Gunshi chose to cooperate.
He slumped to the ground, his broken leg temporarily immobilized. He was in so much pain that sweat beaded on his forehead, but he dared not try anything funny.
Gunshi could tell that this girl who looked like a little girl was even more ruthless than those lunatics in Black Iron City.
Therefore, he confessed very thoroughly.
A gang like his is certainly not an independent "wild dog."
The outer chambers of Black Iron City provide them with ammunition and cheap stimulants, and also take people and scavenged supplies from them.
If a settlement develops rapidly, unearths valuable artifacts, or experiences a population surge, Black Iron City will send someone to "remind" them.
Black Iron City will never allow a second force to emerge outside that can rival them.
Ayla's first reaction was direct. "Destroy Black Iron City."
Mei looked at her and asked, "And then?"
Ayla: "?"
"What about the people inside?" Mei counted on her fingers.
Who builds the water purification station? Who maintains the generator? Where is the grain transported from? How is the wastewater discharged?
"The city has fallen, chaos has broken out, looting and killing have ensued, and the death toll may be even higher than that of those who were exploited to death in Black Iron City."
Ayla stood there, stunned.
She had never thought about these things before.
Killing the bad ruler seems like the right answer.
But what if even more people die after we kill them? Would destroying Black Iron City still be the right solution?
She frowned and remained silent for a long time.
"You need to think about this yourself." Mei didn't say anything more.
Ayla only came back to life when she was dealing with the captured equipment.
Engine, motorcycle, exoskeleton, power unit, hydraulic components...
She had them all dragged to an open space and disassembled piece by piece.
Parts were scattered all over the floor, and her hands and face were covered in oil, but she didn't care at all; her eyes shone with an unnerving light.
While others see these as scrap metal, she can see the purpose of each part, the merits and demerits of each structure, and which part can be modified for use elsewhere.
Mei called her to eat, but there was no response after she called three times.
Finally, the woman brought over the bowl and placed it in her hands.
While chewing on a dry, hard starch biscuit, Ayla was gesturing with her hand to measure the size of a gear, calculating whether it could be modified for use on the joints of an exoskeleton.
This is when she looks most like a living person.
She only acts like a child who has found a toy when she's in contact with machinery.
Har, a scavenger with a broken leg, was the first beneficiary.
Ayla used the exoskeleton parts she had captured, added some hydraulic structures from an off-road vehicle, and made him a powered prosthesis.
The first attempt at debugging failed.
With the power output set too high, Har took a step and flew forward, landing face-first in the mud.
The onlookers were shaking with suppressed laughter.
Ayla wasn't discouraged; she squatted back down and adjusted the parameters for a few minutes.
When he switched to the third version, Har, supporting himself against the wall, slowly stood up, one step, two steps...
He stood in the open space, looking down at the mechanical leg, and tears streamed down his face.
This leg is even stronger than his old, better leg.
" Ayla, could you... change the other one too?"
Ayla looked up at him.
"Why?"
"The machine is stronger." Har's voice trembled slightly. "The fleshy legs will break, but this won't."
Ayla was silent for a few seconds, then pointed to the mechanical leg. "It can break too."
Har was stunned.
"Bearings wear out, power runs out, transmission systems break; nothing is immune to damage."
"But it's still stronger than my legs."
Ayla looked at his intact leg and said calmly, "Your other leg isn't damaged."
"So?"
Therefore, there is no need to replace it.
She couldn't explain why.
There is no complete reasoning, no rigorous deduction, it's just an instinctive feeling that something is wrong.
Har, intimidated by Ayla's newly established authority, remained silent.
In the afternoon, several people worked together to move a large old generator set.
Ayla stood beside them, giving commands: a little to the left, a little to the right, how much to lift.
The more they tried to give orders, the more chaotic things became. Some were afraid of making a mistake, some couldn't keep up with the pace, and some felt they were doing too much and started to get upset.
Ayla was visibly frustrated. Her commands were precise enough, so why was the execution efficiency so low?
Suddenly, she remembered the funeral and the people who carried the coffin.
She paused, then changed her words.
"Once this equipment is installed, Har will be able to work on his own."
The men who were straining paused for a moment, and subconsciously glanced at Har standing to the side.
No one spoke, but then, suddenly, the movements became smooth.
They started chanting themselves, or voluntarily went to support unstable parts, making them more than 10% more efficient than before.
Ayla, standing beside her, clearly caught that faint resonance.
She suddenly understood.
Commands can only tell people what to do, but people seem to also need to know what the purpose of doing it is.
This was the second seed about "governance" that she touched.
Gunshi was a decent guy; after being released, he quickly brought back new intelligence.
"What truly overwhelms the surrounding forces in Black Iron City isn't the city walls, it's that they have a fighter jet," Gunshi said, taking a sip of cold water.
Ayla's eyes sharpened immediately. "Model number?"
How would I know?
"How to proceed?"
"Have no idea."
Wingspan? Weapons?
After thinking for a long time, Gunshi finally managed to say, "It can breathe fire."
Ayla was clearly dissatisfied; the intelligence was far less valuable than expected.
Gunshi quickly added, "That thing is extremely precious; it only flies once every few months or even years. Every flight is like burning money; it's their prized possession."
But it wasn't all useful information either; as far as he knew, this thing was related to the Seventh Dock.
Decades ago, the people of Black Iron City dragged out a lot of parts from there, and afterwards, outsiders were strictly forbidden from touching the ruins.
The reason is simple: roads on the ground can be blocked and blocked, but if someone has an airplane, the city walls become useless.
Ayla made a decision that very day: she would not Black Iron City, but would instead go to the Seventh Dock to see if she could acquire an airplane.
She gazed at the starry sky.
Conquering the skies sounds like a great challenge.
During a scavenging trip, Ayla found an old data chip in a metal box.
The interface was long gone, but she managed to read out a small piece of remaining data.
The coordinates point deep within the Seventh Dock, where a fragmented ancient inscription, written in the old Imperium's standard language, reads:
[The fluff is weak.]
Flesh and blood are weak and frail.
Ayla looked at her hands, then at Har's metal leg not far away.
Reason told her that steel was indeed stronger than bone, more powerful than muscle, and more durable than flesh and blood.
So why not replace them all?
She stared at that line of text for a long time.
This is the first time I've seriously considered this question.
Seventh Dock is bigger than I imagined.
A broken runway stretches for tens of kilometers across the wasteland, like a huge scar.
The collapsed command tower leaned to one side, and the massive Imperial Aquila sculpture had only half a wing remaining, covered in rust.
The hangar was large enough to hold the entire settlement, but now it's filled with shacks for scavengers, people living amidst the corpses of an ancient civilization.
The wind whipped up sand and dust, blowing across the empty tarmac with a whooshing sound.
Once upon a time, massive transport planes took off and landed here, Space Marine legions were deployed here, and Titan God-Machine capable of tearing the earth apart were maintained here.
But nowadays, people will fight tooth and nail for a perfectly good bearing.
When Ayla arrived with her people, the scavenging gang occupying the area was initially very wary.
Hearing that she had come to repair airplanes, the leader laughed and said that many people had wanted to do this for decades, but none had succeeded.
But he still stepped aside.
Everyone wanted to know whether these lumps of iron buried in the ruins could still be moved.
The underground entrance is located at the deepest part of the hangar, sealed off by a thick blast-proof door. The power supply has long been cut off, and the lock cylinder is rusted shut.
Others say this is a dead end, and can't be opened.
Ayla squatted by the door for a long time, touching it and then examining the door frame structure.
It's not locked; several sets of mechanical locks have lost pressure and need to be manually released.
She spent half an hour making a simple tool and succeeded on her first try.
The iron gate made a muffled "thud" and slid open a crack to the side.
Dust rushed in, carrying the smell of engine oil and rust.
Inside is an ancient machinery maintenance station.
The wall still bears the faded insignia of the " Iron Hands " Legion, along with scattered damaged armor repair records, expedition numbers, and troop logistics files.
Ayla flipped through several documents; the time span was frighteningly large, with the earliest dating back to the expeditions tens of thousands of years ago.
This place was once a forward maintenance point for an Imperium Expeditionary Force. Later, the war destroyed it, the facilities were buried, and it was slowly forgotten.
The further you go in, the more complete the equipment becomes.
In the center of the deepest hall stands a massive core device, half-buried underground, its wiring as dense as blood vessels.
Ayla connected to the temporary power source, and the entire hall flashed red the moment it was turned on.
A massive, semi-transparent silhouette of Men of Iron was projected above the core; tall, cold, and expressionless.
The first sentence, delivered in a flat, monotone voice, sounded like a mechanical announcement: "Target of testing: Organic structure ratio is too high."
"Optimization potential: significant."
It sounds like a comment about Ayla.
Ayla looked up at it and replied, "Your power supply design also has a lot of redundancy."
The core red light flashed twice, and then it froze for a moment.
It took Ayla a while to figure out what this thing was.
It is not a living person, nor the soul of any Primarch.
It's called the [ Gorgon Legacy Core ]. Initially, it was just a training database, engineering data repository, and tactical analysis core, storing the ancient legions' combat experience, maintenance plans, and human enhancement data.
For tens of thousands of years, generations of Iron Hands members, Tech-Priest, and successive commanders have continuously added to it, adding their own understanding, deductions, and dogmas.
Layer upon layer, they piled up into a complex sediment of thought.
Some entries are frighteningly ancient, some are clearly added later, and some are even contradictory.
It is not Ferrus Manus himself.
It is a "ghost" formed from the countless answers given by people over the past ten thousand years to the question of "steel and flesh."