The colossal intercontinental train, like a weary metal python, slowly slid into the star-devouring entrance of the Intercontinental Forge.
The name "Intercontinental" was no exaggeration.
This forge covered an area of over five million square kilometers—in the 3k era, this was already a vast nation.
Even the entirety of Europe could only accommodate two factories of this size.
Standing on the observation platform at the edge of the factory and gazing into the distance, as far as the eye could see, there were endless clusters of steel structures, like metal waves solidified by some mysterious force, stretching to where the horizon met the sky.
In this ocean of steel, countless production lines, like tangled veins, roared and pulsed, producing every screw, every piece of armor, every wisp of energy needed to sustain the entire Rostov Sub-Sector.
Millions of furnaces spewed out scorching metal torrents day and night, shaping raw materials into the forms required by the Imperium.
It greedily devoured the massive quantities of raw materials transported from the Rostov Sub-Sector, and continuously churned out everything needed to keep the Imperium functioning.
Every day, hundreds of transport ships landed on the factory's gigantic loading platforms, unloading mountains of ore, while the manufactured goods carried away filled every cargo hold of the starships.
This factory was like an insatiable gluttonous beast, perpetually cycling between hunger and satiety.
This enormous throughput could never be handled by intercontinental trains crawling on the ground; that was the exclusive domain of the steel whales—large transport ships—that traversed the star sea.
Those behemoths, over ten kilometers in length, were the true main force for material exchange between the factory and other parts of the galaxy; each of their takeoffs and landings was accompanied by a low-frequency roar powerful enough to shatter the glass of ordinary buildings.
The intercontinental trains were merely the veins on the body of this vast steel construct; although they also transported various "blood" to sustain its operation, their most important function, their true mission, was to transport the most basic, cheapest, yet indispensable flesh-and-blood components of the Imperium, this decaying behemoth: workers.
Every day, millions of workers in uniform poured out of these train cars, silently and orderly flowing into various areas of the factory, as naturally as blood flowing into organs.
Their existence gave this cold metal labyrinth a breath of life, though this form of life was so mechanical and tragic.
The operation of this steel continent required an unimaginable amount of manpower.
Countless workers, like worker ants, filled every production link, from the most basic component assembly to the most precise instrument calibration; every process was steeped in human sweat and blood.
Their figures wriggled on the never-ending assembly lines, forming the most fundamental life rhythm of this industrial leviathan.
The Imperium's "automation"? This was a desperate, cynical joke.
Processes that should have been completed by machines were now repeated by countless calloused hands; procedures that should have been precise and error-free now relied on human wave tactics to ensure operation.
In the core assembly workshop of the forge, thousands of workers formed long lines, passing parts in the most primitive way, like an absurd religious ritual.
Indeed, the Imperium possessed automation technology capable of eclipsing stars, yet due to various twisted "traditions" and "realities," it stubbornly adhered to the "oldest" production methods: filling every gap in every production line with living humans and "Servitor" cobbled together from human remains.
Those pathetic creations known as "Servitor" had their nerves fused with machinery, their consciousness deliberately blurred, becoming beings between tools and life, repeating programmed actions day after day.
The logic was chillingly cold: in the Imperium, a furiously operating meat grinder, throwing living humans, or humans processed into half-dead Servitor, onto the production line, was actually the most "economical," "efficient," and "optimal solution" that could barely maintain "efficiency."
Cost accounting sheets clearly showed: training a qualified worker took fifteen years, while creating a Servitor required only three corpses and two days of surgery; maintaining a fully automated production line required scarce Tech-Priests, while managing a thousand workers only needed a single overseer with a whip.
Black humor? No, this was a bone-chilling, cruel reality.
In the underground archive of the forge, every body was assigned a serial number, and every drop of sweat was converted into production value.
Workers queuing up received not only their daily rations but also their permission to exist as "production resources."
Here, humans themselves, and their derived cadaver products, were merely registered, quantifiable and consumable production materials, fundamentally no different from ore or fuel.
Flesh and blood became the cheapest lubricant and fuel.
When a conveyor belt in a workshop emitted a piercing grinding sound, the foreman's first reaction was not to add lubricant, but to order a few workers to manually adjust the operating machinery—after all, their medical expenses were far cheaper than machinery depreciation costs.
This was the true face of the Imperium of Man.
A monument of civilization built upon countless walking corpses, a deformed system sustained by devouring its own populace, a living corpse slowly rotting over ten millennia yet still moving forward.
No wonder when Roboute Guilliman awoke from ten millennia of slumber and witnessed this monster, a perversion of his father's ideals, he was utterly heartbroken, almost wishing for death.
He saw not the continuation of human glory, but a mad machine that prioritized efficiency over humanity, a twisted civilization that used its own kind as fuel.
Any pioneer who once helped ignite the flame of hope for humanity in the stars, after traversing the chasm of ten millennia, facing this desperate quagmire that sustained itself by chewing its own corpses, would fall into boundless despair due to the profound absurdity and betrayal.
Those slogans that once proclaimed "For the future of humanity" now sounded like the most bitter sarcasm of reality.
Our past struggles, the blood and ideals we shed, ultimately gave birth to such a deformed creation?
This question, like a festering bone-deep illness, gnawed at every soul that still possessed a conscience.
In the never-extinguishing furnace fires of the forge, reflected was not only the molten metal but also the terrifying process of a civilization's gradual alienation.
For a rigid Imperium that had existed for ten millennia, decay seemed to be the only destiny.
This behemoth was like a cursed mummy, slowly rotting in the long river of time, yet refusing to collapse due to some twisted obsession.
Every joint was rusted and solidified, every blood vessel was clogged and hardened, yet it still dragged its decaying body forward.
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