Chapter 123: Heart of Inwit

He took the vast world into his eyes.

No snow fell from the high dome, and the bright wind brought eternal daylight from the dying star. A planet wrapped in an ice shell was frozen in the paleness. When the heavy iron boots stepped on the ground, Perturabo felt cold.

The body functions of the Primarch maintained his body temperature, while the modified Terminator armor kept the temperature of the head constant except for the exposed part. If someone used thermal imaging to observe a group of people walking on the surface of Invit, Perturabo and Rogal Dorn should be the two most conspicuous large creatures in the environment of minus 30 degrees.

His coldness was not an alarm from the body's sensory center, but came from a delicate emotional touch.

The ice layer under Perturabo's feet broke and hummed under his iron boots. From this damaged omen, he suddenly felt that he was stepping on a dying heart that could hardly supply the flow of blood cells.

Leman Russ described Fenris as consisting of ice seas and volcanoes. From his songs and strong wine, he could almost imagine the vivid life of wolves gathering in the hall to bite each other and celebrate. From the wolf king, Perturabo saw the Fenrisians relying on mead to warmly crowd in the tent to spend the long winter.

But Inwit is different.

The life here is born deep in the ice. Humans have cold snow water flowing in their veins before they are born. They are fed by a dying star and given a long cold day, or just pure night, making it impossible to distinguish the difference between before and after birth. In Inwit, the only real living things are ice, snow and rocks, which appear, change, expand, split, sink and disappear with the movement of the earth's crust.

The Iron Lord landed here, and his extremely sensitive mind immediately connected with the life force of this planet that was about to be exhausted or had already been exhausted, just like a piece of metal with extraordinary thermal conductivity, which quickly transmitted the coldness of Invert to his mind, cooling or even freezing the part that maintained the heat in his mind.

So Perturabo felt the cold.

On such a planet, it seemed natural for a Rogal Dorn to be born. The Primarch was a microcosm of their home planet. What could burn in the ice and snow was a ball of fire, but only rocks could survive: sharp edges, cold and firm.

He couldn't help but feel confused about Dorn.

Although Olympia was technologically backward, it had sufficient material resources and manpower - all the way from Terra to here, Perturabo had already discovered how rare the natural and cultural conditions of Olympia were.

But Rogal Dorn's Invert had nothing but ice and snow. But before Perturabo left Lokos, Dorn had already accepted the surrender of the first other planet.

This was an incredible achievement.

Perturabo paid attention to the progress of the team and realized that he had accidentally taken too big a step while distracted, so that he walked in front of the mortal caravan and the accompanying Iron Warriors. He shortened the distance of his steps and continued to walk side by side with Rogal Dorn.

Morse floated lightly outside the Iron Warriors and mortals. Although he seemed to be walking, his footsteps floated on the ice and left no trace.

After taking a look at Morse, Perturabo felt even colder, this time because this person was wearing a paper-thin black robe in the snow in the cold wind and was still leisurely, which was really excessive.

"How long will it take?" Perturabo asked, swallowing a mouthful of cold wind.

"Ten minutes." Rogal Dorn replied.

"I didn't observe any buildings suitable for human habitation on the ground."

"Most of the settlements in Inwit are below the horizon, and the settlement we are heading to is the same." Rog Dorn said, "This is conducive to using natural or artificial ice walls to block the blizzard. At the current speed, you will see the lights of the energy tower in three minutes."

"In fact, there are already people under this piece." Morse pointed under the ice, "A tunnel was dug. Is this the power of engineering?"

"Yes." Dorn said.

After walking through a section of ice, a beam of orange-yellow light with a high degree of distinction in sunlight appeared from the center of the pit that looked like a smooth crack due to the limited viewing angle. Several wisps of extremely light smoke floated out of the pit, representing the burning phenomenon required for survival.

Soon, they came to the edge of the pit. This huge pit formed naturally and then repaired by humans has a diameter of several thousand meters and a depth of about 100 meters. The vertical ice surface around the pit is still being expanded and excavated.

There are several passages of inestimable length in the bottom ice layer, which are obviously ice tunnels built by the Invit people. They use them to communicate between settlements.

Surrounding the towering steel energy tower in the center of the pit, various buildings are spread out in concentric circles from inside to outside, absorbing heat from the core tower.

The roofs of most buildings are pure white blending with smoke due to the long-term snow, and a few walls are painted bright yellow. Through some routine identification, Perturabo identified houses and sheds for people to live in, clinics and workstations, and places far away from the core energy tower are distributed with central heating hubs.

Some factories are not easy to know their functions at a glance, perhaps related to steel smelting or wood cutting. He even saw several round sheds that were obviously entertainment venues, and he didn't know whether they were performing dramas or for other purposes. This made Perturabo slightly change his mind about Invit.

Some abandoned outposts can be seen in the middle of the building complex, witnessing the nature of the inhabited people to expand their living territories. Starting from the concentric circles on one level, the new building plan on the periphery adds additional rationality to the location allocation and the building itself. Donne silently left traces of his rule here.

A group of people boarded the elevator on the edge of the pit in batches. Perturabo saw the brackets with traces of re-welding after the elevator ceiling was raised, so he imagined Dorn deigning to squat in the elevator when he first found this settlement. Be careful not to break the ceiling.

The comical sight brought joy to his heart and softened the cold heart he had felt all the way to this point.

Morse leaned against the guardrail and seemed to be listening. Suddenly, he patted Perturabo's gauntlet.

"Look up," he reminded, "the clock is facing eleven o'clock."

Perturaboy raised his head.

The edge of the eternally calm ice cuts the boundary between the ice and snow pits and the cold sky. And in this pale edge, a small dark gray shadow suddenly rises, with a blazing golden-white fire coming from the tail, and the golden-red afterimage pulls out. Passing the gray and white curtain, the hot smoke pierced the icy clouds several times.

"We are replacing a batch of space stations recently." Dorn said flatly, "The fairings are produced here and shipped to the base for assembly."

"How do you do it?" asked Perturabo, then remembered his Olympia, and at the end of the question got the answer himself.

He devoted a lot of energy to the city construction of Lokos, and used art as an embellishment of daily life, cultivating a group of citizens who grew up in the beautiful city deep in the green mountains and forests and sparkling streams.

Since the Wit people were born in the depths of ice and snow, they have been accustomed to endure and survive at a lower limit. They have no idea how a more comfortable life will unfold, and therefore don't need to.

Therefore, their achievements are far colder than those of the Olympians, and to some extent, higher and more distant.

"Collect raw materials, develop technology, improve theory, assign tasks, build factories, and test many times." Dorn said, "Until success."

Following Dorn's simple answer, the rocket disappeared into the atmosphere, leaving a hot shadow on Perturabo's retina. He seemed to smell the heat in the air.

The elevator dropped to the ground, and heat flowed in the cold wind. The voices of people were not loud, and the mechanical unit spoke on their behalf. The hum of the structure spread along the paved rocks to the soles of Perturabo's iron boots, embracing him along with the hot wind.

If he felt the heartbeat of the planet Invite when he stepped on the ice, what resonated with Perturabo at this moment was the heart of the Invite people.

This is the planet's second heart, slow-beating, overly cold, with heat lurking deep within its shell.

Because the heartbeat of a Veitian has a different rhythm than that of an Olympian, but it is equally powerful and endless.

Perturabo realized that the Primarch corresponded to this, and he thought no more.

"I'll show you around from the outside, brother." Donn said, brother being a little more important than the other words in his mouth. "This settlement is a good example. Do you have a big picture now?"

“I’m not very satisfied,” Perturabo said. “The buildings are disorganized, the design lacks unity, there are redundancies and deficiencies everywhere.”

"You are right," replied Donne, for whom criticism was as much an offshoot of advice as praise. "It took generations of Inwit people to build settlements, and once shelter was available from the cold winds, people's willingness to tear down buildings and spend resources on rebuilding quickly diminished."

"This challenges my ability to accept, brother." Perturabo shook his head, "I see a clear possibility for a better life for the residents."

"What do you want to do?" Donne asked, "Where do you want to go?"

"We'll talk about it after reading it." Perturabo announced without hesitation, "But first I will start building a large number of temporary shelters on the ice for the residents during the reconstruction. The Iron Warriors will mobilize their forces to complete this work. In addition, , I will report to Terra to gather your legions here quickly, without worrying about time delays, as long as you have the ability to manage your newly acquired legions and let them invest in construction."

"This is a kindness, Perturabo." Dorn accepted it decisively after a rather simple calculation. It seemed to him that any question could be answered with a yes or no, without any hesitation or pretentiousness. Hesitantly, “We would have a great collaboration.”

"I will make Inwit's heart beat faster," Perturabo whispered, and though it was a murmur of self-promise, Dorn heard it.

"Inwit is a planet..."

"Yes, I know it has no heart, don't ask." Perturabo said without wavering.

Morse, who was leaning against the fence, pushed away the guardrail that unlocked after landing - this thing was made of wood wrapped in metal, probably to prevent anyone from getting their hands stuck on it. "How long are you going to talk here?"

"The hemisphere we are in has eternal daylight, and there is no urgent matter until all the engineers are ready." Dorn said calmly, "We can chat for a while longer. Do you have any suggestions on the length of time?"

"Dorn is right," said Perturabo. "Are you in a hurry to leave, Morse?"

Morse glanced at Perturabo with an incredulous look, successfully arousing the latter's guilty conscience hidden beneath his appearance.

"Wow," he said, "you've made a friend now?"

"He is not," said Perturabo immediately.

Dorn was half a beat behind, and then he uttered a long paragraph smoothly: "I'm sorry, I misunderstood you, Perturabo. I thought we were friends now. But according to the normal process of making friends, we still need to get to know each other for a period of time before we can cultivate friendship."

This time it was Perturabo who frowned and glared at Dorn.

"Do you have any questions for me?" Dorn said.

"No questions, but I don't want to chat with you anymore." Perturabo took a breath, "Morse, let's go. Work is urgent."

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