Cheslatan Colonial Outpost

Galaxy, Segmentum Obscurus, Cheslatan, main continent human colonial outpost.

Bright, mottled, warm yellow light shines through the window panes onto the floor, and a gentle breeze blows through the door.

Fu Qinghai, shirtless and wearing trousers, sits on the edge of the bed, turning his head to look outside the door. That dazzling star hangs in the sky; it is slightly larger than the sun.

He has been in this world for a week now.

To be precise, one standard Terra week.

He has roughly figured out the situation before him.

Fu Qinghai is currently in the Warhammer 40K universe.

Warhammer 40K is a pop culture IP created by the British company Games Workshop. It began releasing its first edition of tabletop wargames in 1987. It is a long-standing, distinct cultural IP with a massive fan base both domestically and abroad.

Fu Qinghai, of course, had heard a little about it.

Fu Qinghai spent a week desperately recalling the Warhammer 40K games he had played and the novels he had read in his past life, trying to combine them with his current situation to think of a way out.

He is currently on a colonial planet named "Cheslatan." This planet was originally a wild world without civilization or intelligent life discovered by the Imperium of Man during the Great Crusade, designated by the Empire as 17-974.

This means it was the 974th planet discovered and conquered by the 17th Expedition Fleet; "Cheslatan" is the name given by the colonists.

Although it is a wild world, Cheslatan is at a moderate distance from its star. The planet's surface has water, an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and a dry, pleasant climate. It is a rare Terra-like planet. Setting aside the minerals that might exist underground, the current conditions alone make it very suitable for development into an Agri-World.

The administrative departments of the Empire could directly establish biochemical farming factories on the planet without paying the huge costs of terraforming the planetary surface.

The only drawback is that Cheslatan is on the edge of the Segmentum Obscurus, a bit far from the star systems where human activity is concentrated.

Thus, after the 17th Expedition Fleet from the Blood Angels Legion inspected the natural environment of this planet, the Space Marines carried out an extinction of a lizard-like creature that was assessed to be a potential threat to human survival. They then notified the nearest Hive World to send immigrant ships to planet 17-974, left behind a few pathetic administrative officials, and finally patted their backsides and eagerly rushed to the next world waiting to be conquered.

The Levant Hive World nearest to Cheslatan began sending colonial ships. However, after the first colonial ship arrived at the planet through a long Warp voyage, the entire sector suddenly began to be filled with violent Warp storms. Star-sign communication with the Hive World was cut off, and there was no news of subsequent colonial fleets.

A colonial ship and the more than six thousand colonists on board were thus left stranded alone on this wild planet in the distant universe.

It has been two years.

Fortunately, the potential threats on this planet had been completely cleared away by the Space Marines, and combined with the climate being suitable for survival, the first batch of human colonists settled down here with anxiety and trepidation regarding the long-raging Warp storms.

In a simple hut built of earthy-yellow concrete, Fu Qinghai stands up from the bed and walks to the full-length mirror, looking at the figure in the reflection.

This is a handsome youth with black hair and black eyes. His appearance is seven or eight parts similar to his past self: fair skin, a high nose bridge, and deep eyes. Compared to traditional East Asians, he has a sense of mixed-race heritage. He has a large frame, and at 17 years old, he is already over 1.8 meters tall, with faint muscle outlines even without training.

Such a handsome, intelligent, quick-learning, physically fit youth with great potential—a face better than Daniel Wu, a physique surpassing Takuya Kimura.

In the Warhammer 40K universe, there is a simple and unified term for him—

Mortal.

A creature that can die by the billions in any random local conflict within the Imperium of Man.

In the Warhammer 40K universe, the galaxy is dark and cruel.

"A-Luo! A-Luo, come eat!" A familiar, cheerful voice rings out from outside the door.

A short-haired girl with blue eyes bounces in. She is unfazed by Fu Qinghai's bare upper body and tugs on his arm, pulling him toward the door. "Come on, let's go eat."

Fu Qinghai is interrupted from his thoughts and hurriedly grabs a shirt from the bed before being dragged out the door by the girl.

Stepping out, the metal door behind him closes automatically. Wearing his shirt, Fu Qinghai arrives on a street filled with earthy yellow. People walk by in twos and threes, occasionally raising face masks to shield themselves from the slight dust carried by the wind.

The climate on the main continent of Cheslatan is hotter and drier than most regions on Earth. The vegetation is not lush, but such a climate is already a rare, livable environment in the entire galaxy.

The girl leads Fu Qinghai to a low building where food is distributed. The two collect their standard rations and find a corner, eating while listening to the girl chatter about the news in the outpost during the time Fu Qinghai was unconscious.

Thanks to the fact that the first colonial ship did not carry too many people but instead brought a lot of large-scale development equipment, the current three thousand people in the colonial outpost are insignificant compared to the resources of the entire planet, so life in the outpost is still quite comfortable.

With no new bureaucratic system arriving, the few administrative officials originally from the Expedition Fleet became the highest authorities of the colonial outpost. The ship captain, who was forced to stay here, also counts as an official of the outpost, establishing a temporary management order for the colonial settlement.

No, it can no longer be called "comfortable." At this very moment, Cheslatan is simply a paradise in a cruel galaxy, a heaven!

As mentioned earlier, the Warhammer 40K universe is dark and cruel. The quality of life for most humans is far inferior to that of the ancient Earth Terra era. The Imperium of Man constantly faces incursions from various alien creatures and mysterious Warp powers.

Ordinary humans living on Hive Worlds and Forge Worlds either fight to the death on the front lines against heretics and Xenomorphs, perhaps without ever leaving behind a shred of honor or their names, or they labor to death in the dark, heavily polluted lower levels of the Hive, eating Corpse Starch from the recycling systems for their entire lives.

Compared to these two not-so-great options, the colonial outpost on Cheslatan, isolated by Warp storms, is completely a sanctuary in a cruel galaxy.

Temporarily.

Unlike the people in the colonial outpost who are at a loss, Fu Qinghai naturally knows why this sudden Warp storm has lasted so long.

The supreme military commander of the human expeditionary forces—the Primarch Warmaster Horus—launched a rebellion at the end of the unfinished Great Crusade, and half of the Space Marine Legions joined the rebel camp.

The Chaos Gods in the Warp seized the opportunity to stir up Warp storms, cutting off contact between various parts of the Empire and the various Space Marine Legions, both in terms of communication and transportation.

The new identity Fu Qinghai has after his rebirth is called Locke, no surname, just a simple word.

A typical name for a lower-hive dweller, as simple and outrageous as his orphan background. He got the immigration opportunity by drawing lots, which was the result of the planetary governor's mercy.

Of course, it is also possible that the population capacity of the Levant Hive had reached its limit.

The blue-eyed girl is named Feiyi, also an orphan. However, unlike Locke, who boarded the immigrant ship as a hive orphan, Feiyi once had parents—a pair of botanists, residents of the middle levels of the Levant Hive, who were sent by the Imperial government to study the vegetation and animals of the new world, only to die of illness during the exploration of the colonial world.

During the long journey of the colonial ship, Feiyi's family took good care of Locke, who was an orphan. The two of them stuck together in the colonial outpost for survival. Besides both being orphans, there was another reason—Feiyi was not well-liked.

There was no reason, no cause. Everyone in the colonial outpost, except for Locke, inexplicably found this little girl annoying and did not want to get close to her.

Recalling this, Fu Qinghai finds it incredible. How could anyone dislike such a beautiful and kind girl?

Feiyi's ethereal yet wild beauty, combined with her height of nearly 1.7 meters at just 15 years old, would have made her a million-follower Instagram influencer on Earth in his past life without needing any talent—saving her the trouble of retouching photos or wearing makeup—and she would have had a promising future in the modeling industry as well.

However, Fu Qinghai did not dwell on this; he had a more pressing issue to consider.

How to participate in the main storyline of the Imperium of Man and the entire galaxy: the Horus Heresy.

Unlike the previous universe, Fu Qinghai did not receive a beginner's pack that allowed him to freely choose his faction this time, and he had been randomly assigned to the faction of The Emperor.

It wasn't bad; at least it was a faction that could win without effort, provided no other Reincarnators interfered.

But, recalling how the Reincarnators in the previous universe dared to scheme against Iron Man and nearly succeeded, Fu Qinghai couldn't bring himself to be happy—how could it be possible that no Reincarnators would come to interfere?

With a thought, Fu Qinghai opened his attribute panel in his mind.

Name: Fu Qinghai (True Name)
Reincarnation ID: 60731920
Race: Human (Void-born Human)
Height: 184cm
Weight: 75kg
Ability: Tony Stark Electronic Soul Backup (Completion: 17%) bound to the brain
Reincarnation Equipment: None
Assimilation Points: 124
World Anchor: X1
Reincarnation Lives: X2

His name remained the same, but he had one less Reincarnation Life, and the "True Name" in parentheses left Fu Qinghai with many wild thoughts. Connecting it to the fantasy novels he had read in his past life, could this "True Name" be related to some magical ritual or curse?

His race had changed from a standard Earth human to a Void-born Human. Unlike Earth humans, when Fu Qinghai focused his thoughts on the term "Void-born Human," a description appeared:

During the long process of cosmic exploration, humans gradually adapted to the microgravity environment and background radiation of space, developing a certain resistance to cosmic rays and an increased tolerance for extreme G-force loads.

It was a logical transformation. Fu Qinghai knew that traditional Earth humans could not actually stay in space for long periods. Research by scientific institutions in his past life on the bodies of astronauts revealed that prolonged exposure to low-gravity environments in outer space led to various chronic illnesses, affecting vision and cognitive ability, and causing genetic mutations, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, and cerebrospinal fluid accumulation.

"Tony Stark Electronic Backup (Completion: 17%) bound to the brain."

And this was the reward Fu Qinghai had fought for with one of his lives in the previous universe.

It was also the reason why Fu Qinghai had been in such agony that he fainted the moment he woke up in this universe.

A week ago, when he finally understood what had been added to his brain, Fu Qinghai was overcome with uncontrollable ecstasy.

He knew that in the Marvel storyline, Iron Man had once performed an electronic backup of his own brain. After the original died, a Tony Stark composed entirely of data frequently appeared as a blue holographic projection to participate in subsequent plots, and at his peak, he even threatened to destroy the universe.

However, those plots mainly occurred in the Marvel Ultimate Universe (Earth-1610) and other parallel universes. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as it had been presented, there was no scene of Iron Man performing an electronic clone of himself, which was why Fu Qinghai hadn't thought in that direction at first.

Unexpectedly, in 2013 of the MCU, Tony Stark had begun the project to electronically back up his brain, perhaps out of post-war anxiety following the Battle of New York, and it was being developed in parallel with the Ultron project.

Currently, the completion rate of this electronic cloning project was still very low, at only 17%, but when Fu Qinghai's consciousness touched it, he found that the knowledge contained within was as vast as the sea.

This was easy to understand. According to Fu Qinghai's perception, it was actually very easy for Iron Man to back up the knowledge he possessed—it was just building a database of knowledge documents, something a third-rate programmer could do. After all, knowledge is static; no matter how massive the amount, it is still static.

But this was not artificial intelligence, let alone an electronic soul. The true difficulty of this electronic soul cloning project must have been how to digitize and clone Iron Man's emotions, personality, likes and dislikes, and the choices and judgments he would make in different situations. This was the core of this black technology.

Fu Qinghai guessed that when the electronic soul backup was truly completed, knowledge and logic would account for at most 30% of the data, while the remaining 70% would be a clone of Iron Man's personality and emotions.

After all, there were countless smart people in the Marvel Universe; the reason Iron Man was Iron Man did not depend entirely on that knowledge.

It seemed that Tony Stark had not yet found a solution, so the project had been shelved for the time being.

As for how the data interface of a hard drive was connected to Fu Qinghai's brainstem, that could only be attributed to the miraculous nature of the Reincarnation World.

Fu Qinghai probed his consciousness into that vast field of thought, and snippets of knowledge emerged and vanished in his mind.

It was a strange experience, like trying hard to recall a memory, yet not as vague as a normal recollection. Fu Qinghai could clearly feel that there was an ocean in his head, cold and cool, and bubbles would occasionally burst in the ocean. But when he tried hard to "think" about that thing, to chase that bubble, it would disappear again.

Fu Qinghai gave up.

He felt a bit discouraged.

What was the point of this? They said there was a 17% electronic backup of Iron Man in his brain, but he hadn't become 17% of Iron Man.

Taking a bite of food, Fu Qinghai sighed and looked around in confusion.

Suddenly, he saw a Servitor placed by the side of the street not far away.

It was a short, stocky humanoid creature, with nearly half of its flesh and blood body replaced by various agricultural machinery. It stood by the side of the road with a dull gaze, motionless, its back hunched as if the overly installed mechanical arms were about to crush it.

A Servitor was not a person; it was a flesh-and-machine construct stripped of most brain functions to replace artificial intelligence, derived from cloning organs in maturation vats or from criminals. It was the foundation of the Imperium of Man's labor force.

That was why Fu Qinghai used the word "placed."

When Fu Qinghai first arrived in the Warhammer 40K world, it had taken him some time to adapt to viewing a Servitor as a refrigerator or a washing machine rather than a living person.

At this moment, as he stared at the Servitor, a bubble suddenly burst in that strange sea of thought in Fu Qinghai's brain.

"Servitor, mechanical prosthetic humanoid, additional hand modification: shallow drilling arm, additional left shoulder modification: high-power floodlight, waist additional... Preliminary analysis: modifications have exceeded original factory load, output power insufficient... Optional modification directions: 1, remove shoulder... 2, modify... 3,..."

As Fu Qinghai stared, a long string of fragmented information flashed through his mind. Fu Qinghai, who had previously known nothing about the manufacturing principles of Servitors, found more and more problems with this one the longer he looked. This was wrong, that wouldn't work; it could be modified to be better. A faint urge stirred in his mind, driving him to take this Servitor apart and study it.

Shaking his head, Fu Qinghai dismissed this impractical thought.

The official of the colonial outpost seems benevolent toward the people, but that is only because he needs to ensure the survival rate of the immigrants; in these times when communication and transportation are severed, every single population count is precious.

However, the Servitors in the colonial outpost, much like the various large-scale reclamation machines, are property belonging to the Imperium of Man government. They are not things Fu Qinghai can just fiddle with at will; he is a low-hive dweller with no formal education, not a Tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

So that's how it is... Fu Qinghai thought, lost in contemplation, gaining a rough understanding of this "Iron Man electronic backup (17% completion) bound to the brain region."

I knew it, he thought. A superpower linked to Iron Man shouldn't be useless; it just needs to be developed.

He never expected that the alloy hard drive he had casually pulled out back then would actually be an electronic backup of Iron Man.

No wonder a mere hard drive required a massive 7012 Assimilation Points to assimilate... Fu Qinghai shifted his thoughts, wondering, Could I be the legendary lucky dog?

Sure enough, if you want to get rich, you have to place big bets. If you win, you get the high life; if you lose, you get reincarnated... Fu Qinghai thought with a satisfied grin.

"Hey, hey, A-Luo!" A slender little hand waved twice in front of Fu Qinghai's eyes. "Why are you grinning at the Servitor like a fool? Is your head still not right?"

"Uh..." Fu Qinghai wiped the expression off his face and came back to his senses. "Where were you just now?"

"I said, a terrifying major event happened in the outpost yesterday!" Feiyi said in the tone of someone sharing a shocking secret.

"What major event? How terrifying is it?" Fu Qinghai asked casually.

"Do you remember what caused you to pass out?"

"Didn't you tell me I was hit in the head by a rock falling from the sky?" Fu Qinghai looked at Feiyi strangely, thinking, Do we really have to keep repeating such a miserable incident?

"Right, later Calvin and Zephyr and the others investigated it clearly. A spaceship crashed more than two hundred kilometers away from the outpost. That day, a lot of iron chunks and rocks fell from the sky, smashing through some of the roofs in the outpost."

Calvin and Zephyr are the administrative officials of the colonial outpost.

"That includes the one that hit your head," Feiyi added.

Why are you still bringing this up... "And then? Didn't Calvin take people to check it out? After they came back, they sealed off the news, didn't say anything, and forbade people in the outpost from going to the crash site."

Fu Qinghai also knew what happened afterward.

Feiyi lowered her voice and said, "I heard that the night before last, Cedric and his group snuck off to the ship under the cover of darkness."

"Oh?" Fu Qinghai focused his attention.

"After Calvin and the others returned from their first inspection of the crash site, there were rumors in the outpost that the ship was a warship, a vessel from an expeditionary fleet. Yet, for some reason, Calvin ordered that no outpost residents were allowed near the ship. Cedric and his group had been clamoring to go treasure hunting in the ship, looking for weapons, saying that if they got their hands on a Bolter, they'd be set for life."

Cedric's little clique consisted of a group of sixteen or seventeen-year-old youths, hoodlums, some of whom were orphans. If they were the same age on Earth in his past life, they would at most be considered poorly disciplined brats. But these youths raised in the lower levels of a Hive City could not be described as mere "brats." The filthy streets of the lower hive are filled with drugs, guns, bloody murders, and violent gangs. Compared to those child warlords in Africa who can start an independence movement with just an AK, all they lack is an environment where they can actually declare independence.

Cedric's group used to frequently team up to bully Locke—that is, Fu Qinghai. Perhaps they were jealous of Locke's good looks, or for some other reason; regardless, hoodlums don't need a reason to pick a fight. And Feiyi, just as she did when her parents were alive, would bravely stand in front of Locke to protect him every time. Of course, this wasn't because Feiyi was a great fighter, but because Cedric and his group found her annoying and didn't want to get close to her.

"As a result, only one person came back this morning. It was Ladrall. He was covered in blood, his face was pale, he was delirious, and he looked completely traumatized. He kept muttering about demons, white demons, and things like that. He had suffered very serious injuries and died not long after he returned!"

Feiyi's tone was hard to distinguish between fear and schadenfreude; after all, Cedric's group often came to cause trouble for Locke and frequently brought disaster upon the colonial outpost.

Hearing this information, Fu Qinghai narrowed his eyes.

Even without considering participating in the main storyline, the Cheslatan colonial outpost can only be a temporary shelter. Regardless of who the final winner of the Great Heresy is, this place will sooner or later return to the rule of some faction.

And an even worse outcome would be encountering other Xenomorph races from the edge of the galaxy before the rule of the Imperium of Man even arrives, which would undoubtedly be a catastrophe for this weak colonial outpost.

Therefore, for whatever reason, Fu Qinghai cannot just muddle along and survive; he must sooner or later consider a way to leave this place.

And that spaceship that crashed half a month ago is an opportunity.

"Demons, white demons?" Fu Qinghai muttered to himself; this information was too vague.

Fu Qinghai frowned and began to ponder.

Warp entities manifesting in reality?

Not to mention how complex and massive the sacrifices and rituals required for a Warp entity to break through the barrier into reality would be, if it were truly some evil entity from the Warp inside the ship, Ladrall would never have had the chance to escape. Those things that do not belong to the rules of the physical world are difficult even for powerful Space Marines to harm.

What's more, the outpost official Calvin had already taken people to check it out.

Right, I'll just go ask Calvin directly and see if I can fish for some information.

"Let's go!" Fu Qinghai took Feiyi's hand and stood up, heading toward the official's residence.

"Where are we going?" Feiyi, being led by Fu Qinghai, was confused.