Perhaps in the two millennia after the embers of the Great Rebellion had just died down and the Primarchs were still guiding the way, the Empire still retained a glimmer of its Golden Age, staggering yet steadfastly walking the path of reconstruction.
At that time, even though the foundries were equally vast, the occasional sound of workers' conversations could still be heard on the assembly lines; at that time, even though the Tech-Priests were equally fanatical, they at least remembered that the essence of technology was to serve humanity, not to enslave it.
However, as the 'Beast War' claimed the last Primarch, the Empire, this out-of-control behemoth, became like a runaway horse with its reins cut, or a death truck with its brakes removed, irreversibly accelerating into an abyss of decay and destruction.
Without the guidance of the Primarchs, the Empire's bureaucracy began to self-reproduce, with every department creating more forms, more regulations, and more red tape, spreading like cancer cells.
Successive High Lord were not without attempts to change direction, but when the Empire's history accumulated into mountains measured in 'millennia,' its weight was enough to crush any force attempting to correct it.
Those reformers were like fools trying to stop an avalanche with their bare hands, eventually either assimilated by the system or crushed by it.
There was once a High Lord who wanted to simplify administrative procedures, but the reform he initiated itself spawned thirty-seven new approval departments.
Inertia itself had become the most powerful tyrant.
It silently ruled every corner of the Empire, keeping every gear turning in the same way for ten thousand years, even if that turning had long lost its meaning.
In the archives of the foundry, production standards set three thousand years ago are still preserved to this day, and no one dares to question whether these standards are still applicable now.
All the dire consequences of this deep-seated problem were now starkly displayed before Alex's eyes.
He stood on the observation platform of the station, looking at the absurd scene below, composed of flesh and blood, and felt a physiological nausea.
The train doors opened, and a tsunami of people surged out.
This was not the warmth of returning home after work, nor the vigor of starting a workday, but a torrent of flesh and blood.
The workers wore identical grey-blue uniforms, and each face bore the same numb expression, as if they were living parts mass-produced from the same mold.
Countless workers, uniformly dressed and with blurred faces, densely packed every inch of the platform, like an ant colony driven by an invisible force, silently and swiftly surging towards various exits.
Then they were broken down and transported by smaller commuter vehicles, eventually flowing into the ceaselessly operating steel intestines deep within the factory.
Small railcars swallowed sections of the crowd like gluttonous pythons, then spat them out again.
Workers were precisely allocated to their respective workstations, as accurately as parts on an assembly line being installed into their designated positions.
From the cold dome above, this surging tide of people lost its individual contours, leaving only a gray, writhing, deathly 'blanket'.
Occasionally, a worker would look up at the dome, but his eyes were as empty as two dark holes, devoid of any human spark.
They were exactly like worker ants pouring out of their nest, even more like… walking corpses.
Alex couldn't help but think of the records about ancient zombies; at least zombies retained some primitive desires, while these workers had even this desire systematically erased by the system.
They walked, they worked, they breathed, but they could no longer be considered alive.
Some say the Empire is a nation built on corpses, sustained by devouring corpses.
This metaphor is more real than anyone could imagine; it is not merely a dark allegory, but the most naked reality of the Empire's daily operation.
This certainly does not refer solely to the withered God-Emperor on the throne who maintains the Warp routes.
Although the desiccated corpse enshrined on the Golden Throne for ten millennia is indeed the Empire's most sacred corpse, the Empire's ghoulish nature is far more deeply ingrained than this symbolic corpse.
It more profoundly reveals the Empire's nauseating cycle of survival: from the 'corpse starch' for daily sustenance to the Servitor who undertake countless dirty, repetitive, and deadly tasks for the Empire, everything in the Empire is permeated with the stench of corpses.
In the food processing plants at the bottom of the Hive City, tons of organic matter were fed into decomposition tanks, and after a series of 'purification' processes, they became gray-white nutrient blocks; in the sacred halls of the Adeptus Mechanicus, incomplete bodies were attached to mechanical parts, becoming self-unaware slave laborers.
Even these living workers before his eyes, these living beings whose spirits had long been worn away and whose existence was equivalent to tools, in a sense, were they not walking corpses waiting to be 'recycled'?
Every day they dragged their weary bodies between the factory and their dormitories, their eyes empty, their souls withered, having long lost their essence as humans, leaving only their practical value for maintaining the Empire's operation.
This is a foundry of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
In this religious system composed of gears and steel, efficiency is faith, output is prayer, and human lives… are merely renewable resources.
Those who perform 'excellently' will receive 'blessings'—to be'sacredly' transformed into Servitor, permanently welded to their workstations, becoming part of the assembly line,'serving' for hundreds of years in a state of neither life nor death.
Their frontal lobes are precisely excised, and their nerves are perfectly integrated with machinery, making them perfect tools that neither tire nor complain.
The factory's broadcast system will play their 'glorious deeds' to encourage other workers to emulate them.
Those who perform 'poorly' or have exhausted their value?
They enter an efficient 'recycling' process, where their flesh and bones will be crushed and purified, transformed into 'corpse starch' and nutrient paste, to feed their struggling peers.
The slogan in the recycling workshop reads: 'Your sacrifice will perpetuate the Empire's eternity,' but in reality, this is merely an economic consideration to maximize the utilization of every gram of biomass.
The cold chain is perfectly interlocked.
From birth to death, from death to rebirth, every citizen of the Empire is perfectly integrated into this ceaseless ghoulish cycle.
There is no waste, no pity, only eternal efficiency and ruthless pragmatism.
In this system, even death is not an end, but a link in the resource cycle.
The slight benevolence of the Rostov Sub-Sector Governor cannot shake this iron rule deeply ingrained in the Empire's bones.
Alex's faint compassion, in the face of the Empire's ten-millennia-old cold mechanism, was as ridiculous as trying to melt a glacier with candlelight.
Even if he ordered improvements in worker treatment, those reform plans written on parchment would eventually be worn away in the labyrinth of the bureaucratic system.
Even Seventeen, the direct manager of the foundry, who deeply loathed this, was powerless to change it.
The glimmer of humanity in his mechanical eyes witnessed this unending feast of flesh and blood every day.
As a high-ranking member of the Adeptus Mechanicus, he knew better than anyone that every gear in this factory was lubricated with human blood.
Any attempt could be erased under the charge of 'heresy'.
The Inquisition's flamethrowers always came faster and more fiercely than any well-intentioned reform.
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