in oil paper down there.

However, just as Chen Xi was considering how to help Ovilia reclaim the forge, she shook her head and said, "No. I will reclaim my teacher's forge through my own abilities! I'm telling you this because my rival can actually be worked with."

"She is your rival, and she took your teacher's forge, yet you're saying you can cooperate with her?" Chen Xi looked puzzled, unable to understand exactly what was going on.

"It's nothing complicated. She and I were forging apprentices from the same industrial world. We were once the best of partners. It was simply that I was fortunate enough to become my teacher's apprentice, while she could only become the disciple of an ordinary Magos on the Forge World." Ovilia told Chen Xi a story that sounded rather melodramatic.