That afternoon, while the soldiers scoured the ruins for metal, wiring, charge packs, shattered armor plates, and anything else that could be turned into war material, Qin Mo had already begun his work.
The air around the half-ruined hab-block was thick with scorched metal, old smoke, ozone, and the bitter mineral stink of disturbed ferrocrete. Men moved in cautious work parties across the rubble, dragging salvage back with hooks and improvised sleds. Every few minutes someone found a body, a live power cell, or an unexploded munition, and the rhythm of labor briefly stuttered before fear was forced down and work resumed.
Then the fortress began to change.
The transformation of the fortress was nothing short of miraculous, or heretical, depending on who was watching and how loudly they intended to report it.
Grey had seen Qin Mo's abilities before. But this? This was beyond anything he had witnessed.
Within a carefully measured hundred-meter square footprint, the dead metal of the Underhive stopped behaving like dead metal. The once-rigid flooring softened without glowing, flowing like dark wax under pressure from an invisible hand. Under Qin Mo's silent command, alloy stretched, fused, folded, and wove itself into the building's frame.
The ground buckled in controlled waves. Service ducts sealed themselves. Weak flooring collapsed inward and became reinforced foundations. Pits opened where Qin Mo wanted voids, then stabilized as support ribs grew around them. The sound was not one noise but many: the deep groan of tortured steel, the crack of ferrocrete under compression, the wet scrape of rust being stripped from old beams and drawn into new shapes.
Section by section, the simple hab-block was reforged into an ironclad bastion of war.
Five stories tall. Walls thickened outward and inward, reinforced with thirty centimeters of dense, reworked alloy layered around scavenged adamantium fragments, ceramite scraps, and pressure-hardened ferrocrete. Metal rods hung in midair before embedding themselves into the structure, interlocking into latticed layers of support, each one braced to distribute shock from shell impacts rather than merely absorb them. Firing slits materialized, each positioned with calculated precision for maximum crossfire coverage. Some faced forward, others angled to create overlapping kill zones.
Weapon hardpoints formed beneath them: crude now, empty now, but sized for heavy stubbers, flamers, meltaguns, and heavier things Qin Mo intended to build later. Cable channels grew behind the walls. Ammunition recesses opened near firing positions. Narrow steps rose where defenders would need stable footing. Murder-holes appeared above entrances, each with sloped inner lips to channel promethium, grenades, or simple rocks onto anyone foolish enough to stand below.
By the time the final reinforcements settled, the entire structure had become a kill-box, every corridor a gauntlet, every entrance a choke point of death.
Klein, watching this architectural nightmare unfold, felt a cold shudder crawl down his spine. The walls themselves seemed to hum faintly, not alive, exactly, but tense with stored purpose, as if the building had been taught to hate intruders.
"How… are we supposed to enter or exit?"
Qin Mo answered without a word.
The main entrance was no longer a simple doorway. It had become a fortified tunnel, a deadly bottleneck designed to funnel enemies into oblivion.
Invaders would be forced to descend a steep incline before scrambling up a staircase, exposed and vulnerable to intersecting arcs of lasfire and future heavy bolter emplacements. The slope was too sharp for most vehicles and too narrow for more than a few infantrymen to advance abreast. The stairs were uneven by design, forcing attackers to look down, slow their charge, and bunch together under fire. The mere thought of it made Klein's palms sweat.
If, by some miracle, they survived that, they would face a labyrinthine passageway lined with murder-holes, flamer ports, and auto-turret mounts waiting for weapons that did not yet exist.
It was an attacker's worst nightmare.
Walls impervious to standard explosives. Vehicles too large to traverse the incline. Infantry funneled into a slaughterhouse of overlapping kill zones.
Klein exhaled, struggling to mask his awe. His breath came out in a shaky hiss.
"Give me a flamer and a meltagun, and I could hold this place for a year against an enemy force a hundred times our size."
Then, a more practical concern surfaced.
"But… what about supplies? How do we get food and ammo inside?"
Qin Mo raised a hand.
Part of the wall folded inward, forming a seamless doorway. The edges retracted with a soft hiss, the surface smoothing as though the opening had always been there.
Behind it lay a narrow logistics passage large enough for men and cargo sleds, but too tight for armored vehicles. The floor was ridged for traction. The ceiling had recessed clamps for hoists. Hidden shutters waited in the walls, ready to seal the passage in sections if enemies breached it.
Klein blinked. Then nodded.
"…I see."
....
With the surface fortifications complete, Qin Mo turned his attention below.
Digging too deep was out of the question. The Underhive's lower guts were not empty. Genestealers lurked in the depths, and the last thing they needed was to unearth a nest of Tyranid horrors.
Instead, the underground sector was designed for controlled access. A central bunker, reinforced and shielded, with a single, heavily defended entrance accessible only from inside the fortress.
The bunker would not be comfortable. Comfort was not the point. It would be a command refuge, an ammunition reserve, a triage station, and a last redoubt if the upper structure fell. Ventilation shafts were narrow, angled, and trapped with shutters. Drainage channels sloped away from the interior to prevent sump-flooding. Thick internal doors divided the lower levels into compartments so one breach would not doom the entire complex.
Klein watched in silence as tunnels carved themselves into the ferrocrete, entire sections of the Hive reshaping at Qin Mo's whim. The grinding roar of shifting stone echoed through the tunnels, dust curling in the dim light.
His breath came unsteady.
"This… This is power beyond mortal comprehension."
He swallowed hard.
"Psykers are terrifying, but by the Emperor, they're damn useful."
....
"I'm not a psyker," muttered Qin Mo to himself.
The words were quiet enough that no one nearby heard them. That was intentional. The last thing he needed was a theological debate with armed men who still looked at him like a holy weapon, a witch, or both.
For the longest time, he had assumed he was some kind of psyker. He had dismissed his visions, his knowledge, his instincts as aberrations of the immaterium.
But now?
Now, the evidence was irrefutable.
Psyker-suppressing collars had no effect on him.
Neuro-parasites that feasted on Warp-sensitive minds ignored him.
Imperial anti-Warp measures failed to register his existence.
Which meant his power did not stem from the Warp.
Instead, his mind drifted back to the visions, those impossible memories that surfaced when he was on the brink of death.
There was only one possible explanation.
The C'tan.
....
The C'tan, the Star Gods, were beings older than any civilization in the galaxy. They had once fed upon the energy of stars, drinking their essence across the aeons.
They were divine horrors, bound to the material plane, their power anathema to both the Warp and the Imperium's fragile understanding of the universe.
They could forge black holes at will.
They could create entire planets from nothing.
They could bend the fabric of physics to their whim.
Their abilities bore resemblance to Warp sorcery, but they were something far more alien. Far more terrifying.
They could alter matter on a fundamental level.
They could reshape objects with nothing but thought.
They did not plead with daemons. They did not bargain with unreality. They imposed laws on matter and expected obedience.
Qin Mo exhaled. The weight of that realization pressed down on his chest like a slab of stone.
He was 80 percent certain his abilities originated from one of the C'tan.
But which one?
And more importantly, why?
That question bothered him more than the power itself. Power was useful. Power could build walls, kill enemies, shield soldiers, and keep him alive in a universe that treated survival as a clerical error. But origins came with owners. Memories came from somewhere. And if something ancient enough to eat stars had left an echo inside him, then sooner or later he would have to learn whether that echo was a gift, a wound, or a hook.
....
"I need to start weapons manufacturing." Qin Mo's voice was resolute, cutting through the low murmur of the soldiers nearby. "When the scavengers return, have them bring everything to me."
He offered no further explanation. There was no time for questions. There was too much to do, and not enough time.
Even though he now had command authority over the 47th Infantry Regiment, he wasn't planning to bring many soldiers on his recon mission.
Numbers would slow him down. Worse, numbers would draw attention. A large force moving through the Underhive needed food, water, ammunition, stretcher teams, rear security, vox discipline, and officers capable of keeping frightened men from firing at shadows. Qin Mo did not have that luxury. He needed speed, silence, and soldiers who could survive long enough to matter.
His first priority was to arm Grey's squad, ensuring that the fortress had an elite garrison before he left.
The strategy was simple.
Six-man recon teams would scout nearby strongholds stealthily and quickly. For that, they needed high-mobility equipment.
Not vehicles. Too loud. Too obvious. Too dependent on roads, tunnels, fuel, and machine spirits that would probably throw a tantrum the moment someone skipped a maintenance chant.
No, it had to be personal. Integrated. The answer was clear.
Jump Packs.
Each Gravity Shield would be integrated into a Jump Pack, granting:
Flight. Mobility. Integrated storage. Limited environmental protection. Emergency descent control.
Enough lift to cross broken streets, ruined transit shafts, and collapsed industrial gaps without begging the Hive for a passable road.
As for weaponry?
They had to be built directly into the armor.
Energy weapons were ideal. Solid rounds were easy for Gravity Shields to defeat, which meant enemies would eventually learn the same lesson. Kinetic weapons would be secondary until Gravity Shield technology was improved.
Thus, the optimal loadout became clear:
Jump Packs with integrated Gravity Shields. Power Armor, optimized for energy weaponry. Equipment designed for high-speed skirmishes.
One issue remained, power consumption.
Qin Mo's solution?
A high-capacity energy cell, capable of thermal recharging. If energy reserves ran low, the entire squad would regroup. Then, using his C'tan-gifted abilities, Qin Mo would manipulate reality, making fire non-lethal.
Flamers would become mobile recharging stations.
It was absurd. It was dangerous. It violated at least six doctrines, three sacred maintenance principles, and probably a Mechanicus treaty no one had read in eight thousand years. It was also practical. Heat was abundant in battle. Promethium was common. Soldiers already trusted flamers. Converting battlefield fire into stored energy was exactly the kind of solution the Imperium would call heresy right before dying because it refused to use it.
....
Beyond infantry warfare, Qin Mo had bigger plans.
Drones.
Combat Drones: Armed with kinetic or energy weapons.
Medical Drones: Capable of emergency field treatment.
Recon Drones: Designed for scouting and surveillance.
Shield Drones: Mobile cover platforms.
Cargo Drones: Small haulers for ammunition, water, ration blocks, power cells, and wounded men who could not walk.
Signal Drones: Disposable relay nodes to keep vox contact alive through the Underhive's metal-choked corridors.
Mine-Clearance Drones: Cheap, ugly, barely intelligent things whose entire purpose was to go first and die usefully.
Then, fortress defense. That was simple.
Flamers. Meltaguns. Heavy Stubbers. Mass-produced.
Not elegant. Not glorious. Not the kind of weapons sung about by priests. But flamers cleared tunnels, meltaguns killed armor, and heavy stubbers turned charging bodies into logistics problems. In the Underhive, practical brutality won more battles than noble speeches.
His unnatural knowledge allowed him to perfectly replicate any Imperial weapon from memory alone. Before, when he thought he was a psyker, he feared creating too much.
If these machines were ever tainted by the Warp…
"Shit… that would be a disaster."
A daemon in a blade was bad enough. A daemon in a factory line, a targeting system, or a self-replicating drone network would be the kind of mistake that ended with an Inquisitor cleansing the entire world from orbit and calling it restraint.
But now?
Now, knowing he wasn't Warp-touched, he had no reason to hesitate.
Of course, if the Inquisition ever found out…
Qin Mo sighed.
"That'd be a problem for future me."
Future Qin Mo, he decided, was an arrogant bastard who clearly deserved whatever paperwork, orbital bombardment, or theological screaming came his way. Present Qin Mo had a fortress to arm and a Genestealer infestation to survive.
Suddenly, Qin Mo realized something. Genestealers had psykers among them.
Maguses. Patriarchs. Broodminds. Synaptic tricks. False miracles wrapped in stolen Imperial faith. The cult had already used psychic communication once. If they attacked again, they would not politely limit themselves to guns and claws.
Developing anti-psyker technology was now a priority.
His first step?
Reverse-engineering Psyker Suppression Collars into full-scale Anti-Psyker Emitters.
The collars were crude, ugly, and built for restraint rather than battlefield denial, but the principle could be expanded. Hexagrammic warding. Neural interference. Localized disruption fields. Arrays mounted into fortress walls. Portable emitters carried by shield drones. Dead zones placed around command posts, ammunition stores, and medical stations.
If his own power truly came from outside the Warp, then the emitters would not hinder him. If he was wrong, they might cripple him at the worst possible moment.
Qin Mo looked at the unfinished fortress, at the soldiers carrying scrap through dust and smoke, at Grey organizing work details with a voice that had grown steadier since the battle.
Then he looked down at his own hands. Metal dust clung to his fingers. Tiny arcs of light crawled beneath his skin and vanished.
"Fine," he muttered. "We test carefully."
The Underhive answered with distant gunfire.
Qin Mo returned to work.